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Leaping forward nearly two thousand years to the Romantics, the nightingale takes on the enigmatic role of both a symbol of sorrow and joy. The perplexing shift may be explained by the fads of the literary period with the Romantics desiring to learn about human nature through the study of nature. They emerged in the eighteenth century into the nineteenth as a counterculture to the logic and reason of the Enlightenment era. Artists, musicians, and poets emphasized intuition, beauty, and spirit in the creation of all works. Through their creations, they felt they could attain a higher understanding and connection, especially through nature.
34 Not surprisingly, Romantic poets Keats and Coleridge turn to the nightingale for answers. Both allude to Philomela and her song, but they redevelop the symbolism behind it. As will become clear, the nightingale loses Ovid's violent and sexual connotations in the male-dominated literary movement. Rather, the image refocuses upon the loss and regaining of voice and the universality of nature as a literary metaphor. Keats' poem "Ode to a Nightingale" was written after his diagnosis with tuberculosis and explores his personal development as a poet through this affliction. 35
Since the Romantics depart from the ancient interpretation of the nightingale, it might be hard to believe Ovid's Metamorphoses influenced their entreaties of the bird. Brewer recognizes "Ovid was part of the Romantic and Victorian literary consciousness, but a small and conveniently detachable part. Coleridge and Keats were drawn to him and yet in different ways and with different success tried to establish their distance from his world." 37 The two authors frequently studied Ovid, as Keats read his works in Latin, but their poems lie further from the Roman myth and closer to their own intuition-based literary movement.
Noting how he truly "feels nature," John Keats experiences a poetic connection with the nightingale in the midst of his own emotional turmoil. In "Ode to a Nightingale," he relies upon his senses other than sight to connect with the nightingale. He cannot see the bird of his envy, but rather he hears it and imagines 35 Referenced by Garrod In these lines, Keats anguishes. He longs for something that he cannot have. He wants the "full-throated ease" of the nightingale and the ability to write poetry as easily as the night
Yet, there is an obvious transformation in the nightingale's symbolism as a result of his jealousy. He sets up a contradiction between the legacy of Ovid's nightingale and his own desires because he longs for the nightingale's happiness. Therein lays a contradiction, as Keats frequently read Ovid in Latin. He knew well of Philomela's tragic story, but he hears a song of happiness that directly contrasts Ovid's tragic myth. Rather than denying her sorrow, he assumes she must be happy because she does not experience the poet's pain. As a widely anthropocentric literary movement, the
Although it seems as though Keats recognizes, yet denies, the sorrow that afforded Philomela such an elegant song, he incorporates it into his inabilities, portraying his struggles as physically distressing. Keats begrudges his pain for "Here men sit and hear each other groan … where but to think is to be full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despairs." 44 He implies that as men long for inspiration to write, they merely sit statically, growing old in their pursuit. He plays upon the word "groan" to mean both their audible suffering and their inevitable aging into "grown" men. Keats
By contrast, Coleridge departs altogether from the poetic connection of the nightingale to Philomela's emotional despair. While Keats recognizes the nightingale's heavy emotional burden, Coleridge embodies the true Romantic ideal of loving the purity of nature. In "The Nightingale," Coleridge too sits amongst nature, but he is able to see his surroundings. Keats' lack of vision symbolized his impaired poetic vision, a symbolic cutting off of the tongue of inspiration, whereas Coleridge's lively tone masks any feelings of despair. In fact, as stated before, Coleridge despises the
Though Chaucer may have been familiar with Ovid, from him, the symbolism of the thorn splintered even further, developing a new branch of nightingale symbolism. By the time Oscar Wilde receives the image in "The Nightingale and the Rose," the bird had become a lover, being the "only bird that retains the old romantic spirit, while 'the student and the girl are, like 47 Coleridge. "The Nightingale". 81, 90 48 Robinson. Romantic Presences. Pg. 165. 49 Wilde: "literary traditions never quite die as long
Using the nightingale as a case study of the historical development of poetry, shows that both the poet and the time period shape literature. This paper has studied the legacy of the songbird of generations, the nightingale throughout poetry. By analyzing her symbolic imagery and function as a poetic device, the key themes extrapolated shed light upon the writers of that time. Ovid sought to add complexity to gender differences and the sexual role of men and women. He also enjoyed a gruesome story that both captivated and appalled his readers. The Romantics, however, held their own values. They looked to nature and the nighting
With respect to geological topics, as in other branches of Vallisneri's research, a careful thought to the experimental practice was the dominant characteristic of his scientifĳic work. This was not by chance, since Antonio's approach to natural philosophy was deeply rooted in his academic formation. In 1682, when he began to study medicine at Bologna University, the athenaeum was troubled by strife between two radically diffferent epistemological traditions: on one side, the empirical medicine, whose leaders were the galenic physicians Giovanni Girolamo Sbaraglia (1641-1710) and Paolo
The fĳirst Earth sciences related notes in Vallisneri's documents date back to the last decade of the seventeenth century. In 1687, after he graduated, young Antonio returned in the Duchy of Modena and Reggio. There he served as general practitioner in Scandiano, Luzzara (since 1695) and Castelnuovo di sotto (since 1698). During these early years he employed most of his leisure time in the study of various sorts of natural phenomena: he performed many observations, methodically reporting them in seven diaries 2 (properly called by Dario
The earliest geological report is a concise note dated 24 February 1694, concerning a "fearful earthquake" that occurred in Mantua and Luzzara and that "was felt in all Europe" ("Towers fell, along with almost all the chimneys, and a lot of houses"). 4 It was his own homeland, anyway, that 1 gave Vallisneri a fertile background for many cases of study. The hydrogeological, mineralogical and geomorphological features of the lower Po Plain acted as his fĳirst laboratory, where he set the basis for later researches. As for
It has been discovered in our Monte Gesso a new sulphur vein, that once tested has resulted to be of a greater perfection than the commonly sold kind. The Most Serene Prince ordered to bring here a certain Mr. Raggi from Romagna, in order to work and to discover the mine, but nothing has been revealed yet. Vallisneri went on investigating the peculiar lithology of the Monte Gesso. He collected many specimens, also exploring some of the caves near to the mountain. In May 1694 he discovered in a cavern "a dark and chilly site", where he saw a spring whose "most clear
