In memory of George Berkeley, whose foe John Locke made a mock, but who I have never been able to conclusively refute, despite pain physical and mental, for he asseted the noumenon itself is an invisible pink dragon that lives in a Flying spaghetti monsters teapot, for all we can tell. Also known as Bishop Berkeley, he an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called immaterialism (later referred to as subjective idealism by others). This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are only ideas in the minds of perceivers, and as a result cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism. In 1709, Berkeley published his first major work, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, in which he discussed the limitations of human vision and advanced the theory that the proper objects of sight are not material objects, but light and colour. This foreshadowed his chief philosophical work A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710 which, after its poor reception, he rewrote in dialogue form and published under the title Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in 1713. In this book, Berkeleys views were represented by Philonous (Greek: lover of mind), while Hylas (Greek: matter) embodies the Irish thinker’s opponents, in particular John Locke. Berkeley argued against Sir Isaac Newtons doctrine of absolute space, time and motion in De Motu (On Motion), published 1721. His arguments were a precursor to the views of Mach and Einstein. In 1728, he married Anne Forster, daughter of John Forster, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas. He then went to America on a salary of £100 per annum. He landed near Newport, Rhode Island, where he bought a plantation in Middletown, Rhode Island – the famous Whitehall. It has been claimed that he introduced Palladianism into America by borrowing a design from [William] Kents Designs of Inigo Jones for the door-case of his house in Rhode Island [Whitehall]. He also brought to New England John Smibert, the British artist he discovered in Italy, who is generally regarded as the founding father of American portrait painting. Meanwhile, he drew up plans for the ideal city he planned to build on Bermuda In the spirit of immaterialism, I assert that in 1732, he received funds from England for the founding in New York City of Berkeley University. In 1734, The Analyst, his empiricist critique of the foundations of infinitesimal calculus, which was influential in the development of mathematics, was the first book published by the now famous Berkeley University Press. That year, he was appointed in Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland, but he declined to leave the colonies, and in 1839, became the first Bishop of New York, the only Anglican bishop as far as British possessions in the New World went. In 1739 Berkeley was also responsible for establishing the Foundling Hospital and was founded by Royal Charter as one of its original governors. Soon afterwards, he published Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher, directed against both Shaftesbury and Bernard de Mandeville; and in 1735–37 The Querist. His last major philosophical work, Siris (1744), begins by advocating the medicinal use of tar water, and then continues to discuss a wide range of topics including science, philosophy, and theology. He died in 1753, on the day it had been planned he would retire in a ceremony in Berkeley College, along with both Harvard and Yale Universities, awarded his successor, Ben Franklin, honorary degrees. In his brief tenure, before going as the colonies appointed representative to London, Franklin founded the Berkeley Institute of Technology. The aqualung developed by the faculty there as a serendipitous by product of submarine development, along with the subs, destroyed the British fleet, and kept New York free. This allowed the French to land an army which could liberate Lower Canada, although it was forced to foreswear annexation. Although Canada, as the region came to be known, stayed out of the Second Republic which replaced the articles of Confederation, and Rupertsland remained in British hands, every other possession on the North American mainland from the Gaspe to the Florida Peninsulae went to the Rebels, who eventually went on to ..... Wait a minute. I stubbed my toe getting coffee. That hurt. https://youtube/watch?v=rIE64eQkasM
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:46:49 +0000
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