Gifford Lectures
   HOME





Gifford Lectures
The Gifford Lectures () are an annual series of lectures which were established in 1887 by the will of Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford at the four ancient universities of Scotland: St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Their purpose is to "promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in other words, the knowledge of God." A Gifford lectures appointment is one of the most prestigious honours in Scottish academia. University calendars record that at the four Scottish universities, the Gifford Lectures are to be "public and popular, open not only to students of the university, but the whole community (for a tuition fee) without matriculation. Besides a general audience, the Lecturer may form a special class of students for the study of the subject, which will be conducted in the usual way, and tested by examination and thesis, written and oral". The lectures are normally presented as a series over an academic year and given with th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lecture
A lecture (from ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history, background, theories, and equations. A politician's speech, a minister's sermon, or even a business person's sales presentation may be similar in form to a lecture. Usually the lecturer will stand at the front of the room and recite information relevant to the lecture's content. Though lectures are much criticised as a teaching method, universities have not yet found practical alternative teaching methods for the large majority of their courses. Critics point out that lecturing is mainly a one-way method of communication that does not involve significant audience participation but relies upon passive learning. Therefore, lecturing is often contrasted to active learning. Lectures delivered by talented speakers can be highly stimulating; at the very le ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


John Locke Lectures
The John Locke Lectures are a series of annual lectures in philosophy given at the University of Oxford. Named for British philosopher John Locke, the Locke Lectures are the world's most prestigious lectures in philosophy, and are among the world's most prestigious academic lectures. They were established in 1950 by the bequest of Henry Wilde. Another comparable lecture series is the Gifford Lectures, which are delivered annually at several universities in Scotland. The first lecture series was offered to Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ..., who eventually declined. He felt uncomfortable giving formal lectures where the audience would not be asking or answering questions. Lecturers The lectures began as an uncertain biennial series, with the firs ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Honoré Marcel (7 December 1889 – 8 October 1973) was a French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist. The author of over a dozen books and at least thirty plays, Marcel's work focused on the modern individual's struggle in a technologically dehumanizing society. Though often regarded as the first French existentialist, he dissociated himself from figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, preferring the term ''philosophy of existence'' or ''neo-Socrateanism'' to define his own thought. '' The Mystery of Being'' is a well-known two-volume work authored by Marcel. Early life and education Marcel was born on 7 December 1889 in Paris, France. His mother, Laure Meyer, who was Jewish, died when he was young, and he was brought up by his aunt and father, Henry Marcel. When he was eight, he moved for a year where his father was minister plenipotentiary. Marcel completed his DES thesis (', roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) and obtained the ''a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Arthur Darby Nock
Arthur Darby Nock (21 February 1902 – 11 January 1963) was an English classicist and theologian, regarded as a leading scholar in the history of religion. He was a professor at Harvard University from 1930 until his death. Early life Nock was born in Portsmouth, England in 1902 to Cornelius and Alice Mary Ann Nock. He was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School. Education and career Nock studied at Trinity College at Cambridge University, where he was awarded his bachelor's degree in 1922 and master's degree in 1926. He became a fellow at Clare College in Cambridge in 1923 and then served as a university lecturer in Classics starting in 1926. In 1930, he became Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion at Harvard University in the United States (as successor to George Foot Moore), where he remained the rest of his life. At 28, he was the youngest full professor at Harvard in half a century. As a guest lecturer, he held lectures at various universities, such as Harv ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Karl Barth
Karl Barth (; ; – ) was a Swiss Reformed theologian. Barth is best known for his commentary '' The Epistle to the Romans'', his involvement in the Confessing Church, including his authorship (except for a single phrase) of the Barmen Declaration, and especially his unfinished multi-volume theological summa the '' Church Dogmatics'' (published between 1932 and 1967). Barth's influence expanded well beyond the academic realm to mainstream culture, leading him to be featured on the cover of ''Time'' on 20 April 1962. Like many Protestant theologians of his generation, Barth was educated in a liberal theology influenced by Adolf von Harnack, Friedrich Schleiermacher and others. His pastoral career began in the rural Swiss town of Safenwil, where he was known as the "Red Pastor from Safenwil". There he became increasingly disillusioned with the liberal Christianity in which he had been trained. This led him to write the first edition of his ''The Epistle to the Romans'' (a. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


