As Englands first colony, Irelands experience is of great significance to wider colonial studies. Similarities exist between settler societies such as Australia, Canada and Ireland in terms of economic structures and demographic tensions; however the colonial experience of Ireland is unique as it was Englands first colonial enterprise and therefore something of an ongoing experiment, and also because of its proximity to the home island. Nowhere else was Englands appropriation of overseas territory followed by an attempt to amalgamate it into domestic lands.</p><p>This thesis discusses aspects of colonialism, political-religious dissent and education in Belfast in the immediate post-Union period (1801-1814). The commentary is couched in a study of The Belfast Monthly Magazine, a small publication that ran from 1808-1814 which provides a contemporary account of Belfast reformers who had witnessed the period of rebellion and union and continued to promote real whig principles in its aftermath. William Drennan (1754-1820) undertook the publishing venture jointly with John Templeton (1766-1825) and John Hancock (1762-1823). Drennan was a co-founder of the United Irishmen, Templeton was a well-known botanist and former United Irishman, and Hancock was a linen merchant and former member of the Society of Friends. The Proprietors, as they referred to themselves in their publication, reported on continental politics and their observations on the ongoing Napoleonic wars were largely informed by their experiences of civil unrest over the previous three decades.</p>

This study situates Ptolemy’s philosophy within the second-century milieu of Middle Platonism and the nascent Aristotelian commentary tradition. It focuses on Ptolemy’s adaptation and application of Aristotle’s tripartite division of theoretical philosophy into the physical, mathematical, and theological. In Almagest 1.1, Ptolemy defines these three sciences, describes their relations and objects of study, and addresses their epistemic success. According to Ptolemy, physics and theology are conjectural, and mathematics alone yields knowledge. This claim is unprecedented in the history of ancient Greek philosophy. Ptolemy substantiates this claim by constructing and employing a scientific method consistent with it. In Almagest 1.1, after defining the theoretical sciences, Ptolemy adds that, while theology and physics are conjectural, mathematics can make a good guess at the nature of theological objects and contribute significantly to the study of physics. He puts this claim into practice in the remainder of his corpus by applying mathematics to theology and physics in order to produce results in these fields. After the introductory chapter, I present Ptolemy’s philosophy and practice of the three theoretical sciences. In Chapter 2, I examine how and why Ptolemy defines the sciences in Almagest 1.1. In Chapter 3, I further analyze how Ptolemy defines mathematical objects, how he describes the relationships between the tools and branches of mathematics, and whether he demonstrates in the Harmonics and Almagest that he believed mathematics yields sure and incontrovertible knowledge, as he claims in Almagest 1.1. In Chapter 4, I present Ptolemy’s natural philosophy. While in Chapter 2 I discuss his element theory, in Chapter 4 I focus on his physics of composite bodies: astrology, psychology, and cosmology as conveyed in the Tetrabiblos, On the Kritêrion, Harmonics, and Planetary Hypotheses. I do not devote a chapter to theology, as Ptolemy refers to this science only once in his corpus. Therefore, I limit my analysis of his definition and practice of theology to Chapter 2. In the concluding chapter, I discuss Ptolemy’s ethical motivation for studying mathematics. What emerges from this dissertation is a portrait of Ptolemy’s philosophy of science and the scientific method he employs consistently in his texts.

As Englands first colony, Irelands experience is of great significance to wider colonial studies. Similarities exist between settler societies such as Australia, Canada and Ireland in terms of economic structures and demographic tensions; however the colonial experience of Ireland is unique as it was Englands first colonial enterprise and therefore something of an ongoing experiment, and also because of its proximity to the home island. Nowhere else was Englands appropriation of overseas territory followed by an attempt to amalgamate it into domestic lands.</p><p>This thesis discusses aspects of colonialism, political-religious dissent and education in Belfast in the immediate post-Union period (1801-1814). The commentary is couched in a study of The Belfast Monthly Magazine, a small publication that ran from 1808-1814 which provides a contemporary account of Belfast reformers who had witnessed the period of rebellion and union and continued to promote real whig principles in its aftermath. William Drennan (1754-1820) undertook the publishing venture jointly with John Templeton (1766-1825) and John Hancock (1762-1823). Drennan was a co-founder of the United Irishmen, Templeton was a well-known botanist and former United Irishman, and Hancock was a linen merchant and former member of the Society of Friends. The Proprietors, as they referred to themselves in their publication, reported on continental politics and their observations on the ongoing Napoleonic wars were largely informed by their experiences of civil unrest over the previous three decades.</p>

This thesis examines the role of philosophic instrument-makers within the eighteenth-century philosophic instrument trade in Britain. The instrument-maker functioned in both the realms of the philosophic elite and the burgeoning eighteenth-century public marketplace. Faced with the task of balancing the contradictory scholarly expectations of natural philosophers and the monetary pressures of the public market, these craftsmen employed sophisticated marketing strategies to reconcile these opposing realms. This project examines the careers of several London instrument-makers and their attempts to gain and maintain solid standing among philosophic circles, while using that standing to their commercial advantage in the instrument trade. By examining the way instrument-makers marketed their products one can glean insight into the role philosophic credibility played in shaping the successful instrument makers career and how the materials of experimental philosophy were promoted to a public increasingly interested in consuming natural philosophy.<p> This enquiry addresses several types of marketing techniques employed by instrument-makers in their efforts to sell their wares. However, patenting strategies receive particularly close attention as they reveal the tension found between the scholarly expectations among the philosophic elite and the commercial priority of the public marketplace.

In this thesis, I examine the radical political views and activism of Thomas Beddoes, a late eighteenth century chemist and physician. A multifaceted man, Beddoes corresponded with many of Britains leading industrial and intellectual lights, especially members of the Lunar Society, had a brief career as an Oxford lecturer, devised air delivery apparatus with James Watt, and wrote extensively to distribute useful medical knowledge to the public and argue for medical reform, all the while attracting the ire of the government and scientific community for his outspoken, radical, republican politics. <br><br> I track Beddoes career as a Friend of Liberty, set within the context of the British reform movement, from 1792, when he began involving himself publicly in agitation, to 1797, when the death-knell of the British reform movement sounded and the French Revolution seemed to have utterly failed. In doing so, I seek to determine to what extent Beddoes was a radical, a revolutionary, and a fifth-column threat to the British, whether or not his ideology was in any regard the product of his science, and what the nature of his radicalism and the lineage of his ideas can tell us about the intellectual culture of his era. <br><br> I conclude that Beddoes fiery rhetoric belies an otherwise moderate and pacific approach to political change, based in British Enlightenment ideas rather than emerging science. The republic, rather than a goal to be achieved through violent overthrow, was simply the only logical organization for a society of innately equal citizens, a fact he believed obvious to the enlightened mind. He defended the French Revolution while he could still cast it as a moderate endeavor led by rational men, but, like so many of its early British supporters, grew disillusioned as France descended into mob violence and the tyranny of Robespierre. Following the Priestley Riots of 1791, he harboured deep fears of a sans-culotte-like British mob, which threatened not only the Church and King, but the interests and liberty of those men like Joseph Priestley and James Watt who were generating valuable knowledge and industry around him. <br><br> My analysis supports Roy Porters theory of a unique British Enlightenment, a social fermentation which emphasized Lockean personal liberty, improvement, and private property (which evolved into the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith and David Hume), and which was, critically, defensive of liberties already gained. Beddoes constellation of political, religious, scientific, and economic influences reflect the characteristic Englishness of the enlightenment culture around him, distinct particularly from France, and helps illustrate the links between scientific and political ideas in the late Enlightenment.

This dissertation is a work in intellectual history that chronicles racial theories within Western science and medicine. Therein, I address two interrelated questions. Firstly, has Christianity shaped modern scientific perceptions of race? Secondly, is the search for the origin of human life, vis-à-vis theories of race, a purely scientific matter or, a more basic human existential concern? To answer these questions I undertook archival research within the history of European and American racial science, analyzing contemporary scientific work, archival data of primary scientific material, biblical commentaries, literary monthlies, and early maps of the major continents. I argue that Christian ideas about nature, humanity, and history have facilitated modern scientific perceptions of race since the time of the Enlightenment. This is true despite what is believed to be the “Death of Adam” within Western science following the emergence of Darwinian evolution. In defense of my thesis I trace the currency of three ideas derived from Christianity that have shaped the assumptions and reasoning styles of early modern and contemporary scientific theorists of race. These ideas are: common human descent (derived from the Biblical creation narrative), the ontological uniqueness of human life (drawn from Biblical claims about the “image of God” mirrored in “mankind”), and the longevity of racial traits (an idea that has its roots in theological claims about the stability and inherent order of nature). I chart the development of these three Christian concepts across four different historical moments that reveal how religious and scientific perceptions of race share a common foundation in the West. These moment are: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s attempt to develop anthropology as a secular science during the end of the eighteenth-century; mid-nineteenth-century debates in the U.S. over common human descent; early twentieth-century theories of race and disease that relied on polygenist assumptions about distinct human ancestry; and finally the recent discovery of Neanderthal DNA exclusively in the descendents of Eurasia. Ultimately, this thesis concludes that religious and scientific ways of viewing race have been interconnected and are animated by irresolvable questions about what it means to be human.

