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Is There a Christian History of Science?

Edward B. Davis

in Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation

This essay argues that the history of science and faith is not one of ongoing conflict. While earlier historiographers like Andrew Dickson White portrayed a triumphal science engaged in “warfare” ... More

This essay argues that the history of science and faith is not one of ongoing conflict. While earlier historiographers like Andrew Dickson White portrayed a triumphal science engaged in “warfare” with theology, that view has been largely replaced by a much more nuanced story of mutual influence. Davis concludes that historians of science, whether Christians or not, largely share the same goal: to document the complexity of this story without prejudicing the case either for or against faith.Less

Black Boxes and Open-Air Stages: Film Studio Technology and Environmental Control from the Laboratory to the Rooftop

Brian R. Jacobson

in Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space

This chapter examines W.K.L. Dickson’s Black Maria studio and its critical role in Dickson and Thomas Edison’s invention of moving images. It argues that the Black Maria films’ “framed aesthetic” was ... More

This chapter examines W.K.L. Dickson’s Black Maria studio and its critical role in Dickson and Thomas Edison’s invention of moving images. It argues that the Black Maria films’ “framed aesthetic” was the product of the studio’s architectural form and reflected the technological enframing by which Dickson’s design strove to put the sun on reserve for cinematic representation.Less

Odium Theologicum: The Liberal as Antichrist

Robert Pattison

in The Great Dissent: John Henry Newman and the Liberal Heresy

This chapter tells the story of why Newman came to hate Renn Dickson Hampden, a living oracle of liberalism. Newman's violent reaction to liberals like Hampden coincided with his researches into ... More

This chapter tells the story of why Newman came to hate Renn Dickson Hampden, a living oracle of liberalism. Newman's violent reaction to liberals like Hampden coincided with his researches into 4th-century heresy. In the pages of the neglected Fathers of the Church, he discovered that the intellectual depravity he saw around him had a pedigree extending further back than Locke and the empiricists, further back than Luther and Calvin, further back even than Wycliffe and the Lollards. It was Arius, the 4th-century heresiarch, who had first defiled Christian civilization with liberal apostasy.Less

Post–World War II Rejuvenation and Transformation

Feng Bangyan and Nyaw Mee Kau

in Enriching Lives: A History of Insurance in Hong Kong, 1841-2010

The war nearly destroyed a century of painstaking effort among British firms in Hong Kong and China. The colony's insurance sector was not spared the havoc. In face of imminent invasion, foreign ... More

The war nearly destroyed a century of painstaking effort among British firms in Hong Kong and China. The colony's insurance sector was not spared the havoc. In face of imminent invasion, foreign insurers made plans to suspend business and retreat from Hong Kong. In January 1941, Union Insurance moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to Sydney, as well as Canton Insurance. The relocation decision had been approved by the board of directors only a year before. In hindsight, the board's chairman, J. Dickson Leach, affirmed that this decision helped save the company. Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Company, once Union's primary source of re-insurance business from Japan, stepped up as agent for the company in Hong Kong. The insurance sector ground to a halt. In August 1945, the Japanese surrendered and the war ended. Hong Kong's postwar economy recovered, and businesses flourished. This ushered in a new phase in the development of the insurance industry.Less

All the Dead Generations: Jean Toomer’s Dark Sister

Barbara Foley

in Jean Toomer: Race, Repression, and Revolution

This chapter illustrates how Toomer appears to have gleaned about his family's history while he was conceiving and creating Cane. This material features the fabulous fortune gained and lost by his ... More

This chapter illustrates how Toomer appears to have gleaned about his family's history while he was conceiving and creating Cane. This material features the fabulous fortune gained and lost by his father, Nathan Toomer, on the death of his second wife, the Georgia heiress Amanda America Dickson, said to be the “richest colored woman in America.” It also involves a near-Gothic narrative of attempted seduction and rape of his half-sister, Mamie Toomer, by her stepbrother, Charles Dickson. This buried family history gave rise to a complex admixture of shame and guilt that compounded Toomer's already conflicted consciousness as a pro-socialist radical born into Washington's light-skinned Negro aristocracy.Less

Pulpits, Presbyteries and Petitions on the Trade

Iain Whyte

in Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838

Many of the first petitions to Parliament against the slave trade in 1788 came from the Church of Scotland Presbyteries. An early one in Edinburgh was proposed by Rev. Robert Walker, ... More

