Curious Book Research Articles

Descartes and Method in 1637

The Discours de la Méthode and the three essays that were published with it, the Dioptrique, the Météores, and the Géometrie make up a very curious book. The very title page emphasizes the preliminary discourse, and that discourse, the Discours de la Méthode, emphasizes method, the importance that method had for Descartes in making the discoveries he made, the importance that the method Descartes claims to have found will have for the progress of the sciences and for the benefit of humankind as whole. Descartes is not, of course, telling us that we are obligated to follow his method; the Discours is, after all, proposed “as a story, or, if you prefer, as a fable.” (AT VI 4). But Descartes expects that we will all see the light, the light of reason, of course, and follow his example.

Horace Darwin and the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company

Abstract This is a curious book, at first interesting, then irritating and finally infuriating. It is half an uncritical account of Sir Horace Darwin and the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, half a description of a dozen of the Company's most noteworthy products. The principal problem the book sets for a reviewer is to try to identify the audience for whom it was written.

Eberhard Jüngel: God as the Mystery of the World. On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute Between Theism and Atheism

Eberhard jüngel'S reputation as a severely professional systematic and philosophical theologian is beginning to drift across to the English speaking world. His Gott ah Geheimnis der Welt, which first appeared in 1976 and whose third edition is here translated by Darrell L. Guder, is a curious book. It is perhaps best read not so much as a single argument but as a series of studies which at important points overlap or converge. It is a remarkably wide-ranging book: indeed, so wideranging that the argument becomes frustratingly difficult to get hold of in its entirety. Jü ngel writes illuminatingly about a variety of philosophical and theological traditions, and does so in order to advance some large-scale proposals about how a contemporary Christian doctrine of God ought to be pursued. And yet at the end of the book, even the reader who has put in the demanding work of mastering Jüngel's complex argument is left with an odd feeling of dissatisfaction, as if the book somehow lacks a recognisable, sustained treatment of its central theme.

On Monsters and Marvels

Pare's book on monsters, which stems from the late 16th century, is now available to English readers. The 19th-century editor of Pare's works, Malgaigne (from whose text of 1840 the present work is translated), called it one of the most curious books of the French Renaissance. At first glance the most striking feature is the abundant woodcuts, which illustrate various monsters—with two heads, or four limbs, or an additional trunk; hermaphrodites, Siamese twins, amelias, skeletal deformities in great variety; together with some pathological curiosities other than obstetric prodigies. There are also many strange animals once deemed quite marvellous—rhinoceros, whale, giraffe, and toucan, among others—as well as some mythological creatures. Some of these monsters Pare himself had seen. Others were vouched for by friends or had appeared in printed sources, which go back to Pliny. The different entities are the subjects of some 39 short chapters that provide some exposition. Some

An analysis of information preserved in a recently identified collection of insect drawings by Alexander Marshall (1639?–1682)

Alexander Marshall's high reputation for botanical illustration (Edwards, 1964) was established by John Tradescant, the younger, referring to an item in Tradescant's Museum: A Book of Mr. Tradescant's choicest Flowers and Plants, exquisitely limned in vellum by Mr. Alex (Tradescant, 1656). But John Evelyn's statement (Evelyn, 1955) for 1 August 1682, Thence to Fulham to visit the Bish of London, and review again the additions which Mr. Marshall had made of his curious book of flowers in miniature and collection of suggests that Marshall (or Compton) had a collection of insects or insect drawings, as well as botanical illustrations. Since Evelyn's note, however, Marshall has been known only as an illustrator of flowers and plants (Blunt, 1951), on the basis of two collections: the Tradescant flower and plant drawings, apparently part of the Ashmolean collections at one time, and the flower paintings now in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle (formerly in the possession of the Friend family) 1. Now Alexander Marshall's expertise in the illustration of insects can again be judged, for there are watercolors of insects by Marshall bound in an album preserved at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The motivations of a master illustrator and the enthusiasm of an acute observer of nature and of men are demonstrated in the annotations associated with the insect drawings, valuable additions to the meager information heretofore available about Alexander Marshall. The purposes of this paper are to announce the identification of the Marshall insect drawings and to present some of the information associated with the drawings. In 1928, Roswell C. Williams, Jr, deposited with the American Entomological Society, whose library is an integral part of the Library of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, an album of insect drawings said to have been purchased from a London bookseller within the previous ten years. The album had been sold as a collection of Petiver's insect drawings (Phillips and Phillips, 1963). The red leather album contains more than 150 watercolor drawings of insects, five drawings of insects with plants and one drawing of a guinea pig. There are natural history observations and other annotations in at least four hands, some clearly applied after the assembly of all the drawings.

