Academics From The United Kingdom

"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "Utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties."

"We must commence to act as if a united, neutral and pacific Europe already exists. We must learn to be loyal, not to 'East' or 'West' but to each other, and we must disregard the prohibitions and limitations imposed by any national state."

"We are going to stop those piffling cruise missiles, you know, on land if not on sea. What we have to do is seize this moment of mass consciousness to move directly into the structures of the Cold War themselves, the blocs behind the missiles. We have to keep to some very large and simple ideas – like remaking Europe and putting peace and liberty together... This is the most serious political work I have ever done or will ever do in my life. It won't last long. If we succeed a little, the politicians will move in and take it off us."

"Not many authors of general books about the Romans feel bound to discuss the alleged Trojan ancestry of their subject. In sharp contrast, hardly anyone outside the inner circle of tecnici seems able to write about the Etruscans without reflecting at length on the supposed mystery of their origins and on the solution that may or (as has long been beyond all doubt) may not lie in the East, specifically in Lydia. The reason for this is the erroneous but still widely held conviction that' the authority of Herodotus is involved."

"It is not so much in the matter of wives as in that of concubines that Moḥammad made an irretrievable mistake. The condition of the female slave in the East is indeed deplorable. She is at the entire mercy of her master, who can do what he pleases with her and her companions; for the Muslim is not restricted in the number of his concubines, as he is in that of his wives. … The female white slave is kept solely for the master’s sensual gratification, and is sold when he is tired of her, and so she passes from master to master, a very wreck of womanhood. Her condition is a little improved if she bear a son to her tyrant; but even then he is at liberty to refuse to acknowledge the child as his own, though it must be owned he seldom does this. Kind as the Prophet was himself towards bondswomen, one cannot forget the unutterable brutalities which he suffered his followers to inflict upon conquered nations in the taking of slaves. The Muslim soldier was allowed to do as he pleased with any ‘infidel’ woman he might meet with on his victorious march. When one thinks of the thousands of women, mothers and daughters, who must have suffered untold shame and dishonour by this license, he cannot find words to express his horror. And this cruel indulgence has left its mark on the Muslim character, nay, on the whole character of Eastern life."

"The fatal blot in Islām is the degradation of women.… Yet it would be hard to lay the blame altogether on Moḥammad. The real roots of the degradation of women lie much deeper. When Islām was instituted, polygamy was almost necessitated by the number of women and their need of support; and the facility of divorce was quite necessitated by the separation of the sexes, and the consequence that a man could not know or even see the woman he was about to marry before the marriage ceremony was accomplished. It is not Moḥammad whom we must blame for these great evils, polygamy and divorce; it is the state of society which demanded the separation of the sexes, and in which it was not safe to allow men and women freely to associate; in other words, it was the sensual constitution of the Arab that lay at the root of the matter."

"To realize Medieval India there is no better way than to dive into the eight volumes of the priceless History of India as Told by its Own Historians which Sir H. M. Elliot conceived and beganot, and which Professor Dowson edited and completed with infinite labour and learning. It is a revelation of Indian life as seen through the eyes of the Persian court annalists. It is, however, a mine to be worked, not a consecutive history, and its wide leaps in chronology, its repetitions, recurrences, and omissions, render it no easy guide for general readers."

"The Hindu was taxed to the extent of half the produce of his land, and had to pay duties on all his buffaloes, goats, and other milk-cattle. The taxes were to be levied equally on rich and poor, at so much per acre, so much per animal. Any collectors or officers taking bribes were summarily dismissed and heavily punished with sticks, pincers, the rack, imprisonment and chains. The new rules were strictly carried out, so that one revenue officer would string together 20 Hindu notables and enforce payment by blows. No gold or silver, not even the betelnut, so cheering and stimulative to pleasure, was to be seen in a Hindu house, and the wives of the impoverished native officials were reduced to taking service in Muslim families. Revenue officers came to be regarded as more deadly than the plague; and to be a government clerk was disgrace worse than death, in so much that no Hindu would marry his daughter to such a man. ... [These edicts] were so strictly carried out that the chaukidars and khuts and muqad-dims were not able to ride on horseback, to find weapon, to wear fine clothes, or to indulge in betel. . .... No Hindu could hold up his head. ..... Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains were all employed to enforce payment.""

"Islam is now wrestling with Western thought as it once wrestled with Greek philosophy, and is as much in need as it was then of a 'revival of the religious sciences'. Deep study of al-Ghazālī may suggest to Muslims steps to be taken if they are to deal successfully with the contemporary situation. Christians, too, now that the world is in a cultural melting-pot, must be prepared to learn from Islam, and are unlikely to find a more sympathetic guide than al-Ghazālī."

