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10307 results in History of science: general interest

Page 230 of 516

  • Science, sociability and the improvement of Ireland: the Galway Mechanics' Institute, 1826–51

  • ELIZABETH NESWALD
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 39 / Issue 4 / December 2006
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    10 November 2006, pp. 503-534
    Print publication:
    December 2006

  • Irish mechanics' institutes have received little attention from historians of science, but their history presents intriguing questions. Whereas industrialization, Protestant dissent and the politics of liberal social reformers have been identified as crucial for the development of mechanics' institutes in Britain, their influence in Ireland was regionally limited. Nonetheless, many unindustrialized, provincial, largely Catholic Irish towns had mechanics' institutes in the first half of the nineteenth century. This paper investigates the history of the two mechanics' institutes of Galway, founded in 1826 and 1840, and analyses how local and national contexts affected the establishment, function and development of a provincial Irish mechanics' institute. Situating these institutes within the changing social and political constellations of early and mid-nineteenth-century Ireland, it shows how Catholic emancipation, the temperance movement and different strands of Irish nationalism affected approaches to the uses of science and science education in Ireland.

  • Misperception, illusion and epistemological optimism: vision studies in early nineteenth-century Britain and Germany

  • JUTTA SCHICKORE
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 39 / Issue 3 / September 2006
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 August 2006, pp. 383-405
    Print publication:
    September 2006
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  • This article compares investigations of the process of vision that were made in early nineteenth-century Britain and the German lands. It is argued that vision studies differed significantly east and west of the North Sea. Most of the German investigators had a medical background and many of them had a firm grasp of contemporary philosophy. In contrast, the British studies on vision emerged from the context of optics. This difference manifested itself in the conceptual tools for the analysis of vision, deception and illusion and shaped the experiments on visual phenomena that were carried out. Nevertheless, both in Britain and in the German lands vision studies were driven by the same impetus, by epistemological concerns with the nature and reliability of knowledge acquisition in experience. The general epistemological conclusions drawn from researches on vision and deception were optimistic. Precisely because mechanisms of deception and illusion could be uncovered, the possibility of acquiring empirical knowledge could be secured.

Page 230 of 516