Howard Marchitello
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199608058
- eISBN:
- 9780191729492
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608058.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter returns to a series of challenges posed famously in C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, particularly Snow's assessment of the science-literature agon and his ...
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This chapter returns to a series of challenges posed famously in C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, particularly Snow's assessment of the science-literature agon and his perceived privileging of science. Less a contribution to the so-called Culture Wars than an attempt to understand Snow's arguments about culture and history, this chapter is especially concerned to rethink his later rejection of thermodynamics as the model for intellectual inquiry. In its place Snow identifies molecular biology and the new science of DNA as the ideal measures of scientific literacy and the ideal intellectual model for both cultures. In the figure of the double helix, Snow finds evidence that at the molecular level the material world is a work of art. From this new perspective on the “two cultures,” the chapter returns to the art–nature debate that was central to the literary and scientific works under consideration throughout this book.Less
This chapter returns to a series of challenges posed famously in C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, particularly Snow's assessment of the science-literature agon and his perceived privileging of science. Less a contribution to the so-called Culture Wars than an attempt to understand Snow's arguments about culture and history, this chapter is especially concerned to rethink his later rejection of thermodynamics as the model for intellectual inquiry. In its place Snow identifies molecular biology and the new science of DNA as the ideal measures of scientific literacy and the ideal intellectual model for both cultures. In the figure of the double helix, Snow finds evidence that at the molecular level the material world is a work of art. From this new perspective on the “two cultures,” the chapter returns to the art–nature debate that was central to the literary and scientific works under consideration throughout this book.
Christopher Hilliard
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199695171
- eISBN:
- 9780199949946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695171.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines the engagement of Scrutiny contributors and F. R. Leavis's pupils with wider publics. F. R. Leavis's idea of ‘minority culture’ was not simply ‘elitist’ but envisioned a chain ...
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This chapter examines the engagement of Scrutiny contributors and F. R. Leavis's pupils with wider publics. F. R. Leavis's idea of ‘minority culture’ was not simply ‘elitist’ but envisioned a chain of ever larger ‘publics’ that could be guided indirectly by a critical minority. The chapter discusses his own public interventions during the 1960s and 1970s, and contrasts them with those of his followers, who went in for the sorts of popularizing usually practised by British intellectuals in the twentieth century. The focus is on the seven-volume Pelican Guide to English Literature edited by Boris Ford, which projected Scrutiny interpretations to a mass audience. Working from the Penguin archives, the chapter charts the series's publishing history, and explores the ways the context of a survey text affected critical judgements in the Scrutiny mode.Less
This chapter examines the engagement of Scrutiny contributors and F. R. Leavis's pupils with wider publics. F. R. Leavis's idea of ‘minority culture’ was not simply ‘elitist’ but envisioned a chain of ever larger ‘publics’ that could be guided indirectly by a critical minority. The chapter discusses his own public interventions during the 1960s and 1970s, and contrasts them with those of his followers, who went in for the sorts of popularizing usually practised by British intellectuals in the twentieth century. The focus is on the seven-volume Pelican Guide to English Literature edited by Boris Ford, which projected Scrutiny interpretations to a mass audience. Working from the Penguin archives, the chapter charts the series's publishing history, and explores the ways the context of a survey text affected critical judgements in the Scrutiny mode.
Barbara Herrnstein Smith
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748620234
- eISBN:
- 9780748671670
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748620234.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter offers a balanced, symmetrical account of the sciences and humanities as complementary disciplinary clusters representing different but equally valuable sets of epistemic stances and ...
