January 14, 2018 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Whewell was a Deist
Whewell’s review of Connexion was published
in 1834, the very same year the book was published and it was in this very same
year that the Oxford English Dictionary included the word “scientist” in its collection.
So there you have mon ami.
Now you know the origin of the word
scientist; behind its origin lays a humble mathematics-loving lady who also
happened to be the mathematics tutor to Lady Ada.
Whewell himself was quite an extraordinary
fellow corresponding with the masters of many in various fields including
Michael Faraday and Charles Darwin.
It was Whewell who suggested the terms
electrode, cathode, anode, ion and dielectric to Faraday.
To my profession he gave the term
astigmatism.
The very first pages of ‘The Origin of the
Species’ begins with a quotation of Whewell that is found in his own treatise
that formed one of the eight treatises commissioned by the 8th Earl
of Bridgewater.
The one written by Whewell was third of the
eight Bridgewater Treatises and was titled ‘Astronomy and General Physics
considered with reference to Natural Theology’.
Ironically enough, these so called
Bridgewater Treatises were commissioned to emphasize and explore “the Power,
Wisdom and Goodness of God”.
This is how Whewell admits god into the
natural scheme of nature:
“But with regard to the material world, we
can at least go so far as this – we can perceive that events are brought about
not by insulated interpositions of Divine Power, exerted in each particular
case, but by the establishment of general laws”.
It is the supreme irony that the book ‘The
Origin of Species’ begins with a Divine Power, though in this case a deist one.
Many of you may not be very familiar with
this term Deism.
Deism is derived from the Latin word “deus”
which in turn has its origin in the Proto-Indo-European Dyeus or *deiwos which
is an abstract god.
I would like to bring to your attention that
many of the primitive cultures had their gods derived etymologically from the
word *deiwos:
Vedic/Puranic deva
Buddhist deva
Iranic daeva
Latin Deus
Germanic Tiwaz
Baltic Dievas
Celtic like Gaulish Deuos (remember Asterix
the Gaul!)
Slavic div
Roman Zeus
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment