A Sincere and Teachable Heart: Self-Denying Virtue in British Intellectual Life, 1736-1859: 14 (Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions, 14) - Hardcover

"In A Sincere and Teachable Heart : Self-Denying Virtue in British Intellectual Life, 1736-1859, Richard Bellon demonstrates that respectability and authority in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain were not grounded foremost in ideas or specialistskills but in the self-denying virtues of patience and humility. Three case studies clarify this relationship between intellectual standards and practical moral duty. The first shows that the Victorians adapted a universal conception of sainthood to the responsibilities specific to class, gender, social rank, and vocation. The second illustrates how these ideals of self-discipline achieved their form and cultural vigor by analyzing the eighteenth-century moral philosophy of Joseph Butler, John Wesley, Samuel Johnson, and William Paley. The final reinterprets conflict between the liberal Anglican Noetics and the conservative Oxford Movement as a clash over the means of developing habits of self-denial"- -Provided by publisher.

Richard Bellon, Ph.D. (2000), teaches science policy and history at Michigan State University. His work on the reception of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species won the History of Science Society’s 2013 Derek Price/Rod Webster Prize.