Tom Almeroth-Williams writes for University of Cambridge Stories about “a treasure trove of women’s intellectual history”:
The astonishing collection comprises 47 books and pamphlets owned and annotated by the philosopher Mary Astell (1666–1731), viewed by many as “the first English feminist”. Astell’s hand-written notes reveal, for the first time, that she engaged with complex natural philosophy including the ideas of René Descartes. […]
In the early eighteenth century, only a minority of British women could read in English, let alone in French. But even more unusual is the extent of Astell’s scientific understanding which this precious collection makes clear. Catherine Sutherland, Deputy Librarian at Magdalene, who made the discovery says: “Women’s book collections from this period are so rare but it’s even more amazing to find one being used to advance a woman’s career as a writer. Magdalene’s collection represents the nucleus of Astell’s library, including the books that influenced her most.” […]
“This is a major discovery”, says Mark Goldie, Emeritus Professor of Intellectual History at Cambridge. “As a published woman, engaging in polemic, Astell was rare in her time, brave too. Her books reveal a great deal: her reading, her responses, her political and religious commitments, her fluency in French, her grasp of the new philosophy of Descartes, and her engagement with science.” […]
Of the 47 items in the collection, 40 are books and 7 are pamphlets, mostly philosophical, theological, and political works. Thanks to Astell’s note-making, we know that she bought at least 10 of the book titles (mostly second-hand) and that another 13 were gifts or bequests. All of the titles date from the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries and closely correlate with Astell’s academic interests and the trajectory of her writing career. Twenty-eight of the items are in English, eighteen in French and one in Latin. Sutherland says: “I love the inscriptions in the books which were gifted to Astell. These helped me find out more about her circle of friends and colleagues, and build up a picture of how she exchanged ideas with both male academics and like-minded women.” […]
The detailed notes relating to maths and science are particularly striking, and there are specific works which Astell refers to in her notes, such as Borellus’ De vi Percussionis, et Motionibus Naturalibus a Gravitate Pendentibus (1686) and issues of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. Astell studied astronomy with John Flamsteed between 1697 and 1698, and her notes in [Descartes’] Les Principes [de la Philosophie] demonstrate that she had already attained a high level of understanding in the sciences prior to her formal studies with the Astronomer Royal. […]
In the 1740s, it was rumoured that Astell left an extensive library to ‘Magdalen College’ on her death and in the draft manuscript of Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain George Ballard stated that ‘She gave her library, which was a pretty large one to Magdalene College in Oxford’. Crucially, ‘in Oxford’ has been deleted, presumably because Ballard couldn’t find any evidence of Astell’s books at his own college: Magdalen, Oxford. This mix-up is understandable since it was only in the nineteenth century that the final ‘e’ was added to the Cambridge college to better differentiate between the two, and any references to Magdalen prior to this without the suffix ‘Oxon’ or ‘Cant’ to guide the reader could refer to either college.
The webpage layout is great, with lots of illustrations and quotes. It always angers me to think about people like her, prevented from making more significant contributions by gender, class, or any of the other criteria the privileged use to keep down the rest. Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear, and all that. At any rate, if you’re wondering about the name Astell, it is (like Astle) a variant of the fine old surname Ashkettle < ON. Ásketill ‘God-cauldron,’ which may also have given the name Axel.
The Lord giveth and taketh away. As Astell’s notes were found, a link at the bottom of the page informs us that two of Darwin’s notebooks, thought misplaced since 2001, have not been found and are presumed stolen. That includes the one with his “tree of life” drawing.
I hope very much hope it is found, but at least those notes have been photographed and published, which Astell’s have not until now.
Thanks for this. I heard an interview with a physicist about her on a public radio show, and I struggled to understand her importance. The questions were all, But what did she do? and the answers were, Nothing, really. The linked article is much more interesting.
PS- the etymology of Astell led me to do some googling and sure enough – the surname of the great cyclist and five-time winner of the Tour de France, Jacques Anquetil, is a Norman version of the same name.
There’s also Viscount St. Austell-in-the-Moor Biggleswade-Brixham.
two of Darwin’s notebooks, thought misplaced since 2001, have not been found and are presumed stolen.
“Misplaced” ?? As in “left them on a seat in the Number 10 bus” ?
In the early eighteenth century, only a minority of British women could read in English, let alone in French.
Is this true, or is it merely formulated in such a way as to encourage belief that it’s true ? It seems, if only by suppressio veri, to imply that in the early eighteenth century a majority of British men could read in English. Perhaps something like suppressio pertinentiorum would better describe what I suspect here.
