document_title: Common sense

question_text: where did the term common sense come from

question_tokens: where did the term common sense come from

text: Common sense

text: Aristotelian[edit]

text: The origin of the term is in the works of Aristotle. The best-known case is De Anima Book III, chapter 1, especially at line 425a27.[11] The passage is about how the animal mind converts raw sense perceptions from the five specialized sense perceptions, into perceptions of real things moving and changing, which can be thought about. According to Aristotle's understanding of perception, each of the five senses perceives one type of "perceptible" or "sensible" which is specific (ἴδια, idia) to it. For example, sight can see colour. But Aristotle was explaining how the animal mind, not just the human mind, links and categorizes different tastes, colours, feelings, smells and sounds in order to perceive real things in terms of the "common sensibles" (or "common perceptibles"). In this discussion, "common" (κοινή, koiné) is a term opposed to specific or particular (idia). The Greek for these common sensibles is tá koiná (τά κοινᾰ́, lit. 'that which is common to many'), which means shared or common things, and examples include the oneness of each thing, with its specific shape and size and so on, and the change or movement of each thing.[12] Distinct combinations of these properties are common to all perceived things.[13]

text: In this passage, Aristotle explained that concerning these koiná (such as movement) we already have a sense, a "common sense" or sense of the common things (aísthēsis koinḕ), which does not work by accident (κᾰτᾰ́ σῠμβεβηκός, katá sumbebēkós). And there is no specific (idéā) sense perception for movement and other koiná, because then we would not perceive the koiná at all, except by accident. As examples of perceiving by accident Aristotle mentions using the specific sense perception vision on its own to see that something is sweet, or to recognize a friend by their distinctive color. Lee (2011, p. 31) explains that "when I see Socrates, it is not insofar as he is Socrates that he is visible to my eye, but rather because he is coloured". So the normal five individual senses do sense the common perceptibles according to Aristotle (and Plato), but it is not something they necessarily interpret correctly on their own. Aristotle proposes that the reason for having several senses is in fact that it increases the chances that we can distinguish and recognize things correctly, and not just occasionally or by accident.[14] Each sense is used to identify distinctions, such as sight identifying the difference between black and white, but, says Aristotle, all animals with perception must have "some one thing" that can distinguish black from sweet.[15] The common sense is where this comparison happens, and this must occur by comparing impressions (or symbols or markers; σημεῖον, sēmeîon, lit. 'sign, mark') of what the specialist senses have perceived.[16] The common sense is therefore also where a type of consciousness originates, "for it makes us aware of having sensations at all". And it receives physical picture imprints from the imaginative faculty, which are then memories that can be recollected.[17]

text: The discussion was apparently intended to improve upon the account of Aristotle's friend and teacher Plato in his Socratic dialogue, the Theaetetus.[18] But Plato's dialogue presented an argument that recognizing koiná is an active thinking process in the rational part of the human soul, making the senses instruments of the thinking part of man. Plato's Socrates says this kind of thinking is not a kind of sense at all. Aristotle, trying to give a more general account of the souls of all animals, not just humans, moved the act of perception out of the rational thinking soul into this sensus communis, which is something like a sense, and something like thinking, but not rational.[19]

text: The passage is difficult to interpret and there is little consensus about many of the details.[20] Gregorić (2007, pp. 204–205) has argued that this may be because Aristotle did not use the term as a standardized technical term at all. For example, in some passages in his works, Aristotle seems to use the term to refer to the individual sense perceptions simply being common to all people, or common to various types of animals. There is also difficulty with trying to determine whether the common sense is truly separable from the individual sense perceptions and from imagination, in anything other than a conceptual way as a capability. Aristotle never fully spells out the relationship between the common sense and the imaginative faculty (φᾰντᾰσῐ́ᾱ, phantasíā), although the two clearly work together in animals, and not only humans, for example in order to enable a perception of time. They may even be the same.[17][19] Despite hints by Aristotle himself that they were united, early commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Al-Farabi felt they were distinct, but later, Avicenna emphasized the link, influencing future authors including Christian philosophers.[21][22] Gregorić (2007, p. 205) argues that Aristotle used the term "common sense" both to discuss the individual senses when these act as a unity, which Gregorić calls "the perceptual capacity of the soul", or the higher level "sensory capacity of the soul" that represents the senses and the imagination working as a unity. According to Gregorić, there appears to have been a standardization of the term koinḕ aísthēsis as a term for the perceptual capacity (not the higher level sensory capacity), which occurred by the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias at the latest.[23]

text: Compared to Plato, Aristotle's understanding of the soul (psūkhḗ) has an extra level of complexity in the form of the noûs or "intellect"—which is something only humans have and enables humans to perceive things differently from other animals. It works with images coming from the common sense and imagination, using reasoning (λόγος, lógos) as well as the active intellect. The noûs identifies the true forms of things, while the common sense identifies shared aspects of things. Though scholars have varying interpretations of the details, Aristotle's "common sense" was in any case not rational, in the sense that it implied no ability to explain the perception. Reason or rationality (lógos) exists only in man according to Aristotle, and yet some animals can perceive "common perceptibles" such as change and shape, and some even have imagination according to Aristotle. Animals with imagination come closest to having something like reasoning and noûs.[24] Plato, on the other hand was apparently willing to allow that animals could have some level of thought, meaning that he did not have to explain their sometimes complex behavior with a strict division between high-level perception processing and the human-like thinking such as being able to form opinions.[25] Gregorić additionally argues that Aristotle can be interpreted as using the verbs phroneîn and noeîn to distinguish two types of thinking or awareness, the first being found in animals and the second unique to humans and involving reason.[26] Therefore, in Aristotle (and the medieval Aristotelians) the universals used to identify and categorize things are divided into two. In medieval terminology these are the species sensibilis used for perception and imagination in animals, and the species intelligibilis or apprehendable forms used in the human intellect or noûs.

text: Aristotle also occasionally called the koinḕ aísthēsis (or one version of it) the prôton aisthētikón (πρῶτον αἰσθητῐκόν, lit. 'first of the senses'). (According to Gregorić, this is specifically in contexts where it refers to the higher order common sense that includes imagination.) Later philosophers developing this line of thought, such as Themistius, Galen, and Al-Farabi, called it the ruler of the senses or ruling sense, apparently a metaphor developed from a section of Plato's Timaeus (70b).[22] Augustine and some of the Arab writers, also called it the "inner sense".[21] The concept of the inner senses, plural, was further developed in the Middle Ages. Under the influence of the great Persian philosophers Al-Farabi and Avicenna, several inner senses came to be listed. "Thomas Aquinas and John of Jandun recognized four internal senses: the common sense, imagination, vis cogitativa, and memory. Avicenna, followed by Robert Grosseteste, Albert the Great, and Roger Bacon, argued for five internal senses: the common sense, imagination, fantasy, vis aestimativa, and memory."[27] By the time of Descartes and Hobbes, in the 1600s, the inner senses had been standardized to five wits, which complemented the more well-known five "external" senses.[21] Under this medieval scheme the common sense was understood to be seated not in the heart, as Aristotle had thought, but in the anterior Galenic ventricle of the brain. The great anatomist Andreas Vesalius however found no connections between the anterior ventricle and the sensory nerves, leading to speculation about other parts of the brain into the 1600s.[28]

text: Heller-Roazen (2008) writes that "In different ways the philosophers of medieval Latin and Arabic tradition, from Al-Farabi to Avicenna, Averroës, Albert, and Thomas, found in the De Anima and the Parva Naturalia the scattered elements of a coherent doctrine of the "central" faculty of the sensuous soul."[29] It was "one of the most successful and resilient of Aristotelian notions."[30]

text: Roman[edit]

text: "Sensus communis" is the Latin translation of the Greek koinḕ aísthēsis, which came to be recovered by Medieval scholastics when discussing Aristotelian theories of perception. However, in earlier Latin during the Roman empire the term had taken a distinct ethical detour, developing new shades of meaning. These especially Roman meanings were apparently influenced by several Stoic Greek terms with the word koinḗ (κοινή, lit. 'common, shared'); not only koinḕ aísthēsis, but also such terms as koinós noûs (κοινός νοῦς, lit. 'common mind/thought/reason') koinḗ énnoia (κοινή ἔννοιᾰ), and koinonoēmosúnē, all of which involve noûs—something, at least in Aristotle, that would not be present in "lower" animals.[31]

text:
Koinḗ énnoia is a term from Stoic philosophy, a Greek philosophy, influenced by Aristotle, and influential in Rome. This refers to shared notions, or common conceptions, that are either in-born or imprinted by the senses on to the soul. Unfortunately few true Stoic texts survive, and our understanding of their technical terminology is limited.[32]
Koinós noûs is a term found in Epictetus (III.vi.8), a Stoic philosopher. C.S. Lewis (1967, p. 146) believed this to be close to a modern English meaning of "common sense", "the elementary mental outfit of the normal man", something like intelligence. He noted that sensus could be a translation of noûs, (for example in the Vulgate Bible), but he only found one clear case of a Latin text showing this apparent meaning, a text by Phaedrus the fable writer.
Koinonoēmosúnē is found only in the work of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (Meditations I.16), also known as a Stoic. (He uses the word on its own in a list of things he learned from his adopted father.) Shaftesbury and others felt it represented the Stoic Greek original, which gave the special Roman meaning of sensus communis, especially when used to refer to someone's public spirit. Shaftesbury explained the change of meaning as being due to the specific way that Stoics understood perception and intellect, saying that one should "consider withal how small the distinction was in that Philosophy, between the ὑπόληψις [conjecture], and the vulgar αἴσθησις [perception]; how generally Passion was by those Philosophers brought under the Head of Opinion".[33]

text: Another link between Latin communis sensus and Aristotle's Greek was in rhetoric, a subject that Aristotle was the first to systematize. In rhetoric, a prudent speaker must take account of opinions (δόξαι, dóxai) that are widely held.[34] Aristotle referred to such commonly held beliefs not as koinaí dóxai (κοιναί δόξαι, lit. 'common opinions'), which is a term he used for self-evident logical axioms, but with other terms such as éndóxa (ἔνδόξα).

text: In his Rhetoric for example Aristotle mentions "koinōn [...] tàs písteis" or "common beliefs", saying that "our proofs and arguments must rest on generally accepted principles, [...] when speaking of converse with the multitude".[35] In a similar passage in his own work on rhetoric, De Oratore, Cicero wrote that "in oratory the very cardinal sin is to depart from the language of everyday life and the usage approved by the sense of the community". The sense of the community is in this case one translation of "communis sensus" in the Latin of Cicero.[36][37]

text: Whether the Latin writers such as Cicero deliberately used this Aristotelian term in a new more peculiarly Roman way, probably also influenced by Greek Stoicism, therefore remains a subject of discussion. Schaeffer (1990, p. 112) has proposed for example that the Roman republic maintained a very "oral" culture whereas in Aristotle's time rhetoric had come under heavy criticism from philosophers such as Socrates. Peters Agnew (2008) argues, in agreement with Shaftesbury in the 18th century, that the concept developed from the Stoic concept of ethical virtue, influenced by Aristotle, but emphasizing the role of both the individual perception, and shared communal understanding. But in any case a complex of ideas attached itself to the term, to be almost forgotten in the Middle Ages, and eventually returning into ethical discussion in 18th-century Europe, after Descartes.

text: As with other meanings of common sense, for the Romans of the classical era "it designates a sensibility shared by all, from which one may deduce a number of fundamental judgments, that need not, or cannot, be questioned by rational reflection".[38] But even though Cicero did at least once use the term in a manuscript on Plato's Timaeus (concerning a primordial "sense, one and common for all [...] connected with nature"), he and other Roman authors did not normally use it as a technical term limited to discussion about sense perception, as Aristotle apparently had in De Anima, and as the Scholastics later would in the Middle Ages.[39] Instead of referring to all animal judgment, it was used to describe pre-rational, widely shared human beliefs, and therefore it was a near equivalent to the concept of humanitas. This was a term that could be used by Romans to imply not only human nature, but also humane conduct, good breeding, refined manners, and so on.[40] Apart from Cicero, Quintilian, Lucretius, Seneca, Horace and some of the most influential Roman authors influenced by Aristotle's rhetoric and philosophy used the Latin term "sensus communis" in a range of such ways.[41] As C. S. Lewis wrote:

text: Quintilian says it is better to send a boy to school than to have a private tutor for him at home; for if he is kept away from the herd (congressus) how will he ever learn that sensus which we call communis? (I, ii, 20). On the lowest level it means tact. In Horace the man who talks to you when you obviously don't want to talk lacks communis sensus.[42]

text: Compared to Aristotle and his strictest medieval followers, these Roman authors were not so strict about the boundary between animal-like common sense and specially human reasoning. As discussed above, Aristotle had attempted to make a clear distinction between, on the one hand, imagination and the sense perception which both use the sensible koiná, and which animals also have; and, on the other hand, noûs (intellect) and reason, which perceives another type of koiná, the intelligible forms, which (according to Aristotle) only humans have. In other words, these Romans allowed that people could have animal-like shared understandings of reality, not just in terms of memories of sense perceptions, but in terms of the way they would tend to explain things, and in the language they use.[43]

text: Cartesian[edit]

text: One of the last notable philosophers to accept something like the Aristotelian "common sense" was Descartes in the 17th century, but he also undermined it. He described this inner faculty when writing in Latin in his Meditations on first philosophy.[44] The common sense is the link between the body and its senses, and the true human mind, which according to Descartes must be purely immaterial. Unlike Aristotle, who had placed it in the heart, by the time of Descartes this faculty was thought to be in the brain, and he located it in the pineal gland.[45] Descartes' judgement of this common sense was that it was enough to persuade the human consciousness of the existence of physical things, but often in a very indistinct way. To get a more distinct understanding of things, it is more important to be methodical and mathematical.[46] This line of thought was taken further, if not by Descartes himself then by those he influenced, until the concept of a faculty or organ of common sense was itself rejected.

text: René Descartes is generally credited with making obsolete the notion that there was an actual faculty within the human brain that functioned as a sensus communis. The French philosopher did not fully reject the idea of the inner senses, which he appropriated from the Scholastics. But he distanced himself from the Aristotelian conception of a common sense faculty, abandoning it entirely by the time of his Passions of the Soul (1649).[47]

text: Contemporaries such as Gassendi and Hobbes went beyond Descartes in some ways in their rejection of Aristotelianism, rejecting explanations involving anything other than matter and motion, including the distinction between the animal-like judgement of sense perception, a special separate common sense, and the human mind or noûs, which Descartes had retained from Aristotelianism.[48] In contrast to Descartes who "found it unacceptable to assume that sensory representations may enter the mental realm from without"...

text: According to Hobbes [...] man is no different from the other animals. [...] Hobbes' philosophy constituted a more profound rupture with Peripatetic thought. He accepted mental representations but [...] "All sense is fancy", as Hobbes famously put it, with the only exception of extension and motion.[49]

text: But Descartes used two different terms in his work, not only the Latin term "sensus communis", but also the French term bon sens, with which he opens his Discourse on Method. And this second concept survived better. This work was written in French, and does not directly discuss the Aristotelian technical theory of perception. Bon sens is the equivalent of modern English "common sense" or "good sense". As the Aristotelian meaning of the Latin term began to be forgotten after Descartes, his discussion of bon sens gave a new way of defining sensus communis in various European languages (including Latin, even though Descartes himself did not translate bon sens as sensus communis, but treated them as two separate things).[50]

text: Schaeffer (1990, p. 2) writes that "Descartes is the source of the most common meaning of common sense today: practical judgment". Gilson noted that Descartes actually gave bon sens two related meanings, first the basic and widely shared ability to judge true and false, which he also calls raison (lit. 'reason'); and second, wisdom, the perfected version of the first. The Latin term Descartes uses, bona mens (lit. 'good mind'), derives from the Stoic author Seneca who only used it in the second sense. Descartes was being original.[51]

text: The idea that now became influential, developed in both the Latin and French works of Descartes, though coming from different directions, is that common good sense (and indeed sense perception) is not reliable enough for the new Cartesian method of skeptical reasoning.[52] The Cartesian project to replace common good sense with clearly defined mathematical reasoning was aimed at certainty, and not mere probability. It was promoted further by people such as Hobbes, Spinoza, and others and continues to have important impacts on everyday life. In France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy, it was in its initial florescence associated with the administration of Catholic empires of the competing Bourbon, and Habsburg dynasties, both seeking to centralize their power in a modern way, responding to Machiavellianism and Protestantism as part of the so-called counter reformation.[53]

text: Cartesian theory offered a justification for innovative social change achieved through the courts and administration, an ability to adapt the law to changing social conditions by making the basis for legislation "rational" rather than "traditional".[54]

text: So after Descartes, critical attention turned from Aristotle and his theory of perception, and more towards Descartes' own treatment of common good sense, concerning which several 18th-century authors found help in Roman literature.