"Because Europe was reacting against Islam it belittled the influence of Saracens and exaggerated its dependence on its Greek and Roman heritage. So today an important task for us is to correct this false emphasis and to acknowledge fully our debt to the Arab and Islamic world."

"I am not a Muslim in the usual sense, though I hope I am a “Muslim” as “one surrendered to God”; but I believe that embedded in the Qur’an and other expressions of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth from which I and other occidentals have still much to learn."

"In the early days of the Islamic empire the Christian inhabitants of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent were probably better off as dhimmis under Muslim Arab rulers than they had been under Byzantine Greeks."

"After a large earthquake the earth "rings" like a bell; this motion can be observed on sensitive instruments up to a month after a large event. These oscillations have specific frequencies which are properties of the whole earth and which can be measured very accurately indeed. The lowest frequency oscillation has a period of about one hour. Any combination of seismic waves can be represented as an equivalent combination of normal modes. In practice the mode representation is most useful at low frequency — for seismic waves above about 40 s — since at higher frequencies the number of modes becomes prohibitively large."

"Earthquakes generate elastic waves when one block of material slides against another; the break between the two blocks being called a fault. Explosions generate elastic waves by an impulsive change in volume in the material. Small explosive charges are used in controlled-source seismic experiments in which the waves penetrate only a few kilometres into the earth."

"Earthquakes radiate waves with periods of tenths of seconds to several minutes. Rocks behave like elastic solids at these frequencies. Elastic solids allow a variety of wave types and this makes the ground motion after an earthquake or explosion (called an event) quite complex. There are two basic types of elastic wave: one involving compression and rarefaction of the elastic material in the direction of propagation of the wave, and one involving no compression but shear of the elastic material perpendicular to its direction of propagation. These are called P and S waves respectively, for primary and secondary since the P wave travels fastest and arrives first."

"Two recent studies of the geomagnetic field in the last 1Myr have found 14 excursions, large changes in direction lasting 5–10kyr each, six of which are established as global phenomena by correlation between different sites. The older picture of the geomagnetic field enjoying long periods of stable polarity may not therefore be correct; instead, the field appears to suffer many dramatic changes in direction and concomitant reduction in intensity for 10–20 per cent of the time. During excursions the field may reverse in the liquid outer core, which has timescales of 500yr or less, but not in the solid inner core, where the field must change by diffusion with a timescale of 3kyr. This timescale is consistent with the remarkably uniform duration of well-dated excursions. The disparity of dynamical timescales between the inner and outer cores, a factor of 10, is consistent with the 10 excursions between full reversals."

"... since the Second World War ... the proton magnetometer has revolutionized measurements, satellites have given new impetus to magnetic surveying, discoveries of large mineral deposits have maintained activity in conventional magnetic prospecting, and geomagnetism has continued to play a central role in major scientific developments such as plate tectonics (where the time scale of reversals of the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field still provides the main source of information on the movement of the plates.)"

"This summer, soon after the TED controversy, a commando squad of skeptics captured the Wikipedia page about me. They have occupied and controlled it ever since, rewriting my biography with as much negative bias as possible, to the point of defamation. At the beginning of the "Talk" page, on which editorial changes are discussed, they have posted a warning to editors who do not share their biases: "A common objection made by new arrivals is that the article presents Sheldrake's work in an unsympathetic light and that criticism of it is too extensive or violates Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy." Several new arrivals have indeed attempted to restore a more balanced picture, but have had a bewildering variety of rules thrown at them, and warned that they will be banned if they persist in opposing the skeptics."

"Many dogs, cats and horses are loved and cherished, and are even mourned when they die. But pigs, chickens, calves and other animals grown in factory farms are treated in the most brutal and exploitative way, devoid of all affection. They are units in a production line; their only purpose is to produce the maximum amount of food at the minimum cost. Factory farms epitomize the mechanistic spirit. … To justify this treatment, the less-favoured animals have to be regarded as inferior, unworthy of any sentimental attachment. A terrible conflict arises if the exploited animals are considered to have any value in themselves. One way to avoid this conflict is to keep the privileged and the exploited animals in separate categories in our minds. … But if emotions spill over from pets to other animals, there is trouble. People become vegetarians, or even animal rights activists."

"I was impressed by the way that Hindus relate to the land of India and the holy places, and was moved by the great variety of pilgrimages and holy animals and plants and festivals. There are so many aspects of Hinduism that link it to the land and to the natural world in India. It is also closely linked to the culture and languages of India."

"It's unnecessary to introduce magic into the explanation of physical and biological phenomena when in fact there is every likelihood that the continuation of research as it is now practiced will indeed fill all the gaps that Sheldrake draws attention to."