Misshelved. They searched the library very thoroughly before declaring them stolen.
Have I mentioned Elizabeth Fulhame before? If not, let me mention her now. She lived a couple of generations after after Mary Astell, but still, a long time ago. The Wikiparticle about her gives a good account of why she’s worth knowing about.
The conventional wisdom FWIW seems to be that the percentage of English females who were literate only reached parity with the percentage of English males who were literate circa 1870. Whether the male percentage was actually as high as 50% during Astell’s lifetime seems debatable, but it was significantly higher than the female percentage.
One of my great-great-grandmothers (born 1835 in Nova Scotia, died 1922 in Michigan) was illiterate her entire life, which is apparently mentioned in family history simply because it was unusual enough to be noteworthy for a North American white woman of that generation (at least one not living in some sort of out-of-the-mainstream enclave like Appalachia).
It seems, if only by suppressio veri, to imply that in the early eighteenth century a majority of British men could read in English.
I disagree, and I don’t think most people would read it that way. It’s simply a statement about women.
I initially read it as an implicit comparison to British men of the time. However, I quickly realized that I wasn’t sure what the implied rate of literacy among the men was actually supposed to be—greater than the rate among women, or greater than half in absolute terms.
That’s just our ingrained sexism, seeing everything in terms of “but what about the men?” To say “only a minority of British women could read in English, let alone in French” is purely to make a statement about women. A German might as well take it as implying something about Germans.
But the discourse context in which the statement occurs is that Astell was unusual (in having a book collection, in having her own writing published, in having “scientific understanding,” whatever that may be) precisely because she was a woman, so a claim about lower literacy rates of British women in general made in that context carries at least some degree of implicature regarding a difference between female and male literacy rates in that time and place.
Also, there’s some sort of broader Gricean thing going on. If you make a statement about “life expectancy of American women” there’s some implicature that that’s going to be a different number than “life expectancy of Americans” (an implicature that implies in turn that there’s some sort of male/female difference in life expectancy) because you would not have specified the additional level of detail if it wasn’t relevant to the resultant number.
Note, however, that female literacy among the book-buying classes of British society did rise throughout the 18th century, leading to a commonplace complaint that the new-fangled novel was displacing epic poetry etc. on the literary scene precisely because it was the sort of thing that appealed to female readers. And part of the claim being made for Astell here is that she was reading “serious” books, not mere novels.
Also, there’s some sort of broader Gricean thing going on. If you make a statement about “life expectancy of American women” there’s some implicature that that’s going to be a different number than “life expectancy of Americans” (an implicature that implies in turn that there’s some sort of male/female difference in life expectancy) because you would not have specified the additional level of detail if it wasn’t relevant to the resultant number.
That’s not the way people write (or think), whatever logicians may say. It’s quite possible to write “only a minority of British women could read in English, let alone in French” without having a single thought about what percentage of men could read. People do not express themselves either logically or parsimoniously; they say things they think are interesting.
There’s a vintage 1905 article you can now find (huzzah for the public domain) freely on the internet titled “The Books of Lydia Languish’s Circulating Library,” about the fictitious book collection of a fictitious 18th-century Englishwoman. You probably need JSTOR or comparable access, however, to read the more recent piece by Brewer and Whitehead: “The Books of Lydia Languish’s Circulating Library Revisited,” Notes and Queries 255.4 (2010): 551-53 (which I haven’t read myself, despite being acquainted with one of the authors).
That’s just our ingrained sexism, seeing everything in terms of “but what about the men?”
If in fact only a small minority of men or women could read English in that period, then the statement “only a minority of British women could read in English” is at best misleading. “What about the men” is irrelevant to me, in the sense you are using it.
I would react in a similar way if someone wrote “in the early eighteenth century few pet cats were housebroken”. I would wonder whether that is intended to insinuate that more pet dogs were housebroken. Would you then accuse me of ingrained doggism ?
Edit: Sparky just informed me that I don’t do enough for him to earn myself the title of “ingrained doggist”.
Gricean maxims are not abstract points about formal logic, but empirical claims about empirical patterns in, and conventions of, actual human interaction via language. Which is why the maxims point to tendencies, not inflexible rules. While it is certainly possible to talk about a woman from 300 years ago without much focus on or attention to the differences in the social condition of males and females at the time, that is very much not what this author is doing.
