Nevil Shute: His most famous work, On the Beach (1957), which he wrote while living in Australia, reflected his pessimism for humanity in the atomic age.

aesthetics: Post-Hegelian aesthetics: … in his Vom musikalisch-Schönen (1854; On the Beautiful in Music). With this work modern musical aesthetics was born, and all the assumptions made by Batteux and Hegel concerning the unity (or unity in diversity) of the arts were thrown in doubt.

Bruce Chatwin: In On the Black Hill (1982; filmed 1988), which won the Whitbread literary award, Chatwin explored the lives of twin brothers on an isolated 20th-century Welsh farm. Chatwin’s most commercially successful work, The Songlines (1987), is both a study of Australian Aboriginal creation myths and a…

St. Augustine: Early writings: …Providence), De beata vita (386; On the Blessed Life), and Soliloquia (386/387; Soliloquies). These works both do and do not resemble Augustine’s later ecclesiastical writings and are greatly debated for their historical and biographical significance, but the debates should not obscure the fact that they are charming and intelligent pieces.…

Seneca: Philosophical works and tragedies: De brevitate vitae (On the Brevity of Life) demonstrates that the human span is long enough if time is properly employed—which it seldom is. Best written and most compelling are the Ad Lucilium epistulae morales (Moral Letters to Lucilius). Those 124 brilliant essays treat a range of moral…

Apollonius of Perga: …by ancient writers, one, “On the Burning Mirror,” concerned optics. Apollonius demonstrated that parallel light rays striking the interior surface of a spherical mirror would not be reflected to the centre of sphericity, as was previously believed; he also discussed the focal properties of parabolic mirrors. A work titled…

Rita Dove: Notes (1989), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American Smooth (2004), Collected Poems: 1974–2004 (2016), and Playlist for the Apocalypse (2021). In 1993 Dove was appointed poet laureate of the United States by the Library of Congress, becoming the youngest person and the first African American…

Aretaeus Of Cappadocia: …when two of his manuscripts, On the Causes and Indications of Acute and Chronic Diseases (4 vol.) and On the Treatment of Acute and Chronic Diseases (4 vol.), both written in the Ionic Greek dialect, were discovered. These works not only include model descriptions of pleurisy, diphtheria, tetanus, pneumonia, asthma,…

Demosthenes: Leader of the democratic faction: …replied in a speech, “On the Chersonese,” that the motive behind the Macedonian’s “scheming and contriving” was to weaken the Athenians’ will to oppose Philip’s conquests. “Philip is at war with us,” he declared, “and has broken the peace.” Shortly afterward, Demosthenes delivered his “Third Philippic,” perhaps the most…

John Gibson Lockhart: Another article, “On the Cockney School of Poetry,” was the first of a series of attacks on the English poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as on Leigh Hunt, leader of the “school” by virtue of his friendship with Keats, and on William Hazlitt,…

Angie Thomas: Later YA novels: Thomas followed up with On the Come Up (2019). The YA novel examines issues such as poverty, double standards, racism, and resilience by exploring the life of Brianna, a 16-year-old girl who wants to be a rapper and lift her family out of poverty. One of the songs that…

Edward Forbes: …he published an important essay, “On the Connexion Between the Distribution of the Existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles, and the Geological Changes Which Have Affected Their Area.” In this work he divided the plants of Great Britain into five well-defined groups, maintaining that the majority of them,…

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Late life and works: …writing his last prose work, On the Constitution of the Church and State. The third edition of Coleridge’s Poetical Works appeared in time for him to see it before his final illness and death in 1834.

Therapeutae: …in De vita contemplativa (On the Contemplative Life), attributed to Philo of Alexandria. Their origin and fate are both unknown. The sect was unusually severe in discipline and mode of life. According to Philo, the members, both men and women, devoted their time to prayer and study. They prayed…

China: Political developments: …most famous post-1949 speech “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” (February 27, 1957). Its essential message was ambiguous. He stressed the importance of resolving “nonantagonistic contradictions” by methods of persuasion, but he stated that “democratic” methods of resolution would have to be consistent with centralism and…

Sir William Robert Grove: His classic On the Correlation of Physical Forces (1846) enunciated the principle of conservation of energy a year before the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz did so in his famous paper Über die Erhaltung der Kraft (“On the Conservation of Force”).

Mikhayl Mikhaylovich Shcherbatov: …most celebrated in the West, On the Corruption of Morals in Russia, appeared in 1797. Although reflecting his melancholic and ailing disposition, it was a fine example of the outraged erudition for which he was known, as well as an unrivaled account of contemporary Russian social life and conservative thought.

Epicureanism: Doctrine of Epicurus: …are the object of the On the Criterion, or Canon. Since he made the Canon an integral introduction to the Physics, however, his philosophy falls into two parts, the Physics and the Ethics.

Demosthenes: Leader of the democratic faction: …himself in his speech “On the Crown” against the attacks of his lifelong rival, Aeschines, he did not scruple to call him “sly beast,” “idle babbler,” “court hack,” and “polluted.” Demosthenes was not merely better at abuse than most; he also realized the advantage of making an audience lose…

John Milton: Early translations and poems of John Milton: …composed an occasional poem, “On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough,” which mourns the loss of his niece Anne, the daughter of his older sister. Milton tenderly commemorates the child, who was two years old. The poem’s conceits, Classical allusions, and theological overtones emphasize that…

Lactantius: In a companion work, “On the Death of Persecutors,” Lactantius held that the Christian God—in contradistinction to the remote, unconcerned God of Stoic deism—could intervene to right human injustice. Moreover, he maintained that Roman justice could be better perfected by rooting it in the Christian doctrine of divine fatherhood…

Friedrich Karl Forberg: …best known for his essay Über die Entwicklung des Begriffs Religion (1798; “On the Development of the Concept of Religion”), a work that occasioned Fichte’s dismissal from the University of Jena on the charge of atheism after he had published a corroborative treatise. Forberg also wrote further apologetical works in…

Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov: Formulation of Russian Marxism: …most importantly with his book On the Development of the Monistic Conception of History. In 1898 he began publishing a series of tracts defending Marxian orthodoxy from those who proposed modifications or deviations, among them the reformist revisionism propounded by the German Social Democrat Eduard Bernstein.

Italian literature: The age of humanism: …excellentia hominis (completed in 1452; On the Dignity of Man) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oratio de hominis dignitate (written 1486; Oration on the Dignity of Man). The humanist vision evolved during this period condemned many religious opinions of the Middle Ages still widely prevalent: monastic ideals of isolation and…

Christianity: Eastern Christianity: …of Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology and On the Divine Names, the main emphasis was on the ineffability of God (“the Divine Dark”) and hence on the “apophatic” or “negative” approach to God. Through a gradual process of ascension from material things to spiritual realities and an eventual stripping away of all…

Platonism: Medieval Platonism: …the Periphyseon (usually known as De divisione naturae [On the Division of Nature]), was not much read and ceased to be copied after his condemnation in 1210. But a considerable part of the text circulated in the form of anonymous glosses to the Latin translations of the Pseudo-Dionysius (of which…

relaxation phenomenon: Historical survey: In the paper “On the Dynamical Theory of Gases,” which he presented in 1866, Maxwell referred to the time required for the elastic force produced when fluids are distorted to diminish or decay to 1/e (e is the base of the natural logarithm system) times its initial value…

Jakob Böhme: His Von der Gnadenwahl (On the Election of Grace), written the same year, examines the problem of freedom, made acute at the time by the spread of Calvinism.

Samael: History and literary development: …is regarded as the treatise On the Emanation on the Left by Rabbi Isaac ha-Kohen. In this work, ha-Kohen cites Samael as the husband of Lilith for the first time. Ha-Kohen defines Samael and Lilith as a parallel evil version of Adam and Eve, calling them the rulers of the…

Philo Judaeus: Works: …and on his punishment; and On the Embassy to Gaius, an attack on the Emperor Caligula (i.e., Gaius) for his hostility toward the Alexandrian Jews and an account of the unsuccessful embassy to the Emperor headed by Philo.

J. Willard Gibbs: …by his most famous paper, “On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances.” The importance of his work was immediately recognized by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in England, who constructed a model of Gibbs’s thermodynamic surface with his own hands and sent it to him.