I went to Burzano in a cave near to the castle, inside which the water is heard falling from above straight into it. Once lit the lamp, the water is seen to fall down by big gypsum stones, and in one of them some steps are still visible of an ancient staircase, that went right to the end of the cavern to take water, which is frightening to see. In a side of the cavern there are still traces of a smoked oven, from which it is clear that the grotto was once inhabited. In two sites of the cave there are holes, and having thrown stones into them, they are heard falling
Bernardino Ramazzini, De fontium Mutinensium admiranda scaturigine tractatus physico-hydrostaticus (Mutinae: Typis Haeredum Suliani Impressorum Ducalium, 1691), pp. 9-20, 21-29. 10 Vallisneri, Quaderni di osservazioni, Vol. 1 (cit. note 2), pp. 34-35: "Mi portai a Burzano in una spelonca vicino al castello, dentro la quale si sente cadere dall'alto acqua nell'int
13 In Antonio's opinion, it well supported the theory outlined by Bernardino Ramazzini (1633-1714) in his treatise on the origin of the springs in Modena: this statement proves that Vallisneri, since the beginning of his scientifĳic activity, well knew the De fontium Mutinensium. The mentioned "cave near to the castle" can be easily identifĳied as the renowned Tana della Mussina in Borzano: this grotto has a great archaeological importance, given that an Eneolithic sepulchral site has been discovered in it in
14 The author's mention to the "traces of a smoked oven", therefore, could refer to the residual signs of the Eneolithic funeral rituals. These data are defĳinitely signifĳicant, as they confĳirm that the fĳirst cave explorations (along with the fĳirst analytical descriptions) in this part of Italy were performed in historical age by Vallisneri, and not by Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799) or Serafĳino Calindri (1733-1811), as it has recently been thought
The fĳirst excavations in the Tana della Mussina were carried out in 1872 by Abbot Gaetano Chierici (1819-1886). In this cave were found many stone tools and animal bones, along with the human remains of 18 individuals, some with combustion marks on them. In conformity with the most reliable theory, the cavern was used as a burial site: during the rites, probably, the corpses were partially burned. On this topic, see Stefano Benazzi, Giorgio Gruppioni, According to the Quaderni, 1694 was for Antonio a very
The last two considerable emissions happened in 1915 (this one lasted for 15 days) and in 1932. Anyway, it seems that at the end of the eighteenth century violent eruptions still occurred. These phenomena were accompanied by the size enlargement of craters and by vertical fĳissures in the ground. In one of the most violent episodes, which was accurately described by the physician Domenico Gentili (1744-1825) in 1796, the mud mass collapsed at the end of the eruption and caused a landslide in the fĳields beneath it. In recent years the mud
Once more, in this study the observed phenomenon is not disconnected from its natural context. As for this case, a link was detected between the point where the springs "of crystal clear water" arose and the position of the boiling craters. 20 The careful annotation of the villagers' testimony is not a marginal additional information: rather, it responds to a well defĳined epistemological conception of experimental science. As a fĳierce defender of empiricism, Vallisneri always sustained the value of direct experience in the study of nature. The folk's reports, if verifĳied by further observations,
The author often insisted on this point in his later works. He did not despise the use of the "popular" "rough, natural philosophy" as a sort of 19 Vallisneri, Quaderni di osservazioni, Vol. 1 (cit. note 2), pp. 40-41: "Fui a vedere la salsa di Querzola. Questa in due lochi bolliva, come pentola al foco, e di quando in quando gettava all'aria spruzzi di fango. Nel bollire esce sempre terra di color cinerizio
rhetorical weapon against those "renowned philosophers" who "only look after speculations, sitting on a bench", 21 in a provocative attempt to show the efffĳicacy of the experimental method against its detractors (and their use of the principle of authority). On the other side of the coin, in many cases Vallisneri did not hesitate to quote the works of the authors whose theories supported his thought. 22 An evident inconsistency between the former statement and the latter cannot be ignored: nonetheless, even in this case the coherence of Antonio's empiricism was untouched, since he justifĳied
In the Quaderni there is almost no trace of rhetorical or polemical expressions. In Vallisneri's intention, these manuscripts were intended to be the "laboratory papers" from which he could take material for future publications. 24 Despite the heterogeneous disciplines that are covered in these documents, there is no clear separation between subjects: the own Earth sciences notes contain many links to other topics as biology or medicine. A good example is the note on the salse, whose mud was "very efffective to desiccate tumours". The same is for the case of a report dated (once more)
The petrifĳied coal, without those particles of stone that are seen in it, sinks immediately, unlike the unpetrifĳied one. Fossil coal. It derives from the build-up and sedimentation of organic matter (almost exclusively from plants) in an anoxic environment. The increase in thickness of the organic layers leads to a gradual increase in temperature and pressure. These conditions cause the ejection of volatile matter and water from the layers, along with the increase in carbon percentage. This process occurs gradually: it starts from the lower sedimentary strata and passes through diffferent phases. Depending on the carbon
The most favorable environment for the genesis of coal seams is the lagoon, both coastal or in a river delta. The Po Plain was originally a lagoon that evolved in a wetland; however, since this zone is still geologically young, exploitable coal reserves have not formed yet. The "petrifĳied coal" found and analyzed by Vallisneri, therefore, was probably a sort of lignite or low-carbon coal. See Chris Pellant, Rocce e minerali (Milano: R.C.S. Libri, 1995), pp. 244-245. 30 The river
The ordinary coal, when it is burned once more, in dying is burnt to ashes inside, but our coal is not burnt to ashes, except on the surface; it remains coal inside. The former and the latter are similar, that is light. Etc. Cook in water the above mentioned coals, and also see if there is something floating at the top [ Vallisneri, Quaderni di osservazioni, Vol. 1 (cit. note 2), pp. 52-53: "Il carbone impietrito solo senza que' ramenti di pietra, che si ved
As it frequently happens in science history, the greatest value of this document does not reside in the scientifĳic conclusion outlined by the author after having reported the experiment, but in the experiment itself. In this emblematic case, the extreme accuracy of the account makes possible to study in a very detailed fashion the analysis criteria used by Vallisneri. A fĳirst, basic sequence of tests concerned the perceptual characteristics of the observed matter: color, smell, texture. 37 The samples were then exposed to diffferent substances, from water up to salts and corrosive agents (as the sulphuric acid
