Showing results by author "Alfred William Benn" in All Categories

"Man is the measure of all things," said the early Greek philosopher, Protagoras of Abdera. It was in this spirit of humanistic self-confidence that in the first half of the sixth-century B.C., Greek-speaking thinkers inaugurated the western philosophical tradition. In the Greek colonies of western Asia Minor, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes postulated a physical universe based on natural laws. Then in Croton in southern Italy, Pythagoras, enraptured by geometry and music, formulated the doctrine that all things are made out of number. And so, in recounting the life and teachings of ...

In this compelling exploration, author Frank J. Adkins, a distinguished lecturer at Cambridge University, presents a series of profound lectures on European history that he delivered at the onset of World War I for various war-related organizations in Sheffield. These lectures were later transformed into detailed essays published in 1915, examining the intricate histories of Germany, France, England, and the Slavs. Adkins skillfully reveals how centuries of historical events and dynamics laid the groundwork for the devastating conflict that erupted in 1914. - Summary by Ted Lienhart