Archimedes: His works: On the Equilibrium of Planes (or Centres of Gravity of Planes; in two books) is mainly concerned with establishing the centers of gravity of various rectilinear plane figures and segments of the parabola and the paraboloid. The first book purports to establish the “law of…

comedy: Baudelaire on the grotesque: …it in his essay “On the Essence of Laughter” (1855). Laughter, says Baudelaire, is a consequence of the human notion of one’s own superiority. It is a token both of an infinite misery, in relation to the absolute being of whom humans have an inkling, and of infinite grandeur,…

On the Eve, novel by Ivan Turgenev, published in Russian as Nakanune in 1860. It is a major work concerning love in time of war and revolutionary social change. Set in 1853, On the Eve deals with the problems facing the younger intelligentsia on the eve of the Crimean War and speculates on the

John Milton: Early translations and poems of John Milton: …is “In Quintum Novembris” (“On the Fifth of November”), which Milton composed in 1626 at Cambridge. The poem celebrates the anniversary of the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes was discovered preparing to detonate explosives at the opening of Parliament, an event in which King James I…

Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente: Fabricius’ De Formato Foetu (1600; “On the Formation of the Fetus”), summarizing his investigations of the fetal development of many animals, including man, contained the first detailed description of the placenta and opened the field of comparative embryology. He also gave the first full account of…

Marshall Hall: …summarized in his paper entitled “On the Functions of the Medulla Oblongata and Medulla Spinalis, and on the Excito-motory System of Nerves” (1837). This research served as the basis for his theory of reflex action, which stated that the spinal cord consists of a chain of units and that each…

Friedrich Nietzsche: Decade of isolation and creativity (1879–89) of Friedrich Nietzsche: …Zur Genealogie der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morals), also failed to win a proper audience.

Aristotle: Travels: …the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals. Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite without precedent. He—or one of his research assistants—must have been gifted with remarkably acute eyesight, since some…

Shirley Temple: …of her most popular songs,“On the Good Ship Lollipop.” Many claimed that Bright Eyes saved Fox Film Corporation from bankruptcy. By the end of 1934 Temple was one of Hollywood’s top stars, and the following year she received a special Academy Award for her outstanding contribution to screen entertainment…

St. Augustine: Controversial writings: …et de peccato originali (418; On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin) is a more methodical exposition. The hardest positions Augustine takes in favour of predestination in his last years appear in De praedestinatione sanctorum (429; The Predestination of the Blessed) and De dono perseverantiae (429; The Gift…

Djuro Zivkovic: …1984), for his classical composition On the Guarding of the Heart (2011). Intended for a 14-piece chamber orchestra (including piano), the piece was commissioned by an Austrian new-music group, Klangforum Wien. In winning the Grawemeyer, Zivkovic joined a number of significant 20th- and 21st-century composers including John Adams, Gyorgy Ligeti,…

Aristotle: Physics and metaphysics of Aristotle: …On Generation and Corruption and On the Heavens, he presented a world-picture that included many features inherited from his pre-Socratic predecessors. From Empedocles (c. 490–430 bce) he adopted the view that the universe is ultimately composed of different combinations of the four fundamental elements of earth, water, air, and fire.…

St. Basil the Great: Works and legacy: …an extreme Arian thinker, and On the Holy Spirit expounds the deity of the Holy Spirit implied in the church’s tradition, though not previously formally defined. Basil is most characteristically revealed in his letters, of which more than 300 are preserved. Many deal with daily activities; others are, in effect,…

Lois Lowry: Memoirs and other works: In 2020 she published On the Horizon: Memories of World War II, based on her recollections of living in Hawaii just before the Pearl Harbor attack (1941) and of residing in Tokyo a few years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945). Lowry’s writing also includes literature…

comedy: Bergson’s and Meredith’s theories: The essay “On the Idea of Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit” (1877), by Bergson’s English contemporary George Meredith, is a celebration of the civilizing power of the comic spirit. The mind, he affirms, directs the laughter of comedy, and civilization is founded in common…

Theodoret Of Cyrrhus: …Theodoret in his principal works, On The Incarnation and Eranistēs (“The Beggar”), written about 431 and 446, respectively, attributed to Christ an integral human consciousness with a distinct psychological ego. To harmonize this view with the traditional orthodoxy of the earliest church writers, he distinguished the concepts of nature (i.e.,…

Giordano Bruno: Works: …l’infinito universo e mondi (1584; On the Infinite Universe and Worlds), he developed his cosmological theory by systematically criticizing Aristotelian physics; he also formulated his Averroistic view of the relation between philosophy and religion, according to which religion is considered as a means to instruct and govern ignorant people, philosophy…

continental philosophy: Marx: …his early, Rousseau-inspired work “On the Jewish Question,” Marx had emphasized that, in the constitutional state desired by his fellow Left Hegelians, political problems would merely shift to another plane. Religion and bourgeois self-absorption, Marx argued, would merely be transposed to the private sphere of civil society. Society, moreover,…

