texts:
<mask> is a Romanian human rights activist and political scientist born on 8 April 1952 in Buzău. He is one of the few Romanian dissidents who openly opposed Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Communist regime in Romania. At present, he is professor in the Department of Political Science at the National School for Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA) in Bucharest, and an active member of several Romanian human rights organizations. He is also a prodigious journalist, writing and lecturing on topics such as multiculturalism, national minorities, religious freedom and secularism, the ethics and politics of memory and others. He is editor of the Romanian-language New Journal of Human Rights (Noua Revista de Drepturile Omului, formerly Revista Romana de Drepturile Omului). Biography
<mask> attended the BP Hasdeu high school in his hometown, then obtained a BA in Physics from the University of Bucharest. He taught high school physics (1976–1980), then moved to Bucharest where he worked as a researcher for the National Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (1980–1989).During this period he published academic papers on linguistics, logics, and mathematical poetics among others. After the December 1989 anti-Communist revolution, <mask> abandoned his career as a physicist to continue his activism for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. His work as a human rights activist, political analyst, journalist, and writer blended with academic teaching and research. Dissidence under Communism
Between 1983 and 1987 <mask> dispatched clandestine information on human rights abuses in Romania to Radio Free Europe and wrote several anti-communist articles and studies, some of which he managed to send and publish abroad. He was investigated by the Securitate (the Romanian communist-era political police) starting with 1979. He was arrested for his anti-communist activities in December 1987 and indicted for treason (but freed in January 1988 as result of international protests, and put under surveillance till the fall of the Communist regime). Nevertheless, he continued to write and dispatch letters of protest to the Western media (1988–1989).Some of them (e.g., Lettre à la Conférence de Cracovie (1988) and Le devoir d'ingérence (1989)) were published in the Western press (L'Autre Europe and Libération). In June 1989 he went on a hunger strike as a protest against the continuous violation of human rights in Romania. He was demoted and placed by the Securitate under house arrest in Buzău, then again arrested, to be released after the revolution of December 1989. Activity after December 1989
After the anti-Communist revolution <mask> became a member of the Council of the National Salvation Front, the first post-Communist governmental body after the revolution in 1989 (he soon resigned). He also initiated and was co-president of the Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Romania – the Romanian Helsinki Committee (APADOR-CH), where he also worked as expert on national minorities and freedom of conscience and religion. He co-founded and was president of the Group for Social Dialogue (GDS), as well as founding member and vice-president of the Civic Alliance (AC). <mask> founded and headed other organizations developing strategies and projects in support of human rights, among them the Ombudspersons for National Minorities, the Center for International Studies, the Center of Inquiry-affiliated Center for Critical Conscience, and the Solidarity for Freedom of Conscience.He was a board member of several other organizations (Hungarian Europe Society, Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center, Partnership for Equality, Open Society Foundation Expert Teams, Foundation for the Development of Civil Society), as well as a member of the scientific boards of other organizations. <mask> also participated in international programs and research, including
Near neighborhood at the Eastern frontiers of the future European Union (The Centre for Policy Applied Research / Europe Team / Bonn)
Managing Multi-Ethnic Communities: Textbook for schools of public administration in Central and Eastern Europe (Local Government Initiative / Open Society Institute / Budapest)
Improving Hungarian-Romanian Relations (Teleki Foundation / Budapest & Center for International Studies / Bucharest)
International Mission of the Community of Democracies to Georgia
Community Action Programme to Combat Discrimination: Preparatory Work to Establish Transnational Actions for the Development of Policy and/or Legal Responses to the Fight Against Discrimination on Grounds of Racial or Ethnic Origin, Religion or Beliefs, Disability, Age, And Sexual Orientation (EU Commission – Directorate-General Employment and Social Affairs). As a journalist and political analyst, he contributed to several Romanian newspapers and magazines (Ziua, Timpul, Observator cultural, Revista 22, Opinia, Altera, Cotidianul etc. ); between 1994 and 2004 he wrote for Radio Free Europe. Awards
In recognition of his human rights activism and contribution to the development of Romanian civil society, <mask> received several awards from Romanian institutions and organizations:
Award from the magazine "Contemporanul" (2015)
Award from the magazine "Observatorul Cultural" for his book "Cărturari, opozanți și documente. Manipularea Arhivei Securității" (2013)
"C. Rădulescu-Motru” Award, in recognition for the contribution to the field of cultural ideology (2012)
Prize of the National Council for Combating Discrimination (2007)
Prize of the Civic Alliance of Roma from Romania (2006 and 2007)
Pro Minoritate (Diaspora Foundation, Timişoara, 2003)
National Order "Star of Romania”, knight (Presidency of Romania, President Emil Constantinescu, 2000)
First Prize for the study "A Romanian Conception of Federal Europe", co-authored with Adrian Severin (Open Society Foundation, 2000)
The Third Millennium Prize (Partida Romilor, 1999)
Pro Amicitia (Association of Magyar Journalists in Romania, 1994 and 1998)
International awards
JSRI Award (Field: Religion and Politics, 2012)
Petofi Sandor Award (21st Century Institute, Budapest, 2009)
European Journalist (Delegation of the Commission of the European Union, 1996)
Pro Minoritate (from the Hungarian Government, 1995)
Human Rights Monitor Award (Human Rights Watch, 1990)

Publications
Gabriel Andreescu published more than 1000 articles, 150 studies, 28 books, and contributed to several collective volumes. Some of his works were translated into English, German, Italian, Spanish and Hungarian.Books
 Existenţa prin cultură. Represiune, colaboraţionism şi rezistenţă intelectuală sub regimul communist, Polirom, Iaşi, 2015
 MISA. Radiografia unei represiuni, Polirom, Iași, 2013
 Cărturari, opozanți și documente. Manipularea Arhivei Securității, Polirom, Iași, 2013
 L-am urât pe Ceauşescu. Ani, oameni, dissidenţă, Polirom, Iaşi, 2009
 Reprimarea mişcării yoga în anii '80, Polirom, Iaşi, 2008
 Schimbări ale hărţii etnice a României, Centrul pentru Diversitate Etnoculturală, Cluj, 2005
 Naţiuni şi minorităţi, Polirom, Iaşi, 2004
 Extremismul de dreapta în România / Right-Wing Extremism in Romania, Centrul pentru Diversitate Etnoculturală, Cluj 2003 [Romanian and English]
 Pages from the Romanian-Hungarian Reconciliation: 1989–1999. The Role of Civic Organizations, Institute of International Education, Washington, 2001
 Polemici neortodoxe, Noesis, Bucharest, 2001
 Ruleta. Români şi maghiari, 1990–2000, Polirom, Iaşi, 2001
 Locurile unde se construieşte Europa.Adrian Severin în Dialog cu <mask>, Polirom, Iaşi, 2000
 Solidaritatea alergătorilor de cursã lungã, Polirom, Iaşi, 1998
 Patru ani de Revoluţie, Litera, Bucureşţi, 1994
 Cel mai iubit dintre ambasadori. Coen Stork în dialog cu <mask>, All, București, 1993
 Spre o filozofie a dissidenţei, Litera, București, 1992
 Sistemele axiomatice ale logicii limbajului natural. Funcţii şi operaţionalizare, All, București, 1992

Co-authored volumes
 Comentarii la Constituţia României, Polirom, Iaşi, 2010
 Accesul la informaţie în România / Access to Information in Romania, Centrul pentru Drepturile Omului, Bucharest, 1996 [Romanian and English]
 Evoluţia concepţiei U.D.M.R. privind drepturile minoritãţii maghiare, Centrul pentru Drepturile Omului / Evolutions in the D.AH.R. Conception on Hungarian Minority Rights, Bucharest, 1995 [Romanian and English]
 Concepţia U.D.M.R. privind drepturile minoritãţilor naţionale / Study on the Conception of D.A.H.R. on the Rights of National Minorities, Centrul pentru Drepturile Omului, Bucharest, 1994 [Romanian and English]

Edited volumes
 (co-editor) Doctrina internaţională a tratării trecutului communist, C.H.Beck, București, 2016
 (co-editor) Ultimul deceniu communist. Scrisori către radio Europa liberă. Vol. II.1986-1989, Polirom, Iaşi, 2014
 (co-editor) Ultimul deceniu communist. Scrisori către radio Europa liberă. Vol. I.1979-1985, Polirom, Iaşi, 2010 (L`ultimo decennio comunista, Ed.Pavesiana, 2014)
 Tătarii din România: teme identitare / Tartars in Romania: Problems of Identity, Center for Human Rights, Bucharest, 2005 [Romanian and English]
 (co-editor) Problema transilvană, Polirom, Iaşi, 1999
 Naţionalişti, antinaţionalişti. O polemicã în publicistica româneascã, Polirom, Iaşi, 1996
 România versus România, Clavis, București, 1996

Selected articles in books
 "The emergence of a new radical right power: the Romanian Orthodox Church", in Michael Minkenberg (ed. ), Transforming the Transformation? The East European Radical Right in the Political Process, Routledge, London, 2015
 "The Romanian State on State-Church Relations", in Natalia Vlas and Vasile Boari (eds. ), Religion and Politics in the 21st Century: Global and Local Reflections, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, 2013, pp. 236–274
 "Passive / aggressive symbols in the public school: religious displays in the Council of Europe and the United States, with a special focus on Romania" in Jeroen Temperman, The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious Symbols in the Public School Classroom, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Hotei, 2012, pp. 267–299."Multiculturalismul", în Mihaela Miroiu (coord. ), Ideologii politice actuale. Semnificații, evoluții și impact, Polirom, Iași, 2012, pp. 261–304. "Melodrama forului. Documentele Securității despre identitatea și rezistența intelectualilor", Vasile Boari, Natalia Vlas, Radu Murea (coord. ), Intelectualii și puterea, Institutul European, Iași, 2012, pp.167–209. "Douăzeci de ani de democrație anarhică", în Vasile Boari, Natalia Vas, Radu Murea (coord. ), România după douăzeci de ani, Institutul European, Iași, 2011. "20 de ani de războaie culturale. Victoria junk-conservatorismului", in Sorin Adam Matei, Mona Momescu (eds. ), Idolii forului. De ce o clasă de mjloc a spiritului e de preferat "elitei" intelectualilor publici?, Corint, București, 2010
 "The Paradox of National Identity: Its Cultural-Political Power vs. Its Theoretical Poverty", in Vasile Boari and Sergiu Gherghina (eds.), Weighting Differences: Romanian Identity in the Wider European Context, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, 2009
 "Ellenzéki lét Romániában", in Dimenziók Éve (eds. ), 1968, XX. Század Intézet, Budapest, 2008
 "Campaniile de presă: cum ajung adversarii la consens", in Ilie Rad (ed. ), Forme ale manipulării prin presă, Tribuna, Cluj-Napoca, 2008
 "Raportul: ansamblul şi detaliile", in Vasile Ernu, Costi Rogozanu, Ciprian Şiulea, Ovidiu Ţichindelean (eds. ), Iluzia anticomunismului. Lecturi critice ale Raportului Tismăneanu, Cartier, Chişinău, 2008
 "A Functional Approach. Collective and Individual Rights", in Stanisław Parzymies, OSCE and Minorities.Assessment and Prospects, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, Warsaw, 2007
 "Romania", in Cas Mudde (ed.) Racist Extremism in Central and Eastern Europe, Routledge, London and New York, 2005
 "Necesitatea şi detaliile unei legi privind regimul cultelor şi libertatea de conştiinţă", in Sandu Frunză (ed.) Paşi spre integare. Religie şi drepturile omului în România, Limes, Cluj, 2004
 "A múltfeldolgozás modelljei", ("Access to the Securitate archives in Romania") in Gábor Halmai (ed. ), Űgynőkők és akták, SOROS Alopétráy, Budapest, 2003
 “Multiculturalismul normativ”, in Rudolf Polenda, François Ruegg, Călin Rus (eds. ), Interculturalitate. Cercetări şi perspective româneşti, Presa Universitară Clujeană, Cluj, 2002
 “Paths of Secularisation in Eastern Europe: The Church-State Dispute in Romania“, in T.Lipovatz, N. Demertzis, V. Georgiadou (eds.), Religions and Politics in the Age of Modernity, Kritiki, Athens, 2002
 “Universal Thought, Eastern Facts: Scrutinizing National Minority Rights in Romania”, in Will Kymlicka, Magda Opalski (eds. ), Can Liberal Pluralism be Exported? Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001
 “Un concept românesc al Europei Federale“, in Un concept al viitorului Uniunii Europene, Polirom, Iaşi, 2001
 “Die Beziehungen zu Moldova und Ukraine aus der Perspektive einer zukunftigen Schengen-Grenze“, in Iris Kempe, Wim van Meurs, Barbara von Ow (eds. ), Die EU-Beitrittsstaaten und ihre ostlichen Nachbarn, Bertelsmann Stiftung, 1999

References

Living people
1952 births
People from Buzău
Romanian human rights activists
Romanian journalists
Romanian non-fiction writers
Romanian anti-communists
Romanian political scientists
Romanian dissidents
Academic journal editors
University of Bucharest alumni
People of the Romanian Revolution

masks:
Gabriel Andreescu
Andreescu
Andreescu
Gabriel Andreescu
Andreescu
Gabriel Andreescu
Gabriel Andreescu
Andreescu
Gabriel Andreescu
Gabriel Andreescu


type: original

texts:
Captain <mask> (6 January 189218 March 1963) was a pioneer of British broadcasting, the first Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Company Limited from 1922 to 1927 and Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Corporation until 1929. Some sources incorrectly give his middle name as Prothero. Early life
<mask> was born in Puebla, Mexico, in 1892. His father, Alfred (d. 1895 of yellow fever), was a railway engineer then in charge of building the Grand Mexican Railway. His elder brother was the physicist <mask>; and his cousin, Aldous Huxley. In the 1911 census, he is recorded as a resident of the Bedales School-Co-Educational Proprietary Boarding School, Petersfield, Hampshire. He attended Manchester Municipal College of Technology (later UMIST) in 1912.He joining the Royal Flying Corps as a wireless equipment officer in 1915, where he obtained the rank of captain. He was stationed mainly in Egypt and at Salonika. Later in the War, he was sent to the Wireless Experimental Station at Biggin Hill where he conducted experimental work on duplex telephony for aircraft. He Joined Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co as the Head of the Experimental Section, Aircraft Department where he designed the Croydon Airport ground station transmitter. 1920 to 1929
By 1920 <mask> had become an announcer, broadcaster (he recited poetry and sang songs) and engineer of 2MT, the first licensed radio station in Britain, located in Writtle, near Chelmsford, Essex, England, where Guglielmo Marconi had built his wireless telegraphy factories. He was the first Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Company Limited from 1922 to 1927 and then Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Between World War I and World War II the General Electric Company of the United States became a giant cartel which had growing commercial interests in Britain and several not entirely successful steps were undertaken to prevent the Americanisation of Britain.Links between the UK and US had been pioneered by Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company. During World War I General Electric, with help from the US Navy, had taken over the ship-to-shore radio business Marconi had established in America. In 1919 this was transferred to a new GE subsidiary, the Radio Corporation of America. The British military declared a  two years' moratorium on further commercial radio experiments by Marconi's employees. In 1922 the General Post Office agreed to license one commercial monopoly, to be known as the British Broadcasting Company, which would derive some income from a broadcast receiver licence and the rest from the manufacture and sale of receiving sets. Under the terms of the exclusive licence, the company could not sell air time. In 1923 Major-General Sir Frederick Sykes headed a committee to review this arrangement, which concluded that the GPO should stop licensing the British Broadcasting Company.It went out of business in December 1926. In 1927 the British Crown granted a charter to a non-commercial British Broadcasting Corporation and the GPO licensed this. John Reith was appointed to take control of the Crown corporation. In 1925, Captain P.P<mask>, MIEE was made 'Life Vice-President' of the Radio Society of Great Britain, along with Major Basil Binyon (a BBC director). Dorothy "Dolly" Clark, later Eckersley
In 1929 <mask> began an affair with Dorothy "Dolly" Clark, estranged wife of the BBC programme planner and conductor Edward Clark, and then divorced his own wife. Lord Reith, a deeply religious man, forced him out of his job.Dolly had separated from Edward Clark in 1925 and arranged for <mask> to visit Germany on BBC business with Dolly to accompany him. Although they made no secret of their liaison, his wife Stella was unaware of it until Reith's wife Muriel broke the news to her. Top-level conferences were held and even the Archbishop of Canterbury was consulted but <mask> was not sacked immediately as he undertook to end the affair with Dolly Clark and return to his wife. But he and Dolly reunited and he resigned in April 1929. The affair prompted a public enquiry into the BBC's personnel practices. The couple were married on 25 October 1930. Dolly was pro-Nazi in her politics, an admirer of Adolf Hitler, a friend of William Joyce and Unity Mitford and a member of Arnold Leese's Imperial Fascist League.After Eckersley met Sir Oswald Mosley he became involved in his New Party, chairing its London Central Committee. From November 1939 the transmitter he had arranged to put in place at Osterloog was used for William Joyce's broadcasts to Britain and Europe. Eckersley has been described as "at best a foolish Fascist fellow traveller and at worst a traitor". Dolly joined Mosley's British Union of Fascists, outdoing Mosley in her enthusiasm for Nazism, and also the National Socialist League founded by William Joyce after he was expelled by Mosley for being too anti-semitic. 1930 onwards
For a time <mask> was engaged in working to build a broadcasting station based in continental Europe which could be received in the United Kingdom. Captain Leonard Plugge, who became a Member of Parliament, also set about building his own International Broadcasting Company by leasing transmitters in France and other countries to beam commercial radio into Britain. The venture was very successful and, because Reith had banned Sunday light entertainment on the BBC, the IBC stations gained as much as 80 per cent of the Sunday listening audience by 1938.Meanwhile, <mask> had sought other ways to bring the signals of the IBC stations into the living rooms of Britain. Rather than relying upon a receiving set licensed by the General Post Office, he began to wire parts of England for an early form of cable radio but was stopped by the intervention of the GPO. The IBC stations were eventually silenced when Adolf Hitler's troops captured the transmitters. From 1937 onwards <mask> worked for British Military Intelligence MI6 to help combat propaganda coming from Nazi Germany with British propaganda stations. He was turned down for war work. The <mask>s took holidays in Germany a number of times and attended the Nuremberg rallies of 1937 and 1938. They appear to have separated between then and the start of World War II.Dolly worked for the German broadcasting service during the war (as did James Clark, her teenage son by her first husband Edward Clark), and recruited William Joyce. Dorothy and James were tried in 1945 for providing support to the enemy: she was sent to prison for a year and James was bound over for two years. She died in 1971. <mask> died, aged 71, on 18 March 1963 at the West London Hospital in Hammersmith. References

Further reading
<mask>, P.P. (1941). The Power Behind the Microphone.London, Jonathan Cape. <mask>, Myles, Prospero's Wireless, Myles Books 1997, , A biography of <mask> <mask> - pioneer of radio and the art of broadcasting. 1892 births
1963 deaths
British radio people
Royal Flying Corps officers
People educated at Bedales School
English electrical engineers
English fascists
Huxley family
Royal Air Force officers
British Army personnel of World War I
Royal Air Force personnel of World War I

masks:
Peter Pendleton Eckersley
Peter Eckersley
Thomas Eckersley
Eckersley
. Eckersley
Eckersley
Eckersley
Eckersley
Eckersley
Peter Eckersley
Peter Eckersley
Eckersley
Peter Eckersley
Eckersley
Eckersley
Peter Pendleton
Eckersley


texts:
<mask> (March 25, 1745 – September 13, 1803) was an Irish-American officer in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War and later in the United States Navy. He has been  credited as "The Father of the American Navy" (and shares that moniker with <mask> and <mask>) and was appointed a captain in the Continental Navy on December 7, 1775. He was the first captain placed in command of a U.S. warship commissioned for service under the Continental flag. After the war, he became the first commissioned U.S. naval officer, at the rank of commodore, receiving his commission from President George Washington in 1797. Early life and education
<mask> was born on March 25, 1745, in Ballysampson, Tacumshane, County Wexford, Ireland to a Catholic family. When <mask>'s family was evicted from their home by their English landlord, they moved to Rosslare on the coast, where his uncle worked a fishing skiff. As a young man, <mask> determined upon a life as a seaman, and he started out as a cabin boy.Career

<mask> received his first captain's commission in the Continental Navy on March 14, 1776, signed by <mask>, president of the Continental Congress. <mask> was a religious man and began each day at sea with a reading from the Bible. He had great regard for his crew and their well-being and always made sure they were properly provisioned while at sea. During his naval career <mask> commanded the U.S. warships Delaware, Lexington, Raleigh, Alliance and United States. Command of Lexington
Captain <mask> was given command of , of 14 guns, on December 7, 1775. It was the first commission issued by the Continental Congress. The Lexington sailed March 31, 1776.On April 7, 1776, off the Capes of Virginia, he fell in with the Edward, tender to the British man-of-war , and after a desperate fight of one hour and twenty minutes captured her and brought her into Philadelphia. On June 28, Pennsylvania's brig Nancy arrived in the area with 386 barrels of powder in her hold and ran aground while attempting to elude British blockader . <mask> ordered the precious powder rowed ashore during the night, leaving only 100 barrels in Nancy at dawn. A delayed action fuse was left inside the brig, which exploded the powder just as a boatload of British seamen boarded Nancy. This engagement became known as the Battle of Turtle Gut Inlet. <mask> retained command of Lexington until October 18, 1776, and captured several private armed vessels during that time. Command of Delaware
In 1777, <mask> commanded the ship , a brig sailing under a letter of marque and capturing British vessels in the Delaware River.Command of Raleigh
In 1778, <mask> assumed command of , capturing three prizes before being run aground in action on September 27, 1778. Her crew scuttled her, but she was raised by the British, who refloated her for further use in the Royal Navy. <mask> authored a signal book published in 1780 to improve communications at sea among vessels traveling in formation. Command of Alliance
He was seriously wounded on May 29, 1781, while in command of Alliance during her capture of HMS Atalanta and Trepassey. He and his crew of the USS Alliance fought and won the final naval battle of the American Revolution  south of Cape Canaveral on March 10, 1783. <mask> was successful in suppressing three mutinies during his career as an officer in the Continental Navy. Commodore commission

On February 22, 1797, he was issued Commission Number 1 by President George Washington, backdated to June 4, 1794.His title was thereafter "commodore". He is recognized as not only the first American commissioned naval officer but also as its first flag officer. Command of United States
Appointed senior captain upon the establishment of the U.S. Navy, he commanded the frigate United States in the Quasi-War with France. This ship transported commissioners William Richardson Davie and Oliver Ellsworth to France to negotiate a new Franco-American alliance. <mask>'s last day of active duty was March 6, 1801, when he brought  into port, but he remained head of the Navy until his death on September 13, 1803, from asthma. <mask> died childless. Later life and death
<mask> died at Strawberry Hill, in present-day Philadelphia on September 13, 1803, and was buried in the graveyard of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church.The executors of his estate were his wife Sarah, his nephew Patrick Hayes and his friend <mask>. Personal life
On October 24, 1768, <mask> married Mary Cleary, who died in 1774. On July 7, 1777, he married Sarah Austin, daughter of Samuel Austin and Sarah Keen of New Jersey. <mask> had no children, but he helped raise Patrick and Michael Hayes, children of his sister, Eleanor, and her husband, Thomas Hayes, who both died in the 1780s. Commemorations
 The U.S. Revenue Cutter Commodore <mask>, captured off Maine in the War of 1812
 Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn, New York. It is the oldest park in the borough. It was renamed for <mask> in 1951, due to its location next to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which <mask> helped found.Four U.S. Navy ships
 <mask> (DD-2) (1902–1920)
 <mask> (DD-248) (1921–1945)
 <mask> (DD-933) (1956–1983)
 USS <mask> (DDG-52) (1992–present)

 There is a large portrait of <mask> at the Rhode Island State House in Providence; and Title 16 of the Rhode Island Statutes (§ 16-20-3 – Days of special observance) requires observing September 13 as Commodore <mask> Day. Commodore Barry Bridge, which crosses the Delaware River from Chester, Pennsylvania to Bridgeport, New Jersey. <mask> Hall at Villanova University
 Commodore <mask> Club (Philadelphia Irish Center) Emlen Street and Carpenter Lane, Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
 Barry Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania
 Commodore <mask> Elementary School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
 Commodore <mask> Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois
 Commodore <mask> Division of Ancient Order of Hibernians, Annapolis, Maryland
 Commodore <mask> Division of Ancient Order of Hibernians, National Park, New Jersey
 <mask> Barry Bar, Grand Hyatt Muscat, Muscat, Oman
 September 13, Commodore <mask> Day in New Jersey public schools
 Commodore <mask> Memorial Plaque at Staten Island Borough Hall
 A new plaque with a cannon was dedicated on March 10, 2007, in Port Canaveral. A plaque stands in the city of Boston on Boston Common. A plaque commemorating <mask> and his crew of the Alliance for the final naval battle of the American Revolution is located at Jetty Park in Cape Canaveral, Florida. A stone plaque commemorating his grave site is located at Old St. Mary's Church in Philadelphia, PA.
 A six-foot bronze statue of Commodore <mask> stands in Franklin Square (between I and K streets on 14th St. N.W.)in Washington, D.C.
 Barry Hall is one of six military barracks facilities at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in commemoration of him. The visitor entrance to the United States Naval Academy, from Downtown Annapolis to the Visitor's Center, commemorates Commodore <mask>. Inside the entrance is a monument to Commodore <mask> with a plaque with an image of his commission, Number 1 in the United States Navy. Both the gate and the monument were erected by the Ancient Order of Hibernians
 A large statue of <mask> stands directly in front of the formal entrance to Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA.
 A statue of <mask> overlooks the Crescent Quay in Wexford town in Ireland. It was a gift to the town from the United States and was delivered by a United States Navy destroyer, USS John R. Pierce (DD-753). The statue was unveiled in 1956, and each year a parade and wreath-laying ceremony takes place at the statue to celebrate "Barry Day", commemorated by the Irish Naval Service and the Minister for Defence. A statue of <mask> by Eugene Kormendi is placed in the west court of Dillon Hall at the University of Notre Dame.See also

 Bibliography of early American naval history
 Commodore Stephen Decatur
 Commodore <mask>
 Irish military diaspora
 William Brown (admiral), "Father of the Argentine Navy"
 List of people on stamps of Ireland

References

Footnotes

Bibliography
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  URL
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Further reading

External links

 Father of the American Navy
 Portraits of <mask>
 <mask> Collection, papers at Independence Seaport Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, digitized by Villanova University's Digital Library, Villanova, Pennsylvania. 1745 births
1803 deaths
18th-century American naval officers
18th-century Irish people
19th-century American naval officers
19th-century Irish people
American Catholics
American military personnel of the Quasi-War
Continental Navy officers
Irish-American history
Irish sailors in the United States Navy
Irish sailors
Kingdom of Ireland emigrants to the Thirteen Colonies
People from County Wexford
People of colonial Pennsylvania
People of Pennsylvania in the American Revolution
United States Navy commodores

masks:
John Barry
John Paul Jones
John Adams
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
John Hancock
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
John Leamy
Barry
Barry
Barry
Commodore Barry
Barry
USS Barry
USS Barry
USS Barry
Barry
Commodore Barry
John Barry
John Barry
Barry
John Barry
John Barry
John Barry
John Barry
John
John Barry
John Barry
Barry
John Barry
John Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
Barry
John Hazelwood
Barry
Barry Hayes


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<mask>, FBA (16 August 1864 – 6 August 1937), usually cited as F. C. S<mask>, was a German-British philosopher. Born in Altona, Holstein (at that time member of the German Confederation, but under Danish administration), <mask>er studied at the University of Oxford, later was a professor there, after being invited back after a brief time at Cornell University. Later in his life he taught at the University of Southern California. In his lifetime he was well known as a philosopher; after his death his work was largely forgotten. <mask>er's philosophy was very similar to and often aligned with the pragmatism of William James, although <mask>er referred to it as "humanism". He argued vigorously against both logical positivism and associated philosophers (for example, Bertrand Russell) as well as absolute idealism (such as F. H. Bradley). <mask>er was an early supporter of evolution and a founding member of the English Eugenics Society.Life
Born in 1864, one of three brothers and the son of <mask> (a Calcutta merchant), <mask>er's family home was in Switzerland. <mask>er grew up in Rugby. He was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, and graduated in the first class of Literae Humaniores, winning later the Taylorian scholarship for German in 1887. <mask>er's first book, Riddles of the Sphinx (1891), was an immediate success despite his use of a pseudonym because of his fears concerning how the book would be received. Between the years 1893 and 1897 he was an instructor in philosophy at Cornell University. In 1897 he returned to Oxford and became fellow and tutor of Corpus Christi for more than thirty years. <mask>er was president of the Aristotelian Society in 1921, and was for many years treasurer of the Mind Association.In 1926 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy. In 1929 he was appointed visiting professor in the University of Southern California, and spent half of each year in the United States and half in England. <mask>er died in Los Angeles either 6, 7 or 9 August 1937 after a long and lingering illness. <mask>er was a founding member of the English Eugenics Society and published three books on the subject; Tantalus or the Future of Man (1924), Eugenics and Politics (1926), and Social Decay and Eugenic Reform (1932). Philosophy

In 1891, F.C.S<mask> made his first contribution to philosophy anonymously. <mask>er feared that in his time of high naturalism, the metaphysical speculations of his Riddles of the Sphinx were likely to hurt his professional prospects (p. xi, Riddles).However, <mask>er's fear of reprisal from his anti-metaphysical colleagues should not suggest that <mask>er was a friend of metaphysics. Like his fellow pragmatists across the ocean, <mask>er was attempting to stake out an intermediate position between both the spartan landscape of naturalism and the speculative excesses of the metaphysics of his time. In Riddles <mask>er both,
(1) accuses naturalism (which he also sometimes calls "pseudometaphysics" or "positivism") of ignoring the fact that metaphysics is required to justify our natural description of the world, and
(2) accuses "abstract metaphysics" of losing sight of the world we actually live in and constructing grand, disconnected imaginary worlds. The result, <mask>er contends, is that naturalism cannot make sense of the "higher" aspects of our world (freewill, consciousness, God, purpose, universals), while abstract metaphysics cannot make sense of the "lower" aspects of our world (the imperfect, change, physicality). In each case we are unable to guide our moral and epistemological "lower" lives to the achievement of life's "higher" ends, ultimately leading to scepticism on both fronts. For knowledge and morality to be possible, both the world's lower and higher elements must be real; e.g. we need universals (a higher) to make knowledge of particulars (a lower) possible.This would lead <mask>er to argue for what he at the time called a "concrete metaphysics", but would later call "humanism". Shortly after publishing Riddles of the Sphinx, <mask>er became acquainted with the work of pragmatist philosopher William James and this changed the course of his career. For a time, <mask>er's work became focused on extending and developing James' pragmatism (under <mask>er's preferred title, "humanism"). <mask>er even revised his earlier work Riddles of the Sphinx to make the nascent pragmatism implicit in that work more explicit. In one of <mask>er's most prominent works during this phase of his career, "Axioms as Postulates" (1903), <mask>er extended James' will to believe doctrine to show how it could be used to justify not only an acceptance of God, but also our acceptance of causality, of the uniformity of nature, of our concept of identity, of contradiction, of the law of excluded middle, of space and time, of the goodness of God, and more. Towards the end of his career, <mask>er's pragmatism began to take on a character more distinct from the pragmatism of William James. <mask>er's focus became his opposition to formal logic.To understand <mask>er's opposition to formal logic, consider the following inference:
(1) All salt is soluble in water;
(2) Cerebos is not soluble in water;
(3) Therefore, Cerebos is not a salt. From the formal characteristics of this inference alone (All As are Bs; c is not a B; Therefore, c is not an A), formal logic would judge this to be a valid inference. <mask>er, however, refused to evaluate the validity of this inference merely on its formal characteristics. <mask>er argued that unless we look to the contextual fact regarding what specific problem first prompted this inference to actually occur, we can not determine whether the inference was successful (i.e. pragmatically successful). In the case of this inference, since "Cerebos is 'salt' for culinary, but not for chemical purposes", without knowing whether the purpose for this piece of reasoning was culinary or chemical we cannot determine whether this is valid or not. In another example, <mask>er discusses the truth of formal mathematics "1+1=2" and points out that this equation does not hold if one is discussing drops of water.<mask>er's attack on formal logic and formal mathematics never gained much attention from philosophers, however it does share some weak similarities to the contextualist view in contemporary epistemology as well as the views of ordinary language philosophers. Opposition to naturalism and metaphysics

In Riddles, <mask>er gives historical examples of the dangers of abstract metaphysics in the philosophies of Plato, Zeno, and Hegel, portraying Hegel as the worst offender: "Hegelianism never anywhere gets within sight of a fact, or within touch of reality. And the reason is simple: you cannot, without paying the penalty, substitute abstractions for realities; the thought-symbol cannot do duty for the thing symbolized". <mask>er argued that the flaw in Hegel's system, as with all systems of abstract metaphysics, is that the world it constructs always proves to be unhelpful in guiding our imperfect, changing, particular, and physical lives to the achievement of the "higher" universal Ideals and Ends. For example, <mask>er argues that the reality of time and change is intrinsically opposed to the very modus operandi of all systems of abstract metaphysics. He says that the possibility to change is a precondition of any moral action (or action generally), and so any system of abstract metaphysics is bound to lead us into a moral scepticism. The problem lies in the aim of abstract metaphysics for "interpreting the world in terms of conceptions, which should be true not here and now, but "eternally" and independently of Time and Change."The result is that metaphysics must use conceptions that have the "time-aspect of Reality" abstracted away. Of course, "[o]nce abstracted from,"

While abstract metaphysics provides us with a world of beauty and purpose and various other "highers", it condemns other key aspects of the world we live in as imaginary. The world of abstract metaphysics has no place for imperfect moral agents who (1) strive to learn about the world and then (2) act upon the world to change it for the better. Consequently, abstract metaphysics condemns us as illusionary, and declares our place in the world as unimportant and purposeless. Where abstractions take priority, our concrete lives collapse into scepticism and pessimism. He also makes a case against the alternative naturalist method, saying that this too results in an epistemological and moral scepticism. <mask>er looks to show this method's inadequacy at moving from the cold, lifeless lower world of atoms to the higher world of ethics, meanings, and minds.As with abstract metaphysics, <mask>er attacks naturalism on many fronts: (1) the naturalist method is unable to reduce universals to particulars, (2) the naturalist method is unable to reduce freewill to determinist movements, (3) the naturalist method is unable to reduce emergent properties like consciousness to brain activity, (4) the naturalist method is unable to reduce God into a pantheism, and so on. Just as the abstract method cannot find a place for the lower elements of our world inside the higher, the naturalist method cannot find a place for the higher elements of our world inside the lower. In a reversal of abstract metaphysics, naturalism denies the reality of the higher elements to save the lower. <mask>er uses the term "pseudo-metaphysical" here instead of naturalism—as he sometimes does—because he is accusing these naturalist philosophers of trying to solve metaphysical problems while sticking to the non-metaphysical "lower" aspects of the world (i.e. without engaging in real metaphysics):

To show that the world's higher elements do not reduce to the lower is not yet to show that naturalism must condemn the world's higher elements as illusionary. A second component to <mask>er's attack is showing that naturalism cannot escape its inability to reduce the higher to the lower by asserting that these higher elements evolve from the lower. However, <mask>er does not see naturalism as any more capable of explaining the evolution of the higher from the lower than it is capable of reducing the higher to the lower.While evolution does begin with something lower that in turn evolves into something higher, the problem for naturalism is that whatever the starting point for evolution is, it must first be something with the potential to evolve into a higher. For example, the world cannot come into existence from nothing because the potential or "germ" of the world is not "in" nothing (nothing has no potential, it has nothing; after all, it is nothing). Likewise, biological evolution cannot begin from inanimate matter, because the potential for life is not "in" inanimate matter. The following passage shows <mask>er applying the same sort of reasoning to the evolution of consciousness:

Taken as the type of the pseudo-metaphysical method, which explains the higher by the lower ... it does not explain the genesis of consciousness out of unconscious matter, because we cannot, or do not, attribute potential consciousness to matter. ... the theory of Evolution derives the [end result] from its germ, i.e., from that which was, what it became, potentially. Unable to either reduce or explain the evolution of the higher elements of our world, naturalism is left to explain away the higher elements as mere illusions. In doing this, naturalism condemns us to scepticism in both epistemology and ethics.It is worth noting, that while <mask>'s work has been largely neglected since his death, <mask>er's arguments against a naturalistic account of evolution have been recently cited by advocates of intelligent design to establish the existence of a longer history for the view due to legal concerns in the United States (See: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District). Humanist alternative to metaphysics and naturalism

<mask>er argued that both abstract metaphysics and naturalism portray man as holding an intolerable position in the world. He proposed a method that not only recognises the lower world we interact with, but takes into account the higher world of purposes, ideals and abstractions. <mask>er:

We require, then, a method which combines the excellencies of both the pseudo-metaphysical and the abstract metaphysical, if philosophy is to be possible at all. <mask>er was demanding a course correction in field of metaphysics, putting it at the service of science. For example, to explain the creation of the world out of nothing, or to explain the emergence or evolution of the "higher" parts of the world, <mask>er introduces a divine being who might generate the end (i.e. Final Cause) which gives nothingness, lifelessness, and unconscious matter the purpose (and thus potential) of evolving into higher forms:

And thus, so far from dispensing with the need for a Divine First Cause, the theory of evolution, if only we have the faith in science to carry it to its conclusion, and the courage to interpret it, proves irrefragably that no evolution was possible without a pre-existent Deity, and a Deity, moreover, transcendent, non-material and non-phenomenal.... [T]he world process is the working out of an anterior purpose or idea in the divine consciousness. This re-introduction of teleology (which <mask>er sometimes calls a re-anthropomorphizing of the world) is what <mask>er says the naturalist has become afraid to do. <mask>er's method of concrete metaphysics (i.e. his humanism) allows for an appeal to metaphysics when science demands it. However:

<mask>er finally reveals what this "End" is which "all things tend":

If our speculations have not entirely missed their mark, the world-process will come to an end when all the spirits whom it is designed to harmonise [by its Divine Creator] have been united in a perfect society. Now, while by today's philosophic standards <mask>er's speculations would be considered wildly metaphysical and disconnected from the sciences, compared with the metaphysicians of his day (Hegel, McTaggart, etc. ), <mask>er saw himself as radically scientific.<mask>er gave his philosophy a number of labels during his career. Early on he used the names "Concrete Metaphysics" and "Anthropomorphism", while later in life tending towards "Pragmatism" and particularly "Humanism". The Will to Believe

<mask>er also developed a method of philosophy intended to mix elements of both naturalism and abstract metaphysics in a way that allows us to avoid the twin scepticisms each method collapses into when followed on its own. However, <mask>er does not assume that this is enough to justify his humanism over the other two methods. He accepts the possibility that both scepticism and pessimism are true. To justify his attempt to occupy the middle ground between naturalism and abstract metaphysics, <mask>er makes a move that anticipates James' The Will to Believe:

And in action especially we are often forced to act upon slight possibilities. Hence, if it can be shown that our solution is a possible answer, and the only possible alternative to pessimism, to a complete despair of life, it would deserve acceptance, even though it were but a bare possibility.<mask>er contends that in light of the other methods' failure to provide humans with a role and place in the universe, we ought avoid the adoption of these methods. By the end of Riddles, <mask>er offers his method of humanism as the only possible method that results in a world where we can navigate our lower existence to the achievement of our higher purpose. He asserts that it is the method we ought to adopt regardless of the evidence against it ("even though it were but a bare possibility"). While <mask>er's will to believe is a central theme of Riddle of the Sphinx (appearing mainly in the introduction and conclusion of his text), in 1891 the doctrine held a limited role in <mask>er's philosophy. In Riddles, <mask>er only employs his version of the will to believe doctrine when he is faced with overcoming sceptic and pessimistic methods of philosophy. In 1897, William James published his essay "The Will to Believe" and this influenced <mask>er to drastically expanded his application of the doctrine. For a 1903 volume titled Personal Idealism, <mask>er contributed a widely read essay titled "Axioms as Postulates" in which he sets out to justify the "axioms of logic" as postulates adopted on the basis of the will to believe doctrine.In this essay <mask>er extends the will to believe doctrine to be the basis of our acceptance of causality, of the uniformity of nature, of our concept of identity, of contradiction, of the law of excluded middle, of space and time, of the goodness of God, and more. He notes that we postulate that nature is uniform because we need nature to be uniform:

[O]ut of the hurly-burly of events in time and space [we] extract[ ] changeless formulas whose chaste abstraction soars above all reference to any 'where' or 'when,' and thereby renders them blank cheques to be filled up at our pleasure with any figures of the sort. The only question is—Will Nature honour the cheque? Audentes Natura juvat—let us take our life in our hands and try! If we fail, our blood will be on our own hands (or, more probably, in some one else's stomach), but though we fail, we are in no worse case than those who dared not postulate ... Our assumption, therefore, is at least a methodological necessity; it may turn out to be (or be near) a fundamental fact in nature [an axiom]. <mask>er stresses that doctrines

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 like the uniformity of nature must first be postulated on the basis of need (not evidence) and only then "justified by the evidence of their practical working." He attacks both empiricists like <mask> Mill, who try to conclude that nature is uniform from previous experience, as well as Kantians who conclude that nature is uniform from the preconditions on our understanding.<mask>er argues that preconditions are not conclusions, but demands made on our experience that may or may not work. On this success hinges our continued acceptance of the postulate and its eventual promotion to axiom status. In "Axioms and Postulates" <mask>er vindicates the postulation by its success in practice, marking an important shift from Riddles of a Sphinx. In Riddles, <mask>er is concerned with the vague aim of connecting the "higher" to the "lower" so he can avoid scepticism, but by 1903 he has clarified the connection he sees between these two elements. The "higher" abstract elements are connected to the lower because they are our inventions for dealing with the lower; their truth depends on their success as tools. <mask>er dates the entry of this element into his thinking in his 1892 essay "Reality and 'Idealism'" (a mere year after his 1891 Riddles). The shift in <mask>er's thinking continues in his next published work, The Metaphysics of the Time-Process (1895):
The abstractions of metaphysics, then, exist as explanations of the concrete facts of life, and not the latter as illustrations of the former ... Science [along with humanism] does not refuse to interpret the symbols with which it operates; on the contrary, it is only their applicability to the concrete facts originally abstracted from that is held to justify their use and to establish their 'truth.'<mask>er's accusations against the metaphysician in Riddles now appear in a more pragmatic light. His objection is similar to one we might make against a worker who constructs a flat-head screwdriver to help him build a home, and who then accuses a screw of unreality when he comes upon a Phillips-screw that his flat-head screwdriver won't fit. In his works after Riddles, <mask>er's attack takes the form of reminding the abstract metaphysician that abstractions are meant as tools for dealing with the "lower" world of particulars and physicality, and that after constructing abstractions we cannot simply drop the un-abstracted world out of our account. The un-abstracted world is the entire reason for making abstractions in the first place. We did not abstract to reach the unchanging and eternal truths; we abstract to construct an imperfect and rough tool for dealing with life in our particular and concrete world. It is the working of the higher in "making predictions about the future behavior of things for the purpose of shaping the future behavior of things for the purpose of shaping our own conduct accordingly" that justifies the higher. To assert this methodological character of eternal truths is not, of course, to deny their validity ... To say that we assume the truth of abstraction because we wish to attain certain ends, is to subordinate theoretic 'truth' to a teleological implication; to say that, the assumption once made, its truth is 'proved' by its practical working ... For the question of the 'practical' working of a truth will always ultimately be found to resolve itself into the question whether we can live by it.A few lines down from this passage <mask>er adds the following footnote in a 1903 reprint of the essay: "All this seems a very fairly definite anticipation of modern pragmatism." Indeed, it resembles the pragmatist theory of truth. However, <mask>er's pragmatism was still very different from both that of William James and that of <mask> Peirce. Opposition to logic

As early as 1891 <mask>er had independently reached a doctrine very similar to William James' Will to Believe. As early as 1892 <mask>er had independently developed his own pragmatist theory of truth. However, <mask>er's concern with meaning was one he entirely imports from the pragmatisms of James and Peirce. Later in life <mask>er musters all of these elements of his pragmatism to make a concerted attack on formal logic.Concerned with bringing down the timeless, perfect worlds of abstract metaphysics early in life, the central target of <mask>er's developed pragmatism is the abstract rules of formal logic. Statements, <mask>er contends, cannot possess meaning or truth abstracted away from their actual use. Therefore, examining their formal features instead of their function in an actual situation is to make the same mistake the abstract metaphysician makes. Symbols are meaningless scratches on paper unless they are given a life in a situation, and meant by someone to accomplish some task. They are tools for dealing with concrete situations, and not the proper subjects of study themselves. Both <mask>er's theory of truth and meaning (i.e. <mask>er's pragmatism) derive their justification from an examination of thought from what he calls his humanist viewpoint (his new name for concrete metaphysics).He informs us that to answer "what precisely is meant by having a meaning" will require us to "raise the prior question of why we think at all.". A question <mask>er of course looks to evolution to provide. <mask>er provides a detailed defence of his pragmatist theories of truth and meaning in a chapter titled "The Biologic of Judgment" in Logic for Use (1929). The account <mask>er lays out in many ways resembles some of what Peirce asserts in his "The Fixation of Belief" (1877) essay:

This passage of <mask>er was worth quoting at length because of the insight this chapter offers into <mask>er's philosophy. In the passage, <mask>er makes the claim that thought only occurs when our unthinking habits prove themselves inadequate for handling a particular situation. <mask>er's stressing of the genesis of limited occurrences of thought sets <mask>er up for his account of meaning and truth. <mask>er asserts that when a person utters a statement in a situation they are doing so for a specific purpose: to solve the problem that habit could not handle alone.The meaning of such a statement is whatever contribution it makes to accomplishing the purpose of this particular occurrence of thought. The truth of the statement will be if it helps accomplishes that purpose. No utterance or thought can be given a meaning or a truth valuation outside the context of one of these particular occurrences of thought. This account of <mask>er's is a much more extreme view than even James took. At first glance, <mask>er appears very similar to James. However, <mask>er's more stringent requirement that meaningful statements have consequences "to some one for some purpose" makes <mask>er's position more extreme than James'. For <mask>er, it is not a sufficient condition for meaningfulness that a statement entail experiential consequences (as it is for both Peirce and James).<mask>er requires that the consequences of a statement make the statement relevant to some particular person's goals at a specific moment in time if it is to be meaningful. Therefore, it is not simply enough that the statement "diamonds are hard" and the statement "diamonds are soft" entail different experiential consequences, it is also required that the experiential difference makes a difference to someone's purposes. Only then, and only to that person, do the two statements state something different. If the experiential difference between hard and soft diamonds did not connect up with my purpose for entering into thought, the two statements would possess the same meaning. For example, if I were to randomly blurt out "diamonds are hard" and then "diamonds are soft" to everyone in a coffee shop one day, my words would mean nothing. Words can only mean something if they are stated with a specific purpose. Consequently, <mask>er rejects the idea that statements can have meaning or truth when they are looked upon in the abstract, away from a particular context."Diamonds are hard" only possesses meaning when stated (or believed) at some specific situation, by some specific person, uttered (or believed) for some specific aim. It is the consequences the statement holds for that person's purposes which constitute its meaning, and its usefulness in accomplishing that person's purposes that constitutes the statement's truth or falsity. After all, when we look at the sentence "diamonds are hard" in a particular situation we may find it actually has nothing to say about diamonds. A speaker may very well be using the sentence as a joke, as a codephrase, or even simply as an example of a sentence with 15 letters. Which the sentence really means cannot be determined without the specific purpose a person might be using the statement for in a specific context. In an article titled "Pragmatism and Pseudo-pragmatism" <mask>er defends his pragmatism against a particular counterexample in a way that sheds considerable light on his pragmatism:

The impossibility of answering truly the question whether the 100th (or 10,000th) decimal in the evaluation of Pi is or is not a 9, splendidly illustrates how impossible it is to predicate truth in abstraction from actual knowing and actual purpose. For the question cannot be answered until the decimal is calculated.Until then no one knows what it is, or rather will turn out to be. And no one will calculate it, until it serves some purpose to do so, and some one therefore interests himself in the calculation. And so until then the truth remains uncertain: there is no 'true' answer, because there is no actual context in which the question has really been raised. We have merely a number of conflicting possibilities, not even claims to truth, and there is no decision. Yet a decision is possible if an experiment is performed. But his experiment presupposes a desire to know. It will only be made if the point becomes one which it is practically important to decide.Normally no doubt it does not become such, because for the actual purposes of the sciences it makes no difference whether we suppose the figure to be 9 or something else. I.e. the truth to, say, the 99th decimal, is ' true enough ' for our purposes, and the 100th is a matter of indifference. But let that indifference cease, and the question become important, and the ' truth ' will at once become ' useful '. Prof. Taylor's illustration therefore conclusively proves that in an actual context and as an actual question there is no true answer to be got until the truth has become useful. This point is illustrated also by the context Prof. Taylor has himself suggested. For he has made the question about the 100th decimal important by making the refutation of the whole pragmatist theory of knowledge depend on it.And what nobler use could the 100th decimal have in his eyes? If in consequence of this interest he will set himself to work it out, he will discover this once useless, but now most useful, truth, and—triumphantly refute his own contention! We might recognise this claim as the sort of absurdity many philosophers try to read into the pragmatism of William James. James, however, would not agree that the meaning of "the 100th decimal of Pi is 9" and "the 100th decimal of Pi is 6" mean the same thing until someone has a reason to care about any possible difference. <mask>er, in constast, does mean to say this. James and <mask>er both treat truth as something that happens to a statement, and so James would agree that it only becomes true that the 100th decimal of Pi is 9 when someone in fact believes that statement and it leads them to their goals, but nowhere does James imply that meaning is something that happens to a statement. That is a unique element of <mask>er's pragmatism.Humanist theory of meaning and truth

While <mask>er felt greatly indebted to the pragmatism of William James, <mask>er was outright hostile to the pragmatism of C.S. Peirce. Both <mask> and James struggled with what Peirce intended with his pragmatism, and both were often baffled by Peirce's insistent rebuffing of what they both saw as the natural elaboration of the pragmatist cornerstone he himself first laid down. On the basis of his misunderstandings, <mask>er complains that for Peirce to merely say "'truths should have practical consequences'" is to be "very vague, and hints at no reason for the curious connexion it asserts." <mask>er goes on to denigrate Peirce's principle as nothing more than a simple truism "which hardly deserves a permanent place and name in philosophic usage". After all, <mask>er points out, "[i]t is hard ... to see why even the extremest intellectualism should deny that the difference between the truth and the falsehood of an assertion must show itself in some visible way." With Peirce's attempts to restrict the use of pragmatism set aside, <mask>er unpacks the term "consequences" to provide what he considers as a more substantial restatement of Peirce's pragmatism:

For to say that a [statement] has consequences and that what has none is meaningless, must surely mean that it has a bearing upon some human interest; they must be consequences to some one for some purpose.<mask>er believes his pragmatism to be more developed because of its attention to the fact that the "consequences" which make up the meaning and truth of a statement, must always be consequences for someone's particular purposes at some particular time. Continuing his condemnation of the abstract, <mask>er contends that the meaning of a concept is not the consequences of some abstract proposition, but what consequences an actual thinker hopes its use will bring about in an actual situation. The meaning of a thought is what consequences one means to bring about when they employ the thought. To <mask>er, this is what a more sophisticated pragmatist understands by the term meaning. If we are to understand the pragmatic theory of meaning in <mask>er's way, he is right to claim that James' theory of truth is a mere corollary of the pragmatist theory of meaning:

But now, we may ask, how are these 'consequences' to test the 'truth' claimed by the assertion? Only by satisfying or thwarting that purpose, by forwarding or baffling that interest. If they do the one, the assertion is 'good' and pro tanto 'true' ; if they do the other, 'bad' and 'false'.Its 'consequences,' therefore, when investigated, always turn out to involve the 'practical' predicates 'good ' or 'bad,' and to contain a reference to ' practice' in the sense in which we have used that term. So soon as therefore we go beyond an abstract statement of the narrower pragmatism, and ask what in the concrete, and in actual knowing, 'having consequences ' may mean, we develop inevitably the fullblown pragmatism in the wider sense. Given <mask>er's view that the meaning of a thought amounts to the consequences one means to bring about by the thought, <mask>er further concluded that the truth of a thought depends on whether it actually brings about the consequences one intended. For example, if while following a cooking recipe that called for salt I were to think to myself, "Cerebos is salt", my thought will be true if it consequently leads me to add Cerebos and produce a dish with the intended taste. However, if while working in a chemistry lab to produce a certain mixture I were to think to myself, "Cerebos is salt", my thought would both have a different meaning than before (since my intent now differs) and be false (since Cerebos is only equivalent to salt for culinary purposes). According to <mask>er, the question of what a thought like "Cerebos is salt" means or whether it is true can only be answered if the specific circumstances with which the thought arose are taken into consideration. While there is some similarity here between <mask>er's view of meaning and the later ordinary language philosophers, <mask>er's account ties meaning and truth more closely to individuals and their intent with a specific use rather than whole linguistic communities.Selected works
 Riddles of the Sphinx (1891)
 "Axioms as Postulates" (published in the collection Personal Idealism, 1902)
  "Useless 'Knowledge': A Discourse Concerning Pragmatism", January 1902)
 Humanism (1903)
 "The Ethical Basis of Metaphysics" (July 1903)
 "The Definition of 'Pragmatism' and 'Humanism'" (January 1905)
 Studies in Humanism (1907)
 Plato or Protagoras? (1908)
 Riddles of the Sphinx (1910, revised edition)
 Humanism (1912, second edition)
 Formal Logic (1912)
 Problems of Belief (1924, second edition)
 Logic for Use (1929)
 Our Human Truths (1939, published posthumously)

Notes and references

Further reading
 Pragmatic Humanism of F.C.S. Schiller by Rueben Abel (1955)
 Humanistic Pragmatism: The Philosophy of F.C.S. Schiller edited by Rueben Abel (1966)
 "The Pragmatic Humanism of F.C.S. Schiller" in <mask> De Waal's On Pragmatism (2005)

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Pragmatists
Presidents of the Aristotelian Society
University of Southern California

masks:
John Stuart
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Charles Sanders
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schiller
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Schill
Cornelis


texts:
<mask> (born 28 July 1956) is an Italian luthier who specializes in classical guitar making. Biography
Born and raised in Florence, Italy, <mask> took an interest in creating musical instruments from an early age, building his first guitar at age 15. In 1977, he began studying guitar making with Argentinian luthier Ricardo Brané. After Brané’s death, <mask> traveled to Spain, England, France, and the United States to study with various masters, going in 1981 to Spain to meet with many Spanish luthiers including Paulino Bernabe Senior, José Ramírez, Francisco and Gabriel Fleta to get their critical opinions and advice on his guitar making. With the same goal in mind, he went twice to England to consult with José Romanillos. Most importantly, during the early 1980s, <mask> went several times to Paris to visit with Robert Bouchet and Daniel Friederich in their workshops, always with the objective in mind of growing as a luthier through their advice. In Castres, France in 1985, <mask> competed in the "Concours International des Facteurs de Guitare" organized by Robert Vidal of Radio France.There, he won first prize for Aesthetic Qualities and second general prize for Acoustic Qualities. Experienced in the restoration of guitars and other antique string instruments, <mask> has carried out such restorations as the Pagés guitar of Jacob Lindberg, string basses for musicians of the Teatro Comunale di Firenze, and a classical guitar built by Hermann Hauser. <mask> has built over 350 guitars, some owned by guitarists including Filomena Moretti, Flavio Cucchi, Carlo Marchione, Antigoni Goni, Robert Gruca, Colin Davin, Minoru Inagaki, and Marcelo Kayath, while others belong to important private collections. Two of his guitars are in the collection of the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence, Italy. Coclea & Coclea Thucea

<mask> is well known for a guitar he began building in 1989, the Coclea, which possesses unusually resonant acoustic properties. The name refers to the "cochlea" of the inner ear (coclea in Latin), the physiological place where noise is perceived as sound. The Coclea is designed on precise geometrical principles, of which its main characteristic is having top and back conceived of as portions of spheres of different radii.<mask> explains his inspiration for the Coclea: "From the early 80s on, I became interested in understanding the rules adopted by luthiers of the 19th century for designing the form of their instruments, a series of circles and triangles in a mathematical relation to the length of the body. Then I developed a system of spheres of differing diameters and planes in such a way so that these tangents would compose the Coclea." While he originally created two versions of the Coclea, one with a spruce top and another with a cedar top, it was in 1997 that <mask> began to develop the idea for the Coclea Thucea, so named because of the combination of the two woods of which the sound board is composed: thuja plicata (western redcedar) and picea excelsa (spruce). <mask>'s Thucea design was partially inspired by a concept applied by  Antonio Torres who created guitar soundboards with three strips of spruce of differing densities. He produced the first Coclea Thucea in 2000. In 2012, <mask> created a special model of the Coclea Thucea named "Cerulea." Destined for China, the predominant color of the decoration is cerulean blue, inspired by the image of the celestial empire.In the rosette there is a square tile of blue lapis lazuli and as 2012 was the year of the Dragon there is another tile representing a dragon carved from an antique piece of bone. Bouchet Homage

In honor of his former teacher, in 1994 <mask> created his first reproduction of a Bouchet guitar, the Bouchet Homage. Following the Cahier d’atelier (workshop notebook) of Bouchet, later published by the Conservatoire de Paris, <mask> created what is generally recognized as a personalized replica of the master’s instrument. In 1998 the Florentine luthier was invited to exhibit this guitar in Shibuya, Tokyo at the celebration of the 100-year anniversary of Bouchet’s birth. Concerning Bouchet, <mask> has written: "He linked the 'gesture' with the material, a characteristic typical of sculptors, and one ought not to forget that Bouchet started out as both a painter and a sculptor." García & Simplicio Replicas

In 1999 after intense study of Catalan lutherie, <mask> began to make replicas of García and Simplicio Guitars. Concerning the task of creating replicas of guitars by these two masters <mask> García, my state of mind is quite different from the great white canvas ready to be filled with colors that Simplicio represents for me.I feel freer, more tranquil, and more self-confident. Simplicio is more severe. During the period in which I was assiduously studying his work I dreamed of him often and I always felt intimidated and embarrassed before him." Skrjabin Homage

Inspired by the piano works of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, Tacchi created a unique Coclea Thucea named the Skrjabin Homage in 2010. This guitar was unveiled on 23 May 2010 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, played by Jason Vieaux for an encore. Articles and lectures by <mask>

"Una strada da seguire" in Francisco Simplicio luthier: Note di viaggio sulle tracce di Francisco e Miguel Simplicio nella Barcellona fra Modernismo e Seconda Republica Diego Milanese and Umberto Piazza, eds. Il Dialogo, Milan 2010 pp.180–190

"Inside the Tacchi Workshop" at the Classical Guitar Weekend, Cleveland, Ohio 22 May 2010

"Rue de la Guitare" in Guitar Salon Blog, 26 August 2013

<mask> Interviews Daniel Friederich in Guitar Salon Blog, 25 August 2013 (reprinted from Il Fronimo vol. 101, 1998)

"Tacchi Workshop Firenze" at Corde Factum Guitar Festival, Puurs, Belgium 16 May 2010

"Robert Bouchet in Paris" Lecture for Media Calm Co., Ochanomizu, Tokyo, May 2010

"Robert Bouchet chez les japonais" trans. Fabio Ragghianti Les Cahiers de la Guitar et de la Musique  n.70, 1999, p. 11

Simplicio Biography for Rodgers Tuning Machines 1999

"Masaru Kohno: Intervista esclusiva" in Guitart V, n. XX, Oct-Dec 2000 pp. 4–7

"Meet the Maker: Masaru Kohno" in American Lutherie #62 Summer 2000

"Intervista a Daniel Friederich" in Il Fronimo rivista di chitarra n.101 Jan 1998 pp. 9–14

Discography

Flavio Cucchi Presents Works by Castelnuovo Tedesco (ARC Music) 1996

Flavio Cucchi From Dowland to Chick Corea (GuitArt) 2002

Flavio Cucchi Guitar Favourites (Oxmedia) 2003

Flavio Cucchi I maestri della chitarra (Compilation Seicorde) 2003

Flavio Cucchi (DVD) GMC 2009

Colin Davin The Infinite Fabric of Dreams 2011

Robert Gruca  "Handel Guitar Arrangements"

Filomena Moretti recordings on Tacchi guitar

References

People from Florence
Italian luthiers
Classical guitar makers
1956 births
Living people

masks:
Andrea Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Andrea Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchi
Tacchiro
Andrea Tacchi
Andrea Tacchi


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<mask> (1765 or 1768, in London25 August 1818, in Venice) was a British opera singer. Life

She was probably born about 1768 in Litchfield Street, Soho, London. She was the daughter of Carl Weichsel, a native of Freiberg, in Saxony, principal oboist at the King's Theatre. Her mother, Frederika, née Weirman, an English vocalist of some distinction, was a pupil of Johann Christian Bach, and sang at Vauxhall with success between 1765 and 1775. <mask> received her earliest musical instruction, in company with her brother Charles (who afterwards was known as a violinist) from her father, under whom she studied the pianoforte with such assiduity that on 10 March 1774 she played at a concert at the Haymarket for her mother's benefit. In addition to her father's instruction she studied under Johann Samuel Schroeter, and before she was twelve years old published two sets of pianoforte sonatas. She now began to turn her attention to the cultivation of her voice, and at the early age of fourteen appeared at a public concert in Oxford.On 13 October 1783 she was married under her mother's maiden name, Wierman, at Lambeth Church to <mask>, a double-bass player in the Drury Lane orchestra, from whom she had had lessons in singing. Immediately after their marriage the <mask>s went to Dublin, where she made her first appearance on the stage in the part of Eurydice. After singing at Waterford and other towns in Ireland she returned to London in 1786, and was offered an engagement at Covent Garden for three nights only, but she insisted on being engaged for twelve nights, at a salary of £12 a week. On these terms she was announced to appear on 14 Feb. 1786, but the renown she had already won in Dublin had preceded her, and 'by command of their majesties' she appeared on the 13th as Rosetta in Thomas Arne's Love in a Village. At the end of the twelve nights she was engaged for the rest of the season at a salary of £1,000. A contemporary account of her at this period says that her voice was of great sweetness, compass, and power, and that she possessed 'a great deal of genuine beauty and very unaffected and charming manners;' but the secret of her great success was the unremitting zeal with which she studied her art. Her brother-in-law, <mask>, says that she had originally 'a very indifferent voice and manner,' which she completely changed by the industry with which, throughout her public career, she pursued her studies.At the end of her first season she went to Paris, and had lessons from the Antonio Sacchini, whose last pupil she was, and at different periods of her career she also studied with Morelli, Ferdinando Paer, and Friedrich Heinrich Himmel. She returned to London for the season of 1786–7, and continued to sing there, at Covent Garden, the Concerts of Ancient Music, the so-called Oratorios, and the Handel Commemorations, until the end of 1793. William Shield wrote his operas of 'Marian' and 'The Prophet' for her, and in 1789 she appeared as Yarico in Dr. Arnold's long-popular compilation, 'Inkle and Yarico.' Others of her favourite parts were Mandane (in 'Artaxerxes'), and the heroines in 'Polly,' the 'Duenna,' the 'Castle of Andalusia,' 'Corali,' 'Clara,' the 'Flitch of Bacon'. In 1791 she was kind enough to take in <mask> who she had met in Dublin. Clendinning had a short singing career before she retired to have a family, but her husband was in Dublin debtor's prison and she came to England to find work and she found work initially in Bath. Mrs. <mask> was not happy in her marriage, and even before she had appeared on the London stage rumour had been busy with her fair fame.In 1792 there appeared an anonymous publication, which professed to contain her private correspondence with her mother. This work was of so disgraceful and scurrilous a description that Mrs. <mask> was forced to take legal proceedings against the publishers. An answer to the 'Memoirs' appeared in due course ; but it seems probable that the scandal induced Mrs. <mask> to abandon her profession and retire to the Continent. Accompanied by her brother and her husband, she left England early in 1794, and travelled by way of Germany to Italy. At Naples she was induced by Sir William Hamilton, the English ambassador, to sing in private before the royal family. This led to her singing at the San Carlo, where she appeared in a new opera, 'Inez di Castro,' written expressly for her by Francesco Bianchi, on 30 May 1794. Her singing created an extraordinary impression, but her triumph was cut short by the sudden death of her husband, which took place the day after her first appearance, as he was preparing to accompany his wife to the theatre, after dining with the Bishop of Winchester.She stayed at Naples sixteen months, and then sang at Florence, Leghorn, Milan, Venice, and Trieste. In 1797, when singing at Venice, she was prostrated with a severe illness for six weeks. On her recovery the opera house was illuminated for three nights. At Milan she was received with much favour by the Joséphine de Beauharnais, and here she met a young Frenchman, M. Felissent, to whom she was married in 1799. After her second marriage she went to live at St. Artien, an estate she had bought between Venice and Treviso; but her life was rendered so insupportable by the ill-treatment she received from her husband that in 1801 she left him and returned to England. Felissent, who, it was said, had been publicly flogged as an impostor at Milan, followed her to London, but he was arrested and expelled the country as an alien. Mrs. <mask>'s return to London caused a great stir in the musical world, and the managers both of Covent Garden (Harris) and Drury Lane (Richard Brinsley Sheridan) were eager to secure her services.After some negotiation it was arranged that she should appear alternately at both houses, the terms she was to receive being 3,000 guineas for the season, together with a benefit guaranteed to amount to £500, and £500 to her brother for leading the orchestra on the nights she appeared. Her reappearance took place at Covent Garden on 3 Oct. 1801, in Thomas Arne's Artaxerxes, in which she sang the part of Mandane, Incledon singing that of Arbaces. During 1801 she made from £10,000 to £15,000, and at one time her fortune is said to have amounted to £65,000. In 1802 Mrs. <mask> appeared in Italian opera at the King's Theatre, on the occasion of the farewell of Banti, when both these great artists sang in Sebastiano Nasolini's 'Merope.' A similar performance took place on 3 June of the same year, when she was induced to sing a duet with Mara, at the farewell concert of her great rival. From this time until her retirement in 1811 she continued to sing in Italian opera. Winter wrote his 'Calypso' (1803) expressly for her, and in 1806 she distinguished herself by producing, for her benefit, La Clemenza di Tito, the first opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart performed in this country.During 1809-10 she suffered much from ill-health, and at length she retired from the profession, her last appearance being announced at her brother's benefit concert on 3 May 1811. She appeared, however, once more at Whitehall Chapel in 1814, at a concert in aid of the sufferers by the German war. After her retirement she lived in princely style at a villa at Fulham. In 1817 she was reconciled to her husband, and went with him to live near Venice, where she died on 25 August 1818. Her child by her first husband had died in infancy ; but it was believed that an adopted child, whom she had placed in a convent at Brussels, was her own daughter. Critical reception

Contemporary opinions as to the merits of Mrs. <mask> as a singer differ to a singular degree. It was always her misfortune to be forced into a position of rivalry with some other great artist, and thus partisanship often guided the judgments of her critics.As to the perfect finish of her singing all are agreed. The Earl of Mount Edgcombe says that her voice was sweet and flexible, her execution neat and precise, her embellishments in good taste and judicious, but that she lacked feeling, and was no actress. Miss Seward writes of her : 'She has too much sense to gambol like Mara in the sacred songs;' but George III, who was no mean judge—by suggesting in a written memorandum, that Lord Carmarthen 'if he can get her to sing pathetick songs, and not to over-grace them, will be doing an essential service to the court'—seems to imply that she had the great fault of the singers of that day, viz. the excessive and indiscriminate use of vocal embellishments. She was all through her life a finished pianist. Salomon used to say that 'she sang with her fingers,' and quite late in life she played a duet in public with J. B. Cramer.In person Mrs. <mask> was very handsome, though inclined to stoutness. Her portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds as Saint Cecilia, and has been engraved by James Ward, Pastorini, and Cardon. The exhibition of old masters at Burlington House in 1885 contained a small portrait by Reynolds, said to be of Mrs. <mask> in her youth, a statement which is probably inaccurate. Two miniatures of her were painted, one by Daniel, and there are engravings of her by T. Burke after De Koster, as Mandane by Heath after Stothard, by Bartolozzi after Cosway, by Dunkarton after Downman, and by Assen. A portrait of Clara in the 'Duenna,' painted and engraved by J. R. Smith in 1797, probably represents Mrs. <mask>. Haydn said of her, that Sir Joshua Reynolds should rather have painted the angels listening to Mrs Billington singing, than have depicted, as he did, Mrs Billington listening to the angels. References

Attribution:

 Endnotes:
Gent, Mag.lxiv. 671, lxxxviii. 69 ;
Georgian Era (1832), iv. 291 ;
Egerton MSS. 2169, ff. 57, 66;
Earl of Mount Edgcumbe's Musical Reminiscences (2nd ed. 1827), § vi.;
Busby's Concert Room Anecdotes, i. 151, 212, 217, ii. 4;
Eaton's Musical Criticism (1872), 172 ;
Seward's Letters (1811), i. 153 ;
Harmonicon for 1830, 93 ;
Public Characters (1802-3), 394 ;
H. Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, 431;
Memoirs of Harmonic Society;
Musical World, viii. 109: Parke's Musical Memoirs (1830);
Fétis's Biographie des Musiciens, ii. 195 ;
Thos.<mask>'s St. George and the Dragon ;
Quarterly Musical Magazine, i. 175 ;
Registers of Lambeth ;
Thespian Dictionary (1805). Sources
A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses, musicians,..., volume 2
Memoir of Mrs. <mask>
H. Jachmann, intro. J.M. Lewis, Wagner and his First Elisabeth (Novello, London 1944). External links

