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This special issue of Ambix brings together eight new studies on Humphry Davy together with an appreciation of the life and work of David Knight, much of whose scholarship was devoted to understanding Davy. Taken together they provide a much richer and more nuanced account of aspects of Davy's life, showing how he and his work fitted into the very complex and difficult social, cultural and political contexts of the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Taking as our starting point Thomas Carlyle's 1829 critique of modern science, in this introduction we weld together the themes that emerge from these papers, many of which ground their results in the project to publish Davy's Letters. This project has provided evidence that helps us critique the disciplinary boundaries that led to Davy becoming seen mostly as a chemist, while his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge has generally been categorised as a poet. Such boundaries are now breaking down fruitfully as these essays all illustrate in their different ways. A consequence of the new understandings being produced, is that we need to consider anew what constitutes chemistry and chemists, how reputations and commemorations are constructed, the role of audiences (especially women) in developing knowledge and the use of language and literature, which, among other things, are key elements linking chemistry with other parts of society and culture. Davy provides an excellent location by which to address the historical issues involved, giving us an opportunity to balance carefully these and other components (such as human agency) in understanding how knowledge is constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies deny that Kritik der Urteilskraft played a significant role in the early reception of Kant's philosophy in England. In this paper, I examine the notebooks, letters and lectures of several members of British medical and scientific institutions to tell a different story. Drawing from the writings of Thomas Beddoes, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Joseph Henry Green and William Whewell, I identify a line of reception in which Kant's critique of judgement's power of reflection was used to establish the consilience of the mind's anticipation of systematic order and the organization of natural bodies. Each discovered in Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft a shared principle for judgements of taste and scientific inquiry, made available through the mind's affective response to the appearance of contingent order in nature. Their writings, I contend, evince a more sophisticated reception of Kant's philosophy in England than has hitherto been recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No one sincerely doubts that schools should take seriously the need to develop children's imaginations and their capacity to be imaginative. The issue is what does this mean? And what are its implications? This paper, which is mostly inspired by the writings about the imagination of two British nineteenth-century Romantic poets – Coleridge and Wordsworth – provides some answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term “double touch” occurs only once in the published work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a fact which belies the notable philosophical attention it is shown in his notebooks and letters. This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of double touch, examining the concept alongside the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This analysis frames double touch as a concept which engages with the lived experience of embodied consciousness and cognition, operating at the threshold between affective sensation and active practical volition. In this capacity, it will be shown how Coleridge makes use of the concept to challenge the deterministic model of human volition put forward by necessitarianism. The overall aim is to show how the concept of double touch functions as a bridge between Coleridge’s epistemic interests in sense experience and his moral philosophical concerns about the notion of human free will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Logic and its interpretation of Kant's "science of transcendental analysis" as a theory of the cognitive faculties and their "inherent forms" or "several functional powers". I explain why Coleridge characterises transcendental analysis as an "investigation into the constitution and constituent forms" of the faculties, and consider the reasons behind his schematic division of such inquiry into "transcendental [ ... ] Æsthetic, Logic, and Noetic". I argue that Coleridge's claims about the forms, operations, and contents that derive from different cognitive powers, and the philosophical method that enables us to prove such derivation, are based on Kant's theory of "transcendental reflection". I also explain how Coleridge's facultative conception of transcendental analysis relates to recent scholarship on Kant's accounts of (i) our cognitive capacities and (ii) the purposes of transcendental reflection. My essay does not aim to defend Coleridge's interpretation of Kant, but rather to provide a clearer picture of how this interpretation informs Coleridge's analysis of cognitive activity and mental content in Logic, including his "transcendental noetic", which seeks to explain the possibility of the kind intellectual intuition that Kant explicitly denies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I propose a reading of Coleridge and Hölderlin using Stanley Cavell’s philosophical theory of acknowledgment and avoidance as an interpretive rubric. I argue that recognition (acknowledgment) of the skeptical limits of reason and the imagination allow Hölderlin, through his poetical theory, philosophy and practice, to overcome the epistemological limits of the romantic imagination; this factor is instanced in his poetry. On the other hand, Coleridge's work remains trapped within skeptical limits because of his “avoidance” of this ontological recognition, which is due to his continued desire for an intellectual intuition. I further my argument by using the hermeneutics of Heidegger as a secondary tool in reading both poets and in helping to illuminate their relative poetic and philosophical positions. Both poets ultimately recognize the limits of our imaginative autonomy; however, they articulate these limits in very different ways – ways that are useful keys in unlocking the work of Coleridge and Hölderlin. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Coleridge's investment in aesthetics and criticism has broadly been understood as an attempt to overcome the Kantian bargain by which knowledge of the world is gained by relinquishing the thing in itself. This paper seeks to supplement that understanding by recasting the stakes of Kant's critical philosophy in terms of a conflict over the limits and possibility of “discovery.” Drawing on contemporary accounts of discovery by Captain Cook and George Shelvocke, the essay explores the critical role discovery plays in the “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as an historical practice of maritime expansion and mapping, as a textual event, and as an integral moment in the practice of literary criticism, which is to say, of “reading.” Maritime discovery in the Rime, the essay argues, allegorizes literary criticism, revealing both the promise and the limits of the romantic conception of literature as containing its own criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Here I present 'stories of reading' as a model that takes account of the way an actual reader, together with other readers in a group, reacts to a text as part of an interpretive event. I demonstrate the model through the shared reading and discussion, by a non-academic group of Israeli women, of a Hebrew translation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Romantic fragment Christabel. This work, published in 1816, has produced a rich history of 'stories of reading' in oral group discussions during its creation and since its reception. Thus, I argue, it entails collaborative investigation and interpretation. Moreover, its potential as a fragment poem may be fully uncovered and brought to the fore when read in a group context. I present an ethnography of the reading that examines how personal and collective 'stories of reading' in this group revealed meanings of the poem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with Coleridge's view of science as at once a branch of knowledge and a creative activity, mediating between man and nature, and thereby complementing poetry. Coleridge was well-informed about contemporary science. He stressed the symbolic status of scientific language, the role of scientific genius, and the need in science to rely upon reason rather than the unqualified senses. Kepler and, more recently, John Hunter and Humphry Davy provided his favorite instances of scientific genius, while chemistry--Davy's not Lavoisier's--was poetic. Science and poetry could both rely on reason, the power of language, and faithfulness to nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the parliamentary reporting carried out in 1800 by authors in Great Britain. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's reporting of the speech of politician William Pitt; Authenticity of the recording of speeches made in parliament; Performance of various teams of parliamentary reporters; Reproduction of William Pitt's speech and witticism; Evidence of Coleridge's skills as a writer and orator.

