Second Half Of Eighteenth Century Research Articles

História da química e da geologia: Joseph Black e James Hutton como referências para educação em ciências

The second half of eighteenth century is marked by the advancement of chemistry and geology. The first science acquired the law of conservation of mass and this science represented a important support to geology and mineralogy. We say that both became modern science that time. Our aim is to show up some interrelations between history of chemistry and history of geology by means of the study of Joseph Black's and James Hutton's works. We defend that it is positive to science education to understand and approach the relations among different and disciplinary areas of science.

"A Vision Beyond Reach": Some Recent Atlantic Canadian Studies

MAKING ADJUSTMENTS: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN PLANTER NOVA SCOTIA, 1759-1800. Margaret Conrad, ed. Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1991. NINETEENTH-CENTURY CAPE BRETON: A HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY. Stephen J. Hornsby. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992. TROUBLE IN THE WOODS: FOREST POLICY AND SOCIAL CONFLICT IN NOVA SCOTIA AND NEW BRUNSWICK. L. Anders Sandberg, ed. Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1992. GRENFELL OF LABRADOR: A BIOGRAPHY. Ronald Rompkey. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1991. AWAY. MARITIMERS IN MASSACHUSETTS, ONTARIO AND ALBERTA: AN ORAL HISTORY OF LEAVING HOME. Gary Burrill. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992. THE ATLANTIC PROVINCES IN CONFEDERATION. E.R. Forbes and D.A. Muise, eds. Toronto, Buffalo, London and Fredericton: University of Toronto Press and Acadiensis Press, 1993. Academic research and writing on Atlantic Canada is no longer neglected orphan of Canadian studies.1 The region now has had its past carefully examined, at times with a vengeance.2 But has result been an illumination of what went wrong rather than an attempt to understand better what other options were articulated or realistically available? The crop of six books examined here might be unrepresentative but studies all paint a picture of a difficult past and some underline an even more difficult future for a troubled part of Canada. The books also reveal major contributions now being made by practitioners from disciplines beyond strictly historical; insights from historical geography and sociology are proving especially valuable. Regardless of discipline however - and to their credit historians have welcomed and applied many of findings unearthed by other disciplinary approaches - it is clear that history of this region remains far from completely understood while region's quest for accommodation and integration within Canada remains unachieved. Caught between expulsion of Acadians and arrival of Loyalists, Planter-era Nova Scotia might be quickly passed over but for work of Planter Studies Committee at Acadia University. Making Adjustments, edited by Margaret Conrad, is a selection of papers presented at second Planter Studies Conference, held in October of 1990, which examined these New England settlers who moved northward largely in late 1750s and early 1760s. The intention was to focus on in wider Nova Scotia and international contexts of second half of eighteenth century (9). Papers on genealogy, archaeology, literature, religion, architecture, map-making, and music reveal interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of conference and add new dimensions to our understanding of these American settlers and their descendants. Contributions on non-Planter societies and communities - Germans, Blacks, Micmacs, Scots/Irish and Quakers - provide evidence of preand post-revolutionary Nova Scotia's vibrant cultural mosaic. Hints also emerge of discrimination, neglect, and harsh treatment accorded some minorities. This is not to suggest that Planters must bear total responsibility for policies and attitudes that were very much a part of colonial world in which they found themselves in 1760s and 1770s. It is in touching upon this broader world and in probing systematically inner workings of various Planter communities that this volume makes its most substantial contributions. The keynote address at conference, by John Reid (45-59), emphasizes the devising of collective strategies by peoples who had seen their lives profoundly changed by geopolitical events of 1750s and early 1760s and who now had to adapt as best they could to political and environmental contexts that were unfamiliar to them. Both Planter and non-Planter were confronted by these realities and, as Reid suggests, if linked to imperial changes of 176Os, comparative studies of Nova Scotia, Florida and Louisiana, areas which have received less attention than Quebec and trans-appalachian regions, could reveal a great deal about adjustments made to survive and prosper. …

Northrop Frye and the Literature of Process Reconsidered

IN I956 NORTHROP FRYE published one of his characteristically important essays Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility. It was a noble effort to clear away some cant regarding second half of eighteenth century, long characterized as pre-Romantic. Those years, too many still believed, were most valuable for anticipating solid gold of Wordsworth and Coleridge that revealed tinsel of Swift and Pope. As Professor Frye argued, later eighteenth century had its own worthy character, one different from its ancestors or posterity, and its techniques analogous to modern symbolist poetry. Such character, he said, embodied both a literature and psychology of Longinian process not Aristotelian product, of speaker's mind creating work before us rather than narrating a finished story. Tristram Shandy, Jubilate Agno, and Ossian exemplify forms of process, which may include associative, dream-like, hypnotic, incantatory, oracular, primitive, and sub-conscious. In such cases a poet like Smart appears ecstatic in a state of rapt self-communion.'I A novelist like Sterne shows us the author at work writing, so that we wonder,

