bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Intellectual Property and Competition Law
Authors: Hemphill C. Scott
Published: July 2017

This chapter surveys the intersection of competition law—or antitrust law, as it is known in the United States—with intellectual property (IP). It examines whether and how IP rights alter the substantive scope of antitrust law, either by operation of statute or as a matter of economic policy. It discusses a wide variety of antitrust claims, alleging collusion, exclusion, or both, that have been raised against IP rights holders. The examples are drawn mainly from the United States, although European developments are also included where relevant. The analysis supports the conclusion that, beyond a rights holder’s core ability to assert a valid, infringed right against a rival, IP restricts antitrust law less than one might expect. Moreover, the restrictions that do exist are often subtle.
Evolutionary Developmental Psychology of Children’s Religious Beliefs
Authors: Greenway Tyler S. , Barrett Justin L.
Published: July 2017

The pancultural presence of religious beliefs suggests that children’s ordinary development may incline them toward such beliefs. Various cognitive processes that mature during this time period may enable and encourage religion. Such processes include the ability to distinguish agents from objects, think about the mental states of other agents, see purpose in the world, and view agents dualistically. The generation and persistence of religious beliefs may also be a product of their violation of certain intuitive ontologies, as such violations are more memorable for younger individuals. The naturalness of religion is discussed, and evolutionary accounts of religion as an adaptation and byproduct are presented.
Vertical Stare Decisis
Authors: Hansford Thomas G.
Published: July 2017

This chapter critically assesses the current state of the literature on vertical stare decisis. It begins with a consideration of how stare decisis does, or does not, fit with the principal–agent framework that is often used as a starting point for theories of the relationship between high and low courts. Various approaches to testing the existence of vertical stare decisis and the factors that might condition the strength of this constraint are then addressed. While there is a good deal of evidence that is consistent with the claim that High Court precedent constrains lower court decision-making, this evidence is not as conclusive as it might first appear. There is also ambiguity regarding the precise causal mechanism at work. This chapter then considers recent scholarship focused on the potential for bottom-up influences on the operation of precedent in a judicial hierarchy.
Ideology and Partisanship
Authors: Segal Jeffrey A.
Published: July 2017

The question of whether partisan or ideological preferences influence judicial decision-making has been the subject of numerous studies. Due to the strong correlation between party and ideology, scholars have often chosen to examine the combined effects of party and ideology. Recently, however, and in spite of the fact that correlation between party and ideology is growing, scholars have begun to investigate the independent effects of party and ideology by studying a unique group of election law cases, where partisan and ideological considerations often conflict. There has also been an emerging interest in identifying the causes behind the increased polarization of the Court. The increased polarized of the Senate is one posited theory.
Judicial Review
Authors: Clark Tom
Published: July 2017

Judicial review is the power of a court to pass judgment on actions taken in other branches of government, most notably with respect to the constitutionality of legislation enacted by representative legislatures. It is a core feature of judicial power that is prominent in the American system and is increasingly prevalent around the world across all legal traditions. This chapter provides a brief overview of the historical origins and spread of the practice of judicial review. The chapter then reviews two streams of academic research––normative and empirical––that seek to understand the theoretical and practical implications of the practice of judicial review in a representative democracy. The chapter highlights fruitful avenues for future research at the intersection of these lines of inquiry.
The Relationship between Courts and Legislatures
Authors: Keck Thomas M.
Published: July 2017

This chapter surveys four overlapping contexts in which scholars have examined institutional interactions between U.S. courts and legislatures. First, some have sought to explain when and why judges exercise the power of judicial review by invalidating democratically enacted statutes. Second, “regime politics” scholars have examined the political foundations of judicial power over time, emphasizing that courts have developed, retained, and expanded the authority to alter policy outcomes only because (and to the extent that) governing legislative coalitions have supported these developments. Third, some scholars have examined the range of legislative responses to assertions of judicial power, emphasizing that the judicial interpretation or even invalidation of a legislative policy is often far from the final word on the policy conflict in question. Fourth, some scholars have advocated an “interbranch perspective” on the policy process. This fourth approach has significant potential to advance existing understandings of the relationship between courts and legislatures.
The Role of Personal Attributes and Social Backgrounds on Judging
Authors: George Tracey E. , Weaver Taylor Grace
Published: July 2017

Social background theory formalizes and tests the intuition that judges’ attributes and experiences will affect their rulings. Attributes can include race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, religion, and socioeconomic background. Experience can include education, occupation, and political activism. Social background theory is a positive theory rather than a normative one: it treats these factors as an explanation for a judge’s actions. Social background theory has a history of intentional scholarly integration of ideas and methods in other fields. The theory can be seen as evolving through four stages tied to that integration: Legal Realism, behavioralism, new institutionalism, and computation. After briefly assessing the contributions and limitations of the theory, the chapter ends with a proposal for a relevancy threshold for social background research.
The Oxford Movement’s Theory of Religious Knowledge
Authors: Pereiro James
Published: July 2017