Gettati in aqua pezzetti del carbone sudetto impietrito rosseggianti di foco, ed accesi stettero alquanto a galla, poi piomborono al fondo. Il simile fece il carbone commune, e andò anch'egli al fondo. Lasciati rafffreddare altri pezzetti stettero sempre a galla, come fa il carbone ordinario. L'odore del carbone impietrito è diferente da quello della pece navale, essendo quello della pece più grato,
As it happened to many other reports contained in the Quaderni, even this last note was eventually published. Antonio inserted it in an heterogenous article entitled Estratto di notizie sopra la famosa Erba Fumana, 39 in the third volume of the journal "La Galleria di Minerva". The Estratto began with a botanical topic. It concerned the therapeutic properties of the famous erba fumana, a subshrub that was quite common on the slopes of the Emilian Apennines. 40 This plant was, however, linked to a geological subject, having been mentioned by Francesco
The Estratto was addressed to Diacinto Cestoni (1637 Cestoni ( -1718, an apothecary from Leghorn. This peculiar character, who kept an assiduous correspondence 46 with Vallisneri until his death, seemed to embody the superiority claim of experimentalism over speculative philosophy. Despite the lack of academic training, his innate intellectual curiosity and his vast and heterogeneous scientifĳic experience allowed him to earn a fĳirst-rate competence in the natural sciences. In many cases this resulted to be equal -and, with regard to the pure experimental practice, often superior -
Anyway, many pieces of information contained in some previous manuscript notes and published works 50 make clear that since the last decade of the seventeenth century he was deeply interested in the study of springs. The dominant theory in those years found its roots in the Cartesian assumption of alembics: it considered the freshwater as originated from the sea after a process of fĳiltration through rock layers. Renowned scholars and naturalists as Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (1658 -1730 51 and Bernardino Ramazzini 52 partially supported this supposition, since they judged that the meteoric water alone was not enough to replen
Immediately Vallisneri wrote to "Mr Cestoni in Leghorn", so that his friend could repeat the same test. Cestoni threw into the sea a vase made of "a raw sort of clay" that he tied to a lace. He opened it after fĳifteen days, and found salt water inside. 57 The two autonomous experiments proved the theory of alembics wrong: the springs did not originate from the sea, but from the rains ("and in the Arabian deserts, where it never rains, no spring can be found"). Moreover, it was clear that "the seawater becomes fresh
The "pottery test" was extremely efffective in its simplicity. The result of this experiment became a central feature of the Lezione Accademica, along with the many other pieces of information collected by the author during his journeys in the Apennines. 59 Nevertheless, as expected, the bare facts alone would not have been enough to let Vallisneri's theories prevail on rival ones in an academic context. Another ingredient was needed: namely, a well-defĳined theoretical framework that -together with a signifĳicant rhetorical ability -could make these facts persuasive to the distinguished audience of the
Among half a dozen pieces on particle physics are lucid explications of, for instance, the Higgs boson, Hilbert space and the Large Hadron Collider. Weinberg has a knack for capturing a complex concept in a succinct, unforgettable image. He compares quantum superposition, in which a particle has two states at once, to a musical chord; when measurement collapses the particle to one state, it "somehow shifts all the intensity of the chord to one of the notes, which we then hear on its own". And he describes the discovery that nature obeys symmetries whose consequences can be worked out as "like
The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus didn't make observations, so, although he correctly proposed that matter is made of atoms, Weinberg argues that he "was wrong about how to learn about the world". Yet Democritus is of supreme importance for the understanding of science history (as Weinberg admits) because he inspired atomic theorists of the early modern period, such as Robert Boyle and other corpuscular philosophers, in their efforts to explain nature without using theology or teleology. Similarly, Bacon and Descartes, although sometimes scientifically misguided by today's standards, were vastly important for ushering in the mechanical thinking that Weinberg
Weinberg is at his most interesting when probing the big uncertainties in physics. Ultimately, he is not sure, for instance, that he knows what an 'elementary particle' actually is, or how best to interpret quantum mechanics. These moments reveal Weinberg's considerable integrity, where -as one of the smartest and most diligent scientists around -he describes himself as somewhat lost. He has surveyed the present, and all the best paths forward proposed by other scientists; yet, at gut level, he is confident that nothing on the horizon is fully satisfactory, and that other possibilities might be out there. These admissions imply that Weinberg
The articles on public and personal matters -Weinberg's thoughts about taxes, his disappointment with former US President Barack Obama for failing to confront economic disparities more directly, and educators who are honoured with burial in Texas State Cemetery -are less interesting. Yet here, as elsewhere, he is clever: "The only technology for which the manned space flight program is well suited is the technology of keeping people alive in space. And the only demand for that technology is in the manned space flight program itself. " I read the penultimate essay with anticipation. Weinberg reveals in the introduction that he had not published it before because nobody who read it
We also claim that the arguments which Conee offers to show that abortion is not harmful even if ensoulment occurs at fertilization cannot be extended to the hylomorphic account. While a person conceived on the dualist model may thrive when his soul is unencumbered by the flesh, this is not true of a person on the hylomorphic account of the soul. Nor is it true on a hylomorphic view that abortion may just be delaying the soul's obtaining embodiment and a human life. But even on a Cartesian conception, if ensoulment is a miracle, a divine intervention for a purpose, such a metaph
P2 If the "all or nothing" proposition is true, each person begins existence as a fertilized human egg. What is important to notice is that Conee is considering only a Cartesian account of the soul. If he had considered a hylomorphic account, such as that of Aquinas, he wouldn't be able to claim that the soul could exist prior to embodiment or the body prior to ensoulment, claims which Aquinas explicitly rejects. Only on the assumption of substance dualism, can the soul and body be easily separated. In hylomorphic metaphysics, there can't be a body without a soul. A