"This book is a record of pioneer farming on the , one of the , lying a little way out from the mainland in western . Here the author and his devoted wife became the owners of an abandoned and ruinous house, and by sheer hard work, without, as the author says, any considerable bank balance to which to turn for comfort, have renovated the land with lime and basic slag, have repaired the ruined quay, have brought the garden again to life, and although their work is not yet completed, have changed the face of the land."

"As the dominant mammal on the face of the earth, as the clever one, the only one as far as we know capable of reflection and of accumulating knowledge, our duty is plain, to serve the lesser creation, to keep our world clean and pass on to posterity a record of which we shall not feel shame."

"must eat flesh or die; primitive man may be in the same state, whether he be or ; what about the sportsman? The man who owns a , or partridge manor has a moral right to take a share of the natural increase of the animals on his ground if he uses decent methods."

"In my first year [at Cambridge] Seeley was still alive, as Regius Professor. He was dying, but stuck manfully to his work. In the small history school of the day it was possible for the Professor to see personally the score of history freshmen who came up each year. I was sent to see him in his house, and the old man gave me, in a stern voice, a lecture on the theme that history was a science and had nothing to do with literature; he told me that Carlyle and Macaulay were charlatans. Though I had not much sense in those days, I had just enough not to reply; but I went away boiling with rage. And I still resent his words, because he himself had not won his position in life by writing scientific history, but precisely by writing literary history, on subjects about which he knew far less than Carlyle knew about Cromwell, or Macaulay about the English Revolution. Seeley's Ecce Homo, whatever its merits and its use, was one of the least "scientific" books ever written on an historical subject, and his Expansion of England, however important, was merely a clever and timely essay. It was on those works that his fame rested, not on his Stein, which may have been a "scientific" history for all I know."

"The chair was in fact precisely 151 years old when at last the academic claims of history found recognition here, by the inappropriate but normal device of turning it into a tripos of its own. The achievement belonged to the first truly notable Regius professor, Sir John Seeley."

"In 1869 Seeley became professor of modern history at Cambridge... His lectures at once made a great impression. They were carefully prepared, epigrammatic in style, animated in delivery, attractive and stimulating from the originality, width, and suggestiveness of their views. For many years his classes were large, and were by no means confined to those who were making history a special study."

"The chief forces which hold a community together and cause it to constitute one State are three, common nationality, common religion, and common interest."

"Commerce in itself may favour peace, but when commerce is artificially shut out by a decree of Government from some promising territory, then commerce just as naturally favours war."

"Seeley was witty, charming, sympathetic, entirely void of self importance, never making ignorance an excuse for sarcasm, and under his presidency there was a great deal of serious thought given to politics in the higher sense; though pupils were often too shy to talk in the seminar itself, they did talk afterwards among themselves on the subjects there discussed."

"We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind."

"John the Baptist was like the Emperor Nerva. In his career it was given him to do two things—to inaugurate a new régime, and also to nominate a successor who was far greater than himself."

"Men in general take up scheme after scheme, as circumstances suggest one or another, and therefore most biographies are compelled to pass from one subject to another, and to enter into a multitude of minute questions, to divide the life carefully into periods by chronological landmarks accurately determined, to trace the gradual development of character and ripening or change of opinions."

"The difficulty of determining whether a man is or is not good has now become a commonplace of moralists and satirists. It is almost impossible to discover any test which is satisfactory, and the test which is actually applied by society is known to be unsatisfactory in the extreme."

"No man saw the building of the new Jerusalem, the workmen crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets; no man heard the clink of trowel and pickaxe; it descended out of heaven from God."

"In his teaching of modern history Seeley adopted, though he did not formulate, the view that "history is past politics, and politics present history." Historical narrative without generalisation had no value for him; he always tried to solve some problem, to trace large principles, to deduce some lesson. If the conclusions which he reached could be made applicable to present difficulties, so much the better. History was to be a school of statesmanship. So eager was he to establish general principles that his conclusions occasionally appear paradoxical, and are sometimes open to dispute. But his method is at once stimulating and productive, and his whole conception of the subject tends to place it on a high level of public utility. Of the duties of the individual towards the state Seeley formed a high ideal, and, though not an active politician, he held strong political views. In later life he was a liberal unionist, and on more than one occasion raised his voice in public against home rule. He was for several years closely connected with the Imperial Federation League, and, though he never traced out any definite scheme of federation, there was nothing that he had more at heart than the maintenance of the union between Great Britain and her colonies."

"It is a favourite maxim of mine that history, while it should be scientific in its method, should pursue a practical object. That is, it should not merely gratify the reader's curiosity about the past, but modify his view of the present and his forecast of the future,"

"Property can exist only under the guardianship of the State."

"No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic. And such an enthusiastic virtue Christ was to introduce."