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This chapter offers a balanced, symmetrical account of the sciences and humanities as complementary disciplinary clusters representing different but equally valuable sets of epistemic stances and intellectual practices. It goes on to explain how, under pressure from changing intellectual and institutional conditions and culturally pervasive loaded dualisms (e.g., real work and mere play, real things and mere words), the symmetry breaks down and becomes invidious comparison, mutual misunderstanding and mutual antagonism. Noting that the asymmetrical Two-Culture ideology reflected in the recent “science wars” continues to dominate public views of the academy, the chapter concludes by urging mutually respectful interdisciplinary interaction but arguing against either the possibility or the desirability of a unification of all knowledge or, as currently proposed, a “conceptual integration” of all disciplines.Less
This chapter offers a balanced, symmetrical account of the sciences and humanities as complementary disciplinary clusters representing different but equally valuable sets of epistemic stances and intellectual practices. It goes on to explain how, under pressure from changing intellectual and institutional conditions and culturally pervasive loaded dualisms (e.g., real work and mere play, real things and mere words), the symmetry breaks down and becomes invidious comparison, mutual misunderstanding and mutual antagonism. Noting that the asymmetrical Two-Culture ideology reflected in the recent “science wars” continues to dominate public views of the academy, the chapter concludes by urging mutually respectful interdisciplinary interaction but arguing against either the possibility or the desirability of a unification of all knowledge or, as currently proposed, a “conceptual integration” of all disciplines.
Howard Marchitello
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199608058
- eISBN:
- 9780191729492
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608058.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The reassessment of the ‘two cultures’ of art and science has been one of the most urgent areas of research in literary and historical studies over the last fifteen years. The early modern period is ...
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The reassessment of the ‘two cultures’ of art and science has been one of the most urgent areas of research in literary and historical studies over the last fifteen years. The early modern period is an ideal site for such an investigation precisely because of the pre-disciplinary nature of its science. The central focus of this book falls upon the wide-ranging practices of what will come to be called “science” prior to its separation into a realm of its own, one of the legacies of the renaissance and its encounter with modernity. This book offers a new critical examination of the complex and mutually-sustaining relationship between literature and science—and, more broadly, art and nature—in the early modern period. Redefining literature and art as knowledge-producing practices and, at the same time, recasting the practices of emergent science as imaginative and creative and literary, this book argues for a more complex understanding of early modern culture in which the scientific can be said to produce the literary and the literary can be said to produce the scientific. Drawing upon recent work in the field of science studies and focusing on selected works of major writers of the period—including Bacon, Donne, Galileo, and Shakespeare, among others—this book recovers a range of early modern discursive and cultural practices for a new account of the linked histories of science and literature.Less
The reassessment of the ‘two cultures’ of art and science has been one of the most urgent areas of research in literary and historical studies over the last fifteen years. The early modern period is an ideal site for such an investigation precisely because of the pre-disciplinary nature of its science. The central focus of this book falls upon the wide-ranging practices of what will come to be called “science” prior to its separation into a realm of its own, one of the legacies of the renaissance and its encounter with modernity. This book offers a new critical examination of the complex and mutually-sustaining relationship between literature and science—and, more broadly, art and nature—in the early modern period. Redefining literature and art as knowledge-producing practices and, at the same time, recasting the practices of emergent science as imaginative and creative and literary, this book argues for a more complex understanding of early modern culture in which the scientific can be said to produce the literary and the literary can be said to produce the scientific. Drawing upon recent work in the field of science studies and focusing on selected works of major writers of the period—including Bacon, Donne, Galileo, and Shakespeare, among others—this book recovers a range of early modern discursive and cultural practices for a new account of the linked histories of science and literature.
Edward Slingerland
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199794393
- eISBN:
- 9780199919338
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199794393.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General, Philosophy of Science
The distinction between the humanities and the natural sciences is often described in terms of two types of description, “thick” versus “thin,” or two modes of apprehension, “interpretation” ...