At its foundation, the Oxford Movement was characterized by a theory of religious knowledge drawn from Joseph Butler’s Analogy of Religion and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, a theory which had particular influence on John Keble. Later, Keble’s original insights into religious knowledge were developed by Richard Hurrell Froude and John Henry Newman, and passed on to their students at Oriel and to others who came under their influence. This distinctive theory of knowledge, and especially of religious knowledge, was at the heart of the Movement’s varied intellectual contributions and inspired its activities. However, this theory of knowledge did not receive a full expression in any of their books, except perhaps in Newman’s University Sermons.
The Ecclesiology of the Oxford Movement
Authors: Rowell Geoffrey
Published: July 2017

Ecclesiology is fundamental to an understanding of the Oxford Movement. The catalyst of the Movement was the political modification of the Anglican confessional state, which was a significant challenge to earlier Anglican understandings of the Church. In response, a distinctive Tractarian ecclesiology was developed in Christopher Wordsworth’s Theophilus Anglicanus, John Henry Newman’s via media ecclesiology, particularly in his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, William Palmer’s exposition of the ‘Branch Theory’ of the Church, W. G. Ward’s Ideal of a Christian Church, John Keble’s ‘Anglican theory of Church Unity’ and Robert Isaac Wilberforce’s theological understanding of the Church as the ‘extension of the Incarnation’.
Justification and Sanctification in the Oxford Movement
Authors: Erb Peter
Published: July 2017

The issues concerning justification and sanctification, related primarily to the doctrine of forensic justification in the continental Protestant Reformation, were mediated somewhat in the Thirty-Nine Articles, and gained a renewed importance for the Oxford Movement with the publication of John Henry Newman’s Lectures on Justification in 1838 and E. B. Pusey’s preface to his fourth edition of his Letter to the Bishop of Oxford (1840) and above all his Justification (1853). By the 1860s, particularly in the debate over Pusey’s Enchiridion, Pusey and Newman had concluded their debate as for the most part an ‘abstract’ one. Both men’s approaches were firmly rejected by the Evangelical wing of the Anglican tradition.
Tractarian Theology in Verse and Sermon
Authors: Boneham John
Published: July 2017

In this chapter the author explores the role of poetry and sermons in propagating Tractarian theological ideas. The use of these two distinct genres was closely connected to the principle of reserve, a theory of knowledge holding that religious truth ought to be conveyed in accordance with the recipient’s ability to receive it. While poetry allowed a more detailed theological reflection, sermons offered a better opportunity for practical teaching. The chapter examines how the Tractarians used these genres to deal with the interpretation of Scripture, the relationship between Church and state, apostolic succession and the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist.
The British Critic
Authors: Skinner Simon
Published: July 2017

In this chapter the author examines the origins, Tractarian takeover, and ensuing commentary of the British Critic magazine, and the significant controversy which it was to generate. The chapter argues that attention to the Movement’s periodical journalism demonstrates the anxiety of John Henry Newman and others to secure a polemical platform beyond the Tracts for the Times, specifically for the discussion of political and social affairs. It additionally suggests that historians’ long neglect of this journalism has obscured both important contemporary commentary, and the importance of some its traditionally second-rank figures, such as Thomas Mozley, Frederick Oakeley, and W. G. Ward.
Tract 90
Authors: Pahls Michael J. G. , Parker Kenneth
Published: July 2017

In 1864, John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua characterized Tract 90 as his last best effort to remain in the Church of England. While Newman always celebrated his reliance on Anglican Caroline divines, this chapter demonstrates his unacknowledged debt to a notable Oxford convert of the Caroline period, Christopher Davenport (1598–1680), known in Franciscan religious life as Franciscus à Sancta Clara. Davenport served as Catholic chaplain to Queen Henrietta Maria and penned his irenic Paraphrastica Expositio Articulorum Confessionis Anglicanae (1634) to promote the reunion of the churches of England and Rome. The chapter demonstrates Newman’s use and close reading of Davenport’s work, analysing numerous paraphrases that Newman employed to build his arguments.
The Revival of the Religious Life
Authors: Engelhardt Carol
Published: July 2017

This chapter examines one of the most significant achievements of the Oxford Movement, the establishment of vowed religious communities for women. It discusses some of the most significant figures in the history of these sisterhoods and describes the work undertaken by the approximately 10,000 women who belonged to one of the many communities established in the second half of the nineteenth century. Acknowledging that in many ways these communities ratified existing gender roles, this chapter also sees that by standing firm against opposition from bishops and popular opinion, these women and their male supporters contributed to an alternative and productive role for women.
Social and Political Commentary
Authors: Skinner Simon
Published: July 2017