Reacting to incoherent English teaching in the 1930s, Percival Gurrey probed the psychological processes involved in literary appreciation. He sought ways of teaching poetry that avoided lifeless tasks such as labelling ‘poetic devices’. Later, in the 1950s, he wrote about the processes involved in learning to write. At a time when psychology dominated educational discourse, he was in touch with new developments in both literary criticism and linguistics, and he evolved a bridging theory of language, learning and development that spanned philosophy, psychology and literary theory. I connect Gurrey’s sense of wholeness of response to his reading in Coleridge. By returning to debates surrounding Coleridge I show how a new appreciation of what language accomplishes emerged. Gurrey discovered that writing has a central place in children’s developmentas a whole. From such hard-won discoveries a unified theory of development in talking, reading and writing duly emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article makes a case for recording and using dreams in the teaching of writing. Calling on some well-known statements of Freud and on some recent research, I attempt to show how dreams can provide writers with a route to their unconscious. I also illustrate the role of dreams in furnishing writers with inspiration and source material. I provide examples of writing, both my own poems and extracts from the work of Coleridge, Byatt, Kafka, Blanchot and Murakami amongst others, to show how dreams, the experience of dreaming and dream-like imagery have been used successfully in literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the relationship between poetry and mathematics in nineteenth-century thought, particularly in relation to the notion of the world as a text, utterance, program, or formula created by God. In the works of writers and mathematicians as diverse as Coleridge, Hopkins, Lovelace, and Babbage, poetry and mathematics are frequently conceptualized in terms of one another, or envisaged as unified in the context of the world as Divine Logos. Furthermore, the idea of the world as a text or formula which theoretically could be deciphered often translates into an ambition to incarnate language or mathematics into reality itself through providing a 'uniting link' (Lovelace) between the material and symbolic worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Stuart Mill's classic tale of disillusionment from a ‘narrow creed’, an overt as much as a covert theme of his Autobiography (London, 1873), has for many years served as a guide to the search for the causes and sources of his ‘enlargement-of-the-utilitarian-creed’ project. As a result, in analyses of Mill's mature views, Samuel Taylor Coleridge—and friends—commonly take centre stage in terms of influence, whereas John's father—James Mill—is reduced either to a supernumerary or a villain in the last act of John's intellectual development. However, students of Mill's works should not take at face value the story presented in Autobiography. Mill's own emphasis on the role of his ‘new influences’ has led scholars to disregard the role of his ‘old influences’ in his attempt to create a broader theory of living—one which takes into account both the intellectual and the emotional capacities of individuals. A close look at key aspects of John Stuart Mill's ‘enlargement project’ suggests that James Mill may have played a more positive role than is usually acknowledged. A way into the intellectual affinity of the two Mills is the person they both kept returning to for guidance and inspiration throughout their lives: Plato. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Explores the educational philosophy of William Godwin. Contribution to educational debate and praxis in the late 18th and early 19th century; Influence of experience in educating his own family on the development of his philosophy of education; Attempt to provide a structured series of books in accordance to his definition of the primary purpose of education; Influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Godwin's educational philosophy.

Analyzes the ways in which constructions of masculinity and femininity function within pastoral poetry of the Romantic period in England. Reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem `Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement'; Drawing upon the work of Jacques Derrida; Work of Helene Cixous.

Focuses on the similarity between the philosophies of nature of philosophers Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Isaac Newton. Target of Coleridge's condemnations. Role of immaterial agencies in physics; Importance on the structure of the universe; Evolution of hostility on Newtonianism.

Looks at the eloquence of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Reason for Coleridge's dislike of the manual work of composition; Comparison between Coleridge and Plato; Difference of a rhetorician from a poet.

Features author Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Criticisms on the works of Coleridge; His views on books; His interest in writing.

Presents several abstracts of theses in the field of speech related interpretative reading. Analysis of reading and speaking of Vachel Lindsay by Radford Benson Kuykendall of the Northwestern University in Illinois; Study of oral interpretation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's biographies 'Christabel' by Doris Darlene Beaver of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma.