A new dharma for the nation: the Toronto Theosophical Society and Albert Smythe 1891-1945
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation offers an historical analysis of the Toronto Theosophical Society (1891–1945), with particular attention paid to founder and ideologue Albert Ernest Stafford Smythe. This work places the TTS within the context of the international Theosophical movement and the larger Canadian religious and intellectual milieu. The dissertation documents the understanding of Indian philosophical and religious ideas held by members of the Toronto Theosophical Society and how they disseminated these ideas to the Canadian public. Chapters 1 through 3 examine the founding of the TTS in 1891, its early membership, activities and controversies, and the schism that occurred in 1895. Chapter 4 analyses the development of a separate Canadian Theosophical identity which resulted in part from reactions to the various activities sponsored by the international Theosophical Society at Adyar. These include the emergence of the Liberal Catholic Church and the promotion of Krishnamurti as a Messiah, which forced the TTS to take a position regarding these activities, which culminated in the formation of a Canadian Section in 1920. This distinct identity made the TTS attractive to artists and writers in the 1920's and 1930's, who were themselves striving to create a specifically Canadian form of art. Chapter 5 analyses the Theosophical reaction to the Depression, the rise of fascism and World War Two. The final section of the thesis examines the life and ideas of TTS founder Albert Smythe and the impact that he had upon the TTS and Canadian Theosophy in general.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.037 | 0.027 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".