Bernard Lightman
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226481180
- eISBN:
- 9780226481173
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226481173.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The ideas of Charles Darwin and his fellow Victorian scientists have had an abiding effect on the modern world. But at the time The Origin of Species was published in 1859, the British public looked ...
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The ideas of Charles Darwin and his fellow Victorian scientists have had an abiding effect on the modern world. But at the time The Origin of Species was published in 1859, the British public looked not to practicing scientists but to a growing group of professional writers and journalists to interpret the larger meaning of scientific theories in terms they could understand and in ways they could appreciate. This book focuses on this group of men and women who wrote about science for a general audience in the second half of the nineteenth century. The author examines more than thirty of the most prolific and influential popularizers of the day, investigating the dramatic lecturing techniques, vivid illustrations, and accessible literary styles they used to communicate with their audience. By focusing on a forgotten coterie of science writers, their publishers, and their public, he offers insights into the role of women in scientific inquiry, the market for scientific knowledge, tensions between religion and science, and the complexities of scientific authority in nineteenth-century Britain.Less
The ideas of Charles Darwin and his fellow Victorian scientists have had an abiding effect on the modern world. But at the time The Origin of Species was published in 1859, the British public looked not to practicing scientists but to a growing group of professional writers and journalists to interpret the larger meaning of scientific theories in terms they could understand and in ways they could appreciate. This book focuses on this group of men and women who wrote about science for a general audience in the second half of the nineteenth century. The author examines more than thirty of the most prolific and influential popularizers of the day, investigating the dramatic lecturing techniques, vivid illustrations, and accessible literary styles they used to communicate with their audience. By focusing on a forgotten coterie of science writers, their publishers, and their public, he offers insights into the role of women in scientific inquiry, the market for scientific knowledge, tensions between religion and science, and the complexities of scientific authority in nineteenth-century Britain.
George Meredith
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300173178
- eISBN:
- 9780300189100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300173178.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter explores the role that the senses and the sensory experience play in the composition of poetry. The excerpts it shows note, for instance, note how Victorian scientists and physiologists ...
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This chapter explores the role that the senses and the sensory experience play in the composition of poetry. The excerpts it shows note, for instance, note how Victorian scientists and physiologists understood how the sensory experience directly influences poets—and the process of sensory experience proves to be fundamentally important in George Meredith's poetry. Through his poetry, Meredith invites readers to make use of their senses; to see, hear, touch, and smell. This focus on sensory detail even prompted efforts to theorize the relationship between intellectual understanding and the body. In fact, in the extracts compiled in the chapter, scientists insist that comprehending poetry is not just an intellectual activity but also an experiential one. Alexander Bain, for instance, maps and explains the cerebral activity that supports this statement, while Alexander Bryan Johnson shows a concern with the difficulty of relating a sensory experience through language.Less
This chapter explores the role that the senses and the sensory experience play in the composition of poetry. The excerpts it shows note, for instance, note how Victorian scientists and physiologists understood how the sensory experience directly influences poets—and the process of sensory experience proves to be fundamentally important in George Meredith's poetry. Through his poetry, Meredith invites readers to make use of their senses; to see, hear, touch, and smell. This focus on sensory detail even prompted efforts to theorize the relationship between intellectual understanding and the body. In fact, in the extracts compiled in the chapter, scientists insist that comprehending poetry is not just an intellectual activity but also an experiential one. Alexander Bain, for instance, maps and explains the cerebral activity that supports this statement, while Alexander Bryan Johnson shows a concern with the difficulty of relating a sensory experience through language.
