3.2 Publishing One of the strongest impulses in the Enlightenment was to codify knowledge and publish it widely. The most notable example of this impulse is the French Encyclopedic, 'a rational dictionary of the sciences, art and trades’, published chiefly in Paris in the 1750s and 1760s, under the indomitable editorship of Denis Diderot. The seventeen volumes of text and eleven volumes of plates were intended to summarise and clearly present everything that was worth knowing, from the construction
2.2 The Church The Scottish Church seems an unlikely place to look for the stirrings of enlightenment. In 1690, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland passed an act against ‘the Atheistical Opinions of the Deists’, and, in 1696, an eighteen-year-old Edinburgh University student was executed for denying some of the propositions of Christianity. The legacy of the Scottish, Calvinist Reformation, it seems, was one of conformism, intolerance and narrow-mindedness. But this is not the whole sto
2.1 The Act of Union, 1707 Before examining Scottish science in detail, we need a sketch of the particular Scottish historical background from which an astonishing cluster of intellectuals and ideas emerged. It needs to be said at the outset, however, that there is no scholarly consensus as to why a small, poor country in Northern Europe should have made such a disproportionately large contribution to the thought of the age. The event in Scottish history which tends to polarise opinion among scholars is the Act o
6.1 Marketing cloth in Ghana The market in Kumasi is arguably one of the largest in West Africa, and mostly anything can be found there, including lots of cloth. In this section you will learn about the marketing and selling of cloth in Ghana and, in particular, in Kumasi market. 5.3 Addressing the issues Think back over the video evidence so far: what information and examples might you select, and how might you use these to address the issues raised there? You will find the final section of th 5.2 History of adinkra Once you’ve watched the video, make a few notes on what you learnt about the history of adinkra. 4.3 The functions of adinkra Once you’ve watched the video, make a few notes on what you learnt about the functions of adinkra. 4.1 The functions of kente In Section 4 you will learn about the many uses of kente and adinkra. Once you’ve watched the video, make a few notes on what you learnt about the functions of kente. 3.5 What can we learn? The next activity poses a question that should encourage you to bring together the various observations you made above. What can we learn from who is trained and the way people train to make kente and adinkr 2.6 Questions Now that you’ve been introduced to kente and adinkra, you might like to think about the questions in the activity below. The purpose of these questions is to encourage you to think about the broader issues and themes mentioned in Section 2. Later on you will have more information to go on, but it is worth noting what you can now and generating some first thoughts in relation to these questions. 2.5 Making adinkra Once you’ve watched the video, explain how adinkra is made. 2.4 The manufacture of kente Once you’ve watched the video, describe the materials used in the manufacturing of kente. 3.1 Introduction With your initial work on sources and on what it may mean to ‘explore the Classical world’ under your belt, you're now in a good position to start exploring. To lay the foundations for your explorations, you will in this section do some work on ancient times and places. Not least since you will cover a wide range of materials from different periods and locations, it will be important for you to know how they all fit together. 2.6 Books and the internet as sources Finally, let's come back to the different types of modern sources as indicated in Figure 1. Many of these types are familiar to you in one way or another, so we can be brief. The course A219 uses set books that students registered with the Open University are required to purchase. Three of them are clearly modern schol 2.5 Modern sources As set out in Figure 1, modern sources, too, fall into various subcategories. We'll look at some of them in more detail a little later. For now let's just say that most of the sources you will use in this unit are broadly scholarly: publications written by people with an expertise in the Classical world. We will 2.4.3 Literature This doesn't have the kind of physical presence that material evidence does, but it has a different strength: it gives us, more literally, voices from the past. We can, as it were, hear the ancient Greeks and Romans speak, about what happened, about how they felt, about what they thought, and experience how they expressed themselves. This gives us a rather different access to their world, complementary to the one we get from material culture. Like the word ‘arts’, literature can sug 2.4 Ancient sources As you have seen, exploring the Classical world is an interdisciplinary pursuit. Perhaps the most immediately obvious aspect of this interdisciplinary approach is that you will confront different kinds of ancient sources, often simultaneously, since one of them by itself may not be sufficient for answering a particular question you may have. Quite apart from whether a source is ancient or modern, the different disciplines that make up Classical Studies use different kinds of source material. 1 Why study the Classical world? Welcome to A219_1 Introducing the Classical world. There will be many different reasons why you have chosen this unit. You may have a lifelong fascination with the ancient world, and hope to nurture it by studying this unit. Or you may know very little about it and are curious to know more. Alternatively, you may have been prompted by some of the many aspects of the Classical world that are present in our world today, be it physical remains, theatre, films, books, words or ideas. This Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should: have an understanding of how sources are used in studies of the Classical World; have an understanding of issues related to time and space in studies of the Classical World. Introduction This unit aims to get you started on exploring the Classical world by introducing you to the sources upon which you can build your knowledge and understanding. The unit also gets you started on an exploration of both time and space in the Classical world. This unit is an adapted extract from the Open University course Exploring the classical world (A219).
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