In this chapter the author suggests that, in their preoccupation with the Oxford Movement’s theological and ecclesiological legacy, historians have until recently overlooked its extensive social and political commentary. The author argues that the Tractarians’ obvious anti-Erastianism did not typically conduce to a simple anti-establishmentism, and that in fact the Tractarians nourished a high ideal of relations between Church and state. Equipped with that quasi-theocratic ideal, first-generation Tractarians—and not only the later Ritualists and Christian Socialists who are often thought to have first developed an incarnational politics—directed an extensive periodical and fictional commentary to the ‘condition of England’ question.
The Oxford Movement in Europe
Authors: Geck Albrecht
Published: July 2017

During the period between 1833 and 1845 the Oxford Movement was widely discussed in Western European countries. The via media, as Newman understood it, was received with great suspicion. Roman Catholics continued to consider Anglicanism as a heresy, but hailed the Oxford Movement as a means to lead the Church of England back to the mother Church in Rome. Continental Protestants feared that the Oxford Movement might destroy the essence of the Protestant churches. Although the criticism was not universal, it was brought forward by a variety of schools and the nature of the debate served as a mirror of the theological pluralism of the time.
Afterword
Authors: Podmore Colin
Published: July 2017

The primary legacy of the Oxford Movement was the Catholic Movement within the Church of England. Between 1900 and 1960 that Movement grew and diversified, but remained undivided. However, the upheavals of the 1960s proved destabilizing, and from the 1970s debates over the ordination of women caused division. Some heirs of the Oxford Movement rejected the ecclesiological principles that had brought the Movement into being, but continued to identify with Anglo-Catholicism’s liturgical, spiritual, and theological traditions. Others became Roman Catholic or Orthodox or joined Continuing Anglican churches. However, within the Church of England (and to an extent in the Church in Wales), a strong and well-organized Catholic Movement continues.
Eucharistic Ecclesiology
Authors: Handschy Daniel
Published: July 2017

As the constitutional reforms of the 1820s and 1830s called into question the nature of the establishment of the Church of England, leaders of the Oxford Movement looked to the American Episcopal Church as an example of a Church not dependent on state establishment. Bishops Samuel Seabury and John Henry Hobart had constructed a constitution for the American Episcopal Church based on a ‘purely spiritual’ episcopacy and a doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice. Their example influenced Hugh James Rose, John Henry Newman, E. B. Pusey, and John Keble in the course of the Oxford Movement, and this in turn influenced the course of the Ritualist movement within the American Episcopal Church.
Introduction
Authors: Brown Stewart J. , Nockles Peter , Pereiro James
Published: July 2017

In the wake of an era of political and social turmoil, the Oxford Movement represented an effort to recover the Catholic and apostolic patrimony of the Church of England. It had its precursors and background context, but burst forth in 1833 as a potentially disruptive force, challenging contemporaries and provoking opposition. Although the personality and genius of John Henry Newman lay at its heart, the Movement proved greater and more enduring than Newman’s personal Anglican history and took on new life after his departure for Rome in 1845. As the Movement moved away from its Oxford origins to the parishes and wider world, it became increasingly problematic, especially in the context of the rise of Ritualism, as to who could be considered its genuine descendants. Yet the Movement also exercised a profound influence, developing many variations and permutations, and its legacy continues to inform Church life.
Pre-Tractarian Oxford
Authors: Nockles Peter
Published: July 2017

The roots of and context for the genesis of the Oxford Movement can be traced to the intellectual and spiritual formation of its leaders, protagonists, and disciples provided within the milieu of the University of Oxford and notably Oriel College. The influence of the Oriel Noetics was crucial but that of John Keble and Hurrell Froude on the impressionable John Henry Newman and others was no less significant. A parting of the ways between those who would become Tractarians and the Noetics, first evident in the Peel election of 1829, was reflected in Oriel’s tutor dispute of 1830, giving a foretaste of the deepening divisions of the 1830s discussed in a later chapter.
Keble, Froude, Newman, and Pusey
Authors: Gilley Sheridan
Published: July 2017

The Oxford Movement, influenced by Romanticism, was rooted in the inheritance both of an older High Church tradition and of the Evangelical Revival. The Movement was characterized by an effort to recover the Catholic character of the Church of England. Its genius was John Henry Newman, who redefined Anglicanism as a via media between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. John Keble had earlier opened the way to a new Anglican sensibility through his poetry in The Christian Year. The Oxford Professor of Hebrew, Edward Bouverie Pusey, brought to the Tracts his massive scholarship. Newman’s dearest friend, Hurrell Froude, gave the Movement a radical edge, which continued despite his premature death in 1836.
‘A Cloud of Witnesses’
Authors: Pereiro James
Published: July 2017

The leaders of the Oxford Movement were supported by a cast of friends and disciples who made important contributions to the ideas and initiatives associated with the Movement. Most of them, until recently, have been given little attention by historians. However, recent studies of these personalities and their active involvement in Tractarian ventures have offered a more complete and complex perspective of the range of the Movement’s programmes and activities. Among those activities, of particular relevance was the work of the London Tractarians in the field of education, where they played a vital role in the extraordinary development of the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the late 1830s and 1840s.
John Henry Newman
Authors: O'Regan Cyril
Published: July 2017

The nature of faith and reason and their proper relation was a preoccupation of John Henry Newman throughout his long writing career, beginning with his Oxford University Sermons and carrying on long after the publication of An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. In both classic sites of his religious epistemology, Newman wrote out of the British naturalist tradition, which gave sanction to the normal workings of the human mind in religious as well as non-religious affairs against the universalistic tendencies of Lockean epistemology. In so doing, Newman defended religious belief as a form of knowing. Accordingly, this chapter will not only present Newman’s religious epistemology from these important texts but will also show the influence of Newman’s thought on later epistemology as well as the problems, arising from Newman’s writings, that require further epistemological attention.
Knowledge of God
Authors: Greco John
Published: July 2017

Contemporary epistemology has taken an ‘externalist turn’ in its thinking about knowledge and related issues, and contemporary religious epistemology has followed suit in this respect. This is how we should understand Alvin Plantinga’s proper function view of religious knowledge, and William Alston’s view that we can have perceptual knowledge of God. Contemporary epistemology has more recently taken a ‘social turn’, and religious epistemology and the epistemology of theology might fruitfully follow this trend as well. For example, religious epistemology can benefit from recent work on epistemic authority and on the epistemology of testimony.
Maximus the Confessor
Authors: Aquino Frederick D.
Published: July 2017

The current landscape of virtue epistemology is ripe with possibilities for theological engagement and appropriation. Constructively speaking, Maximus the Confessor (580–662 ce) is a fitting example of this kind of intersection. In terms of mapping the cognitive economy of the spiritual life, he draws attention to virtuous and contemplative practices that enable the intellect to attain its proper end (divine likeness) and acquire the related epistemic goods. Accordingly, this chapter shows how the virtues, for Maximus, contribute to the formation of a deep and abiding desire for the relevant epistemic goods (e.g. contemplation of God in and through nature, illumination of divine truths, wisdom, and perceptual knowledge of God) as well as playing a supportive role in the pursuit of them. It also offers briefly some concluding reflections concerning Maximus’s pairing of virtue and knowledge, and identifies a few areas of enquiry that warrant further work and development.
Authority in Religious Communities
Authors: Zagzebski Linda
Published: July 2017

This chapter defends authority in traditional religious communities on the same general grounds used by Joseph Raz in his well-known defence of the authority of the state in the context of political liberalism. The argument proceeds by discussing practical and epistemic authority in small communities, and then extends it to the justification of authority embedded in religious traditions. The conclusion is that, ironically, a modern liberal defence can be given for authorities in communities such as the Catholic Church that are pre-modern or even anti-modern in structure. The perceived conflict between the premodern acceptance of authority and a modern perspective centred on the authority of the self over the self is an illusion.
Pentecostalism
Authors: Smith James K. A.
Published: July 2017

This chapter elucidates the epistemological assumptions tacit in the uniqueness of Pentecostal and charismatic experience. It argues that Pentecostal spirituality functions as a limit case for most paradigms in epistemology, requiring a revised account of ‘understanding’ that recognizes the unique and irreducible mode of ‘narrative knowledge’. It is suggested that this mode of religious experience is an occasion to recall biblical intuitions about knowledge often ignored by paradigms in contemporary religious epistemology. It is suggested that the method here, which begins from lived experience, making explicit what is tacit and implicit in practice, is akin to the phenomenological tradition of Heidegger and the the pragmatism of Wittgenstein and Robert Brandom.
Revelation and Scripture
Authors: Menssen Sandra , Sullivan Thomas
Published: July 2017

Christian scripture is about God’s revelation, which is ‘ontologically’ prior. But scripture is epistemically prior: people typically first encounter Christian revelation through scripture and individuals inspired by scripture. Sacred writings of Christianity abound with specific revelatory claims of the form ‘God revealed that such-and-such’, and the more general Christian revelatory claim compounds the propositional content of Christian scripture. So the notion of a revelatory claim can be used to explore simultaneously the concepts of Christian revelation and scripture. Three questions are addressed: (1) What general method can a non-believer use in attempting to assess the truth of the Christian revelatory claim? (2) What standard must belief in the Christian revelatory claim meet in order for the belief to be justified or warranted? (3) Are the epistemic standards in theology (with regard to revelation) different from epistemic standards elsewhere?
Søren Kierkegaard
Authors: Piety M.G.
Published: July 2017

This chapter argues that Kierkegaard was an epistemological pluralist in that he believed the nature of knowledge was relative to the nature of its object. It argues further that the foundation of religious knowledge, according to Kierkegaard, was a kind of mystical contact of the knower with the object of knowledge through faith in that object, and that this contact actually provided a firmer foundation for religious knowledge than was possible with respect to empirical knowledge. Finally, it makes clear that Kierkegaard’s views on religious knowledge mirror almost exactly the views of Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria on religious knowledge, or gnosis, and asserts that this similarity is the result of Kierkegaard’s efforts to develop an epistemology that was consistent with the doctrines of the early church.
Spiritual Formation, Authority, and Discernment
Authors: Aquino Frederick D.
Published: July 2017

An important feature of spiritual formation involves finding reliable processes, people, practices, and materials that put one in the best position to cultivate the spiritual life and to achieve the specified goals (e.g. purity of heart, discernment, and the vision of God). Accordingly, this chapter draws attention to some works that connect philosophy (including some epistemological themes and issues) and spirituality (including the topic of spiritual formation). It also spells out some of the main features of John Cassian’s (c.360–435 ce) account of spiritual formation. In particular, it focuses on his understanding of the penultimate and ultimate goals of spiritual formation, of the importance of relying on others for making epistemic progress in the spiritual life, and of the three indicators that help determine whether a person is a reliable spiritual authority. The chapter concludes by identifying briefly three areas that deserve further epistemological attention.
Thomas Aquinas
Authors: Brent James
Published: July 2017

Although Thomas Aquinas is perhaps known best for his natural theology and arguments for the existence of God, he thought that there were manifold ways of knowing God available to human beings. This chapter distinguishes and identifies within Aquinas’s thought seven such ways. One can know God (1) by a general and confused knowledge, (2) by a philosophical wisdom, (3) by divine revelation, (4) by faith, (5) by mystical wisdom, (6) by theological wisdom, and (7) by beatific vision. The chapter discusses the epistemic nature, properties, and limits of all seven. The main point is that Aquinas’s thought is rich enough to accommodate and account for all seven ways of knowing God. Such a comprehensive overview of Aquinas helps move past polemical contexts in which Aquinas is charged with reducing the knowledge of God to natural theology or failing to prioritize the Word of God.
Virtue
Authors: Baehr Jason
Published: July 2017

Intellectual virtues are character traits that facilitate the acquisition and transmission of knowledge and related epistemic goods. This chapter takes up the question of which traits are intellectual virtues in relation to a particular variety of knowledge; namely, knowledge of God. It is argued that moral humility (as distinct from intellectual humility) is an intellectual virtue in this context. This account of moral humility and its epistemically salutary effects is sketched against the backdrop of an account of human pride and the obstacles such pride poses to the acquisition of theistic knowledge. Finally, an objection is considered according to which, owing to other features of human psychology, moral humility may in fact be an intellectual vice in this context.
Wisdom in Theology
Authors: Grimm Stephen R.
Published: July 2017

Several of the great religious faiths have an ambiguous attitude towards wisdom. While sometimes it is said to be ‘more precious than rubies’, in other passages the desire for wisdom seems almost like a betrayal of God. More exactly, it is often cast as a pagan, perhaps peculiarly Greek, aspiration that somehow blinds people to what is really important—either acting with steadfast love and justice (Jeremiah) or proclaiming Christ crucified (St Paul). This chapter develops a general conception of wisdom that tries to make sense of these various attitudes. It also applies the view to a variety of theological questions. For instance, does it make sense to say that the Devil, as traditionally conceived, is wise? And does someone who is wise actually need to live well herself, or does she only need to be a source of good advice or guidance about how to live well?
Ecclesial Practices
Authors: McGuigan Colin M. , Kallenberg Brad
Published: July 2017

This chapter uncovers a development of ideas extending from the thought of Alvin Plantinga through William Alston to Nicholas Wolterstorff. It highlights in this conceptual trajectory the crucial role that ‘practice’ plays in training cognizers for knowing in general, and religious knowing in particular. After illustrating the importance Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of ‘practice’ has for tacit knowing in a non-religious domain, the chapter argues for the plausibility that ecclesial practices play an analogous role for training religious knowers to perceive truthfully. It concludes by showing the similarity of this position to what philosophical theologian Sarah Coakley and others have recently dubbed the ‘spiritual sense tradition’.
Karl Barth
Authors: Nimmo Paul T.
Published: July 2017