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The distinction between the humanities and the natural sciences is often described in terms of two types of description, “thick” versus “thin,” or two modes of apprehension, “interpretation” (Verstehen) versus “explanation” (Erklären). This chapter argues that, although it is rarely made explicit, these distinctions are themselves fundamentally based upon the metaphysical assumption of mind-body dualism: humanistic meaning cannot be captured by physical description because it involves the mind, which belongs to an ontological realm separate and independent from the realm of the merely physical or bodily. One of the primary rationales for bridging the science-humanities divide is that, in light of work over the past few decades in various branches of the cognitive sciences, the mind-body dualism is growing increasingly empirically untenable. However, it would also appear that such dualism is a human cognitive default, which means that, for creatures like us, the chain of science-humanities integration will never be seamless: We will always feel a jolt when we cross from the physical to the mental, from the merely biological to the human, from ultimate evolutionary reasons to proximate psychological mechanisms. Understanding this fact will help us to see why the humanities-science divide continues to prove so difficult to negotiate, as well as why something like this divide will always have some traction in human psychology.Less
The distinction between the humanities and the natural sciences is often described in terms of two types of description, “thick” versus “thin,” or two modes of apprehension, “interpretation” (Verstehen) versus “explanation” (Erklären). This chapter argues that, although it is rarely made explicit, these distinctions are themselves fundamentally based upon the metaphysical assumption of mind-body dualism: humanistic meaning cannot be captured by physical description because it involves the mind, which belongs to an ontological realm separate and independent from the realm of the merely physical or bodily. One of the primary rationales for bridging the science-humanities divide is that, in light of work over the past few decades in various branches of the cognitive sciences, the mind-body dualism is growing increasingly empirically untenable. However, it would also appear that such dualism is a human cognitive default, which means that, for creatures like us, the chain of science-humanities integration will never be seamless: We will always feel a jolt when we cross from the physical to the mental, from the merely biological to the human, from ultimate evolutionary reasons to proximate psychological mechanisms. Understanding this fact will help us to see why the humanities-science divide continues to prove so difficult to negotiate, as well as why something like this divide will always have some traction in human psychology.
Barbara Herrnstein Smith
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748620234
- eISBN:
- 9780748671670
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748620234.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book contextualizes, explains and defends the radically new ways of understanding science, truth and knowledge associated with constructivist epistemology and contemporary science studies and ...
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This book contextualizes, explains and defends the radically new ways of understanding science, truth and knowledge associated with constructivist epistemology and contemporary science studies and offers related perspectives on a set of significant current intellectual issues. Early chapters present an overview of the conceptual and empirical problems that led to twentieth-century critiques of traditional realist-rationalist epistemology and logical-empiricist philosophy of science and provide detailed discussions of the alternative accounts of knowledge and science offered by such influential figures as Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, David Bloor and Bruno Latour. Succeeding chapters illuminate the scandals-perplexities, equivocations, hoaxes and overheated controversies--that have attended these developments, including the misplaced fears and empty charges of “relativism” directed at proponents of these new views and the related misunderstandings and misrepresentations involved in the so-called science wars. Later chapters present informed, non-polemical perspectives on the contentious institutional and intellectual relations between the natural sciences and the humanities, the claims of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior, cognition and culture and contemporary debates over how to conceive the ontological and ethical relations between humans and animals.Less
This book contextualizes, explains and defends the radically new ways of understanding science, truth and knowledge associated with constructivist epistemology and contemporary science studies and offers related perspectives on a set of significant current intellectual issues. Early chapters present an overview of the conceptual and empirical problems that led to twentieth-century critiques of traditional realist-rationalist epistemology and logical-empiricist philosophy of science and provide detailed discussions of the alternative accounts of knowledge and science offered by such influential figures as Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, David Bloor and Bruno Latour. Succeeding chapters illuminate the scandals-perplexities, equivocations, hoaxes and overheated controversies--that have attended these developments, including the misplaced fears and empty charges of “relativism” directed at proponents of these new views and the related misunderstandings and misrepresentations involved in the so-called science wars. Later chapters present informed, non-polemical perspectives on the contentious institutional and intellectual relations between the natural sciences and the humanities, the claims of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior, cognition and culture and contemporary debates over how to conceive the ontological and ethical relations between humans and animals.
Joseph Carroll, Dan P. McAdams, and Edward O. Wilson (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190231217
- eISBN:
- 9780190609061
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190231217.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This volume gives evidence for the unity of knowledge in evolutionary biology, the evolutionary social sciences, and the evolutionary humanities. It contains 14 separately authored essays, a foreword ...