This dissertation describes how innovations in the science of mind -- laboratory measurements, psychoanalysis, and mental testing -- changed the ideas and institutions of British imperialism. Psychology did not function as a tool of empire in any straightforward way: in many cases, the knowledge it generated called racial stereotypes into question, uncovered the traumatic effects of British rule, and drew unflattering contrasts between the hierarchical values of imperialism and an idealized vision of meritocracy. Psychology did, however, strengthen the authority of Western experts to intervene in other cultures. While they kept their distance from the political culture of officials and settlers, psychologists embraced a modernizing mission, arguing that knowledge of abilities and emotions could make colonized societies fairer and more efficient. The development projects which defined the postwar and postcolonial periods -- usually seen as the golden age of abstract, impersonal, "high modernist" planning -- relied in significant ways on the measurement and management of minds. / History

This dissertation examines Galen of Pergamon's text On Anatomical Procedures (De anatomicis administrationibus) and considers its audience and purpose. The first chapter presents the audience of the text as Galen perceived it; I use Galen's explicit rhetoric about his readers to paint a picture of his ideal envisioned audience and then measure this against the concrete expectations that he conveys through the explicit and implicit prerequisites he demands of his readers. The second chapter, by contrast, makes strides towards uncovering the actual audience of the work by examining the ramifications of Galen's expectation that his readers will actively participate in the studies he describes; I study the availability of the books, tools, and animals that he expects his audience to be able to purchase, in order to understand the financial and social implications. The third chapter considers the text itself, taking into account the manner and timing of its composition, Galen's linguistic choices vis-à-vis his audience, and the details of his specific directions; I use this analysis to define the nature of the text and how the audience was expected to interact with it, thus necessarily engaging with the norms in ancient medical education and the role that books found there. The fourth and final chapter compares the text to his other anatomical writings, particularly his more descriptive and philosophically oriented treatise, De usu partium, as a final way to determine the purpose of this highly unusual work and its place both in his oeuvre and in its contemporary environment. / The Classics

This dissertation provides an account of how computing left behind its origins in academic and military research to become part of the hospital's equipmental setting. I examine the efforts of reformers, including administrators, planners, architects, and computer consultants, to provide appropriate accommodation for modern biomedicine. I explore three stories in order to untangle the admixture of architecture, medicine, and computation as they intertwined through a mutual engagement with automation, operations research, cybernetics, and biomedical research in the postwar hospital. In Boston, pioneering research consultants Bolt Beranek and Newman collaborated with the Massachusetts General Hospital on an experimental total information system known as the Hospital Computer Project. In London, architects Llewelyn Davies Weeks used computer algorithms to help design Northwick Park Hospital. And in Canada, the Montreal Neurological Institute adopted computing to transform its expertise in clinical brain imaging research. When possible, I emphasize specific computers, arguing that attention to the presence of the machine itself contributes to our understanding of hospital life.

This dissertation examines the impact of the nineteenth-century discussions about climate change and desiccation on large engineering projects in desert regions between 1870 and 1950. It demonstrates that the debate over the variability of global climatic conditions was a product of both internal academic and transnational political developments, and that the perceived threat of advancing desert conditions found a popular and technocratic expression in climate engineering designs. Against the background of new theories about the earth's geological history, the development of academic geography, the travels of Sahara explorers, and imperialism in North Africa, European geographers and geologists initiated an enduring discussion on the origin of desert environments and the question of large-scale climatic changes in the recent past and present. Using a wide array of evidence ranging from cave paintings found in the interior Sahara and classical travel accounts to modern meteorological data, scientists debated whether North Africa, the entire continent, or even the whole world were undergoing desiccation. While the lack of a widely-accepted causal mechanism behind large climatic changes meant that the academic debate remained unresolved by the beginning of the twentieth century, images of progressing desert conditions had already left the confines of academia, heightening public anxiety over the possibility of future climatic catastrophes on a global scale. From the early stages of the nineteenth-century debate on climate change, fears of desiccation inspired scientists and engineers to come up with solutions to detrimental climatic shifts, whether these were viewed as man-made or natural. The resulting climate engineering projects were an expression of environmental pessimism paired with a powerful technological optimism. This was apparent in French and British schemes in the late nineteenth century that aimed to flood large parts of the Sahara and effect wide-ranging climatic changes; in the plan of a German architect to engineer a geographically and climatically transformed new Euro-African continent in the 1920s; and eventually in Nazi designs to Germanize and green the "desertified" areas of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. / History