If in fact only a small minority of men or women could read English in that period, then the statement “only a minority of British women could read in English” is at best misleading. “What about the men” is irrelevant to me, in the sense you are using it.
You may think it’s irrelevant to you, but in fact that’s how you’re thinking. Why don’t you complain about the lack of attention to Germans?
Would you then accuse me of ingrained doggism ?
Yes, though it wouldn’t be an accusation, just a statement. Why would you automatically think of dogs if someone said something about cats?
It’s like authors who hear some other author praised and immediately feel slighted. “The implication is that I’m not as good!”
Sources disagree, even about what literacy means, but it just may be that in the early 18th something like 40% of women and 60% of men were able to read an almanac if they had to. Calling that a minority of women and a majority of men is technically valid, but would also be true if it was 0% for women and 100% for men — I think disingenious is the word here. But the quote is silent about the men, so we’re just guessing at the intended comparison.
In any case I’m pretty sure that it was a minority of Britons of the time who would have been able to master the content of Mary Astell’s collection, so the only reason to talk about the literacy of specifically women in this context is identity politics. But there are still sore spots that need applications of the wirebrush of enlightenment, so bring it on.
You probably need JSTOR or comparable access, however, to read the more recent piece by Brewer and Whitehead: “The Books of Lydia Languish’s Circulating Library Revisited,” Notes and Queries 255.4 (2010): 551-53
If only it were on JSTOR! Then anyone could read half of it (it’s apparently only two pages long), and I could read the whole thing. Instead, “you can request a copy directly from the authors.”
I think disingenious is the word here
The word you’re looking for is “disingenuous,” but that’s entirely in the eye of the beholder, as is the mention of “identity politics.” It depresses me that that’s the reaction to any account of what women have done despite what they have had to put up with.
Disingenuous is exactly the word I needed, instead of “misleading” and “tendentious”.
You may think it’s irrelevant to you, but in fact that’s how you’re thinking.
Nope. I’m not hetero, thank God. What a barrel of discursive pickle y’all have got into ! A crowd of cornichons sticking toothpicks into each other.
Why don’t you complain about the lack of attention to Germans?
I didn’t “complain” about anything but lack of clarity. As far as I am concerned, men and women both can take their gender attentions to where pepper grows [Ger.loc.].
There are only certain specific contexts in which not-being-cats is the primary conceptual feature of dogs or not-being-dogs is the primary conceptual feature of cats, but (at least among mammals etc.) maleness and femaleness exist as concepts primarily if not solely by contrast to each other, so any time you talk about one, an implicit contrast with the other is plausibly lurking in the background. If humanity were divided solely (or overwhelmingly, with a small percentage not fitting cleanly into either major category) into British people and German people, the same would be true for those categories, but it’s not.
The easiest linguistic way to make the male/female contrast seem less salient in contexts where you think it oughtn’t be salient, is not to mention either sex.
Don’t mention the war, and don’t mention the sex.
You may think it’s irrelevant to you, but in fact that’s how you’re thinking.
Ideologieverdacht, as they called it some 100 years ago (round about).
Nope. I’m not hetero, thank God.
Good lord, do you really think homosexuality is a remedy against sexism? You need to get out more.
maleness and femaleness exist as concepts primarily if not solely by contrast to each other, so any time you talk about one, an implicit contrast with the other is plausibly lurking in the background.
For certain values of “plausibly.”
Sadly identity politics is sort of political correctness 2.0 as a disparagement of social criticism you don’t want to take seriously — but that was not why I mentioned it. With the amount of unfairness in the world as it is, we sorely need anything that pokes a hole in the narrative of white males having created all of western culture and science — but claiming that that is not a motive in writing that article is not honest.
I think JWB’s Gricean point is valid; but I’m not sure how much weight any violation of the Maxim of Quantity involved by the specification of “women” in “only a minority of British women could read in English” should carry in the context of an article which (if I am not mistaken) is about a woman. It’s more like gender agreement.*
*Now that I think of it, from the point of view of an English speaker, grammatical gender is an institutionalised violation of the Maxim of Quantity. Surely there is a PhD in this?
I assume “doggism” shifts the balance in favour of dogs.
Then “sexism”, “racism” etc. would be either
– a kind of pro-segregation ideology, one that assigns undue importance to person’s race or sex (men should do this, women should do that).
– an ideology, treating one sex as dominant.
I am against sexism and racism in the former sense. The second sense is a subtype of it, and I am against it as well.
seeing everything in terms of “but what about the men?””
This is what I’m always striving to do. Without this “what about men?” part you will never solve anything.
Good lord, do you really think homosexuality is a remedy against sexism?
You fell for it !!
What I wrote was “I’m not hetero, thank God” – and you immediately retort “what about homosexuals, you think they’re not sexist?” And yet you accuse me of thinking “what about the men?” when women have been mentioned.
Somebody sure is in thrall to saying “what about B” when A is mentioned, but it ain’t me.
Also, there was no mention of remedies. Unless a honey trap counts as one.
Myself, I took Stu’s remark as a simple outburst of pious thankfulness. I think it does him credit.
You can always rely on a Calvinist to put things in their proper light !
I now feel obliged, in turn, to turn myself in as an imposter. With that cryptic clue “air of resignation?”, I guessed that “air” might mean “melody/song”, but could get no further. So I looked it up in the ‘net, and immediately found it.
I herewith return my prize. It’s a fair cop, guv’nor.
Ah, but you now have the unutterably greater prize of a clear conscience, Brother!
But sexism apart – yes, this text is a bit confusing.
1. Maybe the author is treating “women” as the scope of interest for the whole article.
The claim is then made about this specific subset, other subsets are ignored (as if she was writing about “Japanese” rather than “women”).
2. Or maybe this “scope of interest” is the whole society. This is how most most readers think.
In that case the claim is interpreted as “unlike men” – or why else narrow down the scope of this observation to “women”?
If the author wrote “unfortunately we do not know the level of literacy among males, we only have data for women”, this would cause certain discomfort. The reader would feel that her (reader’s, and author’s too) information is incomplete in some uncomfortable way.
the unutterably greater prize of a clear conscience
There is more work to be done ! I have left a message on the answering machine of Augean Stables Personal Property Management GmbH.
Again, I think the most importance piece of context here is that the article is about a woman who is being held out as noteworthy for doing things that: a) were not commonly done by women in the time and place at question although they were more commonly done by men (not that >50% of the men in the society did them, but that the minority in the society who did do them was overwhelmingly male); and b) require literacy as a prerequisite for doing them. The combination of a) and b) makes the issue of whether the female literacy rate was lower than the male literacy rate in that society relevant to the theme of the article in a way that the issue whether, for example, median female height was lower than median male height is not.
To one of Drasvi’s points, it is more likely for a number of reasons that we might have better data for male literacy rates in certain historical times/places than we do for female literacy rates, although I suppose in some particular instance it could be the other way round. (For example, we have much better data on historical trends in height for males than females because back in the 18th century the only institution in many countries that routinely measured the height of lots of individuals and then kept records of it was the military, which generally did not have a reason to measure the height of females.)
“It always angers me to think about people like her, prevented from making more significant contributions by gender, class, or any of the other criteria the privileged use to keep down the rest.”
For example, when scientific monographs cost ~$200 for no reason*, when your government is pressing mine to adopt its (unknown here before) copyright legislation and when people call this persversion “moral”…
—
*any reason for limiting access to science other than limiting access to science?
My reading is that a low share of women could read, that there’s reason to believe that this share was different from other comparable halves of society, that no claim is made as to how different, and that the author may not have the information or interest to discuss it in this context.
I’d think Anquetil was from Arnketill rather than Ásketill.
I was just relying on Wikipedia –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anquetil
Zalizniak complained that when the first unambiguously female birch bark letter was found, some scholars still tried to prove somehow that it was written by a man, because the stereotype “illiterate women in medieval Russia” was too powerful.
yes, this text is a bit confusing.
Only if one insists on reading everything through Gricean spectacles.
My reading is that a low share of women could read, that there’s reason to believe that this share was different from other comparable halves of society, that no claim is made as to how different, and that the author may not have the information or interest to discuss it in this context.
A breath of good sense! Thank you. That is my take as well.
“Only if one insists on reading everything through Gricean spectacles.”
I do not insist. I normally read texts this way:/ When I spoke about the discomfort, my point was: as readers we want to know the situation in the society as a whole. Just “literacy rate” and if it is structured (different for men and women or different for age group, classes etc.), then we want to know how. When our information is partial, we feel discomfort, because our scope is ‘society’.
Then when the author without any explanation says “women” – a reader has two options:
– think that the author’s scope is different
– think that the author is contrasting women to men here.
When a reader is aware of both options, she is confused.
When a reader finds the latter option more likely, she calls it “misleading”.
When a reader finds the former option more likely, she sees no problem here.
as readers we want to know the situation in the society as a whole. Just “literacy rate” and if it is structured (different for men and women or different for age group, classes etc.), then we want to know how. When our information is partial, we feel discomfort, because our scope is ‘society’.
Speak for yourself. My scope is the article, and I’m interested in what the author has to tell me. The other stuff is “But what about Germany/men/dogs?”
I am speaking from the position of a reader who exactly wants to understand the author AND the society in question.
When a reader finds the former option more likely, she sees no problem here.
Your case. If you were not confused. I was. I could see that the author either means that male literacy rate was much higher or just does not find overall literacy rate important. I did not know which one of two.
But, as J.W. Brewer said: The combination of a) and b) makes the issue of whether the female literacy rate was lower than the male literacy rate in that society relevant to the theme of the article in a way that the issue whether, for example, median female height was lower than median male height is not.
“In the middle of the seventeenth century, when only a minority of British men could read in English, let alone in French, John Locke engaged with complex natural philosophy including the ideas of René Descartes.” Does this sentence sound weird, on Gricean or other grounds (assuming the claim about the overall male literacy rate is historically accurate)? Does it sound weirder than the comparable claim about Mary Astell? If so, why?
It soudns a bit patronizing towards men.
It sounds utterly normal to me. But I never bought any Gricean spectacles; I couldn’t afford them.
Zalizniak complained that when the first unambiguously female birch bark letter was found, some scholars still tried to prove somehow that it was written by a man, because the stereotype “illiterate women in medieval Russia” was too powerful.
Supposedly – or so I’ve heard – one of the biggest arguments was that there were (then) no known Old Russian female names with that ending. Except that (again, supposedly) prior to birch bark letters there were only about a dozen known Old Russian female names period, and it was only pure coincidence that none of them happened to share that particular ending.
It sounds utterly normal to me. But I never bought any Gricean spectacles; I couldn’t afford them.
Ditto, though I’d probably call it disingenuous if the minority was closer to 40% than 10%.
(It would not surprise me much – though I hadn’t looked it up – if even in the late twentieth century less than 50% British people of either gender could read in any language other than English.)
Yes, that is how Zaliznyak put it.
But I do not understand. The letter itself is a complaint at someone’s husband. Why the woman is supposed to have written it on her own?
She could simply have asked her literate slave-girl from one of those savage tribes….
I see. Anti-Chomskyanism having become so commonplace and uncontroversial on this blog as not to get anyone riled up or lead to fireworks, a move to anti-Griceanism is in the works in order to boost ratings.
My view is that when discussing someone who was a member of the literate minority in a primarily illiterate society it is generally gratuitous (and thus distracting) to point out that the particular literate person is in fact doing something literate people do, unless there is some more specific reason to find it statistically surprising or unexpected that the particular person is part of the literate minority in the first place. If women are less likely (in the given time and place) to be literate, then the person’s femaleness is salient. If literacy in England in those days had been geographically skewed such that it was more surprising than average for a man from Somerset to be literate, then Locke having been born and raised in Somerset might be salient. If (counterfactually) he had been from a family background (in terms of money or paternal occupation) that was negatively correlated with literacy, that would be salient. But talking about the male literacy rate is (in this particular context) not really salient if “Despite being a man, Locke was literate” is in context a weird claim to make.
Obviously, people (especially when not well-edited) do from time to time say things that are gratuitous and not salient to the point they seem to be trying to make, which is why all of these Gricean-type judgments are statistical tendencies rather than bright-line absolutes.
Oh, I’m not anti-Gricean, Grice is fine in his place. I just don’t think his place is to be in charge of general reading/writing.
Better him than Wittgenstein, mind you.
First of all, I want to thank you for recommending this article, it’s very interesting to me. I didn’t know of Mary Astell before, perhaps because philosophy always has seemed difficult to me.
Secondly, I want to give my opinion on the feminist discussion. Hat, your social circles are very different from mine. In my circles, people don’t normally point out the gender of a person repeteadly as is done in the article. Thoughtful writers also avoid to repeat the word “man” too often, since the idea of the “universal” man is nowadays looked down on. To me, it’s very clear that the author of the article and the experts quoted, contrasts women with men. For example, with only minimal changes: “Book collections from this period are so rare but it’s even more amazing to find one being used to advance a career as a writer.” That would still be a comment on the unfairness of society in that time period, it would still be an example of how the powerful silence the less powerful, but it wouldn’t be the exact same story. If the dichotomy between “woman” and “man” is a sign of sexism, then it’s not only the readers that are sexist, it’s also the writers. And how could it be otherwise? We can’t step out of a sexist society and take it down from afar, we need to deconstruct the sexist society from within, among all the left overs from centuries of oppression.