This chapter explores the epistemology of theology that is described and deployed in the theology of Karl Barth. Drawing primarily on the second volume of the Church Dogmatics, the chapter first considers Barth’s understanding of the epistemology of theology with reference to the roles of Word and Spirit, the primary and secondary objectivity of God, and the place of analogy. It then turns to examine the impact of Barth’s position upon the way in which the discipline of theology engages in dialogue with other disciplines, observing Barth’s practice in respect of the conversations he conducts with general ethics and general anthropology. The chapter concludes by suggesting ways in which the work of Barth may have ongoing importance in respect of contemporary work in the epistemology of theology.
Liberation Theology
Authors: Singh Devin
Published: July 2017

This chapter explores the theological–epistemological dynamics of liberation theology. It considers why liberation theology has tended not to express itself within the language of Anglo-American analytic philosophy that characterizes many epistemological discussions. It then provides a description of liberation theology’s own presentation of its epistemological claims, with a special focus on the notion of ‘critical reflection on praxis’. Attention is given to the ways liberation theology insists on the socially located and historically oriented nature of knowledge formation. Finally, the chapter attempts a dialogue between liberation theology and analytically driven categories of epistemology in the interests of mutual clarification and enrichment, and claims that a fruitful conversation can emerge between these disciplines. Each side also presents challenges that the other might consider for its own refinement and development.
The Epistemology of Feminist Theology
Authors: Harris Harriet A.
Published: July 2017

This chapter examines four modes of feminism and their diverse epistemological attitudes: liberal, experience, women’s-voice, and poststructuralist feminisms. Liberal feminists commit to objectivity, autonomy, and impartiality; experience and women’s-voice feminists claim epistemic privilege for women or the marginaliazed; and poststructuralists typically avoid epistemological claims. While they diverge over whether to aspire to truth claims, all feminist theologians are interested in our realizing our humanity. This chapter considers Schiller’s aesthetic philosophy that argues that truth is established and humanity realized only when experience (e.g. the data of feminist vigilance) meets with formal reasoning (our propensity for universal norms). Since experience and form are opposites, they can meet only through paradox and play. Insofar as feminist theologians privilege women’s experience over form, they risk evading the paradox that is necessary to the instantiation of truth. The chapter suggests four lessons to learn from paradox for the epistemology of theology.
Modern Orthodox Thinkers
Authors: Gavrilyuk Paul L.
Published: July 2017

This chapter discusses four general features of modern Orthodox epistemology of theology—ontologism, apophaticism, integral knowledge, and the noetic implications of theosis—and the contributions of individual Orthodox authors, including Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Florensky, Florovsky, Frank, Khomiakov, Lossky, Solovyov, and Zizioulas. Ontologism is a philosophical stance that subordinates epistemology to metaphysics; apophaticism is an attitude towards the mystery of God with implications for theories of religious language, religious experience, and metaphysics; a theory of integral knowledge challenges one-sided epistemologies developed in modernity; and the idea of theosis indicates human participation in the life of God, which has implications for the process of coming to know God. Gavrilyuk highlights the retrieval by Orthodox neopatristic theologians of important pre-modern epistemological insights as well as their contributions to personalism, reliabilism, and social and virtue epistemology that remain unknown in Western scholarly literature.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Authors: Harrison Victoria S.
Published: July 2017

This chapter focuses on two themes that recur throughout the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) and that provide keys to understanding his theological epistemology: (i) Christian experience and its relation to the ‘form of Christ’, and (ii) the connection between holiness and theology. The chapter also considers the role of ‘exemplary people’, or saints, within Balthasar’s epistemology and discusses the impact of his theological anthropology on his epistemological position. In examining these themes and ideas this chapter throws light onto the epistemic considerations that lie at the heart of Balthasar’s theology. The chapter discusses two objections to his approach: one from Karen Kilby (2012) who charges Balthasar with a ‘performative contradiction’, and the further complaint that his demand for holiness on the part of theologians is too stringent a requirement. The chapter concludes with the observation that Balthasar’s epistemology is highly suggestive of a form of exemplarism.
Physics on Show: Entertainment, Demonstration, and Research in the Long Eighteenth Century
Authors: Stewart Larry
Published: July 2017

This article explores how public performances, research, and devices of demonstration put physics on show during the long eighteenth century. It first considers how demonstration machines made physics real to an amateur audience, how philosophical instrument-makers essentially manufactured the market for public performance, and how entertainment provided by experimental lectures evolved into engagement of many kinds. It then discusses the reactions of audiences to lectures, focusing on the experience of one lecturer: James Dinwiddie. It suggests that those captivated by experimental drama in a cosmopolitan Europe were further drawn to the instrument-makers’ shops. Many sought out apparatus that transformed amusement into their own exploration of nature. While dissemination in the physical sciences clearly had much to do with this commerce in devices, the purchase of apparatus was almost as anonymous as attendance at lectures.
Laplace and the Physics of Short-Range Forces
Authors: Fox Robert
Published: July 2017

