Robert Sharrock
Robert Sharrock (1630–1684) was an English churchman and botanist. He is now known for ''The History of the Propagation and Improvement of Vegetables by the Concurrence of Art and Nature'' (1660), for philosophical work directed against Thomas Hobbes, and as an associate of Robert Boyle He became Archdeacon of Winchester, in the final year of his life. Life He was baptised at Drayton Parslow, Buckinghamshire, on 29 June 1630, the son of Robert Sharrock. His father was rector of Drayton Parslow from 1639 to 1642, and of Adstock, Buckinghamshire, from March 1640 till his death in September 1671; his wife's name was Judith. The son Robert was admitted a scholar of Winchester School in 1643, and was elected Fellow of New College, Oxford, on 5 March 1649 by the parliamentary visitors. He matriculated on 16 November 1650, graduated B.C.L. on 12 October 1654, and D.C.L. on 24 May 1661. He was presented to the college rectory of Horwood Magna in Buckinghamshire on 29 June 1665, an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, theology, and ethics, as well as philosophy in general. Biography Early life Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 (Old Style), in Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England. Having been born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear." Hobbes had a brother, Edmund, about two years older, as well as a sister named Anne. Although Thomas Hobbes's childhood is unknown to a large extent, as is his mother's name, it is known that Hobbes's fat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Equisetum
''Equisetum'' (; horsetail, snake grass, puzzlegrass) is the only living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of ferns, which reproduce by spores rather than seeds. ''Equisetum'' is a "living fossil", the only living genus of the entire subclass Equisetidae, which for over 100 million years was much more diverse and dominated the understorey of late Paleozoic forests. Some equisetids were large trees reaching to tall. The genus ''Calamites'' of the family Calamitaceae, for example, is abundant in coal deposits from the Carboniferous period. The pattern of spacing of nodes in horsetails, wherein those toward the apex of the shoot are increasingly close together, is said to have inspired John Napier to invent logarithms. Modern horsetails first appeared during the Jurassic period. A superficially similar but entirely unrelated flowering plant genus, mare's tail (''Hippuris''), is occasionally referred to as "horsetail", and adding to confusion, the name "mare's tail" is sometimes ap ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1684 Deaths
Events January–March * January 5 – King Charles II of England gives the title Duke of St Albans to Charles Beauclerk, his illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn. * January 15 (January 5 O.S.) - To demonstrate that the River Thames, frozen solid during the Great Frost that started in December, is safe to walk upon, "a Coach and six horses drove over the Thames for a wager" and within three days "whole streets of Booths are built on the Thames and thousands of people are continually walking thereon." Sir Richard Newdigate, 2nd Baronet, records the events in his diary. * January 26 – Marcantonio Giustinian is elected Doge of Venice. * January – Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke have a conversation in which Hooke later claimed not only to have derived the inverse-square law, but also all the laws of planetary motion attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. Hooke's claim is that in a letter to Newton on 6 January 1680, he first stated the inverse-square law. * Februa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1630 Births
Year 163 ( CLXIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Laelianus and Pastor (or, less frequently, year 916 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 163 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Marcus Statius Priscus re-conquers Armenia; the capital city of Artaxata is ruined. Births * Cui Yan (or Jigui), Chinese official and politician (d. 216) * Sun Shao (or Changxu), Chinese chancellor (d. 225) * Tiberius Claudius Severus Proculus, Roman politician * Xun Yu, Chinese politician and adviser (d. 212) Deaths * Kong Zhou, father of Kong Rong (b. 103) * Marcus Annius Libo Marcus Annius Libo was a Roman Senator active in the early second century AD. Life Libo came from the upper ranks of the Roman aristocra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nehemiah Grew
Nehemiah Grew (26 September 164125 March 1712) was an English plant anatomist and physiologist, known as the "Father of Plant Anatomy". Biography Grew was the only son of Obadiah Grew (1607–1688), Nonconformist divine and vicar of St Michaels, Coventry, and was born in Warwickshire. He graduated at Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1661, and ten years later took the degree of MD at Leiden University, his thesis being ''Disputatio medico-physica de liquore nervoso''. He began observations on the anatomy of plants in 1664, and in 1670 his essay, ''The Anatomy of Vegetables begun'', was communicated to the Royal Society by Bishop Wilkins, on whose recommendation he was in the following year elected a fellow. In 1672, when the essay was published, he settled in London, and soon acquired an extensive practice as a physician. In 1673 he published his ''Idea of a Phytological History'', which consisted of papers he had communicated to the Royal Society in the preceding year, and in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrew Pyle (philosopher)