Finally, in the sentence with “British women”, I was more struck with the fact that literacy was relevant for English and French, and not, as I would have expected, for English and Latin.
Either that, or the nasal vowels (Ans- in one or two German names) were still nasal when the Northmen arrived in Normandy – after all they were still nasal in the First Grammatical Treatise (and are still nasal in Älvdalen, even the really old ones that weren’t even marked in Gothic anymore).
Semantic question: what is “kettle” doing in theophoric names?
If the dichotomy between “woman” and “man” is a sign of sexism
It’s not.
Better him than Wittgenstein, mind you.
Infidel!
If the dichotomy between “woman” and “man” is a sign of sexism, then it’s not only the readers that are sexist, it’s also the writers.
I made a similar claim above, but I wrote “undue importance”. Then the question is what is due.
I am not fond of strict gender roles. I also love to be gendered.
I am sexist according to my own definition: as a man I do care more about women and their rights. If women choose to care about me, I won’t object though. This way I am for gender and for equality at once.
This is why after having read the debate about pronouns here, I began using “she” as a generic third person. A beautiful solution would be men using “she” and women using “he”. And if no one else is doing it this way, it does not mean that I can’t. (Unfortunately it does not solve the problem for transgender people).
If I can put my oar in…. The whole “only few women could read, but she studied contemporary philosophy” sounds completely incongruous to me. It sort of suggest that as soon as more women would learn to read they thereupon become philosophers. A bit like saying “she studies protein folding pathways, but most women don’t even know what proteins are made of” And??? “She is a great Mozart performer, but most women don’t know how to read music”. I would say that given the scarcity of women education in the bygone era, it is less surprising that those who obtained it tried to put it to a better use.
Anyway. This fragment quoted by LH is not bad in any way. I was confused by that line, about women. Maybe I wear Gricean glasses, but how on Earth I am supposed to know what the author meant? And how can I think about “literacy among women” or “… men”, without tinking about literacy in that society in general? I do not think it has to do with my (aforeproclaimed) sexism. Yet a confusing (for me) line is nothing really terrible.
And yes, “it is less surprising that those who obtained it tried to put it to a better use.“. True, but the fact is still noteworthy if unsurprising.
“In the middle of the seventeenth century, when only a minority of British men could read in English, let alone in French, John Locke engaged with complex natural philosophy including the ideas of René Descartes.”
I don’t know whether Locke and Descartes wrote to each other, or simply read each other works, but most of those communications would probably have been in Latin.
“Anquetil” ; When I was young, my family lived in Southern Normandy and a few kilmeters away was a manor owned by a noble family named “Adigard des Gautries” (this was the family name, not the full name of one of its members). The head of that family at the time was a university professor, THE specialist in the Scandinavian substatum in Norman language and culture. The etymology of Anquetil is “Arnketil”.
DM: “Semantic question: what is “kettle” doing in theophoric names?”
As shown by the designs on the Gundestrup cauldron, and by the very fact of its existence, a metal vessel large enough to accommodate the body of a large animal or a human was important in North European mythology and religious rituals. As in other mythologies, some of the gods were commonly associated with some significant object that played a role in their myth and through which the god manifested their power. Thor was famous for wielding a huge hammer. The giant cauldron, or ketil, must have figured in some episode or ritual in the myth or legend of a character called Arn, even if this character’s nature is not obvious to us now. In naming their children, especially their sons, the ruling classes would choose or create names reminiscent of a powerful god that could protect them, not so much by using the exact name of the god as by incorporating the name of the god’s most powerful symbolic object.
I was about to go on a spree here, listing parallel formations and elaborating on *laugaz, when it struck me that we’ve been through all of this before.
DM Semantic question: what is “kettle” doing in theophoric names?
M-L The giant cauldron, or ketil, must have figured in some episode or ritual in the myth or legend of a character called Arn
What an interesting topic!
We can perhaps see a connection like the one Marie-Lucie suggests in the following narrative from the Skáldskaparmál (I’ve quickly added a translation by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur I pulled from the internet):
The gods later acquire this mead. Strangely, in regard to the element Arn-, two eagles (ǫrn, genitive arnar) feature in this part of the story:
Is Odin then the eagle (arn-) in Arnketill?
Lena Peterson (2007), Nordiskt runnamnslexikon, p. 24, considers that the onomastic element Ar(i)n- is ‘eagle’. (She also notes the suggestion that the element arn- in Arnketill could be a form of arinn, ‘hearth’, which also strangely matches ketill.)
But returning to the main problem of ketill…
The older proposal is indeed that ketil- ‘cauldron, kettle’ in names like Arnketill and Ásketill makes reference to the large cauldron that played an indisputable role in ritual and myth. This view is expressed, for instance, by Cleasby/Vigfusson under ketill: ‘The freq. use of these names is no doubt derived from the holy cauldron at sacrifices, as is indicated by such names as Vé-kell, Holy kettle’.
As for the gods’ own kettle, the Hymiskviða tells the story of the acquisition of the cauldron of the gods’ feasting. Ægir says he won’t prepare mead for all the gods until he has a cauldron big enough for all the mead at once, and then Tyr speaks of such a cauldron:
The gods’ cauldron shows up at the beginning of the Lokasenna:
However, another proposal (if I understand it correctly) is that the use of ketill in names arises from the simple martial meaning “helmet, kettle hat” (helmet resembling a bucket or kettle), used just like hjálmr “helmet” and its equivalents in the other Germanic languages, as in the name Anselm (cf. Ásketill). For this view, see for example the entry for Kætill in Lena Peterson (2007), Nordiskt runnamnslexikon, p. 155, with the other names on that page and on the pages before and after:
Both Arnketill and Ásketill fit neatly into the series exemplified Arngeirr ‘Eagle-spear’, Arngrímr ‘Eagle-mask(?)’ (gríma “face covering, face-guard(?), cowl/hood(?)”, Grímr, a name given to Odin in his role as a traveller wandering the earth in disguise; cf. Þorgrímr, Steingrímr, Hallgrímr, etc.), and Ásgeirr (Ansgar), Ásgrímr, etc.
The use of a iron helmet as a kettle for boiling water and cooking is not confined to antiquity and the medieval period. Here is the Marine Corps Gazette on the usefulness of the M-1 steel helmet.
Thanks! That’s the kind of complexity I should have expected.:-)
any reason for limiting access to science other than limiting access to science?
Certainly. It is the most common reason for anything (cynics would say the only reason). I split the difference and say “If something appears inexplicable, the reason is money.” In this case, the idea is to make money flow to scientific publishers from both the writing scientist’s institution and the reading scientist’s institution (or in some cases the general public) toward the publisher.
Only if one insists on reading everything through Gricean spectacles.
What spectacles would you insist on reading things through? And never mind the state of your pocketbook.
Ah, that’s what I forgot to comment on yesterday. Yes, the top 4 science publishers have profit margins above 30%, sometimes above 40%. They own almost every journal.
So a $500/yr digital subscription, $30/article journal would break even at $300/yr and $20/article?
Xerib: Lena Peterson (2007), Nordiskt runnamnslexikon
Thanks! I’ve seen that book quoted for, well, probably 14 years, but it never occured to me that it might be online.
As I said in the other thread, Celtic-Roman kettles were prestige objects in the Roman Era/Migration Era. A large number of them have been found in prestige graves, especially along the western coast of Norway, either as offerings or used as containers for ashes and bones.
What spectacles would you insist on reading things through?
My own, developed over decades of seeing and trying to understand the world. I find it the best policy to read, or listen, to people with an eye, or ear, to what they’re trying to convey rather than how they might be breaking some rule or other.
John Cowan, my home library costs basically nothing here and would cost hundreds thousands in the West. I am used to an entirely different situation, and the Western situation for me is as exotic as taxation of kisses would be.
money flow to scientific publishers from both the writing scientist’s institution
Yes, but given how well science is funded here, here it is not the writing institution, it is the researcher herself. Some journals do charge hundreds for submission and reviewing… which is researcher’s monthly wage (unless she has a second job). Then she is asked by the same journal to volunteer for reviewing something (and it is the main thing the journal sells apart of “reputation”: peer-reviewing).
And then the publication is not available, because no one has money for subscription.
Scientific journals are best when published by the nonprofit scientific societies. We are relatively fortunate is this regard in physics.
Basically, yes, and good luck finding an article for just 30 bucks today (as opposed to 10 years ago).
What do you mean by “best”?
@David Marjanović: I mean that in physics and chemistry, the journals run by the American Physical Society,/American Institute for Physics and American Chemical Society are both among the least expensive (on a per article basis), most accessible (having had all their thousands of back issues available online since very early this millennium), and most prestigious. Specifically in regard to the last point, the American Journal of Physics, the Journal of the American Chemical Association, Physical Review A, Physical Review C, Physical Review D, Physical Review E, Physical Review Letters, Physical Review X, and Reviews of Modern Physics are all unquestionably the most respected journals in their respective niches. (There are probably more ACS journals in that category, but I am not very familiar with specialized chemistry journals.) Journals published by Elsevier with similar standards and subject matter can cost five to eight times as much as journals published by the APS or the [British] Institute of Physics.
Brett, they should not cost ANY money.
Excuse me, I repeat:
a Russian researcher pays a large part of her (very humble) monthly salary to publish a paper in Physical Review – because it is one of main international journals and publishing in journals with high citation index is necessary – a Russian researcher volunteers for it as a reviewer and then both articles can not even be accessed from here.
You either use sci-hub or ask a foreign colleagues. And without sci-hub and without people sharing papers with each other for free science will stop. Just stop. For a while. Fora short while.
And then people will reorganize and create a different system (no problem here) and then the journals you just mentioned are bankrupt. We are now discussing a fully parasitic system.
David: if it costs $300/yr times hundreds(?) of subscriptions to publish a journal, how does the free Glossa do what the expensive Lingua did?
drasvi: How are Russian journals funded?
Normal publication in Physical Review journals is free. In some fields, the author can pay to make an article open access, but in my area, all articles are open access automatically.
Here is a clear explanation of the finances of one particular open access journal, Quantum.
If I remember correctly and things didn’t change since “my time”, scientific communication in physics doesn’t happen by way of journals. It happens through arxiv. Journal publications exist for the purpose of hiring and promotion, grants, and maybe prestige. They also would be probably needed in order to prove to one’s dean that the science is being moved ahead in accordance with the contract.
@Brett, I wrote it with a very specific publication in mind (I am not a physicist but I was involved somehow) but it was several years ago and maybe I confused journals. I thought it was Phis.Rev. B.
I will ask what it was. At the moment I do not even remember the title:)
@Y, they keep reforming the system.
Most fundamental research here is done within Russian Academy of Sciences. 50 000 research stuff, as many others. The overall situation with science is:
– experimental science is collapsing (has collapsed). Because funding is barely enough for salaries and maintainign infrastructure.
– theoretical science is thriving:) Those who stayed have proven ready to work for free in 90s. Now they are getting paid for what essentially is a hobby!
As you know, in USSR everything was state-owned and commerce and copyright in the Western sense did not exist. Our economy famously sucked. Our science and education were famously decent. Actually, when you published a paper in, say, JETP you were even paid something, because the West was curiuous. It translated our main journals in English and paid royalties to Soviet publishers, and the authors received some of this.
That was the starting point. In 2013 there was a major attack by the government agaisnt RAS. It was partly planned by the ministry in education and partly by economists from one of our universities.
Institutions of RAS are now subordinate to something called FANO, that issues regulations like “people should not work on grants in their working hours”.
The main publisher, Наука “Science”, that used to publish journals of RAS was transfered to FANO and then to the ministry of education. The ministry expected it to become fully commercial and profitable, it faled and went bankrupt. For journals of RAS there is an auction, where RAS pays to private publishers for publishing. Some bids are negative sums, that is publishers pay to RAS, in hope to earn from subscription.
In other words there an ongoing commercialization campaign, inpired by economists, fuck them.
Does it do the same thing – I would guess Lingua appeared in print and Glossa doesn’t? I don’t know any gold-open-access* print journals at all, only diamond-open-access* journals and closed-access journals appear in print in my experience.
But I fell in a trap by saying “yes”. The top 4 publishers have those profit margins; they own thousands of journals each. Individual journals may be much more or much less profitable, and the publishers publish books, too.
* Green: final-stage preprints, accepted pre-proof manuscripts and the like. Gold: author(‘s institution) pays. Diamond: the journal is published by an institution that bears the entire cost; in the cases I know of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the University of Montpellier, and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
Ah, that must be because those societies are so large.
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology has maybe 2000 members. Its Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology is published by Taylor & Francis, which belongs to Informa, one of the Big 4.
I love printed paper, but if electronic-only is the price of Open Access, so be it. Just make sure that between the publishers and the libraries people know how to properly archive electronic material, so it doesn’t all disappear some day.
Further, on the historically low cost of publishing in Physical Review, I discovered this today (from this biography of Alfred Lee Loomis):