Professor Brown Research Articles

"Dubliners": Portraits of the Artist as a Narrator

Joyce's explicit statements concerning his artistic intentions in Dubliners are not very useful as basis for interpretation. Admittedly, they identify some of themes in collection; but they do not provide insight into its challenges. We read book at very superficial level if we assume it narrates a chapter of moral history of Ireland, with Dublin serving as the centre of paralysis. Joyce's outline for arrangement of stories, moreover, lists only obvious categories: childhood, adolescence, mature life, and public life. 2 Yet it is upon evidence of these remarks from his correspondence that many arguments for unity have been founded. Critics who have taken this point of departure have usually had to supplement their arguments for narrative and thematic relationships with source studies, intricate symbolic systems, and biographical backgrounds. Ultimately, they have oversimplified difficult question of sequence; and they have neglected fact that Joyce relocated some of stories when he was getting book ready for publication. They have concluded, for example, that The Dead is nihilistic coda and that Joyce conceived it as protest against his native land; or, as in work of Homer 0. Brown, they have said that final story in Dubliners reverses meaning of book by celebrating self-knowledge and self-acceptance and breaks link between Joyce and narrator of earlier stories. 3 Professor Brown's point is certainly tenable; and it makes sense both in terms of Joyce's exile from, but continuing love for, Ireland. Dubliners, however, supports another theory, one which proposes that stories are studies in growth of Joyce's developing and maturing consciousness and that his exploration of this growth-imaging also his formal interest in narrative art-gives book coherence. For purposes of orientation in discussion of Dubliners, perhaps we should begin with an observation which Joyce made in 1900: Life we must accept as we see it before our eyes, men and women as we meet them in real world, not as we apprehend them in world of faery. 4

The Rising Price of Physicians' Services: A Reply

The three primary conclusions of my previous study can be summarized briefly. First, there appears to be a permanent excess demand for physicians' services. The observed prices and quantities are not points on the demand function and the market does not follow a Marshallian or Walrasian process of adjustment to remove the excess demand. Second, physicians' fees rise when patients' ability to pay improves through higher income or more complete insurance coverage. More than a third of the potential gain from improved insurance coverage has been dissipated by induced price increases. Third, the supply equation indicates that physicians reduce the quantity of services provided when fees rise. This in turn implies that government action to control physicians' fees may increase the quantity of services provided. Professors Brown and Lapan raise some questions about the research and about the first and third of these conclusions. However, a careful analysis of their note shows that the original conclusions can remain unchanged. Their own discussion, on the other hand, contains a number of serious errors.

Consistency and the Persistence of Ideology: Some Experimental Results

Is ideology the exclusive property of an “articulate elite,” or are we all ideologists in one way or another? Professor Brown's experimental test of these alternative positions indicates that belief structure persists among the “inarticulate mass” just as it does among his more articulate subjects, and he concludes that the conflicting findings reported by other investigators result from the particular, in his view restrictive, definition of ideology they employ.

Memorial Lecture Honors Professor Brown

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The Hindu Act of Truth in Celtic Tradition

IT HAS long been known that certain correspondences of vocabulary and inflection exist between Indo-Iranian and Italo-Celtic languages. In an article in the MImoires de la Societd de linguistique,1 Vendryes has collected words which point to religious traditions common to the speakers of both groups, and he explains their survival in these dialects by the fact that, in each case, there was a caste of priests-brahman, pontifex, druid -who were the custodians of a liturgical tradition which is reflected in language. In recent years the Old Irish law tracts have been studied, chiefly by Thurneysen. They had been avoided by scholars up to then, because of the great difficulty of the language. In 1936 a volume devoted to the study of the legal status of women in ancient Ireland was published, and it appeared that ten classes of unions between man and wife are recognized, to which are compared the eight kinds of marriage discussed in the Manavadharmasdstra iii. 2042;2 and other points of resemblance between the two legal systems have been indicated.3 Professor Brown has reminded me that the practice of fasting on someone is common to India and Ireland.

Research in atmospheric electricity at Stanford University

After ten years of work in atmospheric electricity in the Department of Physics at Stanford University the reporter retired as Professor Emeritus and the work is being continued under the direction of Professor Norris E. Bradbury. During the past year Professor Brown has been making an analysis of the diurnal variation of the potential gradient from all available data, and will continue his studies in this field in cooperation with the Department of Physics.Professor Bradbury has been working for several years on gaseous ions and will now start a study of atmospheric ions with special reference to their structure and mobility.

Erratum

Erratum in Professor Brown's paper “On a Method of solving Kepler's Equation”: p. 104, in the line after equation (1), for e5/46 or e6/120 read e6/46 or e5/120.

LUNAR PHOTOGRAPHY WITH THE HOOKER TELESCOPE

My justification for contributing to this symposium is certainly not that of special knowledge. I cannot pretend to have made any serious study of the Moon, and therefore my comments on lunar research are entitled to but little weight. But I could not forego the privilege of joining in this tribute of admiration and respect for the work of my friend Professor Brown, whose fundamental investigations on the motion of the Moon have so richly deserved the award of the Bruce Medal.

Modern Theology and the Preaching of the Gospel: I. The Contribution of Modern Theology to the Equipment of the Preacher

In the fall of 1911 Professor Brown was invited by the Congregationalists of Washington to deliver a series of theological lectures at their state conference at Seattle. In 1913 these lectures were repeated at the Preachers' Institutes of the Southern Methodists at Fayette, Missouri and Georgetown, Texas. The response to the lectures on the part of those who heard them was so generous, and the requests for their publication so many, that they are here reprinted, in the hope that they may carry to a larger circle than could be reached by the spoken voice the author's conviction that the final test of every theology must be its preachableness, and his hope that, judged by this standard, modern theology may prove to have something of value to offer to the ministers of today. For this reason, further, Professor Brown has left this material in lecture rather than essay form.

Note on Professor Brown's Note

Note on Professor Brown's Note

5. On a Glass Digester in which to Heat Substances under Pressure

The objections to the use of sealed tubes are known to every practical chemist, and are a serious drawback to their employment. The chief of these are the time expended in the manufacture of the tubes, the amount of skill in glass-blowing required, the danger experienced in opening them, and above all, the fact that only a small quantity of material can be heated at one operation. Moreover, the same tube can seldom be used for more than three or four experiments, as each time it is sealed up its neck must be drawn out, and its length thus considerably decreased. These disadvantages were especially felt by me whilst preparing bromacetic acid, which was required in considerable quantities, and where as many as half a dozen tubes of bromine and acetic acid had to be heated before 100 grammes of the acid could be obtained. To obviate these objections I have had an apparatus constructed, which consists of a cylinder of glass, the walls of which are about half an inch thick. Its length is fifteen inches, its external diameter three inches, and its capacity about 600 cubic centimetres. At one end it is drawn out to a tube, whose aperture is only about one-sixth of an inch in diameter, though its walls are as thick as the rest of the apparatus. Originally this tube was provided with a stopcock, but at Professor Brown's suggestion, I have substituted a glass plate, which is ground fiat, and accurately adapted to the top of the tube.