text: The Enlightenment after Descartes[edit]

text: Epistemology: versus claims of certainty[edit]

text: During the Enlightenment, Descartes' insistence upon a mathematical-style method of thinking that treated common sense and the sense perceptions sceptically, was accepted in some ways, but also criticized. On the one hand, the approach of Descartes is and was seen as radically sceptical in some ways. On the other hand, like the Scholastics before him, while being cautious of common sense, Descartes was instead seen to rely too much on undemonstrable metaphysical assumptions in order to justify his method, especially in its separation of mind and body (with the sensus communis linking them). Cartesians such as Henricus Regius, Geraud de Cordemoy, and Nicolas Malebranche realized that Descartes's logic could give no evidence of the "external world" at all, meaning it had to be taken on faith.[55] Though his own proposed solution was even more controversial, Berkeley famously wrote that enlightenment requires a "revolt from metaphysical notions to the plain dictates of nature and common sense".[56] Descartes and the Cartesian "rationalists", rejected reliance upon experience, the senses and inductive reasoning, and seemed to insist that certainty was possible. The alternative to induction, deductive reasoning, demanded a mathematical approach, starting from simple and certain assumptions. This in turn required Descartes (and later rationalists such as Kant) to assume the existence of innate or "a priori" knowledge in the human mind—a controversial proposal.

text: In contrast to the rationalists, the "empiricists" took their orientation from Francis Bacon, whose arguments for methodical science were earlier than those of Descartes, and less directed towards mathematics and certainty. Bacon is known for his doctrine of the "idols of the mind", presented in his Novum Organum, and in his Essays described normal human thinking as biased towards believing in lies.[57] But he was also the opponent of all metaphysical explanations of nature, or over-reaching speculation generally, and a proponent of science based on small steps of experience,  experimentation and methodical induction. So while agreeing upon the need to help common sense with a methodical approach, he also insisted that starting from common sense, including especially common sense perceptions, was acceptable and correct. He influenced Locke and Pierre Bayle, in their critique of metaphysics, and in 1733 Voltaire "introduced him as the "father" of the scientific method" to a French audience, an understanding that was widespread by 1750. Together with this, references to "common sense" became positive and associated with modernity, in contrast to negative references to metaphysics, which was associated with the Ancien Régime.[8]

text: As mentioned above, in terms of the more general epistemological implications of common sense, modern philosophy came to use the term common sense like Descartes, abandoning Aristotle's theory. While Descartes had distanced himself from it, John Locke abandoned it more openly, while still maintaining the idea of "common sensibles" that are perceived. But then George Berkeley abandoned both.[47] David Hume agreed with Berkeley on this, and like Locke and Vico saw himself as following Bacon more than Descartes. In his synthesis, which he saw as the first Baconian analysis of man (something the lesser known Vico had claimed earlier), common sense is entirely built up from shared experience and shared innate emotions, and therefore it is indeed imperfect as a basis for any attempt to know the truth or to make the best decision. But he defended the possibility of science without absolute certainty, and consistently described common sense as giving a valid answer to the challenge of extreme skepticism. Concerning such sceptics, he wrote:

text: But would these prejudiced reasoners reflect a moment, there are many obvious instances and arguments, sufficient to undeceive them, and make them enlarge their maxims and principles. Do they not see the vast variety of inclinations and pursuits among our species; where each man seems fully satisfied with his own course of life, and would esteem it the greatest unhappiness to be confined to that of his neighbour? Do they not feel in themselves, that what pleases at one time, displeases at another, by the change of inclination; and that it is not in their power, by their utmost efforts, to recall that taste or appetite, which formerly bestowed charms on what now appears indifferent or disagreeable? [...] Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?[58]

text: Ethics: "humanist"[edit]

text: Once Thomas Hobbes and Spinoza had applied Cartesian approaches to political philosophy, concerns about the inhumanity of the deductive approach of Descartes increased. With this in mind, Shaftesbury and, much less known at the time, Giambattista Vico, both presented new arguments for the importance of the Roman understanding of common sense, in what is now often referred to, after Hans-Georg Gadamer, as a humanist interpretation of the term.[59] Their concern had several inter-related aspects. One ethical concern was the deliberately simplified method that treated human communities as made up of selfish independent individuals (methodological individualism), ignoring the sense of community that the Romans understood as part of common sense. Another connected epistemological concern was that by considering common good sense as inherently inferior to Cartesian conclusions developed from simple assumptions, an important type of wisdom was being arrogantly ignored.

text: Shaftesbury's seminal 1709 essay Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour was a highly erudite and influential defense of the use of irony and humour in serious discussions, at least among men of "Good Breeding". He drew upon authors such as Seneca, Juvenal, Horace and Marcus Aurelius, for whom, he saw, common sense was not just a reference to widely held vulgar opinions, but something cultivated among educated people living in better communities. One aspect of this, later taken up by authors such as Kant, was good taste. Another very important aspect of common sense particularly interesting to later British political philosophers such as Francis Hutcheson was what came to be called moral sentiment, which is different from a tribal or factional sentiment, but a more general fellow feeling that is very important for larger communities:

text: A publick Spirit can come only from a social Feeling or Sense of Partnership with Human Kind. Now there are none so far from being Partners in this Sense, or sharers in this common Affection, as they who scarcely know an Equall, nor consider themselves as subject to any law of Fellowship or Community. And thus Morality and good Government go together.[60]

text: Hutcheson described it as, "a Publick Sense, viz. "our Determination to be pleased with the Happiness of others, and to be uneasy at their Misery."" which, he explains, "was sometimes called κοινονοημοσύνη[61] or Sensus Communis by some of the Antients".[62]

text: A reaction to Shaftesbury in defense of the Hobbesian approach of treating communities as driven by individual self-interest, was not long coming in Bernard Mandeville's controversial works. Indeed, this approach was never fully rejected, at least in economics. And so despite the criticism heaped upon Mandeville and Hobbes by Adam Smith, Hutcheson's student and successor in Glasgow university, Smith made self-interest a core assumption within nascent modern economics, specifically as part of the practical justification for allowing free markets.

text: By the late enlightenment period in the 18th century, the communal sense or empathy pointed to by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had become the "moral sense" or "moral sentiment" referred to by Hume and Adam Smith, the latter writing in plural of the "moral sentiments" with the key one being sympathy, which was not so much a public spirit as such, but a kind of extension of self-interest. Jeremy Bentham gives a summary of the plethora of terms used in British philosophy by the nineteenth century to describe common sense in discussions about ethics:

text: Another man comes and alters the phrase: leaving out moral, and putting in common, in the room of it. He then tells you, that his common sense teaches him what is right and wrong, as surely as the other's moral sense did: meaning by common sense, a sense of some kind or other, which he says, is possessed by all mankind: the sense of those, whose sense is not the same as the author's, being struck out of the account as not worth taking.[63]

text: This was at least to some extent opposed to the Hobbesian approach, still today normal in economic theory, of trying to understand all human behaviour as fundamentally selfish, and would also be a foil to the new ethics of Kant. This understanding of a moral sense or public spirit remains a subject for discussion, although the term "common sense" is no longer commonly used for the sentiment itself.[64] In several European languages, a separate term for this type of common sense is used. For example, French sens commun and German Gemeinsinn are used for this feeling of human solidarity, while bon sens (good sense) and gesunder Verstand (healthy understanding) are the terms for everyday "common sense".

text: According to Gadamer, at least in French and British philosophy a moral element in appeals to common sense (or bon sens), such as found in Reid, remains normal to this day.[65] But according to Gadamer, the civic quality implied in discussion of sensus communis in other European countries did not take root in the German philosophy of the 18th and 19th centuries, despite the fact it consciously imitated much in English and French philosophy. "Sensus communis was understood as a purely theoretical judgment, parallel to moral consciousness (conscience) and taste."[66] The concept of sensus communis "was emptied and intellectualized by the German enlightenment".[67] But German philosophy was becoming internationally important at this same time.

