History

Modern Europe

Sigmund Freud ( 1856-1939)

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

  Chronology

• The most important moments in Sigmund Freud's life and genesis of his work

1856 - 6 May: is born (to change his name to Sigmund at 22). According to custom, he is also given a Jewish name: Schlomo. His birthplace is Freiberg (nowadays Pribor) in Moravia (the Czech Republic).

1873 - He receives a summa cum laudae award on graduation from secondary school. He is congratulated on his style in German. He is already able to read in several languages. Under his colleague's Heinrich Braun influence, he plans to study law but finally decides in favor of medical school, after having attended a lecture on Goethe's essay On Nature. Start his studies at Vienna University.

1876 - His first personal research in Trieste, on sexual glands of anguilas. Joins Brucke's laboratory.

1877 - Publishes the result of his anatomical research on the central nervous system of a specific larva.

1881 - A delayed award of a doctor's degree in medicine.

1884 - Discovers the analgesic properties of cocaine. Carl Koller is the one publishing a successful study in that respect. Freud himself uses cocaine as a tonic but prescribes it to his friend Fleischl who was morphine addicted, thereby aggravating his situation. He is criticized in medical circles.

1885 - Hold a temporary position in a private clinic where hypnosis is used. He destroys all his documents in April. He is appointed Privatdozent, then is awarded a grant for a study tour and chooses to go to Paris, to visit Charcot at the Salpetriere Hospital. He is able to observe the manifestations of hysteria and the effects of hypnosis and suggestion here. Charcot leaves him with special impression. Freud volunteers to translate his lectures.

1900 -Interprataion of dreams was released, the fundamental work for the whole of psychoanalytic theory

1902 - professor at University of Vienna

1930 -becomes the winner of Goethe’s Literary Prize

1939 - suffers from cancer and in severe pain, persuaded his doctor and friend Max Schur to help him commit suicide

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907)

No law of nature, however general, has been established all at once; its recognition has always been preceded by many presentiments.

• Mendeleev recognized there were undiscovered elements.

• By using his periodic table, he could predict the chemical properties of the undiscovered elements

Publications

• March 1869 - Mendeleev presented a paper to the Russian Chemical Society entitled “On the Correlation Between the Properties of the Elements and their Atomic Weights”

• Not translated from Russian until 1895

• 1869, two German abstracts of the paper were published.

• The first contained only the table.

• The second failed to mention the word periodic and contained a confusing typographical error

• Mendeleev was recognized as the first scientist to publish on the relationship between atomic weight and periodic chemical properties.

Wall Art & Statue

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Best Selling Books on Charles Darwin

1839 – Voyage of the Beagle1851 – 1854 – Living and Fossil Cirripedia1859 – On the Origin of Species1862 – On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects1865 – On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants1868 – The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication1871 – The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex1872 – The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals1875 – Insectivorous Plants1876 – The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom1877 – The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species1880 – The Power of Movement in Plants (with son Francis Darwin)1881 – The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms

• Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire

1817 – 1818: Attended day-school of Reverend Case

• 1818 – 1825: Attended Shrewsbury School, a boarding school run by Dr. Samuel Butler (grandfather of the Samuel Butler who wrote Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh). He could readily walk back home from this school, although he was a boarder.

• 1825 – 1827: Studied medicine (mostly) at University of Edinburgh, where his father and brother had studied, but discovered medicine was not to his liking.

• 1828 – 1831: Attended and graduated from Cambridge University, intending to become a clergyman.

• 1836 – 1839

• Back in London, Darwin became a well-known scientist/ naturalist, more of a geologist than a biologist. However, he began several notebooks on biology and evolution, having become convinced that species were not immutable but changed and evolved.

• In 1838 he read Thomas Malthus’ essay on population and conceived the importance of natural selection in evolution.

• In 1839 he married his first cousin. Emma Wedgwood, and they had 10 children born between 1841 and 1854

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

August Comte (1798 – 1857)

• Comte’s goal was to:

1. Explain the past2. Predict the future

Auguste Comte is mostly known as the creator of the science of sociology, the foundations of which he laid in his two main treatises, the Course in Positive Philosophy (1830-1842) and the System of Positive Policy (1851-

1854).

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

(1821-1881)

• Fyodor Dostoevsky is renowned as one of the world’s greatest novelists and literary psychologists.

• Born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a doctor, Dostoevsky was

educated first at home and then at a boarding school.

• When Dostoevsky was a young boy, his father sent him to the St. Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering, from which he graduated in 1843.

• Dostoevsky had long been interested in writing, and he immediately resigned from his position as a sub lieutenant to devote his time to his craft.

• His first book, Poor Folk (1846), was immediately popular with critics.

• Crime and Punishment’s popular and critical success allowed him to keep ahead, albeit just barely, of daunting debts and the burden of supporting a number of children left in his care after the deaths of his brother and sister.

• In 1867, he married a second time, to Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, who helped him cope with his epilepsy, depression, and gambling problems.

• Anna had served as his stenographer for his novel The Gambler (1867).

• After writing Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot (1868), and perhaps his greatest masterwork, The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

• The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky’s deepest and most complex examination of crucial philosophical questions of human existence.

• In it, he addresses the conflict between faith and doubt, the problem of free will, and the question of moral responsibility

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

• Principles of Biology (several volumes 1864-1867)

– Textbook used at Oxford

• The Study of Sociology (1873)

– Textbook used at Yale University

• William Graham Sumner taught Spencerism at Yale

• Principles of Psychology (two volumes 1870-1872)

– Textbook used at Harvard University

• Born April 27, 1820 in Derby, England

– Located in the heart of British industry

• Oldest of nine children, the only to survive

• Taught at home by his father and later his uncle

• Education--heavy in science--very light in Latin, Greek, English, and History

• By age 16 he had a good background in mathematics and the natural sciences

• Never would become a generally educated individual

– 1850 he finished his first book, Social Statics

• Based on the theme in “The Proper Sphere of Government”

– Creed of laissez faire

• His work was in disagreement with Comte in the area of “intervention.” Comte visualized that a “social priest” (with governmental powers) would fine tune society so that society would run as smoothly as possible.

– Similar to the role of the chairperson of the Federal Reserve (in the United States) in fine tuning the economy via changing interest rates.

Leo Tolostoy

Born August 28 (Sept. 9) 1828 on family estate, Yasnaya Polyana

-Born into an ancient noble family -Parents die when Tolstoy is young-Raised by his aunts-Studies law at the Kazan’ University-Writes and publishes his first fiction:Childhood (1852) Boyhood (1854) Youth (1857

War and Peace (1863-69)

• Begins to appear in literary magazine Russky vestnik in 1865

• Reflects Tolstoy’s interest in the Russian narod (“people”)

• Graphic descriptions of slaughter on the battlefield reflect Tolstoy’s experience as a soldier, amount to a pacifist critique of war

Anna Karenina, 1873-77

• Family novel centred around an autobiographical hero plus a novel about adultery (cf. Flaubert’s Madame Bovary)

• Vehicle for Tolstoy to express his opinion on the reforms of the 1860s, agriculture, modernity

Charles Lyell (1797-1875)

Émile Zola