The Village Enlightenment in America

The Village Enlightenment in America PDF Author: Craig Hazen
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252068287
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The Village Enlightenment in America focuses on three nineteenth-century spiritual activists who epitomized the marriage of science and religion fostered in antebellum, pre-Darwinian America by the American Enlightenment. A theologian, writer, and apologist for the nascent Mormon movement, as well as an amateur scientist, Orson Pratt wrote Key to the Universe, or a New Theory of Its Mechanism, to establish a scientific base for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Robert Hare, an inventor and ardent convert to spiritualism, used his scientific expertise to lend credence to the spiritualist movement. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, generally considered the initiator of the American mind-cure movement, developed an overtly religious concept of science and used it to justify his system of theology. Pratt, Hare, and Quimby all employed a potent combination of popular science and Baconianism to legitimate their new religious ideas. Using the same terms--matter, ether, magnetic force--to account for the behavior of particles, planetary rotation, and the influence of the Holy Ghost, these agents of the Enlightenment constructed complex systems intended to demonstrate a fundamental harmony between the physical and the metaphysical. Through the lives and work of these three influential men, The Village Enlightenment in America opens a window to a time when science and religion, instead of seeming fundamentally at odds with each other, appeared entirely reconcilable.

The Village Enlightenment in America

The Village Enlightenment in America PDF Author: Craig Hazen
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252068287
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
The Village Enlightenment in America focuses on three nineteenth-century spiritual activists who epitomized the marriage of science and religion fostered in antebellum, pre-Darwinian America by the American Enlightenment. A theologian, writer, and apologist for the nascent Mormon movement, as well as an amateur scientist, Orson Pratt wrote Key to the Universe, or a New Theory of Its Mechanism, to establish a scientific base for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Robert Hare, an inventor and ardent convert to spiritualism, used his scientific expertise to lend credence to the spiritualist movement. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, generally considered the initiator of the American mind-cure movement, developed an overtly religious concept of science and used it to justify his system of theology. Pratt, Hare, and Quimby all employed a potent combination of popular science and Baconianism to legitimate their new religious ideas. Using the same terms--matter, ether, magnetic force--to account for the behavior of particles, planetary rotation, and the influence of the Holy Ghost, these agents of the Enlightenment constructed complex systems intended to demonstrate a fundamental harmony between the physical and the metaphysical. Through the lives and work of these three influential men, The Village Enlightenment in America opens a window to a time when science and religion, instead of seeming fundamentally at odds with each other, appeared entirely reconcilable.

The Village Enlightenment in America

The Village Enlightenment in America PDF Author: Craig Hazen
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252068287
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
The Village Enlightenment in America focuses on three nineteenth-century spiritual activists who epitomized the marriage of science and religion fostered in antebellum, pre-Darwinian America by the American Enlightenment. A theologian, writer, and apologist for the nascent Mormon movement, as well as an amateur scientist, Orson Pratt wrote Key to the Universe, or a New Theory of Its Mechanism, to establish a scientific base for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Robert Hare, an inventor and ardent convert to spiritualism, used his scientific expertise to lend credence to the spiritualist movement. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, generally considered the initiator of the American mind-cure movement, developed an overtly religious concept of science and used it to justify his system of theology. Pratt, Hare, and Quimby all employed a potent combination of popular science and Baconianism to legitimate their new religious ideas. Using the same terms--matter, ether, magnetic force--to account for the behavior of particles, planetary rotation, and the influence of the Holy Ghost, these agents of the Enlightenment constructed complex systems intended to demonstrate a fundamental harmony between the physical and the metaphysical. Through the lives and work of these three influential men, The Village Enlightenment in America opens a window to a time when science and religion, instead of seeming fundamentally at odds with each other, appeared entirely reconcilable.

American Enlightenments

American Enlightenments PDF Author: Caroline Winterer
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300224567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
A provocative reassessment of the concept of an American golden age of European-born reason and intellectual curiosity in the years following the Revolutionary War The accepted myth of the “American Enlightenment” suggests that the rejection of monarchy and establishment of a new republic in the United States in the eighteenth century was the realization of utopian philosophies born in the intellectual salons of Europe and radiating outward to the New World. In this revelatory work, Stanford historian Caroline Winterer argues that a national mythology of a unitary, patriotic era of enlightenment in America was created during the Cold War to act as a shield against the threat of totalitarianism, and that Americans followed many paths toward political, religious, scientific, and artistic enlightenment in the 1700s that were influenced by European models in more complex ways than commonly thought. Winterer’s book strips away our modern inventions of the American national past, exploring which of our ideas and ideals are truly rooted in the eighteenth century and which are inventions and mystifications of more recent times.

The Twilight of the American Enlightenment

The Twilight of the American Enlightenment PDF Author: George Marsden
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465030106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country’s traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country’s secular, liberal elites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course. Their failure lost them the faith of their constituents, paving the way for a Christian revival that offered America a firm new moral vision—one rooted in the Protestant values of the founders. A groundbreaking reappraisal of the country’s spiritual reawakening, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment shows how America found new purpose at the dawn of the Cold War.

The American Enlightenment, 1750-1820

The American Enlightenment, 1750-1820 PDF Author: Robert A. Ferguson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674023222
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
This concise literary history of the American Enlightenment captures the varied and conflicting voices of religious and political conviction in the decades when the new nation was formed. Robert Ferguson's trenchant interpretation yields new understanding of this pivotal period for American culture.

The Enlightenment in America

The Enlightenment in America PDF Author: Ernest Cassara
Publisher: New York : Twayne
ISBN:
Category : Enlightenment
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description


The Way of Improvement Leads Home

The Way of Improvement Leads Home PDF Author: John Fea
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780812240610
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
The Way of Improvement Leads Home traces the short but fascinating life of Philip Vickers Fithian. Born to Presbyterian grain-growers in rural New Jersey, he was never quite satisfied with the agricultural life he seemed destined to inherit. Fithian longed for something more- to improve himself in a revolutionary world that was making upward mobility possible. Fithian is best known for the diary that he wrote in 1773-74 while working as a tutor at Nomini Hall, the Virginia plantation of Robert Carter, and his role as a Revolutionary War chaplain. From the villages of New Jersey, Fithian was able to participate indirectly in the eighteenth-century republic of letters- a transatlantic intellectual community. Participation required a commitment to self-improvement that demanded a belief in the Enlightenment values of human potential and social progress. He constantly struggled to reconcile this quest for a cosmopolitan life with his love of home. It was the people, the religious culture, and the very landscape of his "native sod" that continued to hold Fithian's affections.

Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers

Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers PDF Author: Adrienne Koch
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
When Freddie Fox injures his paw in a skiing accident, his family and friends distract him with stories about the animal inhabitants of their village.

Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment

Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment PDF Author: Mark G. Spencer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0826479693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1257

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Book Description
The first reference work on one of the key subjects in American history, filling an important gap in the literature, with over 500 original essays.

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment PDF Author: Mark G. Spencer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1474249809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1257

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Book Description
The first reference work on one of the key subjects in American history, filling an important gap in the literature, with over 500 original essays.