Richard Yeo
Biographic Data
| ID | 3768835 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Yeo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Yeo |
| SIGNATURE | YEO R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Griffith University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 97 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
The European Encyclopedia: From 1650 to the Twenty-First Century, by Jeff Loveland
In Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), John Locke insisted that the example of good behaviour imparted by a polite tutor to a young gentleman was more important ‘than all the hard Words, or real Knowledge he has got from the Liberal Arts, or his Tutor’s learned Encyclopaidia’. Despite the existence of Johann Heinrich Alsted’s Latin Encyclopaedia (1630), it is unlikely that Locke was referring to a printed book. In the late 1600s, the term …
Thinking with Excerpts: John Locke (1632–1704) and his Notebooks
In his “Méthode nouvelle,” an anonymous article in the Bibliothèque universelle of 1686, John Locke described his way of collecting excerpts in notebooks and retrieving relevant entries. The well‐known practice of entering textual passages in commonplace books sits uneasily with Locke's criticism of received opinion and authority. Is it possible that he used any of these notes to think with? I suggest that the conditions for this were provided by…
The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke, Vol. 23: Literary and Historical Writings
Now our Athenian Olive Spreads
"Now our Athenian Olive Spreads" published on by null.
Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725
In this intriguing and impressive book, Vera Keller presents a history of the desiderata that appeared in early modern Europe. These wish lists responded to public interest by pursuing projects likely to advance the common good. Among the favorite desired things, recurring across two centuries, were perpetual lamps, flexible glass, diving bells, the philosopher’s stone, the Alkahest (or universal solvent), and perpetual motion. During the same pe…
Boyle Studies: Aspects of the Life and Thought of Robert Boyle (1627–91)
For almost three decades, Michael Hunter’s work has been a necessary starting point for students and scholars of Robert Boyle and other founding fellows of the Royal Society of London. His many publications, and his editions (with collaborators) of Boyle’s printed works and correspondence, have provided an intellectual framework and an invaluable set of resources. Boyle Studies brings together material published since 2004, plus two new chapters …
Capacious Memory and Copious Notebooks
Taking Notes in Samuel Hartlib's Circle
John Locke, Master Note-taker
This chapter considers John Locke's lifetime of assiduous note-taking, with illustrations from his personal notebooks, and a discussion of his ‘New Method’ of entering and indexing information. One of the key features of this account, published in 1686, was a method of indexing a commonplace book that relied on the combinations of first letter and vowels in the words selected as Heads. This method separated cognate topics and hence flouted some o…
Collective Note-taking and Robert Hooke's Dynamic Archive
This chapter examines the challenge of collective note-taking in the service of collaborative projects, such as those of John Ray and Martin Lister on the description and classification of plants and animals. It considers the influence of Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum as a model for the preliminary collection of data under tentative topics, and one that might guide additional collection. It underlines Henry Oldenburg's role as the Royal Society'…
Conclusion
In making notes about the empirical world, the English virtuosi were able to draw on a legacy of ideas formed by Renaissance humanists, Jesuits, and Francis Bacon. Early-modern figures recognized a complex relationship between individual memory and external records of information. The demand of Baconian natural histories for empirical details did put pressure on memory and focussed attention on better ways of arranging and storing information for…
Information and Empirical Sensibility
This chapter argues that thinking about notes clarified some of the challenges and opportunities of the ‘new philosophy,’ or empirical science, in early modern Europe. Francis Bacon called for the making of natural histories?that is, huge collections of empirical information on topics ranging from celestial phenomena to technology, thus yielding histories of the air, of heat and cold, of sounds, blood, of life and death. This programme, embraced …
Rival Memories
This chapter considers Robert Boyle's views on memory and note-taking in the light of his relationship with Samuel Hartlib, and especially as revealed in his correspondence in the 1660s with John Beale. The young Boyle thought and wrote about the mental and moral cultivation of the mind, independent of the use of notes. He was therefore potentially receptive to Beale's emphasis on memory training, and on abbreviation, reduction and systematic dis…
Robert Boyle's Loose Notes
Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science
Before Memex: Robert Hooke, John Locke, and Vannevar Bush on External Memory
Argument In 1945 Vannevar Bush proposed a machine that acted as a “supplement” to memory and met the particular information needs of its user. Because this “memex” recorded “trails” of selected documents, it has been seen as a precursor to hypertext. However, this paper considers Bush in relation to earlier concerns about memory and information, via the ideas of Robert Hooke and John Locke. Whereas Bush modeled the memex on the associative proces…
Between Memory and Paperbooks: Baconianism and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England