GLI SCIENZIATI ITALIANI E LA RIVOLUZIONE CHIMICA *

Abstracttitle SUMMARY /title Italian chemistry in the second half of eighteenth century was strongly characterized by ambivalence. On the one hand there were the experimental and technical contributions by Landriani, Fontana, Volta, Spallanzani, Giobert, and many others, who immediately contributed original results to the debate on gases which was going on between English and French chemists. On the other hand there was a lack of interest from the same scientists for the theoretical and methodological issues of the controversy between Lavoisier and Priestley. It was this lack of interest, due to their opposition to the abstract and philosophical aspects of chemistry, that cut off the italian chemists from the theoretical debate.

On the Road with Professor Wilson

I AM grateful to Prof. Wilson for opportunity to clarify certain points in my article which, on evidence of his comments, are source of some confusion. Apart from pointing to one or two proof-reading errors, for which I happily apologize to readers of Review, his criticisms fall into six categories: my sketch of historiography of subject; my emphasis on traffic rather than road surfaces; interpretation of figures in my tables; reality of published carrying schedules; selection of some literary evidences against others; and, finally, my apparent confusion over stage-coaches. I propose to deal with these points in same order. The historiographical issues are probably most interesting, since they involve conflict between established views and proposed revisions. I may have been unduly severe on some of the most widely read cited by Prof. Wilson: all were more circumspect on subject than he was himself. G. N. Clark commented on great growth of road traffic in later seventeenth century, though without citing any authorities.' J. U. Nef, too, acknowledged importance of road carriage: by end of seventeenth century the population of at least fifth of all territory of Great Britain was in position to receive coal by land carriage at lower-generally at very much lower-price than that paid for water-borne coal at London. But this comment does not reflect overall balance of Nef's assessment of transport, which quite properly stressed importance of water carriage in coal trade. Fay's comments on subject related principally to second half of eighteenth century, but, where they can be identified with our period, tended to accept existence of road carriage, while stressing its inefficiency.3 In so far as Prof. Wilson's authorities support his views, they do so only in showing that his use of them was somewhat incautious. Of several shades of meaning attached by dictionary to word myth, purest definition, a purely fictitious narrative, is undoubtedly harsh on such views and was not intended.4 I employed word figuratively to characterize historical interpretations which had been based on partial use of narrow range of materials and which had gained currency as beliefs about this historical phenomenon. Used in this sense, word adequately suggests teaching of many historians who, while not denying existence of road traffic, do nowhere acknowledge that road carriage was often faster, cheaper (in real terms), and safer than water carriage, and was frequently preferred to it. 1 G. N. Clark, The Later Stuarts, i660-I714 (2nd edn. Oxford, 1955), pp. 51-2. 2J. U. Nef, The Rise of British Coal Industry (I932), I, 104. 3 C. R. Fay, Great Britain from Adam Smith to Present Day: An Economic and Social Survey (I 928), pp. I 74-6. 4 The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (3rd edn. Oxford, repr. I 966), p. 1306.

George Crabbe and the Tenth Muse

RECENTLY CRITICS have been adopting a more positive approach to old complaint that many poets of second half of eighteenth century found difficulty in creating a for their poetry. Northrop Frye, for instance, has suggested that one way of looking at writing of this period is to see work of art, not as a product with a single voice, but as a process which incorporates moods and voices of ever-shifting present.' Similarly Martin Price has argued of this period that the very range of styles that are tried on makes one all more aware of nature of style itself.2 One apparent reason why writers of late eighteenth century experienced such difficulty in creating a voice was their growing awareness that both philosophy and science had revealed an undoubted if somewhat confused relation between perceiver and perceived. Blake's comment-the Eye altering, alters all ... And flat Earth becomes a Ball-declares that most fundamental facts depend upon mode of perception or angle from which they are viewed. While influence of writings of Locke, Hume, and Montesquieu made increasingly apparent to writers throughout eighteenth century that choice of perspective was crucial to their themes, it was by no means clear which voice should be chosen. The poet George Crabbe is typical of many of post-Augustan writers, such as Thomson, Shenstone, Goldsmith, and even Johnson, in that his work embodies alternate or antithetic visions of world which result from a conflict between consciously held ideas and those created under pressure of creative practice. That this is not an entirely unusual state of affairs confined solely to artists has been demonstrated in recent times by taxonomists in their important discovery