Word: mathers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Though now a specialist in English history, Owen started late in his field. As an undergraduate at Denison University, Granville, Ohio, he had "delusions of being a scientist," took geology under Kirtley Mather, and changed his mind abruptly after a near-disastrous chemistry course. Graduating in 1920, Owen had earned a Ph.B., which he describes as a "bastard degree for philosophers who lack a knowledge of Greek." From Denison he went to Yale, received a doctorate and became an instructor, but it was ten years before he began to teach English History. "I sort of backed into it," he says...
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9: In Social Sciences 113, Kirtley Mather defines the limitations of science, shows its impact on modern life, and predicts its future development. Organization and smooth, witty delivery are Mather's forte. The course meets in the Geological Lecture room...
...story of Increase Mather's courageous fight for deconey and sanity, history adds a bizarre note of irony. A few years after the trials, a book appeared in Boston which denounced Cotton Mather, Increase's son, for his part in the Salem witch-hunts. But although Cotton's son, for his part in the Salem witch-hunts. But although Cotton's role had, in fact, been at best a rather ambiguous one. Increase reseswiftly and violently to his son's defense. Legend has it that a curious ceremony took place in Cambridge a few days after the appearance...
...October 3, Mather rose before the Cambridge ministers and read a long and scholarly paper, later published under the awesome title of Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits. At last his views had crystallized and he was determined to speak out. While still professing to believe in the possibility of witchcraft, Mather explicitly denounced the use of spectral evidence. And while emphasizing his great respect for the court, he cast doubt on many of the other tests the trial judges had accepted as proof. In an eloquent and memorable passage, Mather said: "It is better that ten suspected witches should...
...Mather's statement, which quickly circulated in the leading circles of the colony and was published in book form within a month, broke the back of the witchcraft hysteria. Several weeks later, the court which had tried the Salem cases adjourned, never to sit again. No more executions took place in the colony of Massachusetts; the following spring, Governor Phips pardoned 150 people who had been imprisoned on witchcraft charges. The fury of the mania subsided as quickly as it had come, when Puritan good sense re-asserted itself. Soon the witchcraft trials were but an ugly memory, though Puritanism...