CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · History & Society

Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy

Professorship at the University of Oxford

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ8001046 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Wilde Professorship of Mental Philosophy is a chair in philosophy at the University of Oxford. Its holder is elected to a Fellowship of Corpus Christi College.

The position was initially established in 1898 as a readership by an endowment from the engineer Henry Wilde. The first Wilde Readers were the notable psychologists George Stout, William McDougall and William Brown.The post was converted to a professorship in 2000, on the recommendation of the Literae Humaniores Board and with the concurrence of the General Board.

Editorial summary

“Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy” enters the record as professorship at the University of Oxford. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wilde, Professor and Mental can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1898, 2000—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Wilde, Professor and Mental.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Wilde, Professor and Mental provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8001046. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1898 and 2000.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy primary sources, Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy archive and Wilde research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.