Since the "perfect precedes the imperfect" in the order of nature, Aquinas finds it unreasonable that the form of the human being or any other form should begin its existence in an imperfect, deprived state: hence, the human form begins to exist in its natural state of configuring matter, and when separated from matter at death, is in a deprived state until reunited with matter upon resurrection. 7 Additionally, Aquinas argues that since the human being is essentially a unity of form and matter, if it were the case that forms exist before matter, the soul's "union with the body would be an accident of the soul: and
And since monozygotic twinning is the result of the division of a single fertilized egg into two genetically identical embryos which develop into two human beings, it does not seem credible that the original entity is a human being. What is argued, then, is that from fertilization to at some point when twinning, either natural or induced, is no longer possible, the "pre-embryo" is matter animated by just a vegetative soul. When twinning is no longer possible, the sensitive soul becomes present and is eventually succeeded by a rational soul, at which point is the origin of the human being, a composite
A consequence of this succession of souls is that if people couldn't exist without a rational soul, then none of us was ever an early embryo. However, there are certain reasons to believe that there is only a single soul and it comes into existence at fertilization. Our reason for this is that the impetus for positing a succession of souls are twinning-based problems which, we shall see in the next section, lose their force when the empirical data of human embryology is reexamined. In fact, a hylomorphic theory is not only consistent with embryological data, but may provide more explanatory power for the data than
A further consideration is that if the rational soul came later than fertilization, it would come much later than Thomists maintain, since there is no evidence of rationality in the advanced fetus or even newborn. Surely Thomists don't want to posit that babies are not ensouled. But they can only avoid this conclusion by claiming that the rational soul is latent in advanced fetuses and newborns. But then there is less reason to doubt that the rational soul should be able to come into existence even earlier (at fertilization) without manifesting its rational capabilities. Another consideration is that early miscarriages unknown to the mother or anyone else
The forms of those hylomorphic composites which are plants, animals and humans are what Aquinas refers to as "substantial forms". These forms are actual; when they are present they are fully so, yet in order to manifest its capacities a form actualizes the potential matter with which it is united. The matter which the form "configures" is in a state of potentiality and comes to exist in its biological state (engaged in metabolic, homeostatic functions etc.) because of its unity with the form; the form is what gives it life, so to speak, configures the matter in order to express the
Aquinas also claims that each species has its own form, and that there is a difference between the form, or soul, of the human being and the forms, or souls, of sub-human animals and plants. The souls of animals and plants cannot come to exist apart from the matter, nor do they originate via supernatural intervention. This, Aquinas argues, is evidenced "by their function, which cannot be exercised without a bodily organ, wherefore absolutely speaking they have no being independently of the body". 10 Because the vegetative and sensible souls of plants and animals are functionally correlated to the matter with which they are united-th
Aquinas' terms, "transcend the matter"-these souls are said to originate with the "natural powers of the generator", as opposed to the supernatural intervention of God. There is not a lack of material explanation for the functions of these beings; hence, the forms of these beings cannot "exist apart from the body, nor be brought into being except insofar as the body is brought into being". 11 Since the body is brought into being through the proper fusion (as in gametes) or fission (as in lower animals) of matter, there is no reason to posit an origin outside of the natural generation of
The rational soul of the human being, however is an exception. It is a "subsistent substance wherefore its being does not consist solely in its union with the body"; although it originates in union with it matter, it can exist on its own without the body, albeit in an imperfect state. 13 The rational soul's independence from matter is a function of its nature: Aquinas claims that operations of the rational soul, such as intellect and will, are not restricted to any part of the body (although many of our intellectual functions, such as imagination and sensibility-based thoughts, necessitate union with matter). The rational soul
The contemporary Thomist's approach to embryology is typically to suggest a succession of souls during, roughly, the first couple of weeks after fertilization, for it is during this time frame that human and non-human embryos are said to have the capacity to divide into two or more new embryos through either induced or natural division of the embryo. These twinning capacities, however, when scrutinized, do not present a strong case against the human being originating at fertilization. In the first case, that of induced twinning, it is theorized that the cells of the human embryo, during the two days after fertilization, are "tot
Further data on monozygotic twinning is also consistent with the hylomorphic conception of ensoulment at fertilization: in some cases of twinning, the fissioning of the original entity is incomplete, resulting in conjoined twins. These twins are always genetically identical, the result of a single fertilized egg which fails to divide properly. However, although conjoined twins share material dimensions, our intuitions tell us that they are not one human being (or person); it is absurd to consider surgical division of these twins the division of a single human (or person) into two. We therefore do not always consider
Even if Conee were forced to admit that certain metaphysical views favored early existence more than others, he wouldn't grant any moral significance to this. Conee considers the possibility that adding more metaphysical assumptions to a Nonreductionist account of the self will provide more support for a particular moral conclusion. What Conee then does is suppose that we are souls (or ensouled?), begin at conception, and are rational and sentient from the first day that we exist. Despite granting such assumptions for the sake of argument, Conee concludes that this will fail to make a moral difference. He even suggests "that this attempt fails in
Conee claims that even if we assume that the fetus has the added capabilities of sentience and rationality, this leaves unanswered the morally vital question: "What does the abortion of a fetus do to the soul that is associated with it?" He considers two possibilities in which abortion would appear to do no harm to us if we were souls and one account in which it would. He writes that "the present soul view in conjunction with the empirical facts tells us nothing about the fate of a soul in abortion…Perhaps abortion would free the soul to lead a perfectly good existence, unencumbered by fleshy constraints, or perhaps
