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(from fonds level description of Rudler papers held at Aberystwyth University)

Frederick William Rudler was born in London on the 8th of July 1840. He began his career at the Museum of Practical Geology in 1861, where he was to remain until 1876. It was during this period, in 1869, that he accepted the role of Assistant Secretary of the Ethnological Society. He then took up a position as lecturer in natural science at the University College of Wales (Aberystwyth), and was to become one of the College's earliest professors of geology.

Rudler became Registrar of the Royal School of Mines in 1879, and held this position for a year. In 1880 he took up the role of President of the Anthropological Department of the British Association, and seven years later he began a two-year spell as President of the Geologists Association. In the same year he was made Curator and Librarian of the Museum of Practical Geology, and would remain so until 1902. Rudler's string of presidencies continued in 1898, when he entered into a year long period as President of the Anthropological Institute. In 1903, he was made President of the Essex Field Club, and the following year President of the S E Union of Scientific Societies.

Rudler published a great deal, and his works appear in various literary and scientific journals. He also acted as assistant editor on Ure's Dictionary of Arts and Manufacturers (1875), and contributed both to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Thorpe's Dictionary of Applied Chemistry. He died on the 23 January 1915.

For more information, see Hugh Owen Library, Aberystwyth University at: http://www.archiveswales.org.uk/anw/get_collection.php?coll_id=10008&inst_id=42&term=Rudler%20|%20F.%20W.%20%28Frederick%20William%29%20|%201840-1915 ,

(from Wikipedia entry)

Sir Michael Ernest Sadler KCSI (3 July 1861 - 14 October 1943) was a British historian, educationalist and university administrator. He worked at the universities of Manchester and Leeds. He was a champion of the public school system. Michael Ernest Sadler, born into a radical home in 1861 at Barnsley in the industrial north of England, died in Oxford in 1943. He is the father of Michael Sadleir.

His early youth was coloured by the fact that one of his forebears, Michael Thomas Sadler, was among the pioneers of the Factory Acts. His early memories were full of associations with the leaders of the working-class movement in the north of England. Remembering these pioneers, Sadler recorded: ‘I can see how much religion deepened their insight and steadied their judgement, and saved them from coarse materialism in their judgement of economic values. This common heritage was a bond of social union. A social tradition is the matrix of education’.

Sadler’s schooling was typical of his times. It gave him a diverse background, which was to be reflected throughout his life in his interpretation of the process and content of education. When he was 10 years old, he was sent to a private boarding school at Winchester where the atmosphere was markedly conservative. Sadler recalls:

Think of the effect on my mind of being swug from the Radical West Riding…where I never heard the Conservative point of view properly put, to where I was thrown into an entirely new atmosphere in which the old Conservative and Anglican traditions were still strong.

From this preparatory school he moved to Rugby in the English Midlands, where he spent his adolescence in an atmosphere entirely different from that of the Winchester school. His masters were enthusiastic upholders of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution. The young Sadler soon found himself in critical revolt against the Cavalier and Anglican traditions.

He went to Trinity College, Oxford in 1880. There he soon came under the spell of leading historians such as T.H. Green and Arnold Toynbee. But it was John Ruskin who completely overwhelmed the undergraduate. Sadler has left on record how, in his second year at Trinity, a short course of lectures was announced, to be given in the Oxford University Museum by Ruskin. Tickets were difficult to get because of the popularity of the speaker. After a warm description of Ruskin’s picturesque appearance, Sadler articulates a favourite conviction when he writes:

Nominally these lectures of Ruskin’s were upon Art. Really they dealt with the economic and spiritual problems of English national life. He believed, and he made us believe, that every lasting influence in an educational system requires an economic structure of society in harmony with its ethical ideal.

That belief persisted to the end of Sadler’s life and is recurrent in his many analyses of foreign systems of education. When, in July 1882, the examinations lists were issued, Sadler had gained a first-class degree in Literae Humaniores. A month earlier he had become President Elect of the Oxford Union, a field of public debating experience that has produced many an English politician. In 1885, he was elected Secretary of Oxford's Extensions Lectures Sub-Committee, providing outreach lectures. He was a "student" (the equivalent of a fellow) at Christ Church, Oxford from 1890-95. In 1895, he was appointed to a government post as Director of the Office of Special Inquiries and Reports, resigning from the Board of Education in 1903. A special professorship in 'History and Administration of Education' was created for him at the University of Manchester.

He became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds in 1911, where he now has a building named in his honour, and returned to Oxford in 1923 as Master of University College, Oxford where he continued to influence national educational policy, and promote the work of various modernist artists. Whilst in Leeds Sadler became President of the avant-garde modernist cultural group the Leeds Arts Club. Originally founded in 1903 by Alfred Orage, the Leeds Arts Club was an important meeting ground for radical artists, thinkers, educationalists and writers in Britain, and had strong leanings to the cultural, political and theoretical ideas coming out of Germany at this time.

Using his personal links with Wassily Kandinsky in Munich, Sadler built up a remarkable collection of expressionist and abstract expressionist art at a time when such art was either unknown or dismissed in London, even by well-known promoters of modernism such as Roger Fry. Most notable in his collection was Kandinsky's abstract painting Fragment for Composition VII, of 1912, a painting that was in Leeds and on display at the Leeds Arts Club in 1913. Sadler also owned Paul Gauguin's celebrated painting "The Vision After the Sermon", and according to Patrick Heron, Sadler even had Kandinsky visit Leeds before the First World War, although this claim is uncorroborated by other sources

With Frank Rutter, Sadler also co-founded the Leeds Art Collections Fund to help Leeds City Art Gallery. In particular the aim of the Fund was to bypass the financial restraints placed on the Gallery by the municipal authorities in Leeds, who had, in the opinion of Sadler, a dislike of modern art. In 1917 to 1919, Sadler led the 'Sadler Commission' which looked at the state of Indian Education.

Towards the end of the First World War, the Secretary of State for India, Austen Chamberlain, invited Sadler to accept the chairmanship of a commission the government proposed to appoint to inquire into the affairs of the University of Calcutta. Chamberlain wrote: ’Lord Chelmsford [the Viceroy] informs me that they hope for the solution of the big political problems of India through the solution of the educational problems’. After some hesitation, Sadler accepted the invitation. Under his direction the Commission far exceeded its initial terms of reference. The result was thirteen volumes issued in 1919, providing a comprehensive sociological account of the context in which Mahatma Gandhi was campaigning for the end of the British Raj and the independence of India. From the lines of inquiry pursued, it is possible to deduce a conception of expanding higher education that goes far beyond the traditional university image in its search to relate higher education to the 20th century, with its increasing availability of educational opportunities to women.

Prior to the publication of the Calcutta University Report, Sadler delivered a private address to the Senate of the University of Bombay. He put forward his personal conclusions as he surveyed The Educational Movement in India and Britain. It was a far-sighted address, characteristic of Sadler’s belief in the inter-relationship of all the various levels of education and the importance of teacher training. He warned his listeners about producing an academic proletariat with job expectations that could not be fulfilled. And finally he told the members of the Senate:

And in India you stand on the verge of the most hazardous and inevitable of adventures—the planning of primary education for the unlettered millions of a hundred various races. I doubt whether the European model will fit Indian conditions. If you want social dynamite, modern elementary education of the customary kind will give it to you. It is the agency that will put the masses in motion. But to what end or issue no one can foretell.

In 1919, Sadler was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India (KCSI).

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sadler_(educationist) .

(from Wikipedia entry)

Caleb Williams Saleeby (1878 - 9 December 1940) was an English physician, writer, and journalist known for his support of eugenics. During World War I, he was an adviser to the Minister of Food and advocated the establishment of a Ministry of Health. Saleeby was born in Sussex, the son of E. G. Saleeby. At Edinburgh University, he took First Class Honours and was an Ettles Scholar and Scott Scholar in Obstetrics. In 1904, he received his Doctor of Medicine degree. He was a resident at the Maternity Hospital and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, and briefly at the York City Dispensary.

He became a prolific freelance writer and journalist, with strong views on many subjects. He became known in particular as an advocate of eugenics: in 1907 he was influential in launching the Eugenics Education Society, and in 1909 he published (in New York) Parenthood and Race Culture.

He was a contributor to the first edition of Arthur Mee's The Children's Encyclopædia. Like Mee, he was a keen temperance reformer. Saleeby's contributions to the Encyclopedia were explicitly race realist: he saw mankind as the pinnacle of evolution, and white men as superior to other men, based on "craniometry".

He predicted the use of atomic power, "perhaps not for hundreds of years". He favoured the education of women, but primarily so they should become better mothers. In Woman and Womanhood (1912), he wrote: "Women, being constructed by Nature, as individuals, for her racial ends, are happier and more beautiful, live longer and more beautiful lives, when they follow, as mothers or foster-mothers the role of motherhood". Yet, at this time when the suffragette movement was at its peak, he also wrote that he could see no good reason against the vote for women: "I believe in the vote; I believe it will be eugenic".

During World War I, he was an adviser to the Minister of Food and argued in favour of the establishment of a Ministry of Health. Later, he moved away from eugenics, and did not publish any further writings on this subject after 1921—though he continued to write on health matters in particular. He also campaigned for clean air and the benefits of sunlight, founding a Sunlight League in 1924.

He died on 9 December 1940 from heart failure at Apple Tree, Aldbury, near Tring.
For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caleb_Saleeby .

Marilyn Silverman, anthropologist and professor, was born in Montreal in 1945. She received an honours BA in anthropology and sociology from McGill University in 1966, where she also completed an MA (1967) and PhD (1973) in the Department of Anthropology. She started her academic career as an assistant professor in York University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology (later the Department of Anthropology) between 1973 and 1976 and was promoted to associate professor in 1976 and to full professor in 1996. She also served as the coordinator of York University’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies Programme between 1975 and 1978.

Silverman is the author of four books: Rich People and Rice: Factional Politics in Rural Guyana (1980), In the Valley of the Nore: A Social History of Thomastown, County Kilkenny, 1840-1983 (1986), Merchants and Shopkeepers: An Historical Anthropology of an Irish Market Town, 1200-1986 (1995), and An Irish Working Class: Explorations in Political Economy and Hegemony, 1800-1950 (2001). She is the co-editor of A House Divided? Anthropological Studies of Factionalism (1978) and Approaching the Past: Historical Anthropology Through Irish Case Studies (1992), and editor of Walking into the Past (1995) and Ethnography and Development – the Work of Richard F. Salisbury (2004).

She received the 2002 William A. Douglass Book Prize in Europeanist Anthropology from the Society for the Anthropology of Europe and the American Anthropological Association for her book An Irish Working Class: Explorations in Political Economy and Hegemony, 1800-1950. In March 2008, she held the Henrietta Harvey Distinguished Lectureship at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Paul Axelrod, professor and writer, was born in 1949 and educated at York University and the University of Toronto where he received his BA and MA in 1972 and 1973, respectively. He received a PhD in History from York University in 1980. He was a professor at York University from 1982 until his retirement in 2015, where he also served as the Dean of the Faculty of Education between 2001 and 2008. He is the author and editor of numerous books concerning the history of schooling and higher education, the political economy of education, and educational policy. Axelrod is the author of "Scholars and dollars: politics, economics, and the universities of Ontario, 1945-1980" (1982), "Making a middle class: student life in English Canada during the Thirties" (1990), "Transitions: schooling and employment in Canada" (1993) (with Paul Anisef), "The promise of schooling: education in Canada, 1800-1914" (1997)," Opportunity and uncertainty: life course experiences of the class of '73" (2000) (with Paul Anisef), "Values in conflict: The university, the marketplace, and the trials of liberal education" (2002), and editor of "Youth, university, and Canadian society: essays in the social history of higher education" (1989) and "Knowledge matters: essays in honour of Bernard J. Shapiro" (2004).

Canadian Speakers' and Writers' Service Ltd. was begun by Matie Molinaro in 1950 as Canada's first literary agency. Since that time it has represented the interests of several leading Canadian authors, performers and speakers including Marshall McLuhan, Harry Boyle, Mavor Moore, Celia Franca, Lister Sinclair, Don Harron, and several others. The Service also ran a writer's retreat north of Toronto until the late 1980s. Molinaro has also acted as a ghost-writer, written publicity, and translated material in her career as president of CSWS.

Frank Zingrone, writer and professor, was born in Toronto on 16 August 1933. He was a student at St. Michael's College School in Toronto and attended the University of Western Ontario in London, where he received a BA in Philosophy in 1958. He then obtained a MA in English literature from the University of Toronto in 1961 and a PhD from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo in 1966. Zingrone was an instructor in the Department of English at SUNY between 1963 and 1966 before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge as an assistant professor of communication, a position he held from 1966 to 1970. In 1971, Zingrone became an assistant professor of humanities at York University, where he remained for the rest of his academic career, co-founding the university's Communications department. He was appointed a senior scholar emeritus in 1994. In addition, Zingrone was associate editor of the "Canadian journal of communication" between 1980 and 1985.

Zingrone's work as a critic, lecturer and academic writer in the area of communications and media produced numerous conference papers, newspaper and journal articles, as well as books including "Who was Marshall McLuhan?" (co-editor, 1995), "Essential McLuhan" (co-editor, 1996), and "The media symplex: at the edge of meaning the age of chaos" (2001). He was a contributor to "On McLuhan: forward through the rearview mirror" (1996) and "Understanding McLuhan" (CD-ROM, 1996). Zingrone was also a poet, with poems published in "The fiddlehead" and "Audit" in the early 1960s. He published two books of poetry, "Traces" (1980) and "Strange attraction" (2000). Frank Zingrone died in Toronto on 13 December 2009.

(from Wikipedia entry)

Mary Augusta Ward née Arnold; (11 June 1851 - 24 March 1920), was a British novelist who wrote under her married name as Mrs Humphry Ward. Mary Augusta Arnold was born in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, into a prominent intellectual family of writers and educationalists. Mary was the daughter of Tom Arnold, a professor of literature, and Julia Sorrell. Her uncle was the poet Matthew Arnold and her grandfather Thomas Arnold, the famous headmaster of Rugby School. Her sister Julia married Leonard Huxley, the son of Thomas Huxley, and their sons were Julian and Aldous Huxley. The Arnolds and the Huxleys were an important influence on British intellectual life. Mary's father Tom Arnold was appointed inspector of schools in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) and commenced his role on 15 January 1850. Tom Arnold was received into the Roman Catholic Church on 12 January 1856, which made him so unpopular in his job (and with his wife) that he resigned and left for England with his family in July 1856. Mary Arnold had her fifth birthday the month before they left, and had no further connection with Tasmania. Tom Arnold was ratified as chair of English literature at the contemplated Catholic university, Dublin, after some delay. Mary spent much of her time with her grandmother. She was educated at various boarding schools (from ages 11 to 15, in Shifnal, Shropshire) and at 16 returned to live with her parents at Oxford, where her father had a lecturership in history. Her schooldays formed the basis for one of her later novels, Marcella (1894).

On 6 April 1872, not yet 21 years old, Mary married Humphry Ward, a fellow and tutor of Brasenose College, and also a writer and editor. For the next nine years she continued to live at Oxford, at 17 Bradmore Road, where she is commemorated by a blue plaque. She had by now made herself familiar with French, German, Italian, Latin and Greek. She was developing an interest in social and educational service and making tentative efforts at literature. She added Spanish to her languages, and in 1877 undertook the writing of a large number of the lives of early Spanish ecclesiastics for the Dictionary of Christian Biography edited by Dr William Smith and Dr. Henry Wace. Her translation of Amiel's Journal appeared in 1887. Mary Augusta Ward began her career writing articles for Macmillan's Magazine while working on a book for children that was published in 1881 under the title Milly and Olly. This was followed in 1884 by a more ambitious, though slight, study of modern life, Miss Bretherton, the story of an actress. Ward's novels contained strong religious subject matter relevant to Victorian values she herself practised. Her popularity spread beyond Great Britain to the United States. Her book Lady Rose's Daughter was the best-selling novel in the United States in 1903, as was The Marriage of William Ashe in 1905. Ward's most popular novel by far was the religious "novel with a purpose" Robert Elsmere, which portrayed the emotional conflict between the young pastor Elsmere and his wife, whose over-narrow orthodoxy brings her religious faith and their mutual love to a terrible impasse; but it was the detailed discussion of the "higher criticism" of the day, and its influence on Christian belief, rather than its power as a piece of dramatic fiction, that gave the book its exceptional vogue. It started, as no academic work could have done, a popular discussion on historic and essential Christianity. Ward helped establish an organisation for working and teaching among the poor. She also worked as an educator in the residential settlement movements she founded. Mary Ward's declared aim was "equalisation" in society, and she established educational settlements first at Marchmont Hall and later at Tavistock Place in Bloomsbury. This was originally called the Passmore Edwards Settlement, after its benefactor John Passmore Edwards, but after Ward's death it became the Mary Ward Settlement. It is now known as the Mary Ward Centre and continues as an adult education college; affiliated with it is the Mary Ward Legal Centre.

She was also a significant campaigner against women getting the vote. In the summer of 1908 she was approached by George Nathaniel Curzon and William Cremer, who asked her to be the founding president of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League. Ward took on the job, creating and editing the Anti-Suffrage Review. She published a large number of articles on the subject, while two of her novels, The Testing of Diana Mallory and Delia Blanchflower, were used as platforms to criticise the suffragettes. In a 1909 article in The Times, Ward wrote that constitutional, legal, financial, military, and international problems were problems only men could solve. However, she came to promote the idea of women having a voice in local government and other rights that the men's anti-suffrage movement would not tolerate.

During World War I, Ward was asked by United States President Theodore Roosevelt to write a series of articles to explain to Americans what was happening in Britain. Her work involved visiting the trenches on the Western Front, and resulted in three books, England's Effort - Six Letters to an American Friend (1916), Towards the Goal (1917), and Fields of Victory (1919). Mary Augusta Ward died in London, England, and was interred at Aldbury in Hertfordshire, near her beloved country home Stocks.

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Augusta_Ward

Author of Princetoniana. Charles and A.A. Hodge: with class and table tale of Hodge the Younger (1888), Eli, Samuel, & Saul a transition chapter in Ireaelitish history (1904), Exposition and defence of Prince Bismarck's anit-Ultramontane policy: showing the difference between the present state of the Romish question in Germany and Great Britain (1876), The religious question in France in the light of historic facts and of current events (1905), The parables of Our Lord (1880), A woman's work: memorials of Eliza Fletcher (1900), Our Christian passover: a guide for young people in the serious study of the Lord's Super (1830), Echoes of the war (1916).

Author of "Illustrated handbook to the city and cathedral of Peterborough."

(from Wikipedia entry)

Sir George Henry Savage (1842-1921) was a prominent English psychiatrist. Savage was born in Brighton in 1842, the son of a chemist. Educated at Brighton College, he served an internship at Guy's Hospital from 1861. After 1865, he was resident at Guy's; he earned his MD in 1867. He remained a regular lecturer at the hospital for decades after.

During his time as a doctor for a mining company in Nenthead, he met his wife, Margaret Walton; however, she died after a year of marriage. The couple had one child. Shortly after his wife's death, Savage accepted an appointment as an assistant medical officer at Bethlem Royal Hospital. By 1878, he had become chief medical officer at the hospital; in the same year, he joined the MCRP.

Also in 1878, Savage cofounded the Journal of Mental Science with Thomas Clouston and Daniel Hack Tuke. He published regularly in this journal until the end of his career. At Bethlem and after, he was sparing in his use of chemical sedation, although his freedom with physical restraint drew criticism from Henry Maudsley, J. C. Bucknill, and others.

Over the course of the 1880s, private practice took up more of Savage's time; he finally retired in 1888 to devote himself entirely to private practice. In 1882, he married Adelaide Sutton, the daughter of another doctor.

He drew his private clientele from wealthy or well-connected London society. Virginia Woolf saw him intermittently for a decade, and he is among the figures lampooned in the Sir William Bradshaw of Mrs. Dalloway. At the same time, he worked as a consultant for a number of asylums, and was often called in on especially difficult cases.

His major public work was Insanity and Allied Neuroses, a reference book for students; published in 1884, it was revised and reissued in 1894 and 1907. In 1909 he delivered the Harveian Oration to the Royal College of Physicians on the subject of Experimental Psychology and Hypnotism. He was knighted in 1912.

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Savage_(physician) .

Archibald Henry Sayce was an orientalist and comparative philologist.

(from Wikipedia entry)

Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (August 16, 1864 - August 6, 1937) was a German-British philosopher. Born in Altona, Holstein (at that time member of the German Confederation, but under Danish administration), Schiller studied at the University of Oxford, and later was a professor there, after being invited back after a brief time at Cornell University. Later in his life he taught at the University of Southern California. In his lifetime he was well known as a philosopher; after his death his work was largely forgotten.

Schiller's philosophy was very similar to and often aligned with the pragmatism of William James, although Schiller referred to it as "humanism". He argued vigorously against both logical positivism and associated philosophers (for example, Bertrand Russell) as well as absolute idealism (such as F.H. Bradley).

Schiller was an early supporter of evolution and a founding member of the English Eugenics Society. Born in 1864, one of three brothers and the son of Ferdinand Schiller (a Calcutta merchant), Schiller's family home was in Switzerland. Schiller was educated at Rugby and Balliol, and graduated in the first class of Literae Humaniores, winning later the Taylorian scholarship for German in 1887. Schiller's first book, Riddles of the Sphinx (1891), was an immediate success despite his use of a pseudonym because of his fears concerning how the book would be received. Between the years 1893 and 1897 he was an instructor in philosophy at Cornell University. In 1897 he returned to Oxford and became fellow and tutor of Corpus for more than thirty years. Schiller was president of the Aristotelian Society in 1921, and was for many years treasurer of the Mind Association. In 1926 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy. In 1929 he was appointed visiting professor in the University of Southern California, and spent half of each year in the United States and half in England. Schiller died in Los Angeles either August 6, 7, or 9th of 1937 after a long and lingering illness.

Schiller was a founding member of the English Eugenics Society and published three books on the subject; Tantalus or the Future of Man (1924), Eugenics and Politics (1926), and Social Decay and Eugenic Reform (1932). In 1891, F.C.S. Schiller made his first contribution to philosophy anonymously. Schiller feared that in his time of high naturalism, the metaphysical speculations of his Riddles of the Sphinx were likely to hurt his professional prospects (p. xi, Riddles). However, Schiller's fear of reprisal from his anti-metaphysical colleagues should not suggest that Schiller was a friend of metaphysics. Like his fellow pragmatists across the ocean, Schiller was attempting to stake out an intermediate position between both the spartan landscape of naturalism and the speculative excesses of the metaphysics of his time. In Riddles Schiller both,

(1) accuses naturalism (which he also sometimes calls "pseudometaphysics" or "positivism") of ignoring the fact that metaphysics is required to justify our natural description of the world, and
(2) accuses "abstract metaphysics" of losing sight of the world we actually live in and constructing grand, disconnected imaginary worlds.
The result, Schiller contends, is that naturalism cannot make sense of the "higher" aspects of our world (freewill, consciousness, God, purpose, universals), while abstract metaphysics cannot make sense of the "lower" aspects of our world (the imperfect, change, physicality). In each case we are unable to guide our moral and epistemological "lower" lives to the achievement of life's "higher" ends, ultimately leading to skepticism on both fronts. For knowledge and morality to be possible, both the world's lower and higher elements must be real; e.g. we need universals (a higher) to make knowledge of particulars (a lower) possible. This would lead Schiller to argue for what he at the time called a "concrete metaphysics", but would later call "humanism".

Shortly after publishing Riddles of the Sphinx, Schiller became acquainted with the work of pragmatist philosopher William James and this changed the course of his career. For a time, Schiller's work became focused on extending and developing James' pragmatism (under Schiller's preferred title, "humanism"). Schiller even revised his earlier work Riddles of the Sphinx to make the nascent pragmatism implicit in that work more explicit. In one of Schiller's most prominent works during this phase of his career, “Axioms as Postulates” (1903), Schiller extended James' will to believe doctrine to show how it could be used to justify not only an acceptance of God, but also our acceptance of causality, of the uniformity of nature, of our concept of identity, of contradiction, of the law of excluded middle, of space and time, of the goodness of God, and more. In Riddles, Schiller gives historical examples of the dangers of abstract metaphysics in the philosophies of Plato, Zeno, and Hegel, portraying Hegel as the worst offender: "Hegelianism never anywhere gets within sight of a fact, or within touch of reality. And the reason is simple: you cannot, without paying the penalty, substitute abstractions for realities; the thought-symbol cannot do duty for the thing symbolized".

Schiller argued that both abstract metaphysics and naturalism portray man as holding an intolerable position in the world. He proposed a method that not only recognizes the lower world we interact with, but takes into account the higher world of purposes, ideals and abstractions. Schiller also developed a method of philosophy intended to mix elements of both naturalism and abstract metaphysics in a way that allows us to avoid the twin scepticisms each method collapses into when followed on its own. However, Schiller does not assume that this is enough to justify his humanism over the other two methods. He accepts the possibility that both scepticism and pessimism are true.

As early as 1891 Schiller had independently reached a doctrine very similar to William James’ Will to Believe. As early as 1892 Schiller had independently developed his own pragmatist theory of truth. However, Schiller's concern with meaning was one he entirely imports from the pragmatisms of James and Peirce. Later in life Schiller musters all of these elements of his pragmatism to make a concerted attack on formal logic. Concerned with bringing down the timeless, perfect worlds of abstract metaphysics early in life, the central target of Schiller’s developed pragmatism is the abstract rules of formal logic. Statements, Schiller contends, cannot possess meaning or truth abstracted away from their actual use. Therefore examining their formal features instead of their function in an actual situation is to make the same mistake the abstract metaphysician makes. Symbols are meaningless scratches on paper unless they are given a life in a situation, and meant by someone to accomplish some task. They are tools for dealing with concrete situations, and not the proper subjects of study themselves.

Both Schiller’s theory of truth and meaning (i.e. Schiller’s pragmatism) derive their justification from an examination of thought from what he calls his humanist viewpoint (his new name for concrete metaphysics). He informs us that to answer “what precisely is meant by having a meaning” will require us to “raise the prior question of why we think at all.”. A question Schiller of course looks to evolution to provide.

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._C._S._Schiller .

(from Wikipedia entry)

Olive Schreiner (24 March 1855 - 11 December 1920) was a South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual. She is best remembered today for her novel The Story of an African Farm which has been highly acclaimed ever since its first publication in 1883 for the bold manner in which it dealt with some of the burning issues of the day, including agnosticism, existential independence, individualism and the professional aspirations of women; as well as its portrayal of the elemental nature of life on the colonial frontier. In more recent studies she has also been foregrounded as an apologist for those sidelined by the forces of British Imperialism, such as the Afrikaners, and later other South African groups like Blacks, Jews and Indians - to name but a few. Although she showed interest in socialism, pacifism, vegetarianism and feminism amongst other things, her true views escape restrictive categorisations. Her published works and other surviving writings promote implicit values like moderation, friendship and understanding amongst all peoples, avoiding the pitfalls of political radicalism which she consciously eschewed. Although she may be called a lifelong freethinker in terms of her Victorian background - as opposed to mainstream Christianity - she always remained true to the spirit of the Christian Bible and developed a secular version of the worldview of her missionary parents, with mystical elements.

Karel Schoeman, the South African historian and leading authority on Schreiner's life, has written in one of his books about her that she was an outstanding figure in a South African context, although perhaps not quite the same abroad. In the Preface to the same work, Schoeman acknowledges that although The Story of an African Farm is by no means perfect, it is still unique and gripping even to the modern reader. He also outlines the basic pattern of her life which serves as a useful guide to this article, and the pursuit of further interest in the subject:

"From a chronological viewpoint, Olive Schreiner's life shows an interesting pattern. After she spent the first twenty-five thereof in South Africa ... she was in England for more than seven years, and also lived during this time in Europe. After this she lived in South Africa for twenty-four years, the time of her friendship with Rhodes, the Anglo-Boer war and her growing involvement in issues like racism and the lot of women, after which another exile followed in England for seven years; it was only shortly before her death in 1920 that she returned to South Africa" (Olive Schreiner: A Life in South Africa 1855-1881, Human & Rousseau, Cape Town, 1989). Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner (1855-1920) was the ninth of twelve children born to a missionary couple at the Wesleyan Missionary Society station at Wittebergen in the Eastern Cape, near Herschel in South Africa. Her parents, Gottlob Schreiner and Rebecca Lyndall, married in England in 1837. She was named after her three older brothers, Oliver (1848-1854), Albert (1843-1843) and Emile (1852-1852), who died before she was born. Her childhood was a harsh one as her father was loving and gentle, though impractical; but her mother Rebecca was intent on teaching her children the same restraint and self-discipline that had been a part of her upbringing. Olive received virtually all her initial education from her mother, who was well-read and gifted.[clarification needed] Her eldest brother Frederic Samuel (1841-1901) obtained a BA at London University and founded New College in Eastbourne in 1873/4. He remained as headmaster until late 1897 but continued to run the junior school until 1901. He died in 1901 at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne and was interred in the town.

When Olive was six, Gottlob transferred to Healdtown in the Eastern Cape to run the Wesleyan training institute there. As with so many of his other projects, he simply was not up to the task and was expelled in disgrace for trading against missionary regulations. He was forced to make his own living for the first time in his life, and tried a business venture. Again, he failed and was insolvent within a year. The family lived in abject poverty as a result.

However, Olive was not to remain with her parents for long. When her older brother Theophilus (1844-1920) was appointed headmaster in Cradock in 1867, she went to live with him along with two of her siblings. She also attended his school and received a formal education for the first time. Despite that, she was no happier in Cradock than she had been in Wittebergen or Healdtown. Her siblings were very religious, but Olive had already questioned the Christianity of her parents like many learned Victorians, and it was the cause of many arguments that she had with her family.

Therefore, when Theo and her brother left Cradock for the diamond fields of Griqualand West, Olive chose to become a governess . On the way to her first post at Barkly East, she met Willie Bertram, who shared her views of religion and who lent her a copy of Herbert Spencer’s First Principles. This text was to have a profound impact on her. While rejecting religious creeds and doctrine, Spencer also argued for a belief in an Absolute that lay beyond the scope of human knowledge and conception. This belief was founded in the unity of nature and a teleological universe, both of which Olive was to appropriate for herself in her attempts to create a morality free of organized religion.

After this meeting, Olive travelled from place to place, accepting posts as a governess with various families, later leaving them because of personal conflict with her employers. One issue which always surfaced, was her unusual view of religion. Her apostasy didn't sit well with the traditional farm folk she worked amongs.

Another factor was that she was somewhat unconventional in her relationships, for she was uncertain as to how to relate sexually to her male employers in many cases, and men in general. During this time she met Julius Gau, to whom she became engaged under doubtful circumstances. For whatever reason, their engagement did not last long and she returned to live with her parents and then with her brothers. She read widely and began writing seriously. She started Undine at this time. As in the case of her later husband, Cronwright, she may have been attracted to Gau, as other men, for his dominant personality, maturity and physicality...However, her brothers’ financial situation soon deteriorated, as diamonds became increasingly difficult to find. Olive had no choice but to resume her transient lifestyle, moving between various households and towns, until she returned briefly to her parents in 1874. It was there that she had the first of the asthma attacks that would plague her for the rest of her life. Since her parents were no more financially secure than before and because of her ill-health, Olive was forced to resume working in order to support them.

Over the next few years, she accepted the position of governess at a number of farms, most notably the Fouchés who provided inspiration for certain aspects of The Story of an African Farm, which she published under the pseudonym “Ralph Iron,” as well as a small collection of stories and allegories called Dream Life and Real Life.

However, Olive’s real ambitions did not lie in the direction of writing. She had always wanted to be a doctor, but had never had enough money to pay for the training. Undaunted, she decided that she would be a nurse as that did not require her to pay anything. By 1880, she had saved enough money for an overseas trip and she applied to the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh in Scotland. In 1881, she traveled to Southampton in England. Once there, she was never to realize her dream of becoming a medical practitioner, as her ill-health prevented her from completing any form of training or studying. She was forced to concede that writing would and could be her only work in life.

Despite that, she still had a passion to heal society’s ills and set out to do with her pen what she could not with pills. Her Story of an African Farm was acclaimed for the manner it tackled the issues of its day, ranging from agnosticism to the treatment of women. It was also the cause of one of her most significant and long-lasting friendships, as the renowned sexologist Havelock Ellis wrote to her about her novel. Their relationship soon developed beyond intellectual debate to a genuine source of support for Schreiner.

She finally met him in 1884 when she went with him to a meeting of the Progressive Organisation, a group for freethinkers to discuss political and philosophical views. This was one of a number of radical discussion groups to which she was to belong and brought her into contact with many important socialists of the time. A friendship as influential as that with Ellis was with Edward Carpenter, the founder Socialist and gay rights activist, which, as Stephen Gray shows, remains hardly explored.[3] In addition to the Progressive Organisation, she also attended meetings of the Fellowship of the New Order and Karl Pearson’s Men and Women's Club, where she was insistent on the critical importance of woman’s equality and the need to consider men as well as women when looking at gender relationships.

However, her own relationships with men were anything but happy. She had refused a proposal from her doctor, Bryan Donkin, but he was irritatingly persistent in his suit of her. To make matters worse, despite her reservations about Karl Pearson and her intentions just to remain his friend, she soon conceived an attraction for him. He did not reciprocate her feelings, preferring Elizabeth Cobb. In 1886, she left England for the Continent under something of a cloud, traveling between Switzerland, France and Italy before returning to England. During this time, she was tremendously productive, working on From Man to Man and publishing numerous allegories. She also worked on an introduction to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Given the situation in England, it is perhaps unsurprising that Schreiner chose to return to South Africa, sailing back to Cape Town in 1889. The return home was unsettling for her - she felt extremely alienated from the people around her, but at the same time experienced a great affinity for the land itself. In an attempt to reconnect with her surroundings, she became increasingly involved in local politics as well as produced a series of articles on the land and people around her, published posthumously as Thoughts on South Africa. Through her work with local politics she became intimate friends with Emily Hobhouse and Elizabeth Maria Molteno, influential women activists with similar opinions on civil and women's rights.

Her involvement with Cape politics led her into an association with Cecil John Rhodes, with whom she would soon become disillusioned and against whom she would write her bitterly satirical allegory Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland. This disillusionment began with his support of the “strop bill” that would allow black and coloured servants to be flogged for relatively small offenses.

Her opposition to the “strop bill” also brought her into contact with Samuel Cronwright, a politically active farmer. They were of the same mind on the “Native Question” and on Rhodes, and Schreiner soon fell in love with him. During a brief visit to England in 1893, she discussed with her friends the possibility of marrying him, although she was concerned that she would find marriage restrictive. She put aside these doubts, however, and they were married in 1894, after which they settled at Cronwright’s farm.

The next few years were difficult and unsettled ones for them. Schreiner’s worsening health forced the couple to move constantly, while her first and only child, a daughter, died within a day. This loss was only worsened by the fact that all her other pregnancies would end in miscarriages. However, she found solace in work, publishing a pamphlet with her husband on the political situation in 1896 and Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland the next year. Both of these isolated her from her family and the people around her, and she was given to long spells of loneliness during that period of her life. hen Woman and Labour was finally published in 1911, Schreiner was severely ill, her asthma worsened by attacks of angina. Two years later, she sailed alone to England for treatment, where she was trapped by the outbreak of World War I. During this time, her primary interest was in pacifism - she was in contact with Gandhi and other prominent activists like Emily Hobhouse and Elizabeth Maria Molteno - and she started a book on war, which was abbreviated and published as The Dawn of Civilisation. This was the last book she was to write. After the war, she returned home to the Cape, where she died in her sleep in a boarding house in 1920. She was buried later in Kimberley. After the death of her husband, Samuel Cronwright, her body was exhumed. Olive Schreiner, along with her baby, dog and husband were buried atop Buffelskop mountain, on the farm known as Buffelshoek, near Cradock, in the Eastern Cape.

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Schreiner .

Professor of eugenics (?)

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Alexander Faulkner Shand FBA (20 May 1858 - 6 January 1936) was an English writer and barrister. Born in Bayswater, London he was the son of Hugh Morton Shand, a Scot, and his wife Edrica Faulkner, Italian born but the daughter of Joshua Wilson Faulkner of Kent. He was a founding member of the British Psychological Society in 1901 and was awarded with honorary membership in 1934. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). Through his son Philip, he is the paternal great-grandfather of HRH Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Faulkner_Shand .

Born Sarah Scott. Eldest daughter of John and Elizabeth Scott. Married Joseph Henry Shorthouse at the Friends' meeting-house in Warwick on 19 August 1857. Converted with husband to the Church of England in 1861. Died in 1909.

Author of mathematics textbooks, including "The teaching of elementary mathematics", "Theoretical geometry ", "Further mechanics and hydrostatics."

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Alfred Sidgwick (1850 in Skipton - December 22 1943 in Orchard Trewoofe ) was an English logician and philosopher.

Sidgwick studied at Lincoln College in Oxford. He became known for his analysis of fallacies . His logic is a theory of argumentation. He opposes the formal logic and emphasized the practical benefits that the study of the logic must have. In addition to some own books he published mainly in the philosophical journal Mind. For Sidgwick, the logic is a science in which it comes to distinguishing good from bad arguments, and these arguments in both the communication between several people as well as in the analysis of thinking of an individual play a role.

Sidwick's publications include:

Fallacies. A View of Logic from the Practical Side. 1883; 2. Aufl.: London 1890
Distinction and Criticism of Beliefs. Longmans, Green & Co., London 1892
The Process of Argument: A Contribution to Logic. 1893
The Use of Words in Reasoning. 1901
The Application of Logic.Macmillan, London 1910
Elementary Logic. 1914

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sidgwick .

(from Wikipedia entry)

Johannes Sieveking (July 6 1869 in Hamburg , September 20th 1942 in Munich ) was a German Classic archaeologist. Johannes Sieveking belonged to the old Hanseatic family Sieveking , who had besides several mayors spawned many professors, senators, diplomats and merchants. He studied at the University of Bonn , then at the University of Berlin and then moved to the University of Munich , where he last pupil of Heinrich Brunn was. After this had passed away, he went together with Adam Flasch at the University of Erlangen , where he in 1894 with the Scriptures The cornucopia of the Romans was awarded his doctorate. Then travels took him to Greece and Italy. After returning Sieveking was briefly assistant at Würzburg Martin-von-Wagner-Museum , but then switched to wish Adolf Furtwängler at the Antiquarium in Munich . After Furtwängler's death in 1907, he took over the management of the Antiquarium and the collection of vases, which he in 1919 in the premises of the Alte Pinakothek was able to unite and regroup. In 1942 he took his own life.

Sieveking lent his particular the Munich Collection of Antiquities. So he ordered the hitherto often neglected large and rich collections of ancient cabaret new. Parts he restored by hand. With Rudolf Hackl he began in 1912 to develop the collection in a series of publications, but she could because of the First World War not be set forth. Were published by him thus in particular acquisitions and smaller reports. In a large four-volume publication also bronzes and has terracotta collection of James Loeb published. Thanks Sieveking Loeb bequeathed his collection including Munich antiquities collection. It was the largest increase in the collection since its inception and included some very high-quality pieces. His main research field of research was the Roman art . He is considered one of the pioneers in this field of research. He researched the Roman portrait, for relief and the architectural ornaments. Above all, he demanded an exact copy of criticism. Sieveking wrote no monographs on his research, but wrote many, mostly short essays, find themselves scattered across many different journals.

Sieveking was described as humble, shy, unassuming and very withdrawn. Literally was his punctuality. Although Munich had become his second home, which he left reluctantly, but he was by nature his whole life Hanseat. He had personal discretion is very important, so his colleagues learned only after years on the occasion of a disease that Sieveking was married. He did not pursue an academic career, but was the only scientist. He never attended lectures and never held any. His work was strictly regulated. In the morning he worked at the Museum, in the afternoon at the Archaeological Department of the University. Ludwig Curtius wrote in an obituary Sieveking " realized in his own way a modern, unromantic, but horazistisches Romanism, not one of the victors and proconsuls , but one of the legacies and military tribunes whose punctual, to the great subordinating them following work also the empire of our science can not exist without ".[translation]

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Sieveking .

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Theologian and biographer (1843-1899). Brother of British classical scholar and poet, George Agusutus Simcox. William wrote the first major biography of Barnabe Barnes, the famous 16th-century poet and patron of William Shakespeare.

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Simcox .

(from Wikipedia entry)

James Gilliland Simpson (16 October 1865 - 10 October 1948) was the Dean of Peterborough in the Church of England from 1928 to 1942.

He was educated at the City of London School and Trinity College, Oxford, he was ordained in 1889 and began his career with a curacy at Leeds Parish Church. He was then appointed Vice Principal of Edinburgh Theological College after which he was Principal of Leeds Clergy School before becoming Canon of Manchester in 1910. Two years later he became a Canon of St Paul's, a post he held for seventeen years before his elevation to the Deanery. He was a noted author.

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Simpson_(priest) .

A medical scholar