text: Gadamer notes one less-known exception—the Württemberg pietism, inspired by the 18th century Swabian churchman, M. Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, who appealed to Shaftesbury and other Enlightenment figures in his critique of the Cartesian rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff, who were the most important German philosophers before Kant.[68]

text: Giambattista Vico[edit]

text: Vico, who taught classical rhetoric in Naples (where Shaftesbury died) under a Cartesian-influenced Spanish government, was not widely read until the 20th century, but his writings on common sense have been an important influence upon Hans-Georg Gadamer, Benedetto Croce and Antonio Gramsci.[31] Vico united the Roman and Greek meanings of the term communis sensus.[69] Vico's initial use of the term, which was of much inspiration to Gadamer for example, appears in his On the Study Methods of our Time, which was partly a defense of his own profession, given the reformist pressure upon both his University and the legal system in Naples. It presents common sense as something adolescents need to be trained in if they are not to "break into odd and arrogant behaviour when adulthood is reached", whereas teaching Cartesian method on its own harms common sense and stunts intellectual development. Rhetoric and elocution are not just for legal debate, but also educate young people to use their sense perceptions and their perceptions more broadly, building a fund of remembered images in their imagination, and then using ingenuity in creating linking metaphors, in order to make enthymemes. Enthymemes are reasonings about uncertain truths and probabilities—as opposed to the Cartesian method, which was skeptical of all that could not be dealt with as syllogisms, including raw perceptions of physical bodies. Hence common sense is not just a "guiding standard of eloquence" but also "the standard of practical judgment". The imagination or fantasy, which under traditional Aristotelianism was often equated with the koinḕ aísthēsis, is built up under this training, becoming the "fund" (to use Schaeffer's term) accepting not only memories of things seen by an individual, but also metaphors and images known in the community, including the ones out of which language itself is made.[70]

text: In its mature version, Vico's conception of sensus communis is defined by him as "judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire people, and entire nation, or the entire human race". Vico proposed his own anti-Cartesian methodology for a new Baconian science, inspired, he said, by Plato, Tacitus,[71] Francis Bacon and Grotius. In this he went further than his predecessors concerning the ancient certainties available within vulgar common sense. What is required, according to his new science, is to find the common sense shared by different people and nations. He made this a basis for a new and better-founded approach to discuss Natural Law, improving upon Grotius, John Selden, and Pufendorf who he felt had failed to convince, because they could claim no authority from nature. Unlike Grotius, Vico went beyond looking for one single set of similarities amongst nations but also established rules about how natural law properly changes as peoples change, and has to be judged relative to this state of development. He thus developed a detailed view of an evolving wisdom of peoples. Ancient forgotten wisdoms, he claimed, could be re-discovered by analysis of languages and myths formed under the influence of them.[72] This is comparable to both Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, as well as much later Hegelian historicism, both of which apparently developed without any awareness of Vico's work.[73]

text: Thomas Reid and the Scottish school[edit]

text: Contemporary with Hume, but critical of Hume's scepticism, a so-called Scottish school of Common Sense formed, whose basic principle was enunciated by its founder and greatest figure, Thomas Reid:

text: If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them — these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd.[74]

text: Thomas Reid was a successor to Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith as Professor of Moral Philosophy, Glasgow. While Reid's interests lay in the defense of common sense as a type of self-evident knowledge available to individuals, this was also part of a defense of natural law in the style of Grotius. He believed that the term common sense as he used it did encompass both the social common sense described by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, and the perceptive powers described by Aristotelians.

text: Reid was criticised, partly for his critique of Hume, by Kant and J. S. Mill, who were two of the most important influences in nineteenth century philosophy. He was blamed for over-stating Hume's scepticism of commonly held beliefs, and more importantly for not perceiving the problem with any claim that common sense could ever fulfill Cartesian (or Kantian) demands for absolute knowledge. Reid furthermore emphasized inborn common sense as opposed to only experience and sense perception. In this way his common sense has a similarity to the assertion of a priori knowledge asserted by rationalists like Descartes and Kant, despite Reid's criticism of Descartes concerning his theory of ideas. Hume was critical of Reid on this point.

text: Despite the criticism, the influence of the Scottish school was notable for example upon American pragmatism, and modern Thomism. The influence has been particularly important concerning the epistemological importance of a sensus communis for any possibility of rational discussion between people.

text: Kant: In aesthetic taste[edit]

text: Immanuel Kant developed a new variant of the idea of sensus communis, noting how having a sensitivity for what opinions are widely shared and comprehensible gives a sort of standard for judgment, and objective discussion, at least in the field of aesthetics and taste:

text: The common Understanding of men [gemeine Menschenverstand], which, as the mere sound (not yet cultivated) Understanding, we regard as the least to be expected from any one claiming the name of man, has therefore the doubtful honour of being given the name of common sense [Namen des Gemeinsinnes] (sensus communis); and in such a way that by the name common (not merely in our language, where the word actually has a double signification, but in many others) we understand vulgar, that which is everywhere met with, the possession of which indicates absolutely no merit or superiority.

text: But under the sensus communis we must include the Idea of a communal sense [eines gemeinschaftlichen Sinnes], i.e. of a faculty of judgement, which in its reflection takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of all other men in thought; in order as it were to compare its judgement with the collective Reason of humanity, and thus to escape the illusion arising from the private conditions that could be so easily taken for objective, which would injuriously affect the judgement.[75]

text: Kant saw this concept as answering a particular need in his system: "the question of why aesthetic judgments are valid: since aesthetic judgments are a perfectly normal function of the same faculties of cognition involved in ordinary cognition, they will have the same universal validity as such ordinary acts of cognition".[76]

text: But Kant's overall approach was very different from those of Hume or Vico. Like Descartes, he rejected appeals to uncertain sense perception and common sense (except in the very specific way he describes concerning aesthetics), or the prejudices of one's "Weltanschauung", and tried to give a new way to certainty through methodical logic, and an assumption of a type of a priori knowledge. He was also not in agreement with Reid and the Scottish school, who he criticized in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics as using "the magic wand of common sense", and not properly confronting the "metaphysical" problem defined by Hume, which Kant wanted to be solved scientifically—the problem of how to use reason to consider how one ought to act.

text: Kant used different words to refer to his aesthetic sensus communis, for which he used Latin or else German Gemeinsinn, and the more general English meaning which he associated with Reid and his followers, for which he used various terms such as gemeinen Menscheverstand, gesunden Verstand, or gemeinen Verstand.[77]

text: According to Gadamer, in contrast to the "wealth of meaning" that Vico and Shaftesbury brought from the Roman tradition into their humanism, Kant "developed his moral philosophy in explicit opposition to the doctrine of "moral feeling" that had been worked out in English philosophy". The moral imperative "cannot be based on feeling, not even if one does not mean an individual's feeling but common moral sensibility".[78] For Kant, the sensus communis only applied to taste, and the meaning of taste was also narrowed as it was no longer understood as any kind of knowledge.[79] Taste, for Kant, is universal only in that it results from "the free play of all our cognitive powers", and is communal only in that it "abstracts from all subjective, private conditions such as attractiveness and emotion".[80]

text: Kant himself did not see himself as a relativist, and was aiming to give knowledge a more solid basis, but as Richard J. Bernstein remarks, reviewing this same critique of Gadamer:

text: Once we begin to question whether there is a common faculty of taste (a sensus communis), we are easily led down the path to relativism. And this is what did happen after Kant—so much so that today it is extraordinarily difficult to retrieve any idea of taste or aesthetic judgment that is more than the expression of personal preferences. Ironically (given Kant's intentions), the same tendency has worked itself out with a vengeance with regards to all judgments of value, including moral judgments.[81]

text: Contemporary philosophy[edit]

text: Epistemology[edit]

text: Continuing the tradition of Reid and the enlightenment generally, the common sense of individuals trying to understand reality continues to be a serious subject in philosophy. In America, Reid influenced C. S. Peirce, the founder of the philosophical movement now known as Pragmatism, which has become internationally influential. One of the names Peirce used for the movement was "Critical Common-Sensism". Peirce, who wrote after Charles Darwin, suggested that Reid and Kant's ideas about inborn common sense could be explained by evolution. But while such beliefs might be well adapted to primitive conditions, they were not infallible, and could not always be relied upon.