Andrew Pyle (born 17 March 1955) is a British philosopher on the history of philosophical atomism. Pyle is professor Emeritus in Early Modern Philosophy at the University of Bristol, where he also received his doctorate. His dissertation was titled ''Atomism and its Critics: Democritus to Newton''. Pyle also writes on the history of science and has given talks within the university on the nature of science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ... historically. Pyle is one of the editors of the ''Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy''. Andrew Pyle engaged in an apologetics debate with William Lane Craig in 2008 on the topic: Does the Christian God Exist? In 2018, Bristol University held an all day conference honouring the thematic themes of Pyle's research Publ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thomas Willis
Thomas Willis FRS (27 January 1621 – 11 November 1675) was an English doctor who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology and psychiatry, and was a founding member of the Royal Society. Life Willis was born on his parents' farm in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, where his father held the stewardship of the manor. He was a kinsman of the Willys baronets of Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire. He graduated M.A. from Christ Church, Oxford in 1642.Willis, Thomas The Galileo Project. Galileo.rice.edu. Retrieved on 17 July 2012. In the Civil War years he was a royalist, dispossessed of the family farm at by Parliamentary forces. In the 1640s, Willis was one of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Scholasticism
Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon the Aristotelian 10 Categories. Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translated scholastic Judeo—Islamic philosophies, and thereby "rediscovered" the collected works of Aristotle. Endeavoring to harmonize his metaphysics and its account of a prime mover with the Latin Catholic dogmatic trinitarian theology, these monastic schools became the basis of the earliest European medieval universities, and scholasticism dominated education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. The rise of scholasticism was closely associated with these schools that flourished in Italy, France, Portugal, Spain and England. Scholasticism is a method of learning more than a philosophy or a theology, since it places a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference and to resolve contradictions. Scholastic thought is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC. His influence on the Latin language was immense. He wrote more than three-quarters of extant Latin literature that is known to have existed in his lifetime, and it has been said that subsequent prose was either a reaction against or a return to his style, not only in Latin but in European languages up to the 19th century. Cicero introduced into Latin the arguments of the chief schools of Hellenistic philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Epicurean
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy founded around 307 BC based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism. Later its main opponent became Stoicism. Few writings by Epicurus have survived. However, there are independent attestations of his ideas from his later disciples. Some scholars consider the epic poem '' De rerum natura'' (Latin for ''On the Nature of Things'') by Lucretius to present in one unified work the core arguments and theories of Epicureanism. Many of the scrolls unearthed at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum are Epicurean texts. At least some are thought to have belonged to the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. Epicurus also had a wealthy 2nd-century AD disciple, Diogenes of Oenoanda, who had a portico wall inscribed with tenets of the philosophy erected in Oenoanda, Lycia (present day Turkey). Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His material ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Cumberland (philosopher)
Richard Cumberland (15 July 1631 (or 1632) – 9 October 1718) was an English philosopher, and Bishop of Peterborough from 1691. In 1672, he published his major work, ''De legibus naturae'' (''On natural laws''), propounding utilitarianism and opposing the egoistic ethics of Thomas Hobbes. Cumberland was a member of the Latitudinarian movement, along with his friend Hezekiah Burton of Magdalene College, Cambridge and closely allied with the Cambridge Platonists, a group of ecclesiastical philosophers centred on Cambridge University in the mid 17th century. Early life He was born in the parish of St Ann, near Aldersgate, where his father was a tailor. He was educated in St Paul's School, where Samuel Pepys was a friend, and from 1649 at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. He took the degree of BA in 1653; and, having proceeded to the MA in 1656, was incorporated the following year into the same degree in the University of Oxford. For some time ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leviathan And The Air Pump
''Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life'' (published 1985) is a book by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. It examines the debate between Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes over Boyle's air-pump experiments in the 1660s. In 2005, Shapin and Schaffer were awarded the Erasmus Prize for this work. On a theoretical level, the book explores the acceptable methods of knowledge production, and societal factors related to the different knowledge systems promoted by Boyle and Hobbes. The "Leviathan" in the title is Hobbes's book on the structure of society, '' Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil'' and the "Air-Pump" is Robert Boyle's mechanical instrument. The book also contains a translation by Schaffer of Hobbes's ''Dialogus physicus de natura aeris''. It attacked Boyle and others who founded the society for experimental research, soon known as the Royal Society. Intention of the work Shapin and Schaffer stat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |