Top ten innovations of the last 250 years

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by dejon


Now, now, let's not make fun of philosophy. Philosophy is the birthplace of all the sciences. When an area of study within philosophy gains enough interest and momentum, it generally becomes a separate science. Don't mock the fields that remain under the Philosophy banner just because they are too small or young to go it alone.

I've been out of the academic loop for awhile, but when I was in university there was some excitement about the generation of new classes and a department for an area borne of Advanced Math, Psychology, and...Logics from Philosophy - it was Artificial Intelligence. You of all people, Asher, should appreciate that.

eh, nevermind

I just realized you've been going at this with Aggie and others in another thread. But I do think you should pay proper respect to the breeding ground of your own discipline, amongst countless others. Even if the current residents of the pool (Phil of mind, ethics) aren't your taste - they will mature or die and be replaced with other areas over time.

[Zkribbler]

(1) Assembly Line
(2) Democratic Republic
(3) Steam Engine
(4) Electricity
(5) Germ Theory
(6) Penicillin and other anti-biotics
(7) Birth Control Pill
(8) Computers & the Internet
(9) Modern Agriculture [wasn't it Ming who had a thread on the guy who came up with a grain modification which is now feeding something like a billion people each day?]
(10) Space travel

...and coming soon:

(11) Human cloning and DNA-therapy.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


This has nothing to do with nationalism.

Tell that to Gepap.

[Asher]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Top ten innovations of the last 250 years

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Benjamin Franklin was a philospher.

Benjamin Franklin:
(A) did a scientific experiment
(B) showed lightning is a form of electricity, and did not actually "invent" or "discover" electricity

Hero invented the steam engine in ancient times.

no

[Last Conformist]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Top ten innovations of the last 250 years

Originally posted by Asher

Benjamin Franklin:
(A) did a scientific experiment
(B) showed lightning is a form of electricity, and did not actually "invent" or "discover" electricity

That hardly precludes him from being a philosopher.

Anyway, may I, just out of curiosity, ask you what you think of Popper?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

But, it was still a far cry from the explicit nationalist ideology of the age of revolution and beyond.

Actually, it wasn't that different.

The Tudor dynasty begins with a man descended from a Welsh family, who wins the crown by killing the last king- so, in order to make itself acceptable, this dynasty sets out to centralize power in southern England, reduce the power of local magnates and aristocrats and stamp out any ideas of regional identity opposed to the centralizing authority of the English crown.

Henry VII's reign saw English troops go abroad once only, if I recall- otherwise the king relied on foreign mercenaries. Adventurism in mainland Europe was off the agenda, especially after the losses of the Hundred Years' War and the civil strife of the Wars of the Roses.

Fortunately for his son, Henry VIII, his and Catherine of Aragon's inability to produce a viable male heir coincided with the Reformation- so a political, dynastic nationalistic agenda could be reinforced with a new nationalist theological agenda.

1531, the beginning of the suppression of the monasteries:

The Southern Convocation [in Canterbury] hoped to bribe the king with L40,000 but soon learned that Henry expected much more. Therefore, on January 24, 1531 they voted to pay the king L100,000 "as a grant to the king in acknowledgment of his defense of the faith against heresy".This obvious attempt to bribe the king without admitting their guilt failed when on February 7 Henry sent the grant back ordering the "clergy to confess their guilt and acknowledge him as 'the Protector and Supreme Head of the Church in England' having, moreover, in his dominions a cure of souls".

http://www.peterwestern.f9.co.uk/monasteries.htm

The monastic foundations had to be suppressed- to fund the king and his supporters, but also because many monasteries owed allegiance to a spiritual head and a temporal power outside the realm.

In 1533 there was the Act Of Restraint Of Appeals- Thomas Cranmer receives the right to make religious rulings without having to appeal to Rome- thus enabling Henry's divorce from Catherine and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, to secure the English succession.

1534 sees this act followed by the Act For Ecclesiastical Appointments, the Act For Peter's Pence and the Act Of Supremacy- all acts reducing the influence of Rome and increasing the power and prestige of the English king and the Anglican church.

In 1535, Henry's friend and adviser Sir Thomas More, is executed for refusing to acknowledge Henry as supreme authority over the English church.

The Act For The Dissolution Of The Monasteries is joined in 1536 by the Act For The Union Of England And Wales and the suppression of the Catholic northern lords' Pilgrimage of Grace.

In 1541 Henry raises Ireland to the level of a separate kingdom- unifying it to the English crown.

Welsh customary law and marcher law are replaced by English common law in 1543, and 1549 sees the Proclamation of the English Prayer Book- the Cornish rebellion against Cranmer's English language prayer book is suppressed.

This is followed in 1550 by the Anglican Ordinal, in 1553 by the Forty-Two Articles Of Religion, and in 1559 by the Act Of Uniformity, enforcing attendance at Anglican church services, which was followed in 1560 by the Irish Act Of Uniformity.

In 1563, a Welsh translation of the Anglican Prayer Book was made.