This organization consists, in the first place, of a mechanical arrangement of materials, such as is to be found in our catalogues, lexicons, registers, indexes, digests, scientific and literary annuals, systems of natural history, and the like. By these appliances, thus much at least is gained, that such knowledge as cannot be carried about in the memory is immediately accessible to anyone who wants it
Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind
A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers's "Cyclopaedia" (1728) as "The Best Book in the Universe
This article considers Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (2 Vols., 1728) as a work that responded to anxieties about information overload. Chambers drew on Renaissance ideas about summarizing and organizing knowledge—in particular, the humanist practice of keeping a commonplace book. By completing an alphabetical dictionary with due deference to categories, or Heads, he not only offered a convenient summary of knowledge but retained the notion of an…
Author's response
Managing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces
Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopædia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces Richard Yeo In the fifth volume (1755) of the Encyclopédie in his entry on “En-cyclopædia,” Denis Diderot forecast a time in which the sheer number of books would require a division of intellectual labor. Some people, he said, will not do much rea ding but rather “devote themselves to investigation which will be new, or which they will believe to be new.” The majority, unable …
Reading Encyclopedias: Science and the Organization of Knowledge in British Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730-1850
The correspondence of Charles Darwin
Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science
An Idol of the Market-Place: Baconianism in Nineteenth Century Britain
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the name of Francis Bacon was closely associated with the idea of experimental philosophy or natural science. For the leading members of the early Royal Society, he was the guiding moral and intellectual spirit of the scientific endeavour, or, as Abraham Cowley's Ode would have it, a prophetic Moses who led natural philosophers towards the promised land.1 Similarly, within a European context, one wr…
Reading Encyclopedias: Science and the Organization of Knowledge in British Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730-1850
William Whewell, natural theology and the philosophy of science in mid nineteenth century Britain
This article aims to reveal the moral and theological dimensions of William Whewell's philosophy of science. It suggests that, in addition to an internalist account of Whewell's method and epistemology, there is a need to view his philosophy of science (and knowledge) within the intellectual context constituted by the assumptions of natural theology. It argues that writers of natural theology saw man's ability to know the world as an indication o…
Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760-1860
The ArgumentFocusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rule…
Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces
Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopædia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces Richard Yeo In the fifth volume (1755) of the Encyclopédie in his entry on “En-cyclopædia,” Denis Diderot forecast a time in which the sheer number of books would require a division of intellectual labor. Some people, he said, will not do much rea ding but rather “devote themselves to investigation which will be new, or which they will believe to be new.” The majority, unable …
Between Memory and Paperbooks: Baconianism and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England
This organization consists, in the first place, of a mechanical arrangement of materials, such as is to be found in our catalogues, lexicons, registers, indexes, digests, scientific and literary annuals, systems of natural history, and the like. By these appliances, thus much at least is gained, that such knowledge as cannot be carried about in the memory is immediately accessible to anyone who wants it
William Whewell, natural theology and the philosophy of science in mid nineteenth century Britain
This article aims to reveal the moral and theological dimensions of William Whewell's philosophy of science. It suggests that, in addition to an internalist account of Whewell's method and epistemology, there is a need to view his philosophy of science (and knowledge) within the intellectual context constituted by the assumptions of natural theology. It argues that writers of natural theology saw man's ability to know the world as an indication o…
Darwin to Einstein: Historical studies on science and belief
An Idol of the Market-Place: Baconianism in Nineteenth Century Britain
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the name of Francis Bacon was closely associated with the idea of experimental philosophy or natural science. For the leading members of the early Royal Society, he was the guiding moral and intellectual spirit of the scientific endeavour, or, as Abraham Cowley's Ode would have it, a prophetic Moses who led natural philosophers towards the promised land.1 Similarly, within a European context, one wr…
The correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 1, 1821–1836
The correspondence of Charles Darwin
Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760-1860
The ArgumentFocusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rule…
Reading Encyclopedias: Science and the Organization of Knowledge in British Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730-1850
Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces
Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopædia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces Richard Yeo In the fifth volume (1755) of the Encyclopédie in his entry on “En-cyclopædia,” Denis Diderot forecast a time in which the sheer number of books would require a division of intellectual labor. Some people, he said, will not do much rea ding but rather “devote themselves to investigation which will be new, or which they will believe to be new.” The majority, unable …
Author's response
Managing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind
A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers's "Cyclopaedia" (1728) as "The Best Book in the Universe
This article considers Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (2 Vols., 1728) as a work that responded to anxieties about information overload. Chambers drew on Renaissance ideas about summarizing and organizing knowledge—in particular, the humanist practice of keeping a commonplace book. By completing an alphabetical dictionary with due deference to categories, or Heads, he not only offered a convenient summary of knowledge but retained the notion of an…
Before Memex: Robert Hooke, John Locke, and Vannevar Bush on External Memory
Argument In 1945 Vannevar Bush proposed a machine that acted as a “supplement” to memory and met the particular information needs of its user. Because this “memex” recorded “trails” of selected documents, it has been seen as a precursor to hypertext. However, this paper considers Bush in relation to earlier concerns about memory and information, via the ideas of Robert Hooke and John Locke. Whereas Bush modeled the memex on the associative proces…
Between Memory and Paperbooks: Baconianism and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England
This organization consists, in the first place, of a mechanical arrangement of materials, such as is to be found in our catalogues, lexicons, registers, indexes, digests, scientific and literary annuals, systems of natural history, and the like. By these appliances, thus much at least is gained, that such knowledge as cannot be carried about in the memory is immediately accessible to anyone who wants it
Capacious Memory and Copious Notebooks
Taking Notes in Samuel Hartlib's Circle
John Locke, Master Note-taker
This chapter considers John Locke's lifetime of assiduous note-taking, with illustrations from his personal notebooks, and a discussion of his ‘New Method’ of entering and indexing information. One of the key features of this account, published in 1686, was a method of indexing a commonplace book that relied on the combinations of first letter and vowels in the words selected as Heads. This method separated cognate topics and hence flouted some o…
Collective Note-taking and Robert Hooke's Dynamic Archive
This chapter examines the challenge of collective note-taking in the service of collaborative projects, such as those of John Ray and Martin Lister on the description and classification of plants and animals. It considers the influence of Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum as a model for the preliminary collection of data under tentative topics, and one that might guide additional collection. It underlines Henry Oldenburg's role as the Royal Society'…
Conclusion
In making notes about the empirical world, the English virtuosi were able to draw on a legacy of ideas formed by Renaissance humanists, Jesuits, and Francis Bacon. Early-modern figures recognized a complex relationship between individual memory and external records of information. The demand of Baconian natural histories for empirical details did put pressure on memory and focussed attention on better ways of arranging and storing information for…
Information and Empirical Sensibility
This chapter argues that thinking about notes clarified some of the challenges and opportunities of the ‘new philosophy,’ or empirical science, in early modern Europe. Francis Bacon called for the making of natural histories?that is, huge collections of empirical information on topics ranging from celestial phenomena to technology, thus yielding histories of the air, of heat and cold, of sounds, blood, of life and death. This programme, embraced …
Rival Memories
This chapter considers Robert Boyle's views on memory and note-taking in the light of his relationship with Samuel Hartlib, and especially as revealed in his correspondence in the 1660s with John Beale. The young Boyle thought and wrote about the mental and moral cultivation of the mind, independent of the use of notes. He was therefore potentially receptive to Beale's emphasis on memory training, and on abbreviation, reduction and systematic dis…
Robert Boyle's Loose Notes
Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science
Boyle Studies: Aspects of the Life and Thought of Robert Boyle (1627–91)
For almost three decades, Michael Hunter’s work has been a necessary starting point for students and scholars of Robert Boyle and other founding fellows of the Royal Society of London. His many publications, and his editions (with collaborators) of Boyle’s printed works and correspondence, have provided an intellectual framework and an invaluable set of resources. Boyle Studies brings together material published since 2004, plus two new chapters …
Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725
In this intriguing and impressive book, Vera Keller presents a history of the desiderata that appeared in early modern Europe. These wish lists responded to public interest by pursuing projects likely to advance the common good. Among the favorite desired things, recurring across two centuries, were perpetual lamps, flexible glass, diving bells, the philosopher’s stone, the Alkahest (or universal solvent), and perpetual motion. During the same pe…
Philosophy (20 works) · History (15 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · History of Science and Medicine (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Historical Philosophy and Science (8 works) · Historical and Literary Studies (7 works) · History (7 works)