This engrossing and entertaining scientific history includes the story of Glasgow's 'Big Bang' of 1863, the controversy over 'Astronomer Royal for Scotland' and a historical survey of the eight observatories that once populated Glasgow.

The story of the creation of Britain's national game has often been told. According to the accepted wisdom, the refined football games created by English public schools in the 1860s subsequently became the sports of the masses. Football, The First Hundred Years, provides a revisionist history of the game, challenging previously widely-accepted beliefs. Harvey argues that established football history does not correspond with the facts. Football, as played by the 'masses' prior to the adoption of the public school codes is almost always portrayed as wild and barbaric. This view may require considerable modification in the light of Harvey's research. Football's First One Hundred Years provides a very detailed picture of the football played outside the confines of the public schools, revealing a culture that was every bit as sophisticated and influential as that found within their prestigious walls. Football, The First Hundred Years sets forth a completely revisionist thesis, offering a different perspective on almost every aspect of the established history of the formative years of the game. The book will be of great interest to sports historians and football enthusiasts alike.

A richly detailed exploration of the complex urban culture of the Presbyterian elite in late-Georgian Belfast, The 'Natural Leaders' and their World offers a major reassessment of the political life of Belfast in the early nineteenth century. Examining the activities of a close-knit group of individuals who sought to reform British and European politics, Jonathan Wright addresses topics such as romanticism, evangelicalism, and altruism, with a look at writers such as Lord Byron, Walter Scott, Robert Owen, and Thomas Chalmers. In doing so, he tells the story of a Presbyterian middle class and the complex entanglement of their political, cultural, and intellectual lives.

The issues involved in these trials included the right of universities to discipline their professors, the degree of political control over the appointment and methodology of teachers, the preservation of factional advantage through such appointments, and the nature of the relationship between a state church and the public institutions responsible for educating its clergy. Skoczylas shows that the effect of the Enlightenment on Scottish Calvinism, which required adaptation to new developments in theology and pedagogy, was an important sub-text to the trials: the compromise reached at the end of the second led indirectly to the first secession of ultra-orthodox ministers from the Church of Scotland. More significantly, the Church became increasingly open to innovative thought so that enlightened ministers of the latter half of the century could debate matters forbidden to Simson. Mr Simson's Knotty Case breaks new ground, offering the first analysis of many ecclesiastical and political sources. Skoczylas shows that although Simson was in many ways a conservative man, despite his innovative pedagogy, the liberalizing effects of his cases thrust Scotland from the obscurity of Covenanting orthodoxy into the clarity of the Enlightenment.

These pioneering essays provide a unique study of the development of political ideas in Ireland from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The book breaks away from the traditional emphasis in Irish historiography on the nationalism/unionism debate to focus instead on previously neglected areas such as the role of the Scottish Enlightenment and early Irish socialism and conservatism. A wide range of original primary sources are used from pamphlets to journalism, devotional tracts to poetry.

A defense of the social operation of thinking, with an emphasis on testimony and authority.This book describes a lost tradition that can be called reasonableness. The tradition began with Aristotle, was recommended to Western education by Augustine, flourished in the schools of the Renaissance through the nineteenth century, then got lost in the academic and philosophic shuffles of the twentieth century. Representative of the tradition is John Locke''s story of a King of Siam who rejected reports of the existence of ice. The King would have hadto risk too much trust in another man whom he did not know too well -- a Dutch ambassador -- in order to believe that elephants could walk on cold water. John Locke presented the story to encourage his readers to think about theresponsibilities and risks entailed in what he called ''the gentle and fair ways of information.'' The art of thinking is largely social. Popular textbook writers such as Quintilian, Boethius, Philipp Melanchthon, John of St.Thomas, Antoine Arnauld, Thomas Reid, Isaac Watts, Richard Whately, William Hamilton, L. Susan Stebbings, and Max Black taught strategies of belief, trust, assent, and even submission as part of reasonableness. For over two thousand years testimony and authority were at the center of lively discussions about teaching the art of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University. Hamilton, L. Susan Stebbings, and Max Black taught strategies of belief, trust, assent, and even submission as part of reasonableness. For over two thousand years testimony and authority were at the center of lively discussions about teaching the art of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University.uld, Thomas Reid, Isaac Watts, Richard Whately, William Hamilton, L. Susan Stebbings, and Max Black taught strategies of belief, trust, assent, and even submission as part of reasonableness. For over two thousand years testimony and authority were at the center of lively discussions about teaching the art of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University. Hamilton, L. Susan Stebbings, and Max Black taught strategies of belief, trust, assent, and even submission as part of reasonableness. For over two thousand years testimony and authority were at the center of lively discussions about teaching the art of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University.t of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University.