And even if it weren't necessary but would still occur as promised, it would seem to offer a benefit that disembodied existence does not. Why would resurrection be promised if we could flourish without a body, unimpaired by our body as Conee writes? It would mean that the human being would not even experience any (nonsinful) pleasures of the senses. So dispatching the soul of a fetus would not be a welcome state for it would be neither the survival of the individual that was a fetus, or even that attractive an existence for a being that we are not identical to but intimately related to as a whole Readers
Conee's argument that metaphysics doesn't constrain the abortion debate is further weakened by other theological-metaphysical principles. While a soul doesn't necessarily commit one to a theological view of its origins, such beliefs have been historically paired. They certainly are in Augustine and Descartes, and the latter is the paradigmatic Nonreductionist. And Aquinas sees God's creation and infusion into matter of each soul as necessary to a coherent account of hylomorphism. Now if we understand miracles as interventions in the lawful physical order, ensoulment is a miracle. So if God must miraculously intervene to ensoul
If Conee or his supporters respond that God allows spontaneous abortions (miscarriages), our reply is that this is the result of the broken world in which form doesn't always master matter. We could reasonably say that is an act of God since He made and sustains the objects in the world and their causal powers. But that is quite a different matter from a human intentionally destroying life. We can't say that is God's will, reading it off the natural course of events. We can, of course, say He allows abortion as He allows other evils. (It would perhaps be helpful to distinguish between His original plan and then
A hylomorphic metaphysics is not only compatible with the findings of modern embryology, it may also provide the best explanation of phenomena which occur in embryology, and may therefore, contra Conee's claim, be not easily replaceable by alternative metaphysical theories. Aquinas' teleological metaphysics accounts for the configuration of the matter of the developing embryo into a more complex being even when there is not an explanation which makes reference to the causal powers of an organism for growth and unity of the pre-embryo (the cells of which do not yet compose a multi-cell organism.) Aquinas' hylomorphism is also
And a hylomorphic account weakens Conee's attack on ensoulment theories being uncommitted to when we began to exist. We have shown that there is reason for believing that we were each once zygotes and no reason to deny this on the grounds that twinning might occur. We have also postulated that it is the form which brings about twinning, a position whose appeal is enhanced in the absence of any substantial body of empirical support for any other explanation of why monozygotic twinning occurs. 29 Finally, we believe that hylomorphism also undermines Conee's charge that ensoulment theories
What we have presented is an account of ensoulment at fertilization which differs significantly from the Cartesian account which Conee concentrates upon. He concludes from "the cases that (he) has examined that metaphysics doesn't so much as alter the balance of reasons" 20 and "that the metaphysical facts are epistemically independent of the conditions that determine how it is moral to treat pre-viable human organisms." 30 Even if he is right to draw that inference from his study of Cartesianism (and a few other metaphysical approaches), our discussion of hylomorphism shows that he is wrong to conclude his paper with
Pauling came to the California Institute of Technology as a graduate student in 1922 and remained there for more than 40 years. He chose Caltech because he could obtain a doctorate there in three years (Harvard required six) and because Noyes offered him a modest stipend as part-time instructor. It was a fortunate choice both for Pauling and for Caltech. As he wrote towards the end of his life: 'Years later... I realized that there was no place in the world in 1922 that would have prepared me in a better way for my career as a scientist' (37)*. When
Pauling's doctoral work was on the determination of crystal structures by X-ray diffraction analysis, under the direction of Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson (1894 Dickinson ( -1945, who had obtained his Ph.D. only two years earlier (he was the first person to receive a Ph.D. from Caltech). By a happy chance, Ralph W.G. Wyckoff (1897 -1994, For.Mem.R.S. 1951, one of the pioneers of X-ray analysis, had spent the year before Pauling's arrival at Caltech and had taught Dickinson the method of using Laue photographic data (
They arrived in April 1926, just as the Bohr-Sommerfeld model was being displaced by the 'new' quantum mechanics. It was an exciting time, and Pauling knew he was lucky to be there at one of the centres. He concentrated on learning as much as he could about the new theoretical physics at Sommerfeld's institute. Pauling had been regarded, and probably also regarded himself, as intellectually outstanding among his fellow students at Oregon and even at Caltech. However, he must have become aware of his limitations during his stay in Europe. The new theories were being made by men of his own generation.
The year in Europe was to have a decisive influence on Pauling's scientific development. In addition to Munich, he visited Copenhagen in the spring of 1927 and then spent the summer in Zurich. In Copenhagen it was not Bohr but Samuei A. Goudsmit (1902 -1978 who influenced Pauling (they later collaborated in writing The structure o f line spectra (8)), and in Zurich it was neither Debye nor Schrodinger but the two young assistants, Walter Heitler (1904 -1981, F.R.S. 1948 ) and Fritz London (1900 -195
In 1927 Pauling returned to Caltech as Assistant Professor of Theoretical Chemistry. The next 12 years produced the remarkable series of papers that established Pauling's worldwide reputation. His abilities were quickly recognized through promotions (Associate Professor, 1929; Full Professor, 1931), through awards (Langmuir Prize, 1931), through election to the National Academy of Sciences (1933) and through visiting lectureships, especially the Baker Lectureship at Cornell in 1937-38. Through his writings and lectures, Pauling established himself as the founder and master of what might be called structural
Pauling's way was first to establish a solid and extensive collection of data. By means of X-ray crystallography, gas-phase electron diffraction (installed after Pauling's 1930 visit to Europe, where he learned about Hermann Mark's pioneering studies), infrared, Raman, and ultraviolet spectroscopy, interatomic distances and angles were established for hundreds of crystals and molecules. Thermochemical information was already available. The first task of theory, as Pauling saw it, was to provide a basis to explain the known metric and energetic facts about molecules, and only then to lead to prediction of new facts.