"The Islamists are the spearhead of current anti-Semitism, aided and abetted by the moral relativism of all too many naïve Western liberals."

"This is not the place to dwell on these debates, as important as they are. We will find a good overview in the very well informed and very balanced book by Edwin Bryant which, moreover, demonstrates that, all things considered, no scientific argument allows us to choose between the theses of Indian or extra-Indian origin of the Āryas and, consequently, of the Indo-Europeans... To anyone who doubts the fact that the commonly accepted opinion in the West on the origin of i-e language peoples is based primarily on an intuition that is difficult to demonstrate, I would recommend reading E. Bryant's book. We can clearly see that the debate resurfaces from generation to generation."

"Indeed, one might well wonder how much research would have been invested in the Indo-European problem in the first place, had it not been for its relevance to European imperialism and nationalism."

"These chapters give a good sense of the range of what has been termed “revisionist” scholarship (I do not use this term with the derogatory sense that it has accrued, but in its literal sense of scholarship that is prepared to revise, that is, revisit and reconsider theories and versions of history formulated over the last two centuries)."

"In conclusion, any objective and honest attempt at presenting a comprehensive account of the pre-historic period in South Asia should give a fair and adequate representation of the differences of opinion on this matter, as well as of the criticisms that can be levied against any point of view."

"I trust I may be forgiven for not coming to a clear conclusion myself. Until the script is deciphered, the presently available data are not sufficient to resolve the issue in my mind. The Indo-European languages came from somewhere between the Caspian Sea area (and the Balkans) and northwest South Asia. I do not feel impelled to favor any particular area in this vast expanse: all homeland proposals (not least of all South Asian ones) have significant problems, as I have attempted to outline throughout this work. The Indigenous Aryan critique has certainly influenced my own agnosticism."

"In India, in particular, many scholars understandably are committed to exerting a major role on the construction and representation of the history of South Asia, and this to a great extent involves revisiting and scrutinizing the versions of history inherited from the colonial period."

"The Indo-Aryan problem is likely to remain unresolved for the foreseeable future, so we might as well attempt to address it in a cordial fashion."

"But frustrating as it might some- times be, Western scholars must address the suspicions of the Indigenists—at least of those that are open to dialogue and exchange—given the neccessity of examining our own attitudes and biases made incumbent on us by the Orientalist critique. The post- colonial climate is a sensitive one, and it should be obvious why there might be very good reasons for Indian scholars to want to reevaluate the version of Indian history that was constructed during the colonial period. One cannot ignore or dismiss the sentiments and opinions of significant numbers of scholars about the history of their own country. And it is never a bad exercise to have one's own assumptions challenged, or to step out of one's own time-worn paradigms momentarily so as to consider things from other perspectives."

"It is imperative, from the Indian side, that the powers that be in Indian universities must recognize the need for historical Indo-European linguistics in their humanities departments if they are to make significant contributions to the protohistory of their subcontinent. Indo-European studies should, if anything, be an Indian forte, not exclusively a European one; many Indian scholars have a distinct head start due to their advanced knowledge of Sanskrit, which still plays a fundamental and extensive role in this field. In particular, it is simply unacceptable that research into substratum influence in Sanskrit texts has primarily been the preserve of a dozen or so Western scholars, however qualified. Vedic, Dravidian, and Munda are Indian languages; this should be a field dominated by Indian linguists. That their input has been so negligible in the one area that could determine much about the whole protohistory of the subcontinent is lamentable. One cannot simply ignore the linguistic evidence. If nothing else, I hope my work has underscored the need for facility to be directed into this field. Much of the literature from the Indigenous Aryan side, and also from the Indian Migrationist side, is hopelessly inadequate from the perspective of linguistics. This has understandably caused the Indigenist point of view to be neglected in toto, to the detriment of the more scholarly, sober, and cogent voices espousing this version of events."

"Neglected viewpoints do not disappear. They reappear with more aggression due to frustration at being ignored. The Indigenous Aryan viewpoint has been around for over a century. It has been stereotyped and, on the whole, summarily dismissed and excluded from academic dialogue. It has hovered, until recently, on the periphery or outside of mainstream academic circles. Since, over the course of the last decade, it has become representative of many scholars within the Indian academy, it is now clamoring for attention more than ever before. It deserves a response articulated in a rigorously critical but fair and respectful fashion. If the claims of the Indigenous Aryanists cannot be decisively disproved, then they cannot be denied a legitimate place in discussions of Indo-Aryan origins. The opinions of significant numbers of Indian intellectuals about the history of their own country cannot simply be ignored by those engaged in research on South Asian history or be relegated to areas outside the boundaries of what is con- sidered worthy of serious academic attention."