The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England

The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England PDF Author: Sarah Rivett
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807838705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
The Science of the Soul challenges long-standing notions of Puritan provincialism as antithetical to the Enlightenment. Sarah Rivett demonstrates that, instead, empiricism and natural philosophy combined with Puritanism to transform the scope of religious activity in colonial New England from the 1630s to the Great Awakening of the 1740s. In an unprecedented move, Puritan ministers from Thomas Shepard and John Eliot to Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards studied the human soul using the same systematic methods that philosophers applied to the study of nature. In particular, they considered the testimonies of tortured adolescent girls at the center of the Salem witch trials, Native American converts, and dying women as a source of material insight into the divine. Conversions and deathbed speeches were thus scrutinized for evidence of grace in a way that bridged the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the worldly and the divine. In this way, the "science of the soul" was as much a part of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural philosophy as it was part of post-Reformation theology. Rivett's account restores the unity of religion and science in the early modern world and highlights the role and importance of both to transatlantic circuits of knowledge formation.

The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England

The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England PDF Author: Sarah Rivett
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807838705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Science of the Soul challenges long-standing notions of Puritan provincialism as antithetical to the Enlightenment. Sarah Rivett demonstrates that, instead, empiricism and natural philosophy combined with Puritanism to transform the scope of religious activity in colonial New England from the 1630s to the Great Awakening of the 1740s. In an unprecedented move, Puritan ministers from Thomas Shepard and John Eliot to Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards studied the human soul using the same systematic methods that philosophers applied to the study of nature. In particular, they considered the testimonies of tortured adolescent girls at the center of the Salem witch trials, Native American converts, and dying women as a source of material insight into the divine. Conversions and deathbed speeches were thus scrutinized for evidence of grace in a way that bridged the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the worldly and the divine. In this way, the "science of the soul" was as much a part of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural philosophy as it was part of post-Reformation theology. Rivett's account restores the unity of religion and science in the early modern world and highlights the role and importance of both to transatlantic circuits of knowledge formation.

The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England

The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England PDF Author: Sarah Rivett
Publisher: Omohundro Institute and Unc Press
ISBN: 9781469684079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Science of the Soul in Colonial New England

The Theater in Colonial America

The Theater in Colonial America PDF Author: Hugh F. Rankin
Publisher: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The impact of the theater on colonial culture is approached in this study from the viewpoint of the historian rather than the dramatist. From the faded prints of playbills, newspaper advertisements, and court records, the men, women, and children who brought theater to America come to life with their great and petty problems. Originally published in 1965. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Ecological Revolutions

Ecological Revolutions PDF Author: Carolyn Merchant
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807899623
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
With the arrival of European explorers and settlers during the seventeenth century, Native American ways of life and the environment itself underwent radical alterations as human relationships to the land and ways of thinking about nature all changed. This colonial ecological revolution held sway until the nineteenth century, when New England's industrial production brought on a capitalist revolution that again remade the ecology, economy, and conceptions of nature in the region. In Ecological Revolutions, Carolyn Merchant analyzes these two major transformations in the New England environment between 1600 and 1860. In a preface to the second edition, Merchant introduces new ideas about narrating environmental change based on gender and the dialectics of transformation, while the revised epilogue situates New England in the context of twenty-first-century globalization and climate change. Merchant argues that past ways of relating to the land could become an inspiration for renewing resources and achieving sustainability in the future.

The Gentle Puritan

The Gentle Puritan PDF Author: Edmund S. Morgan
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807839728
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
Now available again, this important biography of the early New England intellectual leader was greeted as a "landmark in the history of the American mind" by Clifford K. Shipton when it appeared in 1962. Stiles lived at a critical time--the transition from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, which came suddenly in New England--and because of his position, his influence was great." Originally published in 1974. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Roots of Conflict

Roots of Conflict PDF Author: Douglas Edward Leach
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807898791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This lively book recounts the story of the antagonism between the American colonists and the British armed forces prior to the Revolution. Douglas Leach reveals certain Anglo-American attitudes and stereotypes that evolved before 1763 and became an important factor leading to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. Using research from both England and the United States, Leach provides a comprehensive study of this complex historical relationship. British professional armed forces first were stationed in significant numbers in the colonies during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. During early clashes in Virginia in the 1670s and in Boston and New York in the late 1680s, the colonists began to perceive the British standing army as a repressive force. The colonists rarely identified with the British military and naval personnel and often came to dislike them as individuals and groups. Not suprisingly, these hostile feelings were reciprocated by the British soldiers, who viewed the colonists as people who had failed to succeed at home and had chosen a crude existence in the wilderness. These attitudes hardened, and by the mid-eighteenth century an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion prevailed on both sides. With the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754, greater numbers of British regulars came to America. Reaching uprecedented levels, the increased contact intensified the British military's difficulty in finding shelter and acquiring needed supplies and troops from the colonists. Aristocratic British officers considered the provincial officers crude amateurs -- incompetent, ineffective, and undisciplined -- leading slovenly, unreliable troops. Colonists, in general, hindered the British military by profiteering whenever possible, denouncing taxation for military purposes, and undermining recruiting efforts. Leach shows that these attitudes, formed over decades of tension-breeding contact, are an important development leading up to the American Revolution.

Science and Specters at Salem

Science and Specters at Salem PDF Author: Matt Goldish
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040118518
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
Most studies of the Salem witch trials focus on social history and the dynamics between accused and accusers. Science and Specters at Salem turns instead to the intellectual background of the judges to understand why they accepted controversial types of evidence. The role of judges in a witch trial was central. Goldish argues that in Salem the judges' acceptance of questionable touch tests and spectral evidence was a result of their intellectual commitments. Several of the Salem judges were highly educated, and some of them were adherents of a particular philosophical school in England led by Henry More and Joseph Glanvill which Goldish calls "the anti-Sadducees." He demonstrates how the ideas of these leading thinkers, friends of Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton, could have led to the deaths of twenty accused witches in Salem. This book will interest students and scholars of witch trials, American colonial history, Atlantic history, legal history and early modern Europe, as well as lay readers wanting a better understanding of Salem.

Time, Matter, and Values

Time, Matter, and Values PDF Author: Robert Andrews Millikan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781469611884
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume gives in brief scope some of the most significant changes in fundamental concepts that have resulted from the extraordinary advances made in recent years in the field of experimental physics. These changes have important bearings on nature and life in general as well as on physics. Originally published in 1932. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Prospero's America

Prospero's America PDF Author: Walter W. Woodward
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807895938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
In Prospero’s America, Walter W. Woodward examines the transfer of alchemical culture to America by John Winthrop, Jr., one of English colonization’s early giants. Winthrop participated in a pan-European network of natural philosophers who believed alchemy could improve the human condition and hasten Christ’s Second Coming. Woodward demonstrates the influence of Winthrop and his philosophy on New England’s cultural formation: its settlement, economy, religious toleration, Indian relations, medical practice, witchcraft prosecution, and imperial diplomacy. Prospero’s America reconceptualizes the significance of early modern science in shaping New England hand in hand with Puritanism and politics.

American Literature and the New Puritan Studies

American Literature and the New Puritan Studies PDF Author: Bryce Traister
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107101883
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This book reconsiders the role of seventeenth-century Puritanism in the creation of the United States and its consequent cultural and literary histories.