Once the structures of simple inorganic crystals began to be established, it was soon seen that the observed interatomic distances were consistent with approximate additivity of characteristic radii associated with the various cations and anions. Among the several sets that have been proposed, Pauling's are not merely designed to reproduce the observations but, typical for him, are derived from a mixture of approximate quantum mechanics (using screening constants) and experimental data. His values, derived almost 70 years ago, are still in common use, and the same can be said for the sets of covalent radii and non-bonded (van der Wa
Whereas simple ionic substances, such as the alkali halides, are limited in the types of crystal structure they can adopt, the possibilities open to more complex substances, such as mica, KAl3Si3O 10(OH)2, may appear to be immense. Pauling (7) formulated a set of rules about the stability of such structures, which proved enormously successful in testing the correctness of proposed structures and in predicting unknown ones. As Pauling himself remarked, these rules are neither rigorous in their derivation nor universal in their application; they were obtained in part by induction from known structures and in part from
In 1927 0. Burrau solved the Schrodinger equation for the hydrogen molecule ion H2+ in elliptic coordinates and obtained values for the interatomic distance and bonding energy in good agreement with experiment. Burrau's wave function fails, however, to yield much physical insight into the stability of the system. Soon afterwards, Pauling (6) pointed out that, although an approximate perturbation treatment would not provide any new information, it would be useful to know how well it performed: 'For perturbation methods can be applied to many systems for which the wave equation can not be accurately solved'. Pauling
A few months earlier, Heitler and London had published their calculation for the hydrogen molecule. This was too complicated for an exact solution, and their method also rested on a perturbation model, a combination of atomic wave functions in which the two electrons, with opposite spins, change places. More generally, the energy of the electron-pair bond could now be attributed to 'the resonance energy corresponding to the interchange of the two electrons between the two atomic orbitals'. As developed by Pauling and independently by John C. Slater (1900 Slater ( -1976, the Heitler-London-Slater-Pauling (HLSP)
Much has been made of Pauling's preference for valence bond (VB) theory over molecular orbital (MO) theory. The latter, as developed by Fritz Hund (1896-), Erich Hiickel (1896 -1980, For.Mem.R.S. 1977 and Robert S. Mulliken (1896 -1986, For.Mem.R.S. 1967, works in terms of orbitals extended over the entire molecule, orders these orbitals according to their estimated energies and assigns two electrons with opposite spin to each of the bonding orbitals. Electronic excited states correspond to promotion of one or
Pauling was fully acquainted with early MO theory, there is at least one important paper (11) on the theory of aromatic substitution. But he clearly preferred his own simplified versions of VB theory and soon became a master of combining them with the empirical facts of chemistry. A remarkable series of papers entitled 'The nature of the chemical bond' formed the basis for his later book with the same title. In the very first paper (9), Pauling set out his programme of developing simple quantum mechanical treatments to provide information about 'the relative strengths of bonds formed by different atoms, the angles between bonds, free rotation, or lack of free rotation
Only the first of these truly originates from him. In the first paper of the series, Pauling took up the idea of spatially directed bonds. By a generalization of the Heitler-London model for hydrogen, a normal chemical bond can be associated with the spin pairing of two electrons, one from each of the two atoms. While an s orbital is spherically symmetrical, other atomic orbitals have characteristic shapes and angular distributions. It was not difficult to explain the angular structure of the water molecule H20 and the pyramidal structure o f ammonia H 3N, but the quadrivalency of carbon was a
In attempting to explain the quantum-mechanical exchange phenomenon responsible for the stability of the chemical bond, Heitler and London had used a classical analogy originally due to Heisenberg. In quantum mechanics, a frequency v = E/h can be associated with every system with energy E. Two non-interacting hydrogen atoms are thus comparable to two classical systems both vibrating with the same frequency v, for example, two pendulums. Interaction between the two atoms is analogous to coupling between the pendulums, known as resonance. W hen coupled, the two pendulums no longer vibrate with the same frequency as before but make a joint
Pauling first used the term resonance more or less as a synonym for electron exchange, in the H eitler-London sense, but he went on to think of the actual molecule as'resonating' between two or more valence-bond structures, and hence lowering its energy below the most stable of these. Thus, by resonating between two Kekule structures the benzene molecule is more stable than these extremes, and the additional stability can be attributed to'resonance energy'. Through his resonance concept, Pauling reconciled the chem ist's structural formulae with simplified quantum mechanics, thereby extending the realm of applic
In the middle years of the century, resonance theory was taken up with enthusiasm by teachers and students; it seemed to be the key to understanding chemistry. Since then, its appeal has declined. It has now a slightly old-fashioned connotation. Certainly, it had some failures. Resonance theory would lead one to expect that cyclobutadiene should be more stable as a symmetric square structure than as a rectangular one with alternating long and short bonds, whereas the contrary is true. (It seems ironic that in the 1935 classic Introduction to quantum mechanics (10) qualitative MO theory was applied to only one example, four atoms
Electronegativity, the third concept associated with Pauling's name, is still going strong. It emerged from his concept of partially ionic bonds. The energy of a bond can be considered as the sum of two contributions: a covalent part and an ionic part. 4 is the most electronegative element, caesium with x = 0.7 the least. Apart from providing a basis for estimating bond energies of heteropolar bonds, these x values can also be used to estimate the dipole moment and ionic character of bonds. Other electronegativity scales have been proposed by several authors
Like so many others, I first encountered Pauling through this book, which I discovered some time in my second year as an undergraduate at Glasgow University. It came as a revelation. Setting out to offer an introduction to modem stmctural chemistry, it explained how the stmctures and energies of molecules could be discussed in terms of a few simple principles. The essential first step in understanding chemical phenomena was to establish the atomic arrangements in the substances of interest. To try to understand chemical reactivity without this information or with dubious stmctural information was a waste of time. This was just what I needed to help me make up my mind