Many of the first petitions to Parliament against the slave trade in 1788 came from the Church of Scotland Presbyteries. An early one in Edinburgh was proposed by Rev. Robert Walker, Raeburn's'Skating minister.' In 1792 one third of the 561 sent to London from the British Isles came from Scotland. This was the result of a three month tour by the Moffat-born William Dickson on behalf of the London Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Thomas Clarkson sent Dickson to distribute copies of the evidence gathered by the society and to talk of his experiences in Barbados to ministers and civic leaders. Not all were sympathetic. The fear of revolutionary France inhibited any ‘radical’ talk, let alone action, against the status quo, and the commercial and filial ties with Scots in the West Indies made some hostile to Dickson's message. Scotland's many arguments against the slave trade on moral, religious, and humane grounds forced Prime Minister William Pitt's Key minister in Scotland, Henry Dundas, to promise the abolition of the trade but at an unspecified date.Less

London Scots in the Movement for Abolition

Iain Whyte

in Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838

The contribution of key Scots in England to the abolition movement has been little recognised. James Ramsay from Aberdeenshire, chaplain and physician in St.Kitts was driven out by the planters ... More

The contribution of key Scots in England to the abolition movement has been little recognised. James Ramsay from Aberdeenshire, chaplain and physician in St.Kitts was driven out by the planters because of his humane attitude to slaves. From a vicarage in Kent he provided evidence on the slave trade for William Wilberforce and inspired the young Thomas Clarkson to dedicate his life to the cause. In addition to his 1792 tour, William Dickson wrote detailed books on slavery from his time as Secretary to the Governor of Barbados. James Stephen was inspired as a student in Aberdeen by the anti-slavery lectures of James Beattie and went on to draft the legislation for the abolition of the trade in 1807. Zachary Macaulay, after experiencing a slave plantation in Jamaica in his youth, became Governor of the free settlement of Sierra Leone and edited the highly influential Anti-Slavery Reporter which provided both ammunition for Wilberforce's parliamentary campaign and news for the growing anti-slavery societies throughout Britain. Henry Brougham, the Edinburgh lawyer and MP who was to become Lord Chancellor of England, worked with Macaulay and Stephen in the anti-slavery cause.Less

Nightmare on Eno Road: Poisoned Water and Toxic Racism in Dickson, Tennessee

Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright

in The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities

This chapter examines how incompetent government response to disasters endangers the health and safety of African Americans by focusing on the case of the town of Dickson in Tennessee. Dickson is the ... More

This chapter examines how incompetent government response to disasters endangers the health and safety of African Americans by focusing on the case of the town of Dickson in Tennessee. Dickson is the poster child for environmental racism: for more than forty years, the town's mostly African American Eno Road community has been used as the dumping ground for garbage and toxic wastes. As a result, Dickson's drinking water supply was poisoned by deadly chemicals from the Scovill-Schrader automotive company that ultimately made local residents sick. This chapter describes the Dickson County landfill and explains how an African American family's wells on their homestead were contaminated. It also shows how the combination of toxic waste, institutional racism, and poisoned water creates a deadly mix for African Americans. Finally, it offers policy recommendations to government and nongovernmental organizations in the wake of the environmental health disaster created by the Dickson County Landfill and government inaction.Less

The First 3D Movies

Stephen R. Wilk

in Sandbows and Black Lights: Reflections on Optics

3-D movies have gone through several waves of popularity. They have appeared several times in the 20th and 21st centuries, with new developments in technology enabling better effects with each new ... More

3-D movies have gone through several waves of popularity. They have appeared several times in the 20th and 21st centuries, with new developments in technology enabling better effects with each new incarnation. Rotating discs, polarizing glasses, anaglyphic glasses, coupled polarizers and optical retarders, and the use of electro-optic shutters each provided small advantages over previous technology. But the basic idea is simple, and was used in the 19th century stereoscope—present each eye with an independent view from a different perspective so that the parallax enables the brain to fuse them into one stereoscopic image. Who invented the first 3D movies? The idea is much older than most people suspect, dating back to the very beginning of cinema.Less

The Most Interesting Man I Met: From Hot Springs, Arkansas, to Tuskegee, Alabama

Jennifer Ritterhouse

in Discovering the South: One Man's Travels through a Changing America in the 1930s

This chapter focuses on Daniels's encounter with Victor C. Turner Sr., who worked for the Negro Cooperative Extension System of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Turner's biography as a ... More

