4.3 The changing face of belief The religious life of post-war Britain has become more varied, although Christianity in different forms remains the most influential religion. Yet, the influence of Christianity over British institutions has declined greatly over the last century and a half, although both England and Scotland still retain Established Author(s):
2.4 Activities 9 and 10 Watch the next segment of video. Once you’ve watched the video, jot down some notes on what you learnt about how the Grand Louvre meets the needs of today. Click to view video 9 Line lengths and line endings Read the following prose extract taken from Walter Pater's discussion of the Mona Lisa, written in 1893, and then complete the activity: She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as L 1.1.1 The Rhind papyrus For a literate civilisation extending over some 4000 years, that of the ancient Egyptians has left disappointingly little evidence of its mathematical attainments. Even though the classical Greeks believed mathematics to have been invented in Egypt – though their accounts are far from unanimous on how this happened – there are now but a handful of papyri and other objects to convey a sense of Egyptian mathematical activity. The largest and best preserved of these is the Rhind papyrus (Ext 1.5.3 Errors in Plimpton 322 The presence of errors on the tablet is of further benefit to the historian, in that trying to discover how they could have arisen provides strong clues about how the computations were done. So, for instance, the last entry in column C is half what it ‘should’ be. The scribe wrote 53, where 1,46 is what is needed to preserve the pattern of the rest. This tells us that some stage in the computation must have involved a doubling or halving, which on this occasion the scribe overlooke References 5.2 Philosophy, religion and everyday life Perhaps because he is aware he will be stirring up trouble by publishing his views on this topic, Hume warms to his theme by talking in paragraphs 1–4 about how he conceives of the relation between philosophy, religious ‘superstition’ and ordinary life. The rest of the essay can be read independently of this opening, but these early ruminations are worth pausing over. They reveal subtleties in Hume's sceptical outlook that are drowned out in the more polemical parts of the two essays. 7.2 The main consequences of the Revolution What were the main consequences of the Revolution? Any answer demands so many qualifications that the question may be best answered in broad terms. ‘The Revolution’, says Norman Hampson, ‘put an end to a way of life’ (1975, p. 174). Suddenly, the traditional assumptions of the Old Regime, the old certainties, were gone, transformed. New perspectives and new expectations took their place. ‘In the long run,’ Norman Davies argues, ‘the Revolution probably had its greatest impact in 2.4 Enlightened reformism – dismantling the Old Regime The National Assembly, the self-proclaimed and now de facto supreme representative and legislative organ of state, set to work on the constitution which it had sworn to introduce. Calling itself the Constituent Assembly (to stress both its representative credentials and its constitutional mission), it consisted of 745 deputies elected for two years with virtually unlimited power to pass laws. The king, by interposing his veto, might delay but could not override laws passed by it 1.9 Aberdulais Falls and the local community Other potential areas of conflict are with the local authority and local residents, who see the site as of value to themselves and have differing views about how it should be utilised. The desire to accommodate, to some extent, the demands of the local community, and to engage with that community, has led to a number of initiatives. Examples of these include the use of the site's facilities for
hosting lectures, meetings, keep-fit groups, etc. These initiatives can be of use to local bu Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: assess the specific problems concerning the health of a community; describe how medical knowledge was a resource for, and was shaped by, broader cultural perceptions of the body. Introduction This unit presents information about how Scottish healthcare institutions were influenced by the underlying social, economic, political and cultural contexts. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a series of innovative models of the body was produced, from the mechanical to the mathematical to the sensible. As groundbreaking anatomical investigation and physiological experimentation were carried out, the map of the body changed, and different parts (vessels, glands, nerves) acqu 2.6 Caravaggio's sexuality ‘Caravaggio studies’ often provide good, and sometimes extreme, examples of the ways in which an artist's identity can be bound up in his work and vice versa. In the case of Caravaggio it is difficult to avoid assumptions about his sexual orientation in any modern study of his art. Bold statements sometimes presume that this is a resolved issue: he was, for example, ‘The one major painter of the late Cinquecento whose sexuality is otherwise freely expressed in his oevre’ (Saslow, 1986 1.3 Artists' ‘Lives’ Helen Langdon's subtitle ‘A Life’ points to a very particular combination of literary and artistic sources in her biography. Catherine M. Soussloff suggests that the literary genre of artists' ‘Lives’ has led to the artist and his work being ‘inextricably entwined’ in a way that does not happen in the ‘Lives’ of poets or prose writers (Soussloff, 1990, p. 154). Although she overstates the case, as recent biographies of novelists, musicians, etc. demonstrate, artworks ca References 3.5 New light on compatibilist versus incompatibilist debate Strawson has attempted to throw new light on the compatibilist versus incompatibilist debate by showing that there are certain ‘reactive attitudes’ that are a necessary part of the framework of anything that is recognizably the life of a person. His argument has centred on the claim that is it ‘useless’ to question these attitudes. He argues this by showing the role they have in our lives, and arguing that they are part of the ‘framework’ of life. We could put the point as follows Learning outcomes Having studied this unit you should be able to: discuss what it means to be a person; read and understand arguments discussing this question; 4.2.1 Nouns Nouns are used to name people, places, things or concepts, for example Cicero, Italy, tree, happiness. Most nouns can be singular or plural, for example tree, trees. They each belong to a certain gender, masculine, feminine or neuter (from Latin neuter, neither). In English, nouns have natural gender; for example, boatsman is masculine, woman is feminine, student is of common gender (either masculine or feminine), and university and b Acknowledgements This unit was written by Maria Kasmirli
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce 3 Enlightenment, science and empiricism The Enlightenment's dedication to reason and knowledge did not come out of the blue. After all, scholars had for centuries been adding to humanity's stock of knowledge. The new emphasis, however, was on empirical knowledge: that is, knowledge or opinion grounded in experience. This experience might include scientific experiments or firsthand observation or experience of people, behaviour, politics, society or anything else touching the natural and the human. For any proposition to be a
Activity 9
