Search results for ""Author Robert Chambers""

The book is the first attempt to connect the natural sciences into a history of creation. The idea is a bold one, and there are many circumstances of time and place to render its boldness more than usually conspicuous. The author's desire in the composition of the book was to give the true view of the history of nature, with as little disturbance as possible to existing beliefs, whether philosophical or religious.

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After the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, nationalism in Scotland bloomed, and folklore, traditional songs, and ballads were collected as an important part of Scottish culture. Robert Chambers, a leading nineteenth-century publisher in Edinburgh (famous for Chambers Encyclopaedia and Dictionary), compiled and published various books of those traditional and popular songs of Scotland collected by his predecessors, together with the ones discovered in the nineteenth century. It became a valuable record of the traditional culture of Scotland. The present collection of four volumes consists of the three works of songs he published and—unlike various abridged versions published afterwards—this set includes all original editions in facsimile format, together with illustrations and scores of some of the songs. It provides scholars in the field with the most comprehensive source of Scottish songs and ballads.

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Our world seems entangled in systems increasingly dominated by power, greed, ignorance, self-deception and denial, with spiralling inequity and injustice. Against a backdrop of climate change, failing ecosystems, poverty, crushing debt and corporate exploitation, the future of our world looks dire and the solutions almost too monumental to consider. Yet all is not lost. Robert Chambers, one of the ?glass is half full? optimists of international development, suggests that the problems can be solved and everyone has the power at a personal level to take action, develop solutions and remake our world as it can and should be. Chambers peels apart and analyses aspects of development that have been neglected or misunderstood. In each chapter, he presents an earlier writing which he then reviews and reflects upon in a contemporary light before harvesting a wealth of powerful conclusions and practical implications for the future. The book draws on experiences from Africa, Asia and elsewhere, covering topics and concepts as wide and varied as irreversibility, continuity and commitment; administrative capacity as a scarce resource; procedures and principles; participation in the past, present and future; scaling up; behaviour and attitudes; responsible wellbeing; and concepts for development in the 21st century.

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Originally published anonymously in 1844, "Vestiges" proved to be as controversial as its author expected. Integrating research in the burgeoning sciences of anthropology, geology, astronomy, biology, economics and chemistry, it was the first attempt to connect the natural sciences to a history of creation. The author, whose identity was not revealed until 1884, was Robert Chambers, a leading Scottish writer and publisher. "Vestiges" reached a huge popular audience and was widely read by the social and intellectual elite. It sparked debate about natural law, setting the stage for the controversy over Darwin's "Origin". In response to the surrounding debate and criticism, Chambers published "Explanations: A Sequel", in which he offered a reasoned defence of his ideas about natural law, castigating what he saw as the narrowness of specialist science. With a new introduction by James Secord, a bibliography of reviews and a new index, this volume adds to "Vestiges" and "Explanations" Chambers's earliest works on cosmology, an essay on Darwin, and an autobiographical essay, raising important issues about the changing meanings of popular science and religion and the rise of secular ideologies in Western culture.

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