This chapter focuses on Daniels's encounter with Victor C. Turner Sr., who worked for the Negro Cooperative Extension System of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Turner's biography as a representative of the educated black middle class is presented, including his participation in an officers' training program at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, during World War I. Turner told Daniels about racial violence and debt peonage in Lowndes County, Alabama, mentioning a planter named Dickson. Historical research connects a peonage case involving Lowndes County sheriff J.W. Dickson in 1903 with a case involving his younger brother, Robert Stiles Dickson Sr., in 1946. Neither brother was ever prosecuted, and the younger one was especially socially prominent. The chapter analyses Daniels's portrayal of Turner and Dickson, who remain anonymous in A Southerner Discovers the South. He sought confirmation of Turner's story from white Alabamans, including Birmingham newspaper editor James E. Chappell. Chappell's daughter Mary had taught at the Calhoun Colored School in Lowndes County and seemed to represent a new social consciousness among younger white southerners. However, another journalist's account of the suppression of the black Sharecroppers Union in 1932 reiterated that planter violence was endemic in the Alabama Black Belt.Less

The Law, the Advocates, and the Universities in Late Sixteenth-Century Scotland

John W Cairns

in Law, Lawyers, and Humanism: Selected Essays on the History of Scots Law, Volume 1

About seventy years ago, W. C. Dickinson drew attention to a document that, he argued, explained the failure of the project initiated on January 16, 1589 by the Lords of Council and Session to found ... More

About seventy years ago, W. C. Dickinson drew attention to a document that, he argued, explained the failure of the project initiated on January 16, 1589 by the Lords of Council and Session to found a chair in Law in the University of Edinburgh. This unsuccessful attempt had been noticed in the standard histories of the university, but no satisfactory explanation of the failure had been offered. Based on the document, Dickinson argued that the the project failed because of the opposition of the Advocates, on whom the Lords of Session had relied for help with the necessary endowment. This chapter suggests there was more substance to the Advocates’ arguments against the proposal. Examination of the evidence shows that the Advocates had good reason for their views, and also throws valuable light both on the development of education in law in the Scottish universities and on the early educational aspirations for advocates.Less

Educating Efficient Citizens in Oakland, California

David A. Gamson

in The Importance of Being Urban: Designing the Progressive School District, 1890-1940

Chapter 3 traces the evolution of the modern city school system as enacted by leaders in Oakland, California. Despite their reputation as quintessential “administrative progressives,” due to their ... More

Chapter 3 traces the evolution of the modern city school system as enacted by leaders in Oakland, California. Despite their reputation as quintessential “administrative progressives,” due to their swift adoption of efficiency-oriented practices after World War I, some Oakland leaders dedicated energy to implementing a series of broad pedagogical initiatives that contravene standard narratives portraying administrators as unimaginative central office bureaucrats. Indeed, teachers implemented remarkably creative instructional practices, some designed to engage students in problem-solving, others implemented to help struggling students return to grade level. The chapter devotes special attention to Superintendent Fred Hunter (1917–28), an aggressive, nationally prominent innovator who asserted that he was “democratizing” his schools and providing equal educational opportunities to meet the needs of all students. In practice, the application of such opportunities meant working with Lewis Terman’s protégé, Virgil Dickson, to spread IQ testing throughout the district while designing curricula to match ability levels, backgrounds, and prospective futures. Hunter’s ascent was facilitated by the local business community, and his tenure paralleled periods of local labor strife, ethnic and racial tensions, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, all of which serve to illustrate the close connections between civic organizations and school politics.Less

Are you sitting (un)comfortably? Sound, horror and radio

Richard J. Hand

in Listen in terror: British horror radio from the advent of broadcasting to the digital age

A detailed analysis of BBC Radio's most famous horror radio show in the 1940s onwards. The most significant and long-running horror series in the history of British radio is Appointment with Fear ... More

A detailed analysis of BBC Radio's most famous horror radio show in the 1940s onwards. The most significant and long-running horror series in the history of British radio is Appointment with Fear (1943-55). This series was established following the phenomenal success of the CBS radio series Suspense in the US. The writer John Dickson Carr had played a central role in establishing Suspense and it was his idea to transfer the formula to the UK. Dickson Carr contributed numerous of his own Suspense scripts for Appointment with Fear, but the series also featured some excellent examples of adaptation including dramatizations of fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and others.Less

‘Too Solemn for Laughter’?: Scottish Abolitionists and the Mock Apology for Slavery

Ross Carroll

in Uncivil Mirth: Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain

This chapter turns to a group of critics on the fringes of the Scottish Enlightenment who deployed ridicule for a very different political cause: the campaign against the Atlantic slave trade. ... More

