astronomy

Kenneth Minogue

Kenneth Minogue is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kenneth Minogue rather than just read about it. In short: Kenneth Robert Minogue (September 11, 1930 – June 28, 2013) was an Australian academic and political theorist. Long residing in the United Kingdom, Minogue was a prominent part of the intellectual life of British conservatism.

Key takeaways

Kenneth Minogue belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kenneth Minogue to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kenneth Minogue from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kenneth Robert Minogue (September 11, 1930 – June 28, 2013) was an Australian academic and political theorist. Long residing in the United Kingdom, Minogue was a prominent part of the intellectual life of British conservatism. Associated for much of his career with the London School of Economics, where he was Professor of Political Science from 1984 to 1995, he was described as a central figure in a group of prominent conservative philosophers and commentators at the LSE that included Maurice Cranston, Elie Kedourie, and William Letwin.

Biography Minogue was born on 11 September 1930 in Palmerston North, New Zealand. He was educated in Australia, attending Sydney Boys High School and the University of Sydney. Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1950, his time there was influenced by John Anderson, who had built up a reputation on campus for his firm belief in free speech, secularism, and anti-communism. Minogue was involved in student journalism – which he admitted was to the detriment of his studies – and wrote for Honi Soit and a short-lived free-thinking broadsheet, Heresy. Friends included Murray Sayle and Peter Coleman. Deciding to move to England, Minogue made his way there by working as a cabin boy on a ship bound for London via Odessa and Port Said, and, once arrived, soon found himself lodging at a hostel in Russell Square. After a brief stint as a freelance writer, he found steadier income by working as a supply teacher with the London Education Authority for eighteen months. Turned down for a master's degree at the LSE, he instead enrolled for a second undergraduate evening school course in economics at the same institution. Following graduation he spent a year teaching at the University of Exeter, and in 1956 at the invitation of Michael Oakeshott returned as assistant lecturer to the LSE, where he would spend the rest of his academic life.

Career

Minogue wrote academic essays and books on a great range of problems in political theory. He first came to public attention with his 1963 book The Liberal Mind, which criticised the 'drift' toward collectivism and progressivism in Britain's post-war consensus, which he believed acted as a 'prop to the mediocre' and deprived individuals of personal initiative. A running theme in the book was Minogue's distaste for the 'melodrama of oppressors and victims' that he saw as constituting liberal historiography. Minogue, who described liberalism as the first 'modern ideology', also reflected on what he argued was the second – nationalism – in his 1967 book of the same name. As far as Minogue was concerned, if the liberal view of history tended to the ahistorical, then nationalist ideology was guilty of reducing it to mythology. In 1986 Minogue presented a six-part television program on Channel 4 about free-market economics called The New Enlightenment. He was Senior Research Fellow with the Social Affairs Unit in London. He wrote a study on Māori–Pākehā relations (the latter is the Māori term for New Zealanders of European descent) for the New Zealand Business Roundtable which was published in 1998 as Waitangi - Morality and Reality. From 1991 to 1993 Minogue was chairman of the euro-sceptic Bruges Group. From 2000, he was a trustee of Civitas. He served as president of the Mont Pelerin Society from 2010. In 2003, he received the Centenary Medal from the Australian government. He was also involved with the Centre for Policy Studies and the European Foundation.

Personal He married firstly, Valerie Pearson Hallett, with whom he had a son and a daughter, in 1954. This marriage was dissolved in 2001. Minogue was later married to Beverly Cohen, who predeceased him. He was reportedly a member of the Garrick Club and a keen tennis fan.

Death Minogue died on 28 June 2013, aged 82, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, after apparently suffering cardiac arrest on a flight returning from San Cristóbal Island in the Galapagos, where he had been hosting a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society. On Minogue's legacy, James Philbin in The American Spectator suggested that Minogue was "no mere academic" but "a model of the conservative activist" because "he was in the business of defending old-fashioned civility against ideological rage, and he believed this was the real meaning of the freedom that the English-speaking peoples have created and enjoyed."

Bibliography The Liberal Mind (1963) Nationalism (1967) The Concept of a University (1974) Contemporary Political Philosophers (1976) Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology (1985) Thatcherism: Personality and Politics (ed, 1987) Politics: A Very Short Introduction (1995) Conservative Realism: New Essays in Conservatism (ed, 1996) The Silencing of Society (1997) Waitangi: Morality and Reality (1998) The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life (2010)

References

External links

Daily Telegraph obituary Kenneth Minogue by John O'Sullivan (Centre for Policy Studies) Archived 10 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine St Andrews University - Archive of European Intellectual Life - Kenneth Minogue papers

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kenneth Minogue

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kenneth Minogue claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kenneth Minogue before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kenneth Minogue ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kenneth Minogue

In research: Kenneth Minogue appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kenneth Minogue in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kenneth Minogue is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1930 births, 2013 deaths, Academics of the London School of Economics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kenneth Minogue outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kenneth Minogue in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kenneth Minogue means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kenneth Minogue out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kenneth Minogue in simple terms?

Why does Kenneth Minogue matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kenneth Minogue?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kenneth Minogue.