R. G. M. Nisbet
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263204
- eISBN:
- 9780191734205
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263204.003.0018
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
W. S. Watt, known to his friends as Bill, was one of the leading Latin scholars of his time. His long and energetic life makes an impressive story. To look back at it prompts reflection on the ...
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W. S. Watt, known to his friends as Bill, was one of the leading Latin scholars of his time. His long and energetic life makes an impressive story. To look back at it prompts reflection on the changing patterns of education and scholarship in the 20th century. In 1952 Watt was appointed Regius Professor of Humanity in the University of Aberdeen. He became an excellent lecturer who made the right answer very clear even to the less experienced. He gave thought to the future of his best honours students, some of whom with his encouragement moved on to Oxford or Cambridge and pursued successful careers in classics or other fields. He still based his teaching on prepared books and prose composition, following the tradition that was changing in other universities; essays on Latin literature (as opposed to ancient history) were not required, but in later years he set passages for linguistic and literary comment, a form of exercise that is perhaps not practised enough.Less
W. S. Watt, known to his friends as Bill, was one of the leading Latin scholars of his time. His long and energetic life makes an impressive story. To look back at it prompts reflection on the changing patterns of education and scholarship in the 20th century. In 1952 Watt was appointed Regius Professor of Humanity in the University of Aberdeen. He became an excellent lecturer who made the right answer very clear even to the less experienced. He gave thought to the future of his best honours students, some of whom with his encouragement moved on to Oxford or Cambridge and pursued successful careers in classics or other fields. He still based his teaching on prepared books and prose composition, following the tradition that was changing in other universities; essays on Latin literature (as opposed to ancient history) were not required, but in later years he set passages for linguistic and literary comment, a form of exercise that is perhaps not practised enough.
Mary Jo Nye
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226610634
- eISBN:
- 9780226610658
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226610658.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter discusses Michael Polanyi's incentive for the publication of his Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy of Science, which was an invitation to give a set of Gifford ...
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This chapter discusses Michael Polanyi's incentive for the publication of his Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy of Science, which was an invitation to give a set of Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen. The mandate of the lectures is one of discussing natural religion or natural theology as knowledge “without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation.” The lectures and their revision in Personal Knowledge owed a considerable debt to the philosopher Marjorie Grene, who worked with Polanyi as his assistant and critic throughout the 1950s. The multifaceted origins and audiences for the book in its religious, political, humanistic, and sociological dimensions are demonstrated in the names of those whom Polanyi asked to read the manuscript: the Christian ecumenist J. H. Oldham, the neoconservative journalist Irving Kristol, the poet and novelist Elizabeth Sewell, and the sociologist Edward Shils.Less
This chapter discusses Michael Polanyi's incentive for the publication of his Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy of Science, which was an invitation to give a set of Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen. The mandate of the lectures is one of discussing natural religion or natural theology as knowledge “without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation.” The lectures and their revision in Personal Knowledge owed a considerable debt to the philosopher Marjorie Grene, who worked with Polanyi as his assistant and critic throughout the 1950s. The multifaceted origins and audiences for the book in its religious, political, humanistic, and sociological dimensions are demonstrated in the names of those whom Polanyi asked to read the manuscript: the Christian ecumenist J. H. Oldham, the neoconservative journalist Irving Kristol, the poet and novelist Elizabeth Sewell, and the sociologist Edward Shils.