De Jure Praedae, comprehensive 17th-century work by Hugo Grotius that examines the historical, political, and legal aspects of war and is widely credited as a major foundation of international law because of its argument against the territorial sovereignty of the world’s coastal waters. Grotius was

Hugo Grotius: Life in exile: De Jure Belli ac Pacis: While in Paris, Grotius published his legal masterpiece, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, in 1625. In writing this work, which made full use of De Jure Praedae, he was strongly influenced by the bitter, violent political struggles both in his…

United Kingdom: Law and government: …shown by the great treatise On the Laws and Customs of England, attributed to the royal judge Bracton but probably put together in the 1220s and ’30s under one of his predecessors on the King’s Bench. Soon after Edward’s return to England in 1274, a major inquiry into government in…

Anthony Hecht: …fine arts were published as On the Laws of the Poetic Art (1995).

William Gilbert: …de Magno Magnete Tellure (1600; On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies and on the Great Magnet the Earth), gives a full account of his research on magnetic bodies and electrical attractions. After years of experiments, he concluded that a compass needle points north–south and dips downward because Earth acts as…

Ernst Jünger: …novel Auf den Marmorklippen (1939; On the Marble Cliffs), which, surprisingly, passed the censors and was published in Germany. Jünger served as an army staff officer in Paris during World War II, but by 1943 he had turned decisively against Nazi totalitarianism and its goal of world conquest, a change…

Emir Kusturica: The 21st century: …with Na mlečnom putu (“On the Milky Road”), in which he also starred, with Monica Bellucci. Two years later he helmed El Pepe, una vida suprema (El Pepe, A Supreme Life), a documentary about Uruguayan Pres. José Mujica.

Innocent III: Early life and career: …De miseria condicionis humane (On the Misery of the Human Condition), De missarum mysteriis (On the Mysteries of the Mass), and De quadripartita specie nuptiarum (On Four Types of Marriage). The first was enormously popular in the Middle Ages, and the others demonstrate that he was a competent, if…

John Snow: Broad Street pump and the Grand Experiment: …were published in his book On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (1855). Later, in the 1930s, Snow’s work was republished as a classic work in epidemiology, resulting in lasting recognition of his work.

Matthew Arnold: Poetic achievement: …in his inaugural lecture: “On the Modern Element in Literature,” “modern” being taken to mean not merely “contemporary” (for Greece was “modern”), but the spirit that, contemplating the vast and complex spectacle of life, craves for moral and intellectual “deliverance.” Several of the lectures were afterward published as critical…

John Milton: Early translations and poems of John Milton: …Milton’s principal poems included “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” “On Shakespeare,” and the so-called companion poems “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso.” Milton’s sixth elegy (“Elegia sexta”), a verse letter in Latin sent to Diodati in December 1629, provides valuable insight into his conception of “On the Morning of Christ’s…

Walter Sutton: …in the Biological Bulletin, “On the Morphology of the Chromosome Group in Brachystola magna” provided the earliest detailed demonstration that the somatic chromosomes (those in cells other than sex cells) of a grasshopper occur in definite, distinguishable, and different pairs of like (or homologous) chromosomes. The paper ended with…

Thom Gunn: “On the Move,” a celebration of black-jacketed motorcyclists from that volume, is one of his best-known poems. In the late 1950s Gunn’s poetry became more experimental. He published My Sad Captains in 1961, and Selected Poems, which also contains the work of his Cambridge contemporary…

Innocent III: Early life and career: …Condition), De missarum mysteriis (On the Mysteries of the Mass), and De quadripartita specie nuptiarum (On Four Types of Marriage). The first was enormously popular in the Middle Ages, and the others demonstrate that he was a competent, if not gifted, theologian. All three tracts demonstrate his ability to…

Johannes Müller: …Formen der krankhaften Geschwülste (On the Nature and Structural Characteristics of Cancer, and of Those Morbid Growths Which May Be Confounded with It) began to establish pathological histology as an independent branch of science. Müller also distinguished himself as a teacher. His students included the renowned physiologist and physicist…

Aelian: …is chiefly remembered for his On the Nature of Animals, in 17 books, curious stories of birds and other animals, often in the form of anecdote, folklore, or fable that points a moral. This work set a pattern that continued in bestiaries and medical treatises through the Middle Ages. His…

philosophy of religion: Ancient origins: …an original work of philosophy, De natura deorum (44 bce; “The Nature of the Gods”), by the Roman statesman and scholar Marcus Tullius Cicero, is an invaluable source of information on ancient ideas about religion and the philosophical controversies they engendered.

