6.2.2 Fixed air It was well known that ‘air’ was given off by magnesia (or limestone) when treated with acids. Black sought to show that this ‘air’, which he called ‘fixed air’ (carbon dioxide), is also lost when magnesia is heated. Hampered by practical difficulties in his efforts to collect the fixed air liberated during the heating of magnesia, Black used a series of chemical reactions to prove his argument. He dissolved the magnesia usta in sulphuric acid to produce a solution of Epsom salt.
5.3 Hutton's geology: ‘No vestige of a beginning – no prospect of an end’ Geologists are engaged on the business of reconstructing the earth's past and determining the agents of geological change. The only documentary evidence of the earth's origins and ancient past, and of the agents that had caused change, available to Hutton was the book of Genesis, and he had sceptically put it aside, along with miracles. But what if the processes that are presently observable were to be taken as the key to the past? How far might geological enquiry go with the assumptio
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
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
Acknowledgements Academic Consultants: Catherine King; John Picton, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; additional advice was given by Malinka Kraamer, Erasmus University, Rotterdam and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Producer: Nick Levinson Production Assistant: Jenny Clarke and Judy Collins This extract is taken from A216 © 2006 The Open University.
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4.2 The meaning of kente designs Once you’ve watched the video, explain, using your own words, what kente designs mean. 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 3.3 Training to weave kente Once you’ve watched the video, make a few notes on how the kente weavers train. 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 2.4.2 The visual arts These are closely related to archaeology. They, too, are things we can look at and touch after all. The difference is very much one of interpretation. Are the Parthenon statues art or archaeology; is an ancient painted pot art or archaeology? In order to avoid such questions, many people use the term ‘material culture’ to cover both. For many purposes, the difference doesn't matter. In fact, it is a good illustration of the advantages of interdisciplinary work, with different kinds of app Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should: be able to articulate your own thoughts on the notion of ‘write what you know’; be equipped to write ‘blind’ descriptions of known objects and note new observations; have an enhanced ability to list sensory perceptions; be able to write short texts about a personal memory of either a place or a character. 3.4 The misuse of the concept of positive liberty One of the main claims that Berlin makes in ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ is a historical one. It is that positive theories of freedom, or perversions of them, have been more frequently used as instruments of oppression than have negative ones. These positive theories typically rely on a split between a ‘higher’ and a ‘lower’ self, or between a ‘rational’ and an ‘empirical’ self as Berlin sometimes puts it. Coercion is justified on the grounds that it leads to a realisation of 2.9 Painterly techniques A sensuous use of colour subverted the neoclassical aesthetic, in which moral and intellectual messages – or, at the very least, a concept of ‘noble form’ – were intended to dominate. In the case of Delacroix, this attention to the effects of colour is heightened by a concern with the textural qualities of paint. In order to produce a matt but bright surface, he applied thin layers of oil glaze to an initial lay-in of distemper (see ten-Doesschate Chu, 2001, p.102). It is thoug 2.8 Colour and light – exercise Compare the effects of colour and light in Sardanapalus with those in David’s Andromache mourning Hector (Plate 3). What similarities and differences can you see? (You may find it helpful to look also at Plat 2.1 Inspiration for the Death of Sardanapalus Plate 1 is a reproduction of Delacroix’s The Death of Sardanapalus, believed to have been completed sometime between November 1827 and January 1828. Click on 'View document to see Eugène Delacroix,The Death of Sardanapalus Introduction In this unit you will be introduced to a variety of Delacroix’s work and see how his paintings relate to the cultural transition from Enlightenment to Romanticism. You will study Delacroix’s early career, his classical background, the development of Romantic ideas and their incorporation into his work. You will have the opportunity to study some of his most important paintings and compare them to works favouring a Neoclassical approach. You will also be able to see how his themes, s References 3 Chronology
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