Intellectual History And The Problem Of Conceptual Change

"How does long-term intellectual change occur? Can we develop a theoretical framework for understanding past systems of knowledge? This ambitious study reassesses the main tenets of Intellectual History, offering a new framework for understanding past systems of knowledge from the 17th century onwards"--

This study reassesses the main concepts of Intellectual History, offering a new framework for understanding past systems of knowledge.

This book defends the claim that politics is a linguistically constituted activity and shows that the concepts which inform political beliefs and behaviour undergo changes related to real political events. Having set out and discussed this theme, the editors and contributors go on to analyse the evolution of thirteen particular concepts, all central to political discourse in the western world. They include revolution, rights, democracy, property, corruption, public interest, public opinion, and ideology. The volume will be illuminating to political theorists, intellectual historians, and philosophers.

Perspectives on Conceptual Change presents case study excerpts illustrating the influence on and processes of students' conceptual change, and analyses of these cases from multiple theoretical frameworks. Researchers in reading education have been investigating conceptual change and the effects of students' prior knowledge on their learning for more than a decade. During this time, this research had been changing from the general and cognitive--average effects of interventions on groups of students--to the specific and personal--individuals' reactions to and conceptual change with text structures. Studies in this area have begun to focus on the social, contextual, and affective influences on conceptual change. These studies have potential to be informed by other discourses. Hence, this book shows the results of sharing data--in the form of case study excerpts--with researchers representing varying perspectives of analyses. Instances of learning are examined from cross disciplinary views. Case study authors in turn respond to the case analyses. The result is a text that provides multiple insights into understanding the learning process and the conditions that impact learning.

Winner of the 2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award In An Intellectual History of China, Professor Ge Zhaoguang presents a history of traditional Chinese knowledge, thought and belief to the late six century CE with a new approach offering a new perspective. It appropriates a wide range of source materials and emphasizes the necessity of understanding ideas and thought in their proper historical contexts. Its analytical narrative focuses on the dialectical interaction between historical background and intellectual thought. While discussing the complex dynamics of interaction among the intellectual thought of elite Chinese scholars, their historical conditions, their canonical texts and the “worlds of general knowledge, thought and belief,” it also illuminates the significance of key issues such as the formation of the Chinese world order and its underlying value system, the origins of Chinese cultural identity and foreign influences.

How did the drastic experiences of the turbulent twentieth century affect the works of a legal historian? What kind of an impact did they have on the ideas of justice and rule of law prominent in legal historiography? Ville Erkkila analyses the way in which the concepts of 'Rechtsgewissen' and 'Rechtsbewusstsein' evolved over time in the works of the prestigious legal historian Franz Wieacker. With the help of previously unavailable sources such as private correspondence, the author reveals how Franz Wieacker's personal experiences intertwined in his legal historiography with the tradition of legal science as well as the social and political destinies of twentieth century Germany.

The influential readings contained in this volume combine conceptual history - the history of words and languages - and global history, showing clearly how the two disciplines can benefit from a combined approach. The readings familiarize the reader with conceptual history and its relationship with global history, looking at transfers between nations and languages as well as the ways in which world-views are created and transported through language. Part One: Classical Texts presents the three foundational texts for conceptual history, giving the reader a grasp of the origins of the discipline. Part Two: Challenges focuses on critiques of the approach and explores their ongoing relevance today. Part Three: Translations of Concepts provides examples of conceptual history in practice, via case studies of historical research with a global scope. Finally, the book's concluding essay examines the current state and the future potential of conceptual history. This original introduction provides the students of conceptual, global and intellectual history with a firm grasp of the past trajectories of conceptual history as well as its more recent global and transnational tendencies, and the promises and challenges of writing global history.

Bringing together conceptual obstacles and core concepts of evolutionary theory, this book presents evolution as straightforward and intuitive.

Originally published in 1948. In the first essay of this collection, Lovejoy reflects on the nature, methods, and difficulties of the historiography of ideas. He maps out recurring phenomena in the history of ideas, which the essays illustrate. One phenomenon is the presence and influence of the same presuppositions or other operative "ideas" in very diverse provinces of thought and in different periods. Another is the role of semantic transitions and confusions, of shifts and of ambiguities in the meanings of terms, in the history of thought and taste. A third phenomenon is the internal tensions or waverings in the mind of almost every individual writer—sometimes discernible even in a single writing or on a single page—arising from conflicting ideas or incongruous propensities of feeling or taste to which the writer is susceptible. These essays do not contribute to metaphysical and epistemological questions; they are primarily historical.