text: Another example still influential today is from G. E. Moore, several of whose essays, such as the 1925 "A Defence of Common Sense", argued that individuals can make many types of statements about what they judge to be true, and that the individual and everyone else knows to be true. Michael Huemer has advocated an epistemic theory he calls phenomenal conservatism, which he claims to accord with common sense by way of internalist intuition.[82]

text: Ethics: what the community would think[edit]

text: In twentieth century philosophy the concept of the sensus communis as discussed by Vico and especially Kant became a major topic of philosophical discussion. The theme of this discussion questions how far the understanding of eloquent rhetorical discussion (in the case of Vico), or communally sensitive aesthetic tastes (in the case of Kant) can give a standard or model for political, ethical and legal discussion in a world where forms of relativism are commonly accepted, and serious dialogue between very different nations is essential. Some philosophers such as Jacques Rancière indeed take the lead from Jean-François Lyotard and refer to the "postmodern" condition as one where there is "dissensus communis".[83]

text: Hannah Arendt adapted Kant's concept of sensus communis as a faculty of aesthetic judgement that imagines the judgements of others, into something relevant for political judgement. Thus she created a "Kantian" political philosophy, which, as she said herself, Kant did not write. She argued that there was often a banality to evil in the real world, for example in the case of someone like Adolf Eichmann, which consisted in a lack of sensus communis and thoughtfulness generally. Arendt and also Jürgen Habermas, who took a similar position concerning Kant's sensus communis, were criticised by Lyotard for their use of Kant's sensus communis as a standard for real political judgement. Lyotard also saw Kant's sensus communis as an important concept for understanding political judgement, not aiming at any consensus, but rather at a possibility of a "euphony" in "dis-sensus". Lyotard claimed that any attempt to impose any sensus communis in real politics would mean imposture by an empowered faction upon others.[84]

text: In a parallel development, Antonio Gramsci, Benedetto Croce, and later Hans-Georg Gadamer took inspiration from Vico's understanding of common sense as a kind of wisdom of nations, going beyond Cartesian method. It has been suggested that Gadamer's most well-known work, Truth and Method, can be read as an "extended meditation on the implications of Vico's defense of the rhetorical tradition in response to the nascent methodologism that ultimately dominated academic enquiry".[85] In the case of Gadamer, this was in specific contrast to the sensus communis concept in Kant, which he felt (in agreement with Lyotard) could not be relevant to politics if used in its original sense.

text: Gadamer came into direct debate with his contemporary Habermas, the so-called Hermeneutikstreit. Habermas, with a self-declared Enlightenment "prejudice against prejudice" argued that if breaking free from the restraints of language is not the aim of dialectic, then social science will be dominated by whoever wins debates, and thus Gadamer's defense of sensus communis effectively defends traditional prejudices. Gadamer argued that being critical requires being critical of prejudices including the prejudice against prejudice. Some prejudices will be true. And Gadamer did not share Habermas' acceptance that aiming at going beyond language through method was not itself potentially dangerous. Furthermore, he insisted that because all understanding comes through language, hermeneutics has a claim to universality. As Gadamer wrote in the "Afterword" of Truth and Method, "I find it frighteningly unreal when people like Habermas ascribe to rhetoric a compulsory quality that one must reject in favor of unconstrained, rational dialogue".

text: Paul Ricoeur argued that Gadamer and Habermas were both right in part. As a hermeneutist like Gadamer he agreed with him about the problem of lack of any perspective outside of history, pointing out that Habermas himself argued as someone coming from a particular tradition. He also agreed with Gadamer that hermeneutics is a "basic kind of knowing on which others rest."[86] But he felt that Gadamer under-estimated the need for a dialectic that was critical and distanced, and attempting to go behind language.[87][88]

text: A recent commentator on Vico, John D. Schaeffer has argued that Gadamer's approach to sensus communis exposed itself to the criticism of Habermas because it "privatized" it, removing it from a changing and oral community, following the Greek philosophers in rejecting true communal rhetoric, in favour of forcing the concept within a Socratic dialectic aimed at truth. Schaeffer claims that Vico's concept provides a third option to those of Habermas and Gadamer and he compares it to the recent philosophers Richard J. Bernstein, Bernard Williams, Richard Rorty, and Alasdair MacIntyre, and the recent theorist of rhetoric, Richard Lanham.[89]

text: "Moral sense" as opposed to "rationality"[edit]

text: The other Enlightenment debate about common sense, concerning common sense as a term for an emotion or drive that is unselfish, also continues to be important in discussion of social science, and especially economics. The axiom that communities can be usefully modeled as a collection of self-interested individuals is a central assumption in much of modern mathematical economics, and mathematical economics has now come to be an influential tool of political decision making.

text: While the term "common sense" had already become less commonly used as a term for the empathetic moral sentiments by the time of Adam Smith, debates continue about methodological individualism as something supposedly justified philosophically for methodological reasons (as argued for example by Milton Friedman and more recently by Gary S. Becker, both members of the so-called Chicago school of economics).[90] As in the Enlightenment, this debate therefore continues to combine debates about not only what the individual motivations of people are, but also what can be known about scientifically, and what should be usefully assumed for methodological reasons, even if the truth of the assumptions are strongly doubted. Economics and social science generally have been criticized as a refuge of Cartesian methodology. Hence, amongst critics of the methodological argument for assuming self-centeredness in economics are authors such as Deirdre McCloskey, who have taken their bearings from the above-mentioned philosophical debates involving Habermas, Gadamer, the anti-Cartesian Richard Rorty and others, arguing that trying to force economics to follow artificial methodological laws is bad, and it is better to recognize social science as driven by rhetoric.

text: Catholic theology[edit]

text: Among Catholic theologians, writers such as theologian François Fénelon and philosopher Claude Buffier (1661–1737) gave an anti-Cartesian defense of common sense as a foundation for knowledge. Other catholic theologians took up this approach, and attempts were made to combine this with more traditional Thomism, for example Jean-Marie de Lamennais. This was similar to the approach of Thomas Reid, who for example was a direct influence on Théodore Jouffroy. This however meant basing knowledge upon something uncertain, and irrational. Matteo Liberatore, seeking an approach more consistent with Aristotle and Aquinas, equated this foundational common sense with the koinaí dóxai of Aristotle, that correspond to the communes conceptiones of Aquinas.[55] In the twentieth century, this debate is especially associated with Étienne Gilson and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.[91] Gilson pointed out that Liberatore's approach means categorizing such common beliefs as the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, under the same heading as (in Aristotle and Aquinas) such logical beliefs as that it is impossible for something to exist and not exist at the same time. This, according to Gilson, is going beyond the original meaning. Concerning Liberatore he wrote:

text: Endeavours of this sort always end in defeat. In order to confer a technical philosophical value upon the common sense of orators and moralists it is necessary either to accept Reid's common sense as a sort of unjustified and unjustifiable instinct, which will destroy Thomism, or to reduce it to the Thomist intellect and reason, which will result in its being suppressed as a specifically distinct faculty of knowledge. In short, there can be no middle ground between Reid and St. Thomas.[55]

text: Gilson argued that Thomism avoided the problem of having to decide between Cartesian innate certainties and Reid's uncertain common sense, and that "as soon as the problem of the existence of the external world was presented in terms of common sense, Cartesianism was accepted".[91]

text: Projects[edit]

text:
McCarthy's advice-taker proposal of 1958 represents an early proposal to use logic for representing common-sense knowledge in mathematical logic and using an automated theorem prover to derive answers to questions expressed in logical form. Compare Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator and characteristica universalis.
The Cyc project attempts to provide a basis of common-sense knowledge for artificial-intelligence systems.
The Open Mind Common Sense project resembles the Cyc project, except that it, like other on-line collaborative projects depends on the contributions of thousands of individuals across the World Wide Web.