In Edward VI's reign, English grammar schools replaced monastic schools, and by the end of Elizabeth I's reign, 8 main bibles in the English vernacular were circulating-
Wiclif and Tyndale's translations had been joined by Miles Coverdale's revision of Tyndale's version in 1535, the Matthew Bible of 1537, the Great Bible of 1539, the Calvinist Geneva Bible of 1557-60, the Bishop's Bible of 1566-72 and the Catholic Bible for the English abroad, the Douai Bible of 1582.

In 1592 Trinity College Dublin is founded to provide Anglican clergy for the Irish kingdom, and in 1594 Richard Hooker publishes the Anglican 'Laws Of Ecclesiastical Polity'.

The idea that there was an English nation, political, cultural and theological, was clearly current- along with Richard Hakluyt's 'The principall Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English nation' published in 1589, there had been two quite iconic moments, which would receive echo in a play by Shakespeare.

Firstly the English Protestant martyrs, Latimer and Ridley, executed by the half-Spanish Mary, a Catholic married to a Spaniard:

Be of good comfort Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out!

followed by Elizabeth I's speech at Tilbury:

My loving people,

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general2 shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

The powerful idea of Elizabeth as Virgin Queen, Gloriana, the spotless female embodiment of the spirit of England, is enhanced by the popular literature of the day, and by the political iconography of her medals, portraiture and coinage- Edmund Spenser perhaps best exemplifies this tendency in 1596, in his archaizing English epic, 'The Faerie Queene', which deliberately makes use of antique English terms.

Shakespeare uses his skills as dramatist to glorify the English and act as propagandist for the Tudors- famously he has John of Gaunt say this in 'Richard II' :

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm this England....

Act II, scene I, l. 40-50


'Richard II' is currently being performed by Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic theatre. This speech did of course also get put to good use by Basil Rathbone at the end of 'Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon' in which Holmes ruins the schemes of Professor Moriarty and the Nazis (!) during WWII.

One version of Elizabeth I's Armada portrait:

[GePap]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse




Tell that to Gepap.

You dope.

What Che is saying is that working for the good of the commoner has nothing to do with Nationalism.

What I said was that the state must enbody the needs of the Nation, the Nation being defined as a a common ethno-liguistic cultural group.

If widespread totalitarian terror iw aht is necessary to keep the nation strong, if a long, drawn out war is what is needed to bring about the UNity of the naton, those actions are fully in support of Nationalism, and has little to do with "good of the commonwealth:, anymore than the Bolsheviks notion of creating a state for the proleteriat class is driven by their understanding of the state as ensuring the good of the commonwealth.

[GePap]

Molly:

For all your "evidence", I still fail to see where you equate a feeling of English Patriotism to the idea of Nationalism, specially since you stick to Tudor England, but I fail to see you then go to the English bringing in William of Orange, or then the Georgian period-and of course if real Nationalism was rampant in England, one has to wonder about the history of the English republican period, since Nationalism if it really existed back then would have had a fair amount of influence on that, and of course, the eventual creation of a United Kingdom, a move which would never sit with real nationalist, be they English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish.

[duke o' york]

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm this England....

Then goes on to:

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

thereby undermining the whole idea of England as in any way special. Not a good quote to support this idea Molly.

[Odin]

T0p ten innovations:
1. Steam Engine
2. Electric power
3. Telegraph & telephone
4. Computers
5. Internet
6. Vaccines, Pasteurization & antibiotics
7. Railroad
8. Internal combustion engine
8. Genetic Engineering & the Human Genome Project
10. Flight & Space travel

Top ten discoveries:
1. Darwinian Evolution
2. Germ Theory of disease
3. DNA as the molecule of heredity
4. Structure of the atom
5. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics
6. Plate tectonics
7. Maxwell's equations of Electromagnitism
8. Aluminum production
9. Oxygen
10. Remains of extinct human ancestors and relatives

[Whoha]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Top ten innovations of the last 250 years

Originally posted by Dauphin
The steam engine is over 250 years old. If you count Savery as the inventor, thats some 60 years before 1755. The next innovation by Newcomen was 40 years before 1750.

the high pressure one utilized in Transportation was 1804 right?

[Gangerolf]

1. The V-style (aka the Boklöw technique)
2. - 250. Irrelevant

[-Jrabbit]

I really think the light bulb belongs on this list. It freed us from the tyranny of the sun, enabling truly profound changes in lifestyles and commercial production -- without a live flame to tend..

[Odin]

Now that I think of it, some ancient greek guy invented the steam engine, but it was forgotton because eveyone who tried to sell it to said "then what would the slaves do?"

[Zkribbler]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Top ten innovations of the last 250 years

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Benjamin Franklin was a philospher.

He was a scientist:
He discovered the Gulf Stream and that electricity flowed in a "current," indeed, he was the first to use the term "electric current." He invented the lightning rod, the Franklin stove, the bifocal lens and the armonica.

And yes, he was also a philopher, a diplomat, a very successful businessman, a philantropist and a lover.