SweetFreedom Posted 12 years ago
Grammar
Dickensian lawyers?
Does "Dickensian lawyers" mean "excellent/first-class lawyers"?
Background info:
Great scientists who profess religion become harder to find
through the twentieth century, but they are not particularly rare. I
suspect that most of the more recent ones are religious only in the
Einsteinian sense which, I argued in Chapter 1, is a misuse of the
word. Nevertheless, there are some genuine specimens of good
scientists who are sincerely religious in the full, traditional sense.
Among contemporary British scientists, the same three names crop
up with the likeable familiarity of senior partners in a firm of
Dickensian lawyers: Peacocke, Stannard and Polkinghorne. All three
have either won the Templeton Prize or are on the Templeton Board
of Trustees. After amicable discussions with all of them, both in pub-
lic and in private, I remain baffled, not so much by their belief in a
cosmic lawgiver of some kind, as by their belief in the details of the
Christian religion: resurrection, forgiveness of sins and all.
Background info:
Great scientists who profess religion become harder to find
through the twentieth century, but they are not particularly rare. I
suspect that most of the more recent ones are religious only in the
Einsteinian sense which, I argued in Chapter 1, is a misuse of the
word. Nevertheless, there are some genuine specimens of good
scientists who are sincerely religious in the full, traditional sense.
Among contemporary British scientists, the same three names crop
up with the likeable familiarity of senior partners in a firm of
Dickensian lawyers: Peacocke, Stannard and Polkinghorne. All three
have either won the Templeton Prize or are on the Templeton Board
of Trustees. After amicable discussions with all of them, both in pub-
lic and in private, I remain baffled, not so much by their belief in a
cosmic lawgiver of some kind, as by their belief in the details of the
Christian religion: resurrection, forgiveness of sins and all.
Top answer
Does the author point out that "Peacocke, Stannard and Polkinghorne" are all Dickensian lawyers"?
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Does the author point out that "Peacocke, Stannard and Polkinghorne" are all Dickensian lawyers"?
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SweetFreedomDoes "Dickensian lawyers" mean "excellent/first-class lawyers"?Not according to the definition of "Dickensian."
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/Dickensian
"Of or reminiscent of the n
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SweetFreedom Does the author point out that "Peacocke, Stannard and Polkinghorne" are all Dickensian lawyers"?He seems to suggest that they might be typical of characters in a Dickens' novel.
Many of Dickens' lawyers were disagreeable characters.
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I think the point is that these three names are the sort that Dickens could well have invented for lawyers.
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