1765 births
1818 deaths
18th-century classical composers
19th-century classical composers
English classical composers
English opera singers
English people of German descent
Singers from London
Women classical composers
19th-century British composers
19th-century women composers
18th-century women composers

masks:
Elizabeth Billington
Elizabeth Weichsel
James Billington
Billington
Thomas Billington
Elizabeth Clendining
Billington
Billington
Billington
Billington
Billington
Billington
Billington
Billington
Billington
Billington
Billington


texts:
Semerkhet is the Horus name of an early Egyptian king who ruled during the First Dynasty. This ruler became known through a tragic legend handed down by the historian Manetho, who reported that a calamity of some sort occurred during <mask>'s reign. The archaeological records seem to support the view that <mask> had a difficult time as king and some early archaeologists questioned the legitimacy of <mask>'s succession to the Egyptian throne. Length of reign
Manetho named Semerkhet Semêmpsés and credited him with a reign of 18 years, whilst the Royal Canon of Turin credited him with an implausibly long reign of 72 years. Egyptologists and historians now consider both statements as exaggerations and credit <mask> with a reign of 8½ years. This evaluation is based on the Cairo Stone inscription, where the complete reign of <mask> has been recorded. Additionally, they point to the archaeological records, which strengthen the view that <mask> had a relatively short reign.Name sources

<mask> is well attested in archaeological records. His name appears in inscriptions on vessels made of schist, alabaster, breccia, and marble. His name is also preserved on ivory tags and earthen jar seals. Objects bearing Semerkhet's name and titles come from Abydos and Sakkara. Semerkhet's serekh name is commonly translated as "companion of the divine community" or "thoughtful friend". The latter translation is questioned by many scholars, since the hieroglyph khet (Gardiner-sign F32) normally was the symbol for "body" or "divine community". <mask>'s birth name is more problematic.Any artefact showing his birth name curiously lacks any artistic detail of the used hieroglyphic sign: a walking man with waving cloak or skirt, a nemes head dress, and a long, plain stick in his hands. The reading and meaning of this special sign is disputed, since it doesn't appear in this form before association with king <mask>. Indeed, the hieroglyph of the cloaked man is extremely rare. It appears only twice in relief inscriptions depicting ceremonial processions of priests and standard bearers. Egyptologists such as Toby Wilkinson, Bernhard Grdseloff, and Jochem Kahl read Iry-Netjer, meaning "divine guardian". During the Old Kingdom period, this word is written with uniliteral signs of a netjer flag (Gardiner-sign R8) and a human eye (Gardiner-sign D4) nearby the ideogram of the man. Some contemporary ivory tags show the Nebty name written with the single eye symbol only.Thus, the scholars also read <mask>'s throne name as Iry (meaning "guardian") and the Nebty name as Iry-Nebty (meaning "guardian of the Two Ladies"). This reconstruction is strengthened by the observation that <mask> was the first king using the Nebty title in its ultimate form. For unknown reason <mask> did not use the Nebuy title of his predecessor. It seems that he felt connected with the 'Two Ladies', a title referring to the goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet, the patron deities of the Ancient Egyptians who were worshiped by all after the unification of its two parts, Lower Egypt, and Upper Egypt. The Nebty title in turn was thought to function as an addition to the Nisut-Bity title. His prenomen is Nisut-Bity-Nebty-Iry, nsw.t-bty-nb.ty-irymeaning, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, he of the two ladies, and he who belongs to them or He whom the two ladies guard.M23:t-L2:t-G16-A21A

Scribes and priests of the Ramesside era were also confused, because the archaic ideogram that was used during <mask>'s lifetime was very similar to the sign of an old man with a walking stick (Gardiner sign A19). This had been read as Semsu or Sem and means "the eldest".It was used as a title identifying someone as the head of the house. Due to this uncertainty, it seems that the compiler of the Abydos king list simply tried to imitate the original figure, whilst the author of the Royal Canon of Turin seems to have been convinced about reading it as the Gardiner-sign A19 and he wrote Semsem with uniliteral signs. The Saqqara King List omits Semerkhet's throne name. The reason for that is unknown, but all kings from Narmer up to king Den also are missing their throne names. Identity

Virtually nothing is known about Semerkhet's family. His parents are unknown, but it is thought that one of his predecessors, king Den, might have been his father. Possibly, Semerkhet was born to queen Betrest.On the Cairo Stone she is described as his mother, but definite evidence for that view has not yet been found. It would be expected that Semerkhet had sons and daughters, but their names have not been preserved in the historical record. A candidate as a possible member of his family line is his immediate successor, king Qa'a. Reign

An old theory, supported by Egyptologists and historians such as Jean-Philippe Lauer, Walter Bryan Emery, Wolfgang Helck, and Michael Rice once held that Semerkhet was a usurper and not the rightful heir to the throne. Their assumption was based on the observation that a number of stone vessels with Semerkhet's name on them, originally were inscribed with king Adjib's name. Semerkhet simply erased Adjib's name and replaced it with his own. Furthermore, they point out that no high official and priest associated with Semerkhet was found at Sakkara.All other kings, such as Den and Adjib, are attested in local mastabas. Today this theory has little support. Egyptologists such as Toby Wilkinson, I. E. S. Edwards, and Winifred Needler deny the 'usurping theory', because <mask>'s name is mentioned on stone vessel inscriptions along with those of Den, Adjib, and Qa'a. The objects were found in the underground galleries beneath the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. The inscriptions show that king Qa'a, immediate successor of Semerkhet and sponsor of the vessels, accepted Semerkhet as a rightful ancestor and heir to the throne. Furthermore, the Egyptologists point out that nearly every king of First Dynasty had the habit of taking special vessels (so-called 'anniversary vessels') from their predecessor's tomb and then replacing their predecessor's name with their own. Semerkhet not only confiscated Adjib's vessels, in his tomb several artefacts from the necropolis of queen Meritneith and king Den also were found.The lack of any high official's tomb at Saqqara might be explained by the rather short reign of Semerkhet. It seems that the only known official of Semerkhet, Henu-Ka, had survived his king: His name appears on ivory tags from Semerkhet's and Qaa's tomb. Seal impressions from Semerkhet's burial site show the new royal domain, Hor wep-khet, (meaning "Horus, the judge of the divine community") and the new private household Hut-Ipty (meaning "house of the harem"), which was headed by Semerkhet's wives. Two ivory tags show the yearly 'Escort of Horus', a feast connected to the regular tax collections. Other tags report the cult celebration for the deity of the ancestors, Wer-Wadyt ("the Great White"). And further tags show the celebration of a first (and only) Sokar feast. While the Cairo Stone reports the whole of Semerkhet's reign, unfortunately, the surface of the stone slab is badly worn and most of the events are now illegible.The following chart follows the reconstructions by Toby A. H. Wilkinson, John D. Degreef, and Hermann Alexander Schlögl:

Cairo Stone, main fragment:
 Year of coronation: Appearance of the king of Lower- and Upper Egypt; unifying the two realms; circumambulation of the White Wall of Memphis
 first year: Escort of Horus; destruction of Egypt
 second year: Appearance of the king; creation of a statue for Seshat and Sed
 third year: Escort of... (rest is missing)
 fourth year: Appearance of the king of Upper Egypt; creation of... (rest is missing)
 fifth year: Escort of... (rest is missing)
 sixth year: Appearance of the king of Upper Egypt... (rest is missing)
 seventh year: Escort of... (rest is missing)
 eighth year: Appearance of the king of Lower- and Upper Egypt... (rest is missing)
 year of death: The ...th month and ...th day. (damaged)

Egyptologists and historians pay special attention to the entrance "Destruction of Egypt" in the second window of Semerkhet's year records. The inscription gives no further information about that event, but it has a resemblance to the Manetho's report. The Eusebian version says: "His son, Semémpsês, who reigned for 18 years; in his reign a very great calamity befell Egypt." The Armenian version sounds similar: "Mempsis, 18 years. Under him many portents happened and a great pestilence occurred." None of the documents from after Semerkhet's reign provide any details about this "calamity".Tomb

Semerkhet's burial site was excavated in 1899 by archaeologist and Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie at Abydos and is known as "Tomb U". While excavating, Petrie found no stairways as he did at the necropolis of Den and Adjib. He found a ramp, four metres wide and leading straight into the main chamber. The ramp starts approximately ten metres east outside the tomb and has a base slope of 12°. Inside the tomb the ramp shows irregular graduations. Petrie was also confused by the small number of clay seals. Only 17 seals were found.For archaeologists and Egyptologists, the complete arrangement of the burial site suggests that the builders were pressed for time. When Petrie freed the ramp from sand, he found that the complete ramp was thickly covered in aromatic oil, which still gave off a scent. Beside the ramp several wooden and hand-made baskets and earthen jars were found. These were dated to the Ramesside era. Scholars now think that <mask>'s tomb was re-opened and restored when Ramesside priests and kings saw the tomb of king Djer as the ritual burial of Osiris's head. The findings inside the main chamber included precious objects such as inlays and fragments of furniture (especially pedestals), copper-made armatures, and jewelry made of ebony, amethyst, and turquoise. Some vessels originating from the Levant were also found.They once contained Bescha oil, which was of great value to the Egyptians. Outside the tomb, close to the entrance, a damaged tomb stela made of black granite displaying Semerkhet's serekh name was excavated. The burial chamber measures 29.2 × 20.8 metres and is of simple construction. Petrie found that the king's mastaba once covered the whole of the subsidiary tombs. Now the royal burial formed a unit with the 67 subsidiary tombs. Egyptologists such as Walter Bryan Emery and Toby Wilkinson see this architectural development as proof that the royal family and household were killed willingly when their royal family head had died. Wilkinson goes further and thinks that <mask>, as the godlike king, tried to demonstrate his power over the death and life of his servants and family members even in their afterlife.The tradition of burying the family and court of the king when he died was abandoned at the time of king Qaa, one of the last rulers of the First Dynasty. The tombs of Second Dynasty founder, Hotepsekhemwy, onward have no subsidiary tombs. References

External links

 Francesco Raffaele: Semerkhet - nisut-bity Iry

30th-century BC Pharaohs
Pharaohs of the First Dynasty of Egypt

masks: Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet Semerkhet