That curious book "The Breath of Life" by George Catlin

In 1861, George Catlin published a classic on mouth breathing titled The Breath of Life which is a contri­bution to the history of medicine, dentistry, and medical anthropology. Catlin, famous for his American Indian paintings and contributions to ethnography, believed that primi­tive Indians were healthier than civilized Europeans because they slept on their backs and breathed through their noses rather than their mouths. He emphasized his point with the use of many rather absurd illustrations. The book had a fair degree of success and was reprinted regularly until 1891. Garrison and Morton list the book as the first published work in America on mouth breathing.

Metaphor and Metaphysics

Brian Wicker has written a very curious book. A rough summary of its contents will indicate the obvious sense in which it’s curious: the second part consists of six critical studies, of Lawrence, Joyce, Waugh, Beckett, Robbe-Grillet and Mailer; the first, theoretical, part includes an analysis of metaphor and analogy in relation to Saussure and Chomsky, a comparison of homopathic and contiguous magic with myths and fairly-tales, an excursus on causality in science linked with comments on angels and ecology, and a chapter that brings together discussions of religious language, Whitehead and Teilhard, and the differing narrative structures of Old and New Testament stories. It’s a brave author and publisher who can expect a readership for such a work. But it’s the kind of argument that links these components that I find really curious, since I remain very unclear just what Wicker is arguing for. There are two major difficulties: the overall argument seems to be trying to establish a kind of natural theology, a queer kind of proof that God exists, though Wicker’s formulations of his case never quite commit him to this; and secondly some of his basic arguments seem to me so dubious that, given my respect for Wicker’s previous work, I can only conclude that one of us is deeply muddled but remain uncertain which.

A Psychiatric Odyssey

As Dr. Masserman states in his opening sentence, this is a curious book. But it is also a fascinating, intriguing, frank, provocative, and occasionally irritating one. The author, a brilliant, erudite, extremely active psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher, and administrator, has played a prominent part in the psychiatric scene during the past 30 years. In this volume, the 49th either written or edited by him, he opens to public view various intimate memorabilia—letters, case histories, book reviews, reports to the courts, casual comments, and recapitulations of his philosophy and of his clinical approach. The reader, particularly if he has any acquaintance with dramatis personae, will find himself absorbed by the author's openness; will be admiring and perhaps envious of his keen intelligence, humor, and courage; will be alternately amused and aghast when he tilts with his protagonists; and will be inevitably left breathless by his amazing energy. Dr. Masserman does not suffer

Infectious Agents and Host Reactions

This book collects into one volume a great deal of information on the interrelationships of microorganisms and hosts previously scattered through the periodical literature. It is a curious book in some ways. One has the feeling that it was not so much edited, in the usual sense, as put together. There is no apparent systematic approach to the subject, and it is not comprehensive. For example, in the section on infections by gram-negative pathogens there are chapters on Bordetella, Neisseria , cholera, Salmonella, Brucella, Treponema, and Mycoplasma . Why these particular organisms? I suspect that the topics were selected to fit the contributors rather than vice versa. Certainly, the list of contributors reads like a directory of the investigators who have done most over the past 20 or 30 years to develop our current concepts on the relations of host mechanisms to infectious processes. Very few young, active investigators are represented. In

On Blowing One's Mind (19th-Century Style)

ABSTRACT A few years ago I chanced upon a curious little book with the engaging, albeit long-winded, title of The Chemical Experimentalist; or, an attempt to allure by Experiment, and guide by Reasoning, the enquirer after Rational Amusement and Useful Knowledge, Towards the cultivation of the simple and sublime Science—Chemistry. This work is a remarkable hodge-podge of chemical experiments that one can perform at home, hints on cleaning silver and dying cloth, and even a section on the Philosophy of Nature wherein the author solemnly declares, inter alia, "that comets are male planets, and that their tails are their generative organs." That a comet might possess a phallus and could thus presumably indulge in venery on a celestial scale is an intriguing enough notion, but to my mind the most entertaining item in the Chemical Experimentalist is the apparently serious suggestion that nitrous oxide could replace alcohol as a social stimulant.

