Showing papers in "Journal of the History of Ideas in 1948"

A Note on Method in the History of Ideas

Abstract: Studies in the history of ideas, it seems to me, have largely tended towards the analytic. That is to say, historians of ideas have been primarily concerned with extricating ideas from contexts in which they have been present as consciously formed concepts or as implicit assumptions, and with describing the origin, growth, mutation, collocation, and interaction of those ideas. Contexts have been considered important primarily as they have modified or have allowed for collocations (perhaps fundamentally illogical, as in the case of primitivism and the idea of progress) of ideas. This, of course, is only proper methodologically. For it has been the pioneering task of historians of ideas to analyze, to break down, what had heretofore been taken to be unified and organic. But now, so I should like to suggest, we are in a position to proceed to studies which are synthetic in emphasis. We can study in detail contexts in which given ideas appear to be generally accepted, can try to see how such ideas have come into and how they affect those contexts. In short, we can try to answer this question: How do such ideas function as they become part of specific cultural processes ? This is not to say that the sort of syntheses which I here envisage have not been attempted-and carried out with some degree of success. For, in the first place, my use of the term "tend " should be sufficient indication that the fact that the intellectual historian must extricate ideas from specific contexts makes it impossible for him to neglect those contexts and thus for any study in the history of ideas to be "purely " analytic; what I wish to point out is that emphasis has been placed mainly on the idea and its relationship to other ideas, not on the context (i.e., idea-informed context) and its relationship to other contexts. And, in the second place, we have had notable studies of individuals who have been particularly receptive to an idea or a group of ideas and whose work has affected and has been affected by such ideas. Further, we have had work like that of Miss Whitney, Miss Bryson, Mr. Hofstadter, Mr. Willey, Mr. Tillyard, Mr. Weinberg, and Mr. Ekirch, each of whom pro-

Nietzsche's Admiration for Socrates

Abstract: I t may seem to be a rather trivial problem whether Nietzsche happened to admire Socrates; and even the fact that almost all his interpreters and critics have harped on his alleged repudiation of Socrates could hardly give the present thesis much importance. Yet this is not a footnote on a footnote but part of a revaluation of Nietzsche's philosophy, and the present study reflects the overall revision. The " immoral i s t" who has been so often pictured as the heir of Callicles and Thrasymachus, the sophists whom Socrates sought to refute—the Nietzsche for whom Socrates was allegedly " a villain" appears to have modelled his entire philosophic enterprise in the image of Socrates. Important passages in the Zarathustra and at least one grotesque episode in Nietzsche's biography suddenly acquire a new meaning, and the Ecce Homo emerges as a mad attempt to overtrump the matchless irony of Socrates' Apology.

E. L. Youmans: A Chapter in the Diffusion of Science in America

Abstract: 1 The most important source for the study of Edward Youmans is, of course, his own writings. These include: The Scientific Basis of Prohibition; shall alcoholic liquors as common beverages be commercially outlawed? (London, 1846); A ClassBook of Chemistry in which the Principles of the Science are Familiarly Explained and Applied to the Arts, Agriculture, Physiology, Dietetics, Ventilation, and the Most Important Phenomena of Nature (New York, 1851); Alcohol and the Constitution of Man (New York, 1854); Chemical Atlas; or, The Chemistry of familiar objects (New York, 1855); Chemical Chart (New York, 1855); The Handbook of Household Science (New York, 1857); "Masquerade of the Elements" in Lectures of the American Institute of Instruction (New York, 1860); The Correlation and Conservation of Forces (ed., New York, 1864); The Culture Demanded by Modern Life; A Series of Addresses and Arguments on the Claims of Scientific Education (ed., New York, 1867); Exposition of the Development Hypothesis (New York, 1871); "Herbert Spencer and the Doctrine of Evolution," in Outline of the Evolution-Philosophy by M. E. Cazelles (New York, 1875); Herbert Spencer on the Americans and the Americans on Herbert Spencer (New York, 1883). Especially important are the reviews and editorials he contributed to his own magazine, The Popular Science Monthly (New York, 1872-1887), hereafter cited as PSM. John Fiske's Edward Livingston Youmans, Interpreter of Science for the People (New York, 1894), though uncritical and diffuse, is an interesting biography by a contemporary, and is a storehouse of material about Youmans. J. Fiske, "Edward Livingston Youmans: The Man and his Work," PSM (May, 1890), is a good brief account. His A Century of Science and Other Essays (Boston and New York, 1900), and Darwinism and Other Essays (Boston and New York, 1886), also contain pertinent information about Youmans. The Letters of John Fiske, edited by Ethel Fisk (New York, 1940), include only stray references to Youmans; J. S. Clark, Life and Letters of John Fiske (Boston, 1917), on the other hand, contains much interesting material. The obituaries by Eliza Youmans, "Sketch of E. L. Youmans," PSM (March, 1887); by Grant Allen, "Professor Youmans," London Academy (January 29, 1887); and in the New York Tribune (January 19, 1887), are all helpful. H. G. Good, "Edward Livingston Youmans, A National Teacher of Science," Scientific Monthly (March, 1924), and his "Edward Livingston Youmans" in the Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1936), may also be consulted. Henry Holt, Garrulities of an Octogenarian Editor (Boston and New York, 1923), gives an interesting contemporary attitude towards Youmans. See also Evolution in Science, Philosophy, and Art (New York, 1891). For the relations of Youmans with the House of Appleton, see Brief Studies of General Book Publishiwg Firms of the United States (Urbana, III., 1931); J. C.