This article focuses on Pierre Simon Laplace’s contributions to the physics of short-range forces. Laplacian physics can be interpreted as an attempt to realize a supposedly Newtonian ideal of a science that would account for all phenomena in terms of attractive or repulsive central forces acting between the particles of matter. Laplace formulated and pursued a programme between the 1790s and his death in1827 based on Isaac Newton’s ideas, but it also incorporated theories with a less direct Newtonian pedigree. The most important of these were the theories of the imponderable property-bearing fluids of heat (commonly known as caloric), light, electricity, and magnetism. Laplace first engaged with questions relating to the imponderable fluids in the context of his early experimental work on heat in the 1770s. This article first discusses Laplace’s programme before considering his association with the First Class of the French Institute and his legacy.
Electricity and Magnetism to Volta
Authors: Buchwald Jed Z.
Published: July 2017

This article focuses on developments in electricity and magnetism up to the time of Alessandro Volta. Until the late 1600s electricity as a subject reduced to what has been aptly termed the ‘amber effect’. At the beginning of the century William Gilbert broadened the class of objects that could produce the effect and at the same time introduced a fundamental distinction between it and the properties of the lodestone, or magnet. Gilbert’s Scholastic understanding of magnetism contrasts markedly with what seems to be a quasi-mechanical understanding of electricity, the latter being more congenial to the post-Scholastic way of thinking about nature. This article first provides an overview of experiments on electric objects, including the Leiden jar, before discussing Volta’s quantification of the distinction between amount of electricity and electric tension around 1780.
Optics in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Buchwald Jed Z.
Published: July 2017

This article focuses on developments in optics in the nineteenth century, beginning with concepts and theories on light. It provides a background on eighteenth-century optics, citing the ideas of scientists such as Christiaan Huygens and Charles Coulomb, before discussing experiments on ray optics, polarization, interference, diffraction, and wave particles. It also considers the work of Jean Baptiste Biot, François Arago, Etienne Louis Malus, Augustin Jean Fresnel, and Thomas Young; the controversy between Biot and Arago over the theory of chromatic polarization; the emergence of a new mathematical optics; and experiments on the physical structure of wave optics, the diffraction integral, and unpolarized light. The article concludes with an assessment of the state of optics after 1840.
Electromagnetism and Field Physics
Authors: Steinle Friedrich
Published: July 2017

This article examines developments in electromagnetism and field physics during the early nineteenth century, when electricity had become a fully respected area of research. It begins with a discussion of the ‘Volta’s pile’, an apparatus developed by Alessandro Volta, along with mathematical approaches to electricity and Hans-Christian Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism. It then reviews the work of André-Marie Ampère and the Biot–Savart law, introduced by Jean Baptiste Biot and Félix Savart; developments in electrodynamics during the period 1821–1826; and Michael Faraday’s research initiative in electromagnetism, and especially electromagnetic induction and the electrotonic state. It also looks at three important developments in electromagnetism during the 1820s: galvanometers, electromagnets, and Arago’s effect. Finally, it describes Lenz’s law, electromagnetic generators, the electromagnetic telegraph, the Faraday effect, diamagnetism, and the question of polarity as well as the role of mathematics in Faraday’s theories.
From Workshop to Factory: The Evolution of the Instrument-Making Industry, 1850–1930
Authors: Brenni Paolo
Published: July 2017

This article focuses on the evolution and transformations of the instrument-making industry between 1850 and 1930. It begins with an overview of some broad categories of instruments, namely: research and precision measurement instruments, didactic and teaching instruments, industrial instruments, professional instruments, and scientific instruments. It then examines the history of the production of physics instruments and how workshops were organized, along with some of the techniques and materials used in the production of instruments. It also discusses the advertising, trading, and selling of instruments during the period; how instrument-makers in France, Britain, and Germany fared; the state of instrument-making from 1900 to World War I; and instrument-making in the United States and other countries in Europe. Finally, it evaluates instrument-making during the inter-war years.
Physics and Medicine
Authors: Morus Iwan Rhys
Published: July 2017

This article examines the relationship between physics and medicine during the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the ways that physics contributed to the practice of medicine. It begins with a background on Elements of Human Physiology, translated by Arthur Gamgee from the fifth edition of Ludimar Hermann’s Grundriss der Physiologie des Menschen. Both texts are particularly interesting and intriguing because of the language they used to describe exchanges of matter and energy in the human body. The article proceeds with a discussion of the problem of vitalism and its connection to materialism, focusing on the phenomena of animal electricity. It also considers how the doctrine of the conservation of energy provided a new way of talking about the human body’s balances and imbalances. Finally, it reviews novel therapeutics that were developed based on the instruments and ideas ofphysics, from electrotherapy and nerve vibration to X-ray therapies.
The Emergence of Statistical Mechanics
Authors: Darrigol Olivier , Renn Jürgen
Published: July 2017