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This volume gives evidence for the unity of knowledge in evolutionary biology, the evolutionary social sciences, and the evolutionary humanities. It contains 14 separately authored essays, a foreword by Alice Dreger, a theoretical introduction by Joseph Carroll, and afterwords by David Sloan Wilson and Jonathan Gottschall. Edward O. Wilson, Christopher Boehm, Herbert Gintis, Michael Rose, and Henry Harpending discuss human social evolution. Barbara Oakley integrates psychology and engineering. Dan P. McAdams delineates a model of human identity, and Carroll and his collaborators use a similar model for a quantitative study of Victorian novels. Ellen Dissanayake and John Hawks probe the mystery behind the markings ancient humans made on stones. Brian Boyd uses cognitive psychology to analyze poetry and comics. Catherine Salmon and Mathias Clasen use evolutionary psychology to explain salient genres of popular culture: horror fiction, professional wrestling, romance novels, and male adventure novels.Less
This volume gives evidence for the unity of knowledge in evolutionary biology, the evolutionary social sciences, and the evolutionary humanities. It contains 14 separately authored essays, a foreword by Alice Dreger, a theoretical introduction by Joseph Carroll, and afterwords by David Sloan Wilson and Jonathan Gottschall. Edward O. Wilson, Christopher Boehm, Herbert Gintis, Michael Rose, and Henry Harpending discuss human social evolution. Barbara Oakley integrates psychology and engineering. Dan P. McAdams delineates a model of human identity, and Carroll and his collaborators use a similar model for a quantitative study of Victorian novels. Ellen Dissanayake and John Hawks probe the mystery behind the markings ancient humans made on stones. Brian Boyd uses cognitive psychology to analyze poetry and comics. Catherine Salmon and Mathias Clasen use evolutionary psychology to explain salient genres of popular culture: horror fiction, professional wrestling, romance novels, and male adventure novels.
Alexa Alfer and Amy J. Edwards de Campos
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719066528
- eISBN:
- 9781781701751
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719066528.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter examines the formal and thematic (dis)continuities between the earlier and later Quartet novels. It studies the prism of Byatt's involvement with modern notions of the breakdown and ...
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This chapter examines the formal and thematic (dis)continuities between the earlier and later Quartet novels. It studies the prism of Byatt's involvement with modern notions of the breakdown and fragmentation of language in Babel Tower and her fictional considerations of the narratives of science in A Whistling Woman. This chapter determines that her later fictions usually study the conceptual pitfalls and possibilities of ways of world-making across the ‘Two Cultures’ divide.Less
This chapter examines the formal and thematic (dis)continuities between the earlier and later Quartet novels. It studies the prism of Byatt's involvement with modern notions of the breakdown and fragmentation of language in Babel Tower and her fictional considerations of the narratives of science in A Whistling Woman. This chapter determines that her later fictions usually study the conceptual pitfalls and possibilities of ways of world-making across the ‘Two Cultures’ divide.
Anne Whitehead
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780748686186
- eISBN:
- 9781474438728
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748686186.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter asks how, in the context of the medical humanities, we might productively think across disciplinary domains and boundaries. It draws on Ian McEwan’s Saturday as a focus for positioning ...
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This chapter asks how, in the context of the medical humanities, we might productively think across disciplinary domains and boundaries. It draws on Ian McEwan’s Saturday as a focus for positioning the question of interdisciplinarity within a specifically British context. The first section, ‘The two cultures’, surveys the ‘two cultures’ debate and its legacy and discusses the appearance of Matthew Arnold’s poem ‘Dover Beach’ at a critical point of the novel. In the second section, ‘A third culture?’, the focus turns to McEwan’s engagement with popular science discourses and argues that it underpins a discernible conservatism in his work. The final section, ‘An unbounded view’, reads Saturday against the grain to argue that, in McEwan’s treatment of dementia a more positive, open-ended model for thinking across the arts and sciences might be seen to emerge.Less
This chapter asks how, in the context of the medical humanities, we might productively think across disciplinary domains and boundaries. It draws on Ian McEwan’s Saturday as a focus for positioning the question of interdisciplinarity within a specifically British context. The first section, ‘The two cultures’, surveys the ‘two cultures’ debate and its legacy and discusses the appearance of Matthew Arnold’s poem ‘Dover Beach’ at a critical point of the novel. In the second section, ‘A third culture?’, the focus turns to McEwan’s engagement with popular science discourses and argues that it underpins a discernible conservatism in his work. The final section, ‘An unbounded view’, reads Saturday against the grain to argue that, in McEwan’s treatment of dementia a more positive, open-ended model for thinking across the arts and sciences might be seen to emerge.