document_title: Mint (facility)

question_text: who laid foundation of modern minting of coins

root

text: Mint (facility)

text: History[edit]

text: The first minted coins[edit]

text: The earliest metallic money did not consist of coins, but of unminted metal in the form of rings and other ornaments or of weapons, which were used for thousands of years by the Egyptian, Chaldean and Assyrian empires.[citation needed] Metals were well suited to represent wealth, owing to their great commodity value per unit weight or volume, and their durability, divisibility and rarity. The best metals for coinage are gold, silver, platinum, copper, tin, nickel, aluminum, zinc, iron, and their alloys; certain alloys of gold, silver, copper and nickel have the best combination of the required qualities.[citation needed]

tag: p

text: The first mint was likely established in Lydia in the 7th century BC, for coining gold, silver and electrum. The Lydian innovation of manufacturing coins under the authority of the state spread to neighboring Greece, where a number of city-states operated their own mints. Some of the earliest Greek mints were within city-states on Greek islands such as Crete; a mint existed at the ancient city of Cydonia on Crete at least as early as the fifth century BC.[1]

text: At about the same time, coins and mints appeared independently in China and spread to Korea and Japan. The manufacture of coins in the Roman Empire, dating from about the 4th century BC, significantly influenced later development of coin minting in Europe.

text: The origin of the word "mint" is ascribed to the manufacture of silver coin at Rome in 269 BC at the temple of Juno Moneta. This goddess became the personification of money, and her name was applied both to money and to its place of manufacture. Roman mints were spread widely across the Empire, and were sometimes used for propaganda purposes. The populace often learned of a new Roman Emperor when coins appeared with the new Emperor's portrait. Some of the emperors who ruled only for a short time made sure that a coin bore their image; Quietus, for example, ruled only part of the Roman Empire from 260 to 261 AD, and yet he issued two coins bearing his image.

text: Early minting technology[edit]

text: Ancient coins were made by casting in moulds or by striking between engraved dies. The Romans cast their larger copper coins in clay moulds carrying distinctive markings, not because they knew nothing of striking, but because it was not suitable for such large masses of metal. Casting is now used only by counterfeiters.

text: The most ancient coins were cast in bulletshaped or conical moulds and marked on one side by means of a die which was struck with a hammer. The "blank" or unmarked piece of metal was placed on a small anvil, and the die was held in position with tongs. The reverse or lower side of the coin received a “rough incuse” by the hammer. Later a rectangular mark, a “square incuse,” was made by the sharp edges of the little anvil, or punch. The rich iconography of the obverse of the early electrum coins contrasts with the dull appearance of their reverse which usually carries only punch marks. The shape and number of these punches varied according to their denomination and weight-standard.[2] Subsequently, the anvil was marked in various ways, and decorated with letters and figures of beasts, and later still the anvil was replaced by a reverse die. The spherical blanks soon gave place to lenticular-shaped ones. The blank was made red-hot and struck between cold dies. One blow was usually insufficient, and the method was similar to that still used in striking medals in high relief, except that the blank is now allowed to cool before being struck. With the substitution of iron for bronze as the material for dies, about 300 AD, the practice of striking the blanks while they were hot was gradually discarded.

text: In the Middle Ages bars of metal were cast and hammered out on an anvil. Portions of the flattened sheets were then cut out with shears, struck between dies and again trimmed with shears. A similar method had been used in Ancient Egypt during the Ptolemaic Kingdom (c. 300 BC), but had been forgotten. Square pieces of metal were also cut from cast bars, converted into round disks by hammering and then struck between dies. In striking, the lower die was fixed into a block of wood, and the blank piece of metal laid upon it by hand. The upper die was then placed on the blank, and kept in position by means of a holder round which was placed a roll of lead to protect the hand of the operator while heavy blows were struck with a hammer. An early improvement was the introduction of a tool resembling a pair of tongs, the two dies being placed one at the extremity of each leg. This avoided the necessity of readjusting the dies between blows, and ensured greater accuracy in the impression.[3]

text:
A furnace for producing molten metal for coin production.

A trussell for use with a pile in producing hammered coins as shown by the moneyer at work.

A mill for the production of 'milled' coins with both coin dies illustrated.

A mill for inscribing or milling the edges of coin flans or planchets.

tag: ul

text: The screw press[edit]

text: Minting by means of a falling weight (monkey press) intervened between the hand hammers and the screw press in many places. In Birmingham in particular this system became highly developed and was long in use. In 1553, the French engineer Aubin Olivier introduced screw presses for striking coins, together with rolls for reducing the cast bars and machines for punching-out round disks from flattened sheets of metal.[4] 8 to 12 men took over from each other every quarter of an hour to maneuver the arms driving the screw which struck the medals. Later, the rolls were driven by horses, mules or water-power.

text: Henry II came up against hostility on the part of the coin makers, so the process was largely discarded in 1585 and only used for coins of small value, medals and tokens. The system was reintroduced into France by Jean Varin in 1640 and the practice of hammering was forbidden in 1645.[5] In England the new machinery was tried in London in 1561, but abandoned soon afterwards; it was finally adopted in 1662, although the old pieces continued in circulation until 1696.

text: Industrial minting[edit]

text: Industrial techniques and steam-power was introduced to coin manufacture by Matthew Boulton in Birmingham in 1788. By 1786, two-thirds of the coins in circulation in Britain were counterfeit, and the Royal Mint responded to this crisis by shutting itself down, worsening the situation.[6][7] The industrialist Mathew Boulton turned his attention to coinage in the mid-1780s as an extension to the small metal products he already manufactured in his factory in Soho. In 1788 he established a Mint as part of his industrial plant.[8] He invented a steam driven screw press in the same year (his original machinery was being used at the Royal Mint until 1881, almost a century later), which worked by atmospheric pressure applied to a piston. The piston was in communication with a vacuum vessel from which the air had been pumped by steam power.

text: He installed eight of these state-of-the-art steam-driven presses in his factory, each with the capacity to strike between 70 and 84 coins per minute. The firm had little immediate success getting a license to strike British coins, but was soon engaged in striking coins for the British East India Company, Sierra Leone and Russia, while producing high-quality planchets, or blank coins, to be struck by national mints elsewhere. The firm sent over 20 million blanks to Philadelphia, to be struck into cents and half-cents by the United States Mint[9]—Mint Director Elias Boudinot found them to be "perfect and beautifully polished".[6]

text: These were the first truly modern coins; - the mass-production of coinage with steam driven machinery organised in factories, enabled the achievement of standardized dimensions and uniform weight and roundness, something no counterfeiter of the day could hope to achieve.[10] Boulton also pioneered special methods to further frustrate counterfeiters. Designed by Heinrich Küchler, the coins featured a raised rim with incuse or sunken letters and numbers.[6] The high-technology of Soho Mint gained increasing and somewhat unwelcome attention: rivals attempted industrial espionage, while lobbying with the Government for Boulton's mint to be shut down.[6]

text: Boulton was finally awarded a contract by the Royal Mint on 3 March 1797, after a national financial crisis reached its nadir when the Bank of England suspended convertibility of its notes for gold. The twopenny coins measured exactly an inch and a half across; 16 pennies lined up would reach two feet.[6]

text: Between 1817 and 1830 the German engineer Dietrich "Diedrich" Uhlhorn invented the Presse Monétaire, a level coin press which became known as the Uhlhorn Press. His steam driven knuckle-lever press made him internationally famous, and over 500 units had been sold by 1940.[11] The advanced construction of the Uhlhorn press proved to be highly satisfactory, and the use of the screw press for general coinage was gradually eliminated.[12]

text: This new technology was used at the Birmingham Mint, the largest private mint in the world for much of the 19th century, and was further improved at the Taylor and Challen who began to supply complete press room equipment to national mints around the world, such as Sydney Mint, Australia.[13]

text: By the early 20th century, mints were using electrical power to drive rolls, the advantage being that each pair of rolls could be driven independently without the intervention of cumbrous shafting.

text: Notable mints[edit]

text:
Austrian Mint - established in 1397 and produces the Vienna Philharmonic gold bullion.
Birmingham Mint (United Kingdom)
Casa da Moeda do Brasil
Casa da Moeda de Portugal
Currency Centre, Ireland
Dahlonega Mint (United States of America)
Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre, Spain
Franklin Mint (United States of America)
India Government Mint
Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, "Printer Institute and State Mint", Italy, the first mint to produce bi-metallic coins in recent times
Japan Mint
Joachimsthal Royal Mint,[14] Czech Republic, (Jáchymovská královská mincovna in Czech language)[15]
Kremnica mint,[16] Slovak Republic, (Mincovna Kremnica in Slovak language)
Casa de Moneda de México, established in 1535, is the oldest mint in the Americas.
Monnaie de Navarre (Kingdom of Navarre), established in 1351
Monnaie de Paris (France)
Perth Mint (Australia)
Philadelphia Mint
Royal Australian Mint[17]
Royal Canadian Mint
Royal Dutch Mint
Royal Mint of the United Kingdom
Saint Petersburg Mint (Russia)
Singapore Mint
South African Mint
Soho Mint (United Kingdom)
Swissmint, Switzerland
United States Mint
ICMC - ISRAEL COINS & MEDALS CORPORATION


document_title: Ocean Resort Casino

question_text: who owns the ocean resort in atlantic city

text: Ocean Resort Casino

text: Design and construction[edit]

text: Ocean Resort Casino's hotel tower is the tallest structure in Atlantic City and the third tallest in the state of New Jersey at 710 feet; and is the second tallest casino tower in the United States.[7][8] Arquitectonica was the design architect of the project.[9] BLT Architects was the executive architect for the entirety of the project and architect of record for 75% of the facility.[10] Tishman Realty & Construction, which served as construction manager for The Borgata, performed the same role at Revel.[11] Scéno Plus, a Montreal-based design firm, aided in the conceptualization and implementation of Revel's 130,000 square feet (12,000 m2) casino.[12] In the summer of 2008 the project was officially scaled back to include just one hotel tower with 1,900 rooms due to lack of financing. In March 2009, construction was stopped because of difficulties in raising the financing necessary to complete the project.[13] Revel resumed construction in February 2011 after new financing was secured, and opened with 1399 rooms.[14]

text: Amenities[edit]

text: The former Revel Casino Hotel featured two nightclubs, 13 restaurants, two live entertainment venues and multiple swimming pools. The resort featured a 2-acre (8,100 m2) landscaped rooftop deck containing outdoor pools, cabanas, fire pits and a "pine grove" (known as Sky Garden) with more than 30,000 live trees and plants. The casino was located six stories above the ocean, and a three-story nightclub overlooked the lobby.[15] Revel was completely smoke-free upon opening, but the resort announced in early 2013 that it would create a smoking area.[16][17]

text: Gaming[edit]

text: Revel Atlantic City had 130,000 sq ft (12,000 m2) of gaming space, more than 2,500 slot machines, and 120 table games. The casino was separated into several areas, including the following:

text:
Poker Room (closed in August 2013)
Table Games – Featured over 120 table games, including blackjack, craps, mini-baccarat, roulette, Let It Ride, Big Six wheel, three card poker, four card poker, Fortune Pai Gow poker, and Spanish 21.

text: Dining[edit]

text: The resort had 3 main restaurants and ten less formal dining options.[18][19]

text: Incidents[edit]

text: Construction safety incidents[edit]

text: A tower crane on the Revel construction site collapsed in high winds on March 13, 2010, injuring one person on the ground.[20] On March 20, 2010, the use of welding torches to remove the collapsed crane sparked a rooftop fire. The damage from the fire was minor, and there were no injuries.

text: Lightning from a brief but intense storm struck three concrete workers on September 15, 2011, killing one.[21] On September 30, 2011, a worker was listed in critical condition with a head injury after falling off a ladder.[22]

text: Escalator[edit]

text: On September 10, 2012, a customer was severely injured at Revel when he fell off an escalator to the floor 40 feet (12 m) below.[23] An English tourist was saved by bystanders after having his clothing caught in the escalator, although he was injured.[24]

text: Ray Rice incident[edit]

text: This section does not cite any sources. (July 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

tag: table

text: On September 8, 2014, National Football League (NFL) running back Ray Rice was suspended indefinitely following release by TMZ of a video recording showing him assaulting his fiancée in an elevator at Revel earlier in the year. The publication of the security video forced the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL to revisit their positions on the matter, leading the league to extend Rice's suspension (formerly for 2 weeks) and the team to release him. The only public video previously available was from outside the elevator and showed Ray Rice dragging his unconscious fiancée partially out of the elevator before a hotel employee stopped to help them.

text: Financial problems and closure[edit]

text: Construction of the resort cost $2.4 billion.[25] Global financial company Morgan Stanley, the owner of 90% of Revel Entertainment Group, decided in April 2010 to discontinue construction, put its stake in Revel up for sale and walk away from its $932 million investment.[26] On February 1, 2011, as part of his plan to revitalize Atlantic City, Governor Chris Christie announced that the State of New Jersey would provide tax incentives up to $261 million in the stalled project in exchange for 20% of certain equity distributions.[27] The tax incentives would be paid for by a portion of state taxes generated by the project. None of the $261 million in tax incentives were paid to Revel. On February 17, 2011, Revel Entertainment Group, LLC announced that it completed a $1.15 billion financing package which enabled the company to complete construction of Revel.

text: Revel lost $35 million in the 2nd quarter of 2012, and lost $37 million in the 3rd quarter of 2012.[28] In August 2012, Moody's Investor Services and Standard and Poor's downgraded Revel's credit to Caa2 and CCC, respectively.[29] On August 20, 2012, Revel asked lenders for a $100 million credit cushion.[30] In November 2012, casino officials warned federal regulators about growing debt load of more than $1.3 billion could lead to bankruptcy or foreclosure if revenues did not increase in the foreseeable future. Atlantic City officials noted that Revel owed $12 million in unpaid property taxes, and Unite Here Local 54 said that Revel owed $51 million to contractors.[31] A month later, Revel stated that it had received another $150 million in loans, including a $125 million term loan and a $25 million increase to an existing $100 million revolving loan.

text: In early 2013, because of uncertainty about whether Revel would have enough revenue to pay back its loans, Moody's and Standard and Poor's downgraded Revel's credit rating again to Caa3 and CC, respectively.[32] On February 19, 2013, Revel announced that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The prepackaged bankruptcy will include immediate payment of all priority claims (e.g., vendors, taxes), and the reduction of Revel's debt from $1.503 billion to $272 million in exchange for the transfer of all of Revel's equity to the creditors.[33][34] As part of its bankruptcy filing, Revel declared that the casino's value had dropped from $2.4 billion to $450 million, and predicted that Revel would not be profitable until 2017.[35] In an attempt to attract more business, Revel created a smoking area and reduced hotel room prices, and planned to create an inexpensive food court, and a private lounge for high rollers.[17][35]

text: On June 19, 2014, Revel once again filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, warning of closing in early September if a buyer was not found.[36]

text: On August 12, 2014, Revel announced that no suitable bids were received, and that it would close by September 1.[37] By August 18, Revel Casino Hotel announced the official closing.[38]

text: The hotel, resort, and casino closed permanently on September 2, 2014. Revel was the third Atlantic City casino to close in 2014, after Showboat Hotel Casino closed on August 31, following the Atlantic Club Hotel Casino. The hotel was closed on September 1, 2014, at 11:00 am and the casino was closed the next day at 6:00 am. All reservations after September 1 were canceled and room deposits were automatically refunded. All Revel guests who self-parked or utilized the valet were required to remove their parked cars from the facility by 9:00 am on September 2.

text: Revel Group LLC, headed by former Revel Atlantic City CEO Kevin DeSanctis, released a statement on September 22, 2014, announcing Revel Group was terminating its license agreement with Revel, citing "the property has failed to use the licensed marks in a manner consistent with Revel's standards of quality as provided for in its License Agreement."[39]

text: Toronto-based Brookfield US Holdings LLC won a bankruptcy court auction for Revel on October 1, 2014, and planned to reopen it as-is. It submitted a bid of $110 million in an auction.

text: A bankruptcy court hearing to approve the sale was scheduled for October 7, 2014. An opposing bidder, Florida developer Glenn Straub, was selected as the backup bidder in case the Brookfield bid did not close on the deal. However Brookfield Management backed out of this deal on November 19, 2014. On January 5, 2015, a federal bankruptcy judge approved the sale of Revel to Polo North Country Club, Inc., led by Straub. On February 11, 2015, due to court battles, the sale to Straub was canceled by Revel. Then, on April 6, 2015, Straub got approval to discuss the sale of the casino to him.

