Mark G. Spencer | |
---|---|
Born | September 8, 1967 |
Awards | FRHistS, FSAScot |
Academic background | |
Education | University of Western Ontario (PhD) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | history |
Institutions | Brock University |
Main interests | 18th-century British Atlantic world |
Mark G. Spencer FRHistS FSA Scot (born 8 September 1967) is a Canadian historian and Professor of History at Brock University. He is known for his works on David Hume's life and thought. [1] [2] [3] Spencer is a winner of Governor General's Gold Medal (The University of Western Ontario) and The John Bullen Prize of the Canadian Historical Association for his book David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America. He is co-editor with Elizabeth S. Radcliffe of Hume Studies .
David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher,historian,economist,librarian,and essayist,who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism,skepticism,and naturalism. Beginning with A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40),Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume followed John Locke in rejecting the existence of innate ideas,concluding that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon,Thomas Hobbes,John Locke,and George Berkeley as an empiricist.
Deism is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge,and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical,reliable,and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe. More simply stated,Deism is the belief in the existence of God,solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority. Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology—that is,God's existence is revealed through nature.
William Paley was an English Anglican clergyman,Christian apologist,philosopher,and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity,which made use of the watchmaker analogy.
The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th- and early-19th-century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century,Scotland had a network of parish schools in the Scottish Lowlands and five universities. The Enlightenment culture was based on close readings of new books,and intense discussions which took place daily at such intellectual gathering places in Edinburgh as The Select Society and,later,The Poker Club,as well as within Scotland's ancient universities.
The Georgian era was a period in British history from 1714 to c. 1830–1837,named after the Hanoverian kings George I,George II,George III and George IV. The definition of the Georgian era is also often extended to include the relatively short reign of William IV,which ended with his death in 1837. The subperiod that is the Regency era is defined by the regency of George IV as Prince of Wales during the illness of his father George III. The transition to the Victorian era was characterized in religion,social values,and the arts by a shift in tone away from rationalism and toward romanticism and mysticism.
Roy Sydney Porter,FBA was a British historian known for his work on the history of medicine. He retired in 2001 from the director of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine at University College London (UCL).
Early modern philosophy The early modern era of philosophy was a progressive movement of Western thought,exploring through theories and discourse such topics as mind and matter,is a period in the history of philosophy that overlaps with the beginning of the period known as modern philosophy. It succeeded in the medieval era of philosophy. Early modern philosophy is usually thought to have occurred between the 16th and 18th centuries,though some philosophers and historians may put this period slightly earlier. During this time,influential philosophers included Descartes,Locke,Hume,and Kant,all of whom contributed to the current understanding of philosophy.
A salon is a gathering of people held by a host. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry,"either to please or to educate". Salons in the tradition of the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries are still being carried on today.
The American Enlightenment was a period of intellectual and philosophical fervor in the thirteen American colonies in the 18th to 19th century,which led to the American Revolution and the creation of the United States of America. The American Enlightenment was influenced by the 17th- and 18th-century Age of Enlightenment in Europe and native American philosophy. According to James MacGregor Burns,the spirit of the American Enlightenment was to give Enlightenment ideals a practical,useful form in the life of the nation and its people.
Richard Henry Popkin was an American academic philosopher who specialized in the history of enlightenment philosophy and early modern anti-dogmatism. His 1960 work The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes introduced one previously unrecognized influence on Western thought in the seventeenth century,the Pyrrhonian Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus. Popkin also was an internationally acclaimed scholar on Christian millenarianism and Jewish messianism.
The Society of Dilettanti is a British society of noblemen and scholars that sponsored the study of ancient Greek and Roman art,and the creation of new work in the style.
John Greville Agard Pocock was a New Zealand historian of political thought. He was especially known for his studies of republicanism in the early modern period,his work on the history of English common law,his treatment of Edward Gibbon and other Enlightenment historians,and,in historical method,for his contributions to the history of political discourse.
István Hont was a Hungarian-born British historian of economics and political thought,University Reader in the History of Political Thought at the University of Cambridge.
The salons of Early Modern and Revolutionary France played an integral role in the cultural and intellectual development of France. The salons were seen by contemporary writers as a cultural hub,responsible for the dissemination of good manners and sociability. It was not merely manners that the salons supposedly spread but also ideas,as the salons became a centre of intellectual as well as social exchange,playing host to many members of the Republic of Letters. Women,in contrast to other Early Modern institutions,played an important and visible role within the salons. The extent of this role is,however,heavily contested by some historians.
Peter James Marshall is a British historian known for his work on the British Empire,particularly the activities of British East India Company servants in 18th-century Bengal,and also the history of British involvement in North America during the same period. He is not to be confused with his contemporary,the other P. J. Marshall,who chronicled the history of public transport in the British Isles.
Romanticism in Scotland was an artistic,literary and intellectual movement that developed between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. It was part of the wider European Romantic movement,which was partly a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment,emphasising individual,national and emotional responses,moving beyond Renaissance and Classicist models,particularly into nostalgia for the Middle Ages. The concept of a separate national Scottish Romanticism was first articulated by the critics Ian Duncan and Murray Pittock in the Scottish Romanticism in World Literatures Conference held at UC Berkeley in 2006 and in the latter's Scottish and Irish Romanticism (2008),which argued for a national Romanticism based on the concepts of a distinct national public sphere and differentiated inflection of literary genres;the use of Scots language;the creation of a heroic national history through an Ossianic or Scottian 'taxonomy of glory' and the performance of a distinct national self in diaspora.
Scottish common sense realism,also known as the Scottish school of common sense,is a realist school of philosophy that originated in the ideas of Scottish philosophers Thomas Reid,Adam Ferguson,James Beattie,and Dugald Stewart during the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment. Reid emphasized man's innate ability to perceive common ideas and that this process is inherent in and interdependent with judgement. Common sense,therefore,is the foundation of philosophical inquiry. Though best remembered for its opposition to the pervasive philosophy of David Hume,Scottish common sense philosophy is influential and evident in the works of Thomas Jefferson and late 18th-century American politics.
Margaret Candee Jacob is an American historian of science and Distinguished Professor of Research at UCLA. She specializes in the history of science,knowledge,the Enlightenment and Freemasonry.
Christopher M. S. Johns was an American art historian,and the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of History of Art at Vanderbilt University,who specialized in eighteenth-century Italian art,decorative art,material culture,and architecture. He was a leading scholar of early modern Italian art and culture,especially the relationship between art,politics,and religion in eighteenth-century Rome.
This is a select bibliography of post-World War II English language books and journal articles about the history of Russia and its empire from 1613 until 1917. It specifically excludes topics related to the Russian Revolution. Book entries may have references to reviews published in academic journals or major newspapers when these could be considered helpful.