The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures)

The Silliman Memorial lecture series was established in 1888 in memory of Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman, the wife of Gold S. Silliman, the mother of Benjamin Silliman, one of the first professors of science at Yale University and the first person to fractionate petroleum. It was established from a legacy of $80,000 left in 1883 and the fund was possessed by Yale University, who publish the lectures, in 1901. The lectures are designed to illustrate the presence and providence, the wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in the natural and moral world. It is the belief of the testator that any orderly presentation of the facts of nature or history contributed to the end of this foundation more effectively than any attempt to emphasize the elements of doctrine or creed; and he therefore provided that lectures on dogmatic or polemical theology should be excluded from the scope of this foundation, and that the subjects should be selected rather from the domains of natural science and history, giving special prominence to astronomy, chemistry, geology, and anatomy.