text: On April 7, 2015, Revel was sold to Glenn Straub's Polo North Country Club for $82 million.[3]

text: Events after sale to Polo North[edit]

text: Two days after Revel was sold to Polo North Country Club, on the afternoon of April 9, 2015; ACR, owner of the Energenic Inlet District Energy Center (which is the sole source of primary power, backup power, and, hot and chilled water to the Revel) stopped supplying power and water to the building.[40]

text: On April 29, 2015, after 20 days without power or water, U.S. District Judge Jerome Simandle ordered power and chilled water to be restored to the Revel under a two-week deal between Straub and ACR. Revel facilities staff said limited power was restored around 11:00 am that morning, and engineers said there was no damage done to the building. The deal was later enforced indefinitely.[41]

text: Revel's chief engineer, John Lezenby, resigned on June 9, 2015, leaving behind nine engineers and four security guards to continue to run the Revel's critical systems. Lezenby stated the uncertain future of the building and the fact that it was closed to the public as reasons for his resignation.[42]

text: In late June, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan ruled that Revel owner Polo North Country Club Inc. must allow tenants access to the property "to preserve physical assets, as well as to investigate, plan, and take the necessary steps to restart operations."[43]

text: On September 30, Glenn Straub expelled nine unionized workers from the property, leaving the Revel's command center unstaffed. He said the union engineers, from Local 68 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, were overpaid, and announced that Siemens was in the process of training new engineers within 30 days.[44] Engineers have since returned to the property.

text: On October 9, 2015, Atlantic City Sewerage Co. announced it was suing to bar sewer service to the Revel, citing Polo North owing it more than $162,000.[45] On November 17, an attorney for Polo North said the Revel was "cold, dark and on the verge of suffering widespread property damage", only receiving chilled water since a dispute back in April.

text: On November 24, Glenn Straub announced he was buying the Energenic power plant from ACR. ACR previously warned the city that bondholders were planning to foreclose on the power plant. The deal was announced after Atlantic City threatened to issue fines and said it would consider litigation if the building’s interior dipped below 40 degrees.[46]

text: On January 12, 2016, Polo North announced it had completed purchase of the Energenic power plant, and introduced heat and full electricity back to the Revel.[47]

text: Also in January, Straub announced his plans for the former Revel Resort, including a smaller casino, water park, and other family attractions. He initially planned to reopen the resort on June 15, 2016.[48]

text: On the night of February 29, 2016, the signature Pearl at the top of Revel was lit for the first time since the resort closed.[49] The next morning on March 1, Straub said it was part of an ongoing effort to test systems at the Revel in preparation for the anticipated June 15 opening. Straub also said he expected to have 500 hotel rooms ready to go and most, if not all, of the property's restaurants up and running, stating that the restaurants' owners had been wanting to reopen since the property originally closed. Additionally, he stated the reopened resort would not be named Revel, but he had yet to decide on a name.[50]

text: On Tuesday, March 15, 2016, Atlantic City officials Dale Finch (Director of Licence & Inspections) Elizabeth Terenik (Director of Planning & Development), Scott Evans (Fire Chief), and Wally Shields (Construction Official) conducted an inspection of Revel, escorted by Revel’s facilities manager. After a 90-minute tour, officials stated that Revel was ready for business, and that it was “amazingly intact” and in “great condition”, dispelling many rumors about the condition of the property.[51]

text: The officials also said that clubs were ready but HQ was not part of the reopening plan; the swimming pools were in good condition; there were at least 500 guest rooms that were ready, clean and complete with bedding, artwork, lighting, and other fixtures; and that restaurants and gaming floors were ready to go. In addition, there was now a ropes course in the lobby. However, as stated above, several bankruptcy court orders protected HQ's right to operate at the facility. Glenn Straub said a job fair was planned and that Polo North was looking to bring back as many former Revel employees as possible to the new Revel, and that it was ready to open as soon as possible.[52]

text: As of June 13, 2016, Glenn Straub announced plans to reopen the resort with a small casino, rope-climbing course, water park, a zip line, an e-sports lounge, equestrian facility, beach cabanas, and a bike endurance course in a section of the modern parking garage. Surfing, wind surfing, and scuba lessons would also be available.

text: The new resort would also feature a 32-room spa where guests could have medical beauty treatments performed. In July, a white-sand beach area with pools and volleyball courts dubbed Nikki Beach will open in the former porte cochere area.

text: Later in the year, ten restaurants were scheduled to open, along with a rock-climbing wall, three 75-seat movie theaters, a skydiving course, and a heliport for high rollers to be flown to and from Revel.[53]

text: Staub gave a hint about the new name stating, "we have some Asian painters coming up with the artwork". Straub's team had not held a job fair or hired staff to run the operation, apart from the few facilities and security staff that were inherited with the purchase of the Revel in 2015. Straub said anyone who learned the resort was open, was welcome to check in.[54][55] The property was renamed TEN Atlantic City in September 2016, with an opening predicted for early 2017, however, this did not happen.[56]

text: The hotel was sold to AC Ocean Walk on January 9, 2018 for $200 million, and renamed Ocean Resort Casino, with a reopening announced for Summer 2018.[57]

text: In late January, online casino supplier GAN announced it will power an online gambling arm of the Ocean Resort Casino, and anticipates the site launching in 2018.[58]

text: On April 2, 2018, it was announced that the resort will join Hyatt Hotels as part of their unbranded Unbound Collection.[59]

text: In May of 2018, the Ocean Resort Casino partnered with William Hill to offer sports betting.[60]


document_title: List of oldest Major League Baseball players

question_text: who is the oldest mlb player still playing

text: Oldest players in the regular season[edit]

text: Pitchers

text:
59 - Leroy Paige (1965)
50 - Jack Quinn (1933)[1]
49 - Hoyt Wilhelm (1972)
49 - Jamie Moyer (2012)
48 - Phil Niekro (1987)[2]
48 - Nick Altrock (1924)
46 - Nolan Ryan (1993)
46 - Jesse Orosco (2003)
46 - Charlie Hough (1994)
46 - Tommy John (1989)
46 - Hod Lisenbee (1945)
46 - Randy Johnson (2009)
45 - Roger Clemens (2007)
45 - Gaylord Perry (1983)
45 - Fred Johnson (1939)
45 - Ted Lyons (1946)
45 - Tim Wakefield (2011)

text: Position players

text:
58 - Charley O'Leary (1934)
57 - Nick Altrock (1933)
56 - Minnie Miñoso (1980)
54 - Jim O'Rourke (1904)
49 - Julio Franco (2007)
49 - Hughie Jennings (1918)
49 - Arlie Latham (1909)
48 - Gabby Street (1931)
48 - Deacon McGuire (1912)
48 - Johnny Evers (1929)
46 - Jimmy Austin (1926)
46 - Sam Thompson (1906)
46 - Dan Brouthers (1904)
45 - Cap Anson (1897)
45 - Pete Rose (1986)
45 - Carlton Fisk (1993)
45 - Omar Vizquel (2012)

text: Note: Paige, O'Leary, O'Rourke, Jennings, Street, McGuire and Evers each made one token major league appearance years (or even decades) after their careers had otherwise ended. The careers of Altrock, Minoso and Latham had also effectively ended many years before their final major league appearances, though each were brought back for token appearances several times (spanning several seasons) before their final game. Julio Franco is the oldest position player to appear regularly.

text: Oldest players in the postseason[edit]

text:
Quinn, JackJack Quinn
Philadelphia Athletics
1930 World Series
47 years, 95 days

Quinn, JackJack Quinn
Philadelphia Athletics
1929 World Series
46 years, 103 days

Moyer, JamieJamie Moyer
Philadelphia Phillies
2008 World Series
45 years, 342 days

Clemens, RogerRoger Clemens
New York Yankees
2007 ALDS
45 years, 64 days

Moyer, JamieJamie Moyer
Philadelphia Phillies
2007 NLDS
44 years, 322 days

Rice, SamSam Rice
Washington Senators
1933 World Series
43 years, 226 days

Niekro, PhilPhil Niekro
Atlanta Braves
1982 NLCS
43 years, 191 days

Wells, DavidDavid Wells
San Diego Padres
2006 NLDS
43 years, 138 days

Clemens, RogerRoger Clemens
Houston Astros
2005 World Series
43 years, 79 days

Johnson, RandyRandy Johnson
New York Yankees
2006 ALDS
43 years, 31 days

text: Note: Phil Niekro's start came in the first game of the 1982 NLCS. However, with the Braves leading the St. Louis Cardinals 1-0, the game was delayed on account of rain. When the rain did not clear, the game was called three outs before it could be considered official, and was restarted the following night with Braves pitcher Pascual Pérez getting the start. The Braves would lose the game 7-0. [3]