4 books found
"Ruolo degli accademici dalla ricostituzione dell'accademia" in anno 1907/08-
by R. Wanner
2012 · Springer Science & Business Media
This study has grown out of an interest in French education and cul ture that dates from fondly remembered student days in France. Specifically, it is an attempt to explain the educational thought of Claude Fleury, a literate, responsible homme de leUres who analyzed the historical origins of public education as it existed in seventeenth-cen tury France and, on that basis, proposed what he considered to be a more generally useful program of studies. Generous space has been devoted to historical, social, and pedagogical background in an effort to place Fleury's thought in its proper cultural context; namely, that of the decline of the Classical Age and the dawn of the Age of Reason. This background material represents also an attempt to explain, at times in detail, the origin of Fleury's Traite du Choix et de la Methode des Etudes and his rise to scholarly and pedagogical prominence at court. It is possible that Fleury's thought, while of most immediate interest to students of seventeenth-century cultural history, will be of interest also to a more general audience. In particular, those charged with providing education that must respond to the ever increasing practical needs of society and at the same time give to contemporary man a of his cultural heritage may find in Fleury's thought some useful sense historical perspective. It is a pleasure to acknowledge that this study would not have been possible without the encouragement and guidance of Dr. William W.
Although the Information Age is often described as a new era, a cultural leap springing directly from the invention of modern computers, it is simply the latest step in a long cultural process. Its conceptual roots stretch back to the profound changes that occurred during the Age of Reason and Revolution. When Information Came of Age argues that the key to the present era lies in understanding the systems developed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to gather, store, transform, display, and communicate information. The book provides a concise and readable survey of the many conceptual developments between 1700 and 1850 and draws connections to leading technologies of today. It documents three breakthroughs in information systems that date to the period: the classification and nomenclature of Linnaeus, the chemical system devised by Lavoisier, and the metric system. It shows how eighteenth-century political arithmeticians and demographers pioneered statistics and graphs as a means for presenting data succinctly and visually. It describes the transformation of cartography from art to science as it incorporated new methods for determining longitude at sea and new data on the measure the arc of the meridian on land. Finally, it looks at the early steps in codifying and transmitting information, including the development of dictionaries, the invention of semaphore telegraphs and naval flag signaling, and the conceptual changes in the use and purpose of postal services. When Information Came of Age shows that like the roots of democracy and industrialization, the foundations of the Information Age were built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.