William Ritchie Sorley
William Ritchie Sorley, FBA (; 4 November 1855 – 28 July 1935), usually cited as W. R. Sorley, was a Scottish philosopher. A Gifford Lecturer, he was one of the British Idealist school of thinkers, with interests in ethics. He was opposed to women being admitted as students to the University of Cambridge. Life and career William Ritchie Sorley was born in Selkirk, Scotland, the son of Anna Ritchie and William Sorley, a Free Church of Scotland minister. He was educated first at the University of Edinburgh, where he took a degree in philosophy and mathematics. This was followed by New College, Edinburgh where he studied theology with the intention of training for the church. He gave this up, and after winning the Shaw Fellowship he spent a year at Trinity College, Cambridge where he took Part II of the Moral Sciences Tripos. He subsequently spent several years at Cambridge where he was lecturer and in 1883 he was elected a Fellow at Trinity. In 1886, he was appointed to a pos ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison
Andrew Seth, FBA, DCL (1856, Edinburgh – 1931, The Haining, Selkirkshire), who changed his name to Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison in 1898 to fulfill the terms of a bequest, was a Scottish philosopher. His brother was James Seth, also a philosopher. Early life and education Their father, Smith Kinmont Seth, was the son of a farmer from Fife and a bank clerk in the head office of the Commercial Bank of Scotland. Their mother, Margaret, was the daughter of Andrew Little a farmer from Berwickshire. An elder brother died in infancy. Seth was educated at High School and the University of Edinburgh. In 1878 he was awarded a Hibbert Travelling Fellowship. He spent two years abroad, chiefly at German universities. On his return in 1880 he was appointed assistant to Professor Campbell Fraser, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh. He became Balfour Lecturer in Philosophy in 1883. From 1883 to 1887 he was Professor of Logic and Philosophy at the newly created University C ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Hans Driesch
Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch (28 October 1867 – 17 April 1941) was a German biologist and philosopher from Bad Kreuznach. He is most noted for his early experimental work in embryology and for his neo-vitalist philosophy of entelechy. He has also been credited with performing the first artificial 'cloning' of an animal in the 1880s, although this claim is dependent on how one defines cloning. Early years Driesch was educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums. He began to study medicine in 1886 under August Weismann at the University of Freiburg. In 1887 he attended the University of Jena under Ernst Haeckel, Oscar Hertwig and Christian Ernst Stahl. In 1888 he studied physics and chemistry at the University of Munich. He received his doctorate in 1889. He travelled widely on field and study trips and lecture-tours, visiting Plymouth, India, Zurich and Leipzig where, in 1894, he published his ''Analytische Theorie der organischen Entwicklung'' or ''Analytic Theory of Organic De ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




James Adam (classicist)
James Adam (7 April 1860 – 30 August 1907) was a Scottish classicist who taught classics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Life James Adam was born on 7 April 1860 in Kinmuck in the parish of Keithhall near Inverurie, Aberdeenshire. He was the second son of James Adam, a shopkeeper and former farm servant, and of Adam's wife Barbara (''née'' Anderson), a farmer's daughter. The younger James was educated at the Old Grammar School in Old Aberdeen, at the University of Aberdeen where he studied under William Geddes and gained his B.A. as Senior Classic in 1880. He subsequently moved to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in the same year, receiving his Cambridge B.A. in 1884. In 1884 Adam was appointed Junior Fellow and soon thereafter Senior Lecturer in the Classics at Emmanuel College. He began lecturing on Greek poetry and philosophy in December 1884. He was awarded his M.A. by Emmanuel in 1888, and his Litt. D. in 1903. He later became Senior Tutor at the college; he ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce (; November 20, 1855 – September 14, 1916) was an American Pragmatism, pragmatist and objective idealism, objective idealist philosopher and the founder of American idealism. His philosophical ideas included his joining of pragmatism and idealism, his philosophy of loyalty, and his defense of absolutism. Royce's essay "A Word for the Times" (1914) was quoted in the 1936 State of the Union Address by Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "The human race now passes through one of its great crises. New ideas, new issues – a new call for men to carry on the work of righteousness, of charity, of courage, of patience, and of loyalty. [...] I studied, I loved, I labored, unsparingly and hopefully, to be worthy of my generation." Life Royce, born on November 20, 1855, in Grass Valley, California, Grass Valley, California, was the son of Josiah and Sarah Royce, Sarah Eleanor (Bayliss) Royce, whose families were recent English emigrants and who sought their fortune in the California G ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


James Ward (psychologist)
James Ward (27 January 1843 – 4 March 1925) was an English psychologist and philosopher.James Ward (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
He was a Cambridge Apostle.


Life

Ward was born in , the eldest of nine children. His father was an unsuccessful merchant. Ward was educated at the and Mostyn ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]