Like many of his comments it seems so obvious, almost a truism, but it was not obvious then. Essentially the same idea had been expressed in (13) The detailed mechanism by means of which a gene or a virus molecule produces replicas of itself is not yet known. In general the use of a gene or a virus as a template would lead to the formation of a molecule not with identical structure but with complementary structure... If the structure that serves as a template (the gene or virus molecule) consists of, say, two parts, which are themselves complementary in structure, then each of these parts can serve as the mold for
Both of these prescient statements depend on the concept of complementarity, which arose out of Pauling's early work on proteins and antibodies. This started because, in the search for funding during the depression, Pauling obtained a grant from Warren Weaver, Director of the Rockefeller Foundation Natural Science Division, but only for research in life sciences. With his knowledge of inorganic structural chemistry, haemoglobin was the first target, and, within a few months, he solved an important problem. By magnetic susceptibility measurements it was shown that whereas haemoglobin contains four unpaired electrons per haem and the oxygen molecule contains two, oxyhaem
By this time, Pauling was thinking about antibodies. In 1936 he had met Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943, For.Mem.R.S. 1941), discoverer of the human blood groups and instrumental in establishing immunology as a branch of science. According to Pauling (31), Landsteiner asked him how he would explain the specificity of interaction of antibodies and antigens, to which he replied that he could not. The question set Pauling thinking about the problem, and it was not long before he had a theory (15) that guided his research on antibodies for years to come
The correct part was that the specificity of antibodies for a particular antigen is based on complementarity. 'Atoms and groups which form the surface of the antigen attract certain complementary parts of the globulin chain and repel other parts'. The wrong part was his assumption 'that all antibody molecules contain the same polypeptide chains as normal globulin and differ from normal globulin only in the configuration of the chain'. Pauling was clearly not too happy about this assumption, which he adopted only because of his inability 'to formulate a reasonable mechanism whereby the order of amino-acid residues would be determined by the antigen'. He could not know then about
In 1941 Pauling's intense work schedule was temporarily stemmed when he was diagnosed as having Bright's disease, regarded then by many doctors as incurable. Under the treatment of Dr Thomas Addis, he slowly recovered. Addis, a controversial figure, put Pauling on a lowprotein, salt-free diet, which was effective in healing the damaged kidneys. After about six months Pauling was more or less back to normal, but he kept to Addis's diet for many years afterwards. Pearl Harbour brought further distractions when Pauling's energies were diverted into war work, mainly on rocket propellants and in the search for
By the end of the war, Pauling felt well enough to travel abroad again. In late 1947 he came as Eastman Visiting Professor with his family to England, where he gave lectures to packed out audiences in Oxford and elsewhere, received medals and suffered from the climate. In 1948, confined to bed with a cold, he began thinking again about a problem that had briefly occupied him a decade earlier, the structure of a-keratin. By this time, thanks to the X-ray crystallographic work of Robert B. Corey and his associates, the detailed structures of several amino acids and simple peptides were known
It was taken up again after his return to Pasadena, with the help of Corey and of a young visiting professor, Herman Branson, who checked details of the model and searched for alternatives, but without coming up with anything really new. Then came a paper from the Cavendish Laboratory by Bragg, Kendrew and Perutz (1950), who described several possible helical structures for a-keratin, all unacceptable in Pauling's view because they allowed rotation about the C-N bond of the amide group. This paper provoked Pauling to publish his ideas in a series of papers that described the now famous a-h
Pauling's next essay in model building was not so successful. In the summer of 1952 he learnt about the Hershey-Chase experiment proving that genetic information was carried not by protein but by DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, a polynucleotide. Pauling felt it should be possible to decipher the structure of this substance by building models along similar lines to those in the protein work. The available X-ray diffraction patterns showed a strong reflection at about 3.4 A, but nothing much else. Having convinced himself that a two-stranded helical structure would yield too low a density, he went
Much has been written about this spectacular failure. Why was his model-building approach so successful with the polypeptides and so unsuccessful (in his hands) with DNA? First, the time factor: Pauling had thought about polypeptide structures for more than a decade before he risked publishing his conclusions; he thought only for a few months about DNA. Secondly, the available information: for the polypeptide problem, precise metrical and stereochemical data for amino acids and simple peptides, mostly from Pauling's own laboratory, were at hand; for DNA almost nothing was known about the detailed structures of the monomers or oligomers
Pauling's standing as a founder of molecular biology rests partly on his identification of sickle-cell anemia, a hereditary disease, as a molecular disease, the first to be recognized as such. The red blood cells in the venous systems of sufferers adopt sickle shapes which tend to block small blood vessels, causing distressing symptoms, whereas the cells in the more oxygenated arterial blood have the normal flattened disc shape. When, towards the end of the war, Pauling heard about this it occurred to him that it could be due to the presence of haemoglobin molecules with a different amino acid sequence from normal. The abnormal
A decade later, the further study of mutations in haemoglobin led to yet another fundamental contribution to molecular biology: the concept of the'molecular clock' in evolution (28). By this time, amino acid sequencing of proteins had become standard. Haemoglobins obtained from humans, gorillas, horses and other animals were analysed. From palaeontological evidence, the common ancestor of man and horse lived somewhere around 130 million years ago. The a-chains of horse and human haemoglobin contain about 150 amino acids and differ by about 18 amino acid substitutions, that is, about nine evolutionarily effective mutations
By 1954, when Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his'research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances', not only was he famous as a scientist, he also was a well known public figure, at least in the U.S.A. Although he was not connected in any way with either the Manhattan Project or the Radiation Laboratory, his wartime research on antibodies and rocket propellants had brought him into government advisory agencies such as the Office of Scientific Research and Development (O.S.R.D.) under Vannevar Bush and earned him the Presidential Medal
Almost immediately after August 1945 Pauling became concerned with the implications of the atomic age for international relations and with the necessity for controls. His lectures and writings on this subject soon attracted the attention of the F.B.I. and other government agencies. Far from being intimidated by these attentions, he began, with the encouragement of his wife, Ava Helen, to take a more active stance; he signed petitions, joined organizations (such as the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, presided over by Albert Einstein, and the American Civil Liberties Union), protested against the loyalty oaths demanded of public employees and spoke eloquently against the development