This chapter turns to a group of critics on the fringes of the Scottish Enlightenment who deployed ridicule for a very different political cause: the campaign against the Atlantic slave trade. William Dickson, Alexander Geddes and James Tytler all set out to expose defenders of African slavery as not merely mistaken but contemptible, and their arguments as an absurd affront to humanity. Taking their cue from Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, the form of ridicule they often adopted was a mock endorsement of the very pro-slavery arguments they sought to discredit. In adopting this rhetorical strategy, the chapter argues, these abolitionists found that some prejudiced or self-interested claims on behalf of slavery could not be countered by argument alone and that presenting them as beneath refutation was essential to defeating them.Less

Falling

Charity Vogel

in The Angola Horror: The 1867 Train Wreck That Shocked the Nation and Transformed American Railroads

This chapter recounts how the New York Express's last two cars fell into the icy gorge below the Big Sister Creek bridge. Running after the train, James Mahar did not stop to look at what had ... More

This chapter recounts how the New York Express's last two cars fell into the icy gorge below the Big Sister Creek bridge. Running after the train, James Mahar did not stop to look at what had occurred at the site of the derailment. The frog's curved iron pieces had struck a wheel on the left-hand side of the back truck, throwing the truck off kilter. Passengers on the train could not see what was happening on the rails. How strongly they felt the concussion of the derailment depended on where they sat. The cars of the express then began to shudder as they rolled along the track. Robert J. Dickson, an engineer working for the Buffalo and Erie Railroad, decided to jump from the moving train, which had already traveled 1,230 feet with derailed back wheels.Less

A Congenial Partnership

in Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions of Campus Capitalism

This chapter discusses the experience of Robert M. Dickson, an associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech, in terms of the commercialization of academic research. ... More

This chapter discusses the experience of Robert M. Dickson, an associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech, in terms of the commercialization of academic research. It explains that Dickson worked with biomedical company Invitrogen to develop a medical diagnostic system using atom-size clusters of gold and silver that can cling to cancer cells and help produce in vivo images of the cells at the molecular level. Unlike Robert Holton, Dickson had a congenial partnership with the company that had licensed his research.Less

Medical lives: case studies of five Irish women medical graduates

Laura Kelly

in Irish Women in Medicine, c. 1880s-1920s: Origins, Education and Careers

Chapter 7 explores how the issues raised in Chapters 4 and 5 played out in the lives of five particular individuals, Emily Winifred Dickson (RCSI, 1891), Emma Crooks (QCB, 1899), Lily Baker (TCD, ... More

Chapter 7 explores how the issues raised in Chapters 4 and 5 played out in the lives of five particular individuals, Emily Winifred Dickson (RCSI, 1891), Emma Crooks (QCB, 1899), Lily Baker (TCD, 1906), Mary McGivern (UCD, 1925) and Jane D. Fulton (TCD, 1925). These case studies demonstrate the importance of the personal story, which is sometimes lost in traditional social histories of medicine, yet rather than being traditional narratives of ‘great men’ and ‘great women’, they are narratives of ordinary women who trained at Irish institutions in the period and which demonstrate the themes considered in previous chapters.Less

Dickson and Forsyth

Gillum Ferguson

in Illinois in the War of 1812

This chapter talks about the meeting of two former enemies—Robert Dickson and Thomas Forsyth—in Saint Louis after the war had ended. During a cordial evening, the two talked over their exploits ... More

This chapter talks about the meeting of two former enemies—Robert Dickson and Thomas Forsyth—in Saint Louis after the war had ended. During a cordial evening, the two talked over their exploits during the war. Dickson was one of the most colorful figures on the frontier; the Indians idolized him. He was a large man of commanding appearance, with a ruddy complexion and blazing red hair, for which the Indians gave him the name “The Red Head.” Meanwhile, Forsyth's ambiguous citizenship enabled him to live safely among the Indians by posing as an Englishman, but some Americans on the frontier distrusted him as a British subject. The outbreak of war brought Dickson and Forsyth into the service of their respective countries, and thus into conflict with each other.Less

The Covenant Idea in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Scotland

Guy M. Richard

in The History of Scottish Theology, Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy

This chapter discusses the idea of the covenant in the middle of the seventeenth century in Scotland. It argues that this idea was distinctive within Scotland because of the unique historical context ... More

This chapter discusses the idea of the covenant in the middle of the seventeenth century in Scotland. It argues that this idea was distinctive within Scotland because of the unique historical context of the nation at the time. The ancient Scottish tradition of making alliances to defend oneself, the legacy of John Knox, and the mainstream of Reformation thinking in regard to federal theology all ensured that the covenant concept would give men like Samuel Rutherford, David Dickson, James Durham, and Patrick Gillespie a way to impress the truths of the Reformation as powerfully as possible upon the hearts and minds of the Scottish people. And, by doing so, it enabled them to work as effectively as possible to complete the Reformation in their home country.Less