Wax Figures and Mannequins in Solana

Jos6 Gutierrez-Solana (1886-1945) is primarily known as a painter who is only recently coming into his own as one of the top Spanish artists of the twentieth century. Like other Spanish painters of his generation he was personally acquainted with such literary figures as Baroja, Unamuno, and Valle Inclin. A great attraction at Ram6n G6mez de la Serna's Tertulia de Pombo, Solana developed an interest in writing during his late twenties and thirties. Spurred by a need to write down certain things he could not paint and to express his vision of the world in a different medium from his paintings, he produced several curious books which can best be described as

Communication, Organization and Science

By Jerome Rothstein : with a foreword by C. A. Muses Colardo : The Falcon's Wing Press. Pp. 110 + xcvi. Price $3.50.

Desultory Notes On the Hsi-Yang Chi

My recent reading of the novel Hsi-yang chi 1) resulted in a sh eaf of notes, some of which seem to be of sufficient general interest to deseive publication in these pages. They deal with a variety of topics that are totally unrelated, their only link being the fact that scme notice in this novel started me on an investigation. However, since, put together, they give some impression of the interesting items which may be culled from this curious book, I have deemed it well to discuss them in a lump. This may be the more useful, since, so far, scholars have taken little notice of the

Curious book bindings

Curious book bindings

A curious book

Journal Article A curious book Get access J. B. McGovern, F.S.A., SCOT., F.PH.S. J. B. McGovern, F.S.A., SCOT., F.PH.S. 1Redgarth, Clothorn Road, Didsbury Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume CLIII, Issue dec10, 10 December 1927, Page 423, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/CLIII.dec10.423 Published: 10 December 1927

Curious book bindings

Curious book bindings

Curious book titles

Curious book titles Get access George Berry George Berry 12, South Oxford Street, Edinburgh Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s10-VIII, Issue 196, 28 September 1907, Page 251, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s10-VIII.196.251d Published: 28 September 1907

A Metrical and Pictorial Record of the Earth's History 1

THE author of this curious book tells us that it is an attempt to present a sketch of the evolution of the earth on the nebular hypothesis, to note also subsequent sea and land movements, and successive appearances of life as revealed by the geological strata. The geological record of past life remains very imperfect; still, many additions, notably from strata in Egypt and North America, have been made in recent years, and studied in the light of the doctrine of evolution its revelations have become more intelligible.

Book Review: The Curious Book of Birds

Book Review: The Curious Book of Birds

Art. X.—Some Account of the Arabic Work entitled “Niháyatu'l-irab fí akhbári'l-Furs ua'l-‘Arab,” particularly of that part which treats of the Persian Kings

To the curious book of which the full title stands at the head of this article, I have already alluded in my communication to the Journal of January, 1899, on The Sources of Dawlatsháh, pp. 51–53. I now propose to give such account of its contents as is possible within the limits here prescribed. For this purpose I have made use of the Cambridge Codex (belonging to the Burckhardt Collection) marked QQ. 225. Though the book is a rare one, at least three other manuscripts are known — two in the British Museum (see the old Arabic Catalogue, pp. 418 and 581) and one (marked A. 1741) at Gotha. The last was used by Professor Nöldeke, in his reference to the Niháyat, at pp. 475–476 of his excellent Geschichte … der Sasaniden. He describes it as “in the main a quite arbitrary recension of Dínawarí, though here [namely, in the Romance of Bahrám Chúbin] it had before it an essentially fuller text than this,” and briefly characterizes it as “das seltsame, ziemlich schwindelhafte Werk.”