In the McCarthy era, and especially during the Korean War, this was enough to make him suspect as a security risk. Pauling was invited to lecture at a Royal Society meeting on protein structure, held in London in May 1952. In February, his application for a passport was refused because his proposed travel 'would not be in the best interests of the United States'. Renewed applications up to the end of April met with renewed refusals. A few hours before the start of the meeting, Pauling telegraphed his regrets to London. I was present when the news came that Pauling had not been granted a passport
In March 1954, following the Bikini Atoll explosion of a 'dirty' thermonuclear superbomb, Pauling was in the news again when he began to call attention to the worldwide danger of radioactive fallout in the atmosphere. In the summer, his renewed application for a passport was again turned down, but in November, when his Nobel Prize was announced, the State Department found itself in a public relations dilemma. The fuss created by Pauling's absence in London in 1952 would be nothing compared with the international outcry that could be imagined if Pauling were refused permission to travel to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony. So
In the U.S.A. too, the public was becoming increasingly concerned about radioactive fallout, not only from American tests but also from ever more powerful Soviet nuclear explosions. Increasing levels of strontium-90 and carbon-14 made newspaper headlines. Pauling claimed that the increased level of radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere was a danger not only to the living but also to future generations; the spokesmen on the Atomic Energy Commission countered that, although radiation might be harmful, it was not harmful in the doses produced by the tests and that Pauling vastly exaggerated the dangers. In fact, all the estimates were tentative at best, but since
In January 1958 Pauling, together with his wife, was instrumental in collecting thousands of signatures from scientists all over the world for a petition to end nuclear bomb testing, which was presented to Dag Hammerskjoold, Secretary General of the United Nations. A few months later, the Soviet Union called for an immediate halt to nuclear testing, and in October, after more tests by both sides that added markedly to world concern about fallout, talks began in Geneva to discuss details of a possible test ban. During the talks there was an informal moratorium on testing by the Soviet Union, the U.S.A. and the U.K
In 1960 the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (S.I.S.S.) headed by Senator Thomas Dodd issued a subpoena to Pauling to answer questions about Communist infiltration of the campaign against nuclear testing. At Pauling's request, the hearings were open and they soon turned into a public relations fiasco for Dodd and the S.I.S.S. This was partly because the members of the S.I.S.S. had not done their homework properly and partly because it gave Pauling the excuse to lecture them about elementary civic rights and duties: 'The circulation of petitions is an important part of our democratic process. If it is abolished or inhibited,
In 1961 there was a new petition, an 'Appeal to stop the spread of nuclear weapons', again presented to the United Nations, and he also helped to organize the Oslo Conference on the dangers raised by the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But in September there was a new spate of Soviet tests of even more powerful bombs -50 within a couple of months -and in March 1963 President Kennedy announced that the U.S.A. would also resume testing. This time the tests did not last long: they were stopped in the summer, when new proposals were made to forbid atmospheric tests while permitting underground tests. In August both
By now, especially in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, the cultural climate has changed so much that this short account of atom politics until 1963 must strike younger readers as almost inconceivable. In the summer of 1995, when France exploded some 'nuclear devices' several hundred metres underground below a remote atoll in the South Pacific, there was an international outcry of protest, by governments, by the press and by the public. Forty years ago, when tons of radioactive material were being spewed into the atmosphere by test after test, there was no such outcry, at least not in the U.S.A
A few days after the news of the Peace Prize, Pauling announced that he was leaving Caltech to become a member of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara. He was disappointed with the lukewarm reaction of the administration and some of his colleagues. Perhaps he had intended to move anyway. In the mid-1950s he had become interested in phenylketonuria (mental deficiency due to inability to metabolize phenylalanine) as a further example of a molecular disease arising from the lack of a specific enzyme. About this time too he was developing his theory that xenon acts as an ana
The next few years were not the happiest in Pauling's life. Not only did he sever his connection with Caltech, he resigned from the American Chemical Society as well. The move to Santa Barbara was not a success. He turned to theoretical physics, but his close-packed spheron theory of the atomic nucleus met with little acceptance. He became engaged in actual and threatened libel suits. He moved briefly to the University of California at San Diego and then on to Stanford University, where he was closer to his ranch at Big Sur, but he had no stable position in which to continue his planned research into 'orthomolecular' psychiatric
One consolation was that, after passing his 65th birthday, Pauling's health took a sudden turn for the better. Thanks to Dr Addis's unconventional low-protein diet, he had recovered well from the kidney disease that had laid him low in his forties, but he had always suffered from severe colds several times a year. In 1966, following a suggestion from Dr Irwin Stone, the Paulings began to take 3g of ascorbic acid per day each. Almost immediately they felt livelier and healthier. Over the next few years the colds that had plagued him all his life became less
In his 1970 book Vitamin C and the common cold (29), Pauling gave evolutionary arguments why much larger amounts of vitamin C than the RDA may be conducive to optimal health, he cited studies that supported its efficacy in preventing colds or at least in lessening their severity, he criticized studies that claimed the opposite and he argued that since vitamin C is not a drug but a nutrient there is no reason why a large daily intake should be harmful. Pauling's arguments did not win the approval of the medical profession but they caught on with the general public. The book rapidly became a best seller. As a result, in
One result of the book was a collaboration with a Scottish surgeon, Ewan Cameron, from Vale of Leven, who had observed beneficial effects of high doses of vitamin C in treating terminal cancer patients. Cameron thought that vitamin C might be involved in strengthening the intracellular mucopolysaccharide hyaluronic acid by helping to inhibit the action of the enzyme hyaluronidase produced by invasive cancerous cells. A paper by Cameron and Pauling (30) advocating vitamin C therapy in cancer was submitted to the Proceedings o f the National Academy o f Sciences o f the U.S.A. and, in an unprecedented move

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