On the Nature of Things, long poem written in Latin as De rerum natura by Lucretius that sets forth the physical theory of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. The title of Lucretius’s work translates that of the chief work of Epicurus, Peri physeōs (On Nature). Lucretius divided his argument into six

Rabanus Maurus: …most extensive work is the De rerum naturis (842–847; “On the Nature of Things”), also known as De universo (“On the Universe”), an encyclopaedia of knowledge in 22 books synthesizing intellectual history until the 9th century. Drawing from the Platonism of Augustine and from the noted Latin Church Father Pope…

Demosthenes: Demosthenes as speech writer: The speech, “On the Navy Boards,” was a marked success. The Assembly or Ecclesia (Ekklēsia), a legislative body composed of all adult male Athenian citizens, had convened to consider a rumoured threat against Athens by the King of Persia. Demosthenes’ tightly reasoned oration helped persuade the Athenians…

Mao Zedong: The road to power of Mao Zedong: …Nationalists in his report entitled On the New Stage (October 1938), in which he attributed to it the leading role both in the war against Japan and in the ensuing phase of national reconstruction. By the winter of 1939–40, however, the situation had changed sufficiently so that he could adopt…

instinct: Darwin’s conception of motivational instinct: …“Instinct” in his crucial work On the Origin of Species (1859), he declined to attempt to define the term:

instinct: Darwin’s conception of motivational instinct: …“Instinct” in his crucial work On the Origin of Species (1859), he declined to attempt to define the term:

Pierre Perrault: …De l’origine des fontaines (1674; On the Origin of Springs), he presented a study of a substantial section of the Seine River, beginning at its source, northwest of the city of Dijon. His numerical estimates demonstrated that the annual river runoff was only one-sixth of the amount of water falling…

gnosticism: Diversity of gnostic myths: …Nature of the Archons and On the Origin of the World, contain a figure named Sabaoth, one of the sons of Ialdabaoth, who is reminiscent of Justin’s Elohim. When Sabaoth realizes that there is a higher realm, he undergoes a kind of conversion, condemns Ialdabaoth, and is enthroned above him.

Aristotle: Travels: …Aristotle added two short treatises, On the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals. Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite without precedent. He—or one of his research assistants—must have been gifted…

Demosthenes: Leader of the democratic faction: In his oration “On the Peace” late in 346 Demosthenes, though condemning the terms of the treaty of Philocrates, argued that it had to be honoured. Meanwhile, Philip continued his tactic of setting the Greek city-states, such as Thebes and Sparta, against each other. Demosthenes was one of…

Jean Charbonneau: Sur la borne pensive (1952; “On the Bounds of Thought”), which invites his readers into a garden of delights where life is a spectacle of Persian lilacs, pergolas, fountains, and ruined temples, is characteristic of his mature style.

Nikolay Ivanovich Lobachevsky: Mathematical research: …non-Euclidean geometry in his paper “On the principles of geometry,” which contained fragments of the 1826 manuscript and was published in 1829–30 in a minor Kazan periodical. In his geometry Lobachevsky abandoned the parallel postulate of Euclid, which states that in the plane formed by a line and a point…

classical economics: …expanded upon both ideas in Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817). In his labour theory of value, Ricardo emphasized that the value (i.e., price) of goods produced and sold under competitive conditions tends to be proportionate to the labour costs incurred in producing them. Ricardo fully recognized, however, that…

Maximus Margunios: …his treatise on the subject, “On the Procession of the Holy Spirit,” appeared in 1591, he was suspected of wavering on Eastern Orthodox doctrine and was obliged to send a statement to Constantinople assuring the Byzantine council on doctrine that he had not deviated from Orthodoxy.