This article traces the history of statistical mechanics, beginning with a discussion of mechanical models of thermal phenomena. In particular, it considers how several circumstances, including the establishment of thermodynamics in the mid-nineteenth century, led to a focus on the model of heat as a motion of particles. It then describes the concept of heat as fluid and the kinetic theory before turning to gas theory and how it served as a bridge between mechanics and thermodynamics. It also explores gases as particles in motion, the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution, the problem of specific heats, challenges to the second law of thermodynamics, and the probabilistic interpretation of entropy. Finally, it examines how the results of the kinetic theory assumed a new meaning as cornerstones of a more broadly conceived statistical physics, along with Josiah Willard Gibbs and Albert Einstein’s development of statistical mechanics as a synthetic framework.
Three and a Half Principles: The Origins of Modern Relativity Theory
Authors: Kennefick Daniel
Published: July 2017

This article explores the origins of modern relativity theory. In his 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, Albert Einstein directly addressed one of the largest issues of the time. Electrodynamics aims to describe the motion of charged particles (usually thought of as electrons), whose interaction through the electromagnetic field, as described by Maxwell’s equations, affects their respective motions. The problem was so complex because the electromagnetic field theory was not an action-at-a-distance theory. This article begins with an overview of the principle of relativity and of the constancy of the speed of light, followed by a discussion on the relativity of simultaneity, the mass–energy equivalence, and experimental tests of special relativity. It also examines the principle of equivalence, the concepts of spacetime curvature and general covariance, and Mach’s principle. Finally, it considers experimental predictions of general relativity.
Physics and Cosmology
Authors: Kragh Helge
Published: July 2017

This article considers the role of physics in transforming cosmology into a research field which relies heavily on fundamental physical knowledge. It begins with an overview of astrophysics and the state of physical cosmology prior to the introduction of relativity, followed by a discussion of Albert Einstein’s application of his new theory of gravitation to cosmology. It then examines the development of a theory about the possibility of an expanding universe, citing the work of such scientists as Edwin Hubble, Alexander Friedmann, Georges Lemaître, and George Gamow; the emergence of the field of nuclear archaeology to account for the origins of the early universe; and the controversy sparked by the steady-state theory. It also describes the discovery of a cosmic microwave background of the kind that Alpher and Herman had predicted in 1948 before concluding with a review of modern cosmological hypotheses such as the idea of ‘multiverse’.
Cartesian Physics
Authors: Schuster John A.
Published: July 2017

This article examines the physics of René Descartes. Descartes’ natural philosophy marks a significant moment in the larger history of physics. His system of natural philosophy was a novel, daring, and intricate construction in that field, with two main sets of historical significances for later physics. Before discussing these two significant consequences of Descartes’ natural philosophy for physics, the article provides an overview of the developmental anatomy of Cartesian physics during the period 1618–1644. In particular, it considers the successes, failures, and fate of Descartes’ early physico-mathematics programme, his work on physico-mathematical optics and corpuscular dynamics, and his career inflection between 1628 and 1633. It also explores Descartes’ ideas on vortex celestial mechanics, the explanatory style of mature Cartesian physics, and his work on classical mechanics. Finally, it looks at Descartes’ concerns with realist Copernicanism.
Physics and the Instrument-Makers, 1550–1700
Authors: Turner Anthony
Published: July 2017

This article examines the practice of instrument-making as it impinged upon the nascent science of physics during the period 1550–1700. Instrument-making workshops developed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — the period of transition in mathematical instrument-making from an occasional activity of scholar or artisan to a trade carried out in workshops in which it was possible for aspirants to the activity to be trained. One of the characterizing achievements of Renaissance instrument-making throughout Europe was to respond to an increasing demand by the production of semi-standardized instruments while retaining the ability to innovate and develop special instruments to special order. The number of instrument-makers increased from three in 1551 to fourteen in 1601 and 151 in 1701. This growth in numbers reflects the growth in demand, but conceals the greater capacity and range of workshops by the end of the century.
Newton’s Principia
Authors: Smeenk Chris , Schliesser Eric
Published: July 2017

This article examines the historical context of Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia) and how it reoriented natural philosophy for generations. It first considers how the Principia extends and refines the ideas of De Motu, taking into account the three Laws of Motion, the force responsible for the planetary trajectories, the motion of projectiles in a resisting medium, and the law of universal gravitation. It then discusses three changes that influenced fundamentally the content and reception of the Principia: the relabelling and rewording of nine ‘hypotheses’ (into ‘phenomena’ and ‘rules of reasoning’) at the start of Book 3; the addition of the General Scholium; and changes that minimized explicit commitments to atomism. It also assesses the impact of the Principia on the development of physics and concludes with an overview of Newton’s theory about the cause of gravity