6.5 Third Essay By the time Owen got round to writing Essays Three and Four, probably at the end of 1813 or the beginning of 1814, events had moved on, particularly the success of his new partnership in purchasing the mills and placing him again in full control. But his presentation increasingly leaves much to be desired, and here I have tried to focus on Owen's key proposals. Notice another homily, again derived from Enlightenment notions, and widely adopted by Owen's followers, that ‘truth must ultimatel
6.4 Second Essay As a preliminary to the Second Essay, Owen says that he will enhance further his discussion of his underlying principles and then begin to explain to his readers how they can be applied in practice. Notice too the prologue for the Second Essay (p. 113) , quoting Vansittart's view that ‘if we cannot reconcile, all opinions, let us endeavour to unite all hearts’, a ringing phrase often quoted by Owen in later publications and widely adopted as one of the most popular Owenite homilies
6.3 First Essay The earliest essay, written under the nom de plume of ‘one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Lanark’ (if intended to provide Owen with anonymity this was a thin disguise, given the content) and entitled ‘On the Formation of Character’, is prefixed by the famous precept, central to the ‘New View’, that: Any general character, from the best to the worst, from the most ignoran 6.2 The dedications Let us start with the dedications, which are both intriguing and of considerable interest. Read Owen's dedications heading each essay. To whom are the essays dedicated and can you suggest why? Click 'View docum 5.1 The essays in context Owen's public career effectively began in 1812, when he started to promote his ideas about popular education. He may have been thinking about this for some time. In 1810 he had evidently contacted Lord Liverpool (1770–1828), recently home secretary and by then secretary for war, about a proposed ‘Bill for the Formation of Character among the Poor and Working Classes’, aimed at establishing a national system of education. This object was a logical extension of Owen's experience among the 4.6 New Lanark and the Falls of Clyde Let us take a moment to consider another aspect of New Lanark that was potentially of great importance to any propaganda campaign built around it. Big factories employing large numbers of youngsters were still unusual and so objects of curiosity. But New Lanark was unique given its proximity to the Falls of Clyde, the most spectacular waterfalls in Britain. By our period, the falls (see Author(s): 4.5 Owen at New Lanark 1800–c.1812 At New Lanark Owen quickly initiated changes, some of which he describes in the Second Essay. As in Manchester he placed much emphasis on environmental improvements such as street cleansing, better domestic hygiene, sanitation and water supply. Those designed to enhance efficiency and productivity included new rules and regulations about factory discipline and in 1803–4 installing new machinery. By 1806, and partly on the grounds of cost, he was abandoning the system of pauper apprentices ( 2.7 Conclusion: Culloden in its wider context Moving back out to look at Culloden in its wider context, what can we say that we have learned about the site and its meanings? For international visitors with few or no connections to the battle or to Scotland, it appears to be a site of pilgrimage that is functioning as a place to begin to decode the Scottish identity and the Scottish nation. At home, the major narrative of Culloden for Scots for more than two centuries has been one of tragedy, grief and loss. Once a signifier for the state 2.2 Battlefield sites Battlefields are ‘increasingly being taken up as part of a nation's “official” heritage’ (Carman and Carman, 2006, p. 1) so it is essential to consider their role in the construction of individual and group identity, and in developing a sense of nationhood. As heritage sites, battlefields are a paradox: on the one hand, their qualities as deeply experiential places have long been recognised and are well documented; on the other hand, battlefield sites are often unprepossessing places. 6.3.2 Heat of vaporisation Black read a paper on these experiments to the Glasgow Literary Society in April 1762, and then turned to the investigation of vaporisation. For reasons he himself found difficult to explain, Black was initially reluctant to accept that there was a similar heat of vaporisation. This was in spite of the fact that he (and presumably many cooks) had observed that it takes far longer to boil off water than it takes to raise water to boiling point. In October 1762, he devised a very simple experim 6.3.1 Latent heat The origins of Black's interest in the phenomenon of melting have been the subject of some debate. John Robison remarked, in his edition of Black's lectures, that Black had been struck by the simple fact that snow does not melt instantly on a sunny winter's day nor does a sharp night-time frost cause ponds to form thick layers of ice immediately (Robison, 1803, vol. 1, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii). It is now generally agreed, however, that Black's interest in heat arose from his study of the temperature 6.1 A lifelong academic Hutton can in many ways stand as a representative of the intellectuals of the Scottish Enlightenment. But they were not entirely homogeneous in their intellectual and religious outlooks. The chemist Joseph Black (1728–99) was a close friend of James Hutton (and Adam Smith), but the two men were quite different. Whereas Hutton was robust and disorganised, Black was pallid and precise. Hutton operated outside the universities, but Black was a lifelong academic. If Hutton gained his interest i 3.3 Architecture Printing and publishing, then, had their connections with the Enlightenment programme. Architecture too was related. The Adam family of architects (the father and his two sons) moved in the Edinburgh circle of the intellectuals. The young Robert Adam, for example, attended both McLaurin's mathematics lectures and Monro's anatomy lectures at the university, and his home life was enlivened by regular visits from the leading lights of the city. As one contemporary described the household, in a r 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 2.3 The universities Turning to the universities, scholars have discovered that much more was going on during the late seventeenth century than the unimaginative training of young men for ministry in a dour church. Another legacy from the Reformation in Scotland was a recognition of the need for education, and, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, five universities, in four cities, were well established. (England, a far larger country, had only two.) Research and specialist teaching was held back by a syst 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 4.5 Questions The final activity in this section asks you to bring together the observations you’ll have made after watching each section of video. Consider the following questions: Can 4.4 The meanings of adinkra Once you’ve watched the video, make some notes on what you’ve learnt about the meanings 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.
Exercise 7
Activity 16
Activity 15
Activity 12