James Prescott Joule: …“Joule’s law” in a paper, On the Production of Heat by Voltaic Electricity (1840), he stated that the heat produced in a wire by an electric current is proportional to the product of the resistance of the wire and the square of the current. In 1843 he published his value…

Maya Angelou: Activism and honors: …and deliver a poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” for the inauguration of U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton in 1993. She was the second poet in U.S. history to deliver an inaugural poem (the first being Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961). She celebrated the 50th anniversary…

Cicero: Last months of Cicero: …came to admit in the De republica that republican government required the presence of a powerful individual—an idealized Pompey perhaps—to ensure its stability, he showed little appreciation of the intrinsic weaknesses of Roman republican administration.

Baaba Maal: His later recordings included On the Road (2009), Television (2009), and The Traveller (2016).

On the Road, novel by Jack Kerouac, written over the course of three weeks in 1951 and published in 1957. SUMMARY: The free-form book describes a series of frenetic trips across the United States by a number of penniless young people who are in love with life, beauty, jazz, sex, drugs, speed, and

Amy Adams: Stage debut and later career: …screen adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (2012). Also in 2012 Adams made her New York City stage debut in a Shakespeare in the Park production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods.

Willie Nelson: Outlaw country movement and mainstream success: …become his signature song, “On the Road Again”—and Red Headed Stranger (1986), a drama based on his album. In 1985 Nelson participated in the USA for Africa famine-relief charity single “We Are the World” and was among the singers who had a solo part.

Sofia Coppola: …Murray—this time, on the dramedy On the Rocks, about a young mother who, fearing that her husband is having an affair, seeks the help of her playboy father.

mirror for princes: In the 9th century On the Royal Office by Jonas of Orléans, which centres on the community of the faithful and draws on Isidore and Pseudo-Cyprianus, offered a clear distinction between the tyrant and the just ruler in relation to their engagement with the moral imperatives of a Christian…

Bulgarus: His most important book, De regulis iuris (On the Rules of Law), is the earliest extant legal gloss from the Bolognese school.

The Shadow of a Gunman, drama in two acts by Sean O’Casey, performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1923 and published in 1925. Originally titled “On the Run,” it was the fifth play O’Casey wrote but the first to be produced. The comic-tragic play is set in the tenement slums of Dublin in 1920

autopsy: History of autopsy: In his voluminous work On the Seats and Causes of Diseases as Investigated by Anatomy, he compared the symptoms and observations in some 700 patients with the anatomical findings upon examining their bodies. Thus, in Morgagni’s work the study of the patient replaced the study of books and comparison…

Hermann von Helmholtz: Early life: …optics and in his masterly On the Sensation of Tone As a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1863). What he tried to do, without complete success, was to trace sensations through the sensory nerves and anatomical structures (such as the inner ear) to the brain in the hope…

dream: Dreams as extensions of the waking state: …his work Parva naturalia (On the Senses and Their Objects), the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 bce), despite the practice of divination and incubation among his contemporaries, attributed dreams to sensory impressions from “external objects…pauses within the body…eddies…of sensory movement often remaining like they were when they first started, but…

Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman: Among his better-known works are On the Shifting and Incidence of Taxation (1892) and Progressive Taxation in Theory and Practice (1894; rev. ed. 1908). In 1931 he completed a famous study of the tax laws of Cuba. Seligman was also an authority on the history of economic thought, and his…

Aristarchus of Samos: Aristarchus’s only extant work is On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, the oldest surviving geometric treatment of this problem. Aristarchus takes as premises that

Aristotle: The Academy: His dialogue Eudemus, for example, reflects the Platonic view of the soul as imprisoned in the body and as capable of a happier life only when the body has been left behind. According to Aristotle, the dead are more blessed and happier than the living, and to…

Alexander Of Aphrodisias: …or predetermined human action; and On the Soul, in which he draws upon Aristotle’s doctrine of the soul and the intellect. According to Alexander, the human thought process, which he calls the “mortal intellect,” can function only with the help of the “active intellect,” which lies in every man and…

William Kingdon Clifford: … and Nikolay Lobachevsky, wrote “On the Space-Theory of Matter” (1876). He presented the idea that matter and energy are simply different types of curvature of space, thus foreshadowing Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Philo Judaeus: Life and background: …by a passage in his On the Special Laws. In this work, he describes his longing to escape from worldly cares to the contemplative life, his joy at having succeeded in doing so (perhaps with the Egyptian Jewish ascetic sect of the Therapeutae described in his treatise On the Contemplative…