{"id":5223,"date":"2015-11-24T09:23:29","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T09:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=5223"},"modified":"2015-11-25T16:49:36","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T16:49:36","slug":"james-fowler-to-talk-at-kcl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2015\/11\/24\/james-fowler-to-talk-at-kcl\/","title":{"rendered":"James Fowler to talk at KCL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/modern-languages\/staff\/fowler.html\">Dr James Fowler<\/a>, Senior Lecturer in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/modern-languages\/index.html\">Department of Modern Languages<\/a>, will be giving a talk entitled entitled \u2018Words and Things in Voltaire and Newton\u2019 at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kcl.ac.uk\/index.aspx\">King\u2019s College London<\/a>\u00a0(KCL), as part of a research seminar series in \u2018French Studies: Things\u2019, on Wednesday 2 December 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Based mainly on <em>Lettres philosophiques<\/em> (1734), James\u2019 talk will show how in that text Voltaire exploits philosopher John Locke\u2019s <em>Essay Concerning Human Understanding<\/em> (1689) in order to frame Newton\u2019s controversial ( and still relatively recent) theory of universal gravitation. It turns out that Voltaire wields Locke\u2019s thought as a double-edged sword. In the <em>Essay<\/em>, Locke had devoted important chapters to the \u2018ill use\u2019 of words (in discussion of things and ideas), and also to the extent or limits of human knowledge. Voltaire implicitly uses Locke\u2019s <em>Essay<\/em> to disentangle words <em>qua<\/em> words from things \u2018as such\u2019 throughout his discussion of Newton; but also (misleadingly) to suggest that Newton shared Locke\u2019s \u2018philosophical modesty\u2019 concerning the limits of what is discoverable by the human mind.<\/p>\n<p>For further details of the talk, please see the King\u2019s College London webpage here:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kcl.ac.uk\/artshums\/modlangevents\/eventrecords\/french\/2015-16\/frenchressem3.aspx\">www.kcl.ac.uk\/artshums\/modlangevents\/eventrecords\/french\/2015-16\/frenchressem3.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr James Fowler, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages, will be giving a talk entitled entitled \u2018Words and Things in Voltaire and Newton\u2019 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2015\/11\/24\/james-fowler-to-talk-at-kcl\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2458,"featured_media":5237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5223"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5223"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5231,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5223\/revisions\/5231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}