Katja Guenther
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226288208
- eISBN:
- 9780226288345
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226288345.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The Epilogue returns to the theme of the Introduction, and suggests ways in which this history sheds new light on recent trends in neuroscience—not to offer a full history of the present, but to ...
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The Epilogue returns to the theme of the Introduction, and suggests ways in which this history sheds new light on recent trends in neuroscience—not to offer a full history of the present, but to exploit suggestive structural parallels between the history told in this book and neuroscientific developments of the past decade. It suggests that a historically grounded understanding of the articulation of the relationship between localization and a principle of “connectivity” helps reframe anxieties about the place of neuroscience in contemporary academic culture, and in particular in the humanities. 92Less
The Epilogue returns to the theme of the Introduction, and suggests ways in which this history sheds new light on recent trends in neuroscience—not to offer a full history of the present, but to exploit suggestive structural parallels between the history told in this book and neuroscientific developments of the past decade. It suggests that a historically grounded understanding of the articulation of the relationship between localization and a principle of “connectivity” helps reframe anxieties about the place of neuroscience in contemporary academic culture, and in particular in the humanities. 92
Daniel M. Gross and Stephanie D. Preston
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226126340
- eISBN:
- 9780226126517
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226126517.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter, written jointly by a rhetorician and a neuroscientist, offers a concrete example of the analytic benefits entailed in interdisciplinary collaboration between the two academic cultures. ...
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This chapter, written jointly by a rhetorician and a neuroscientist, offers a concrete example of the analytic benefits entailed in interdisciplinary collaboration between the two academic cultures. By first outlining various limitations and constraints of laboratory science on emotions, the chapter highlight the hardening of the “two cultures” divide in recent research on emotions. In particular, a recent injunction against “reverse inference” in neuroscientific practice has rendered the establishment of casual connection between brain activation and emotional states more difficult. More promising from a humanities perspective appear to be experiments that draw on a “situated emotions” approach, which explicitly incorporates language and audience considerations into experimental design, and into interpretation. Finally the chapter outlines necessary concessions from each side: a realization among humanists that laboratory research requires the isolation of one key variable over others; and a recognition among scientists regarding the historically and socially specific environment in which emotions take shape.Less
This chapter, written jointly by a rhetorician and a neuroscientist, offers a concrete example of the analytic benefits entailed in interdisciplinary collaboration between the two academic cultures. By first outlining various limitations and constraints of laboratory science on emotions, the chapter highlight the hardening of the “two cultures” divide in recent research on emotions. In particular, a recent injunction against “reverse inference” in neuroscientific practice has rendered the establishment of casual connection between brain activation and emotional states more difficult. More promising from a humanities perspective appear to be experiments that draw on a “situated emotions” approach, which explicitly incorporates language and audience considerations into experimental design, and into interpretation. Finally the chapter outlines necessary concessions from each side: a realization among humanists that laboratory research requires the isolation of one key variable over others; and a recognition among scientists regarding the historically and socially specific environment in which emotions take shape.
R. S. Deese
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780520281523
- eISBN:
- 9780520959569
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520281523.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The focus of this chapter is the fundamental point of commonality between Julian and Aldous Huxley: their sense that the future wellbeing of the human race would depend on a more integrated approach ...
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The focus of this chapter is the fundamental point of commonality between Julian and Aldous Huxley: their sense that the future wellbeing of the human race would depend on a more integrated approach to human experience, and the creation of a more ecologically sustainable form of civilization. In an age of increasing specialization and mutual hostility between what C. P. Snow would call “the two cultures” of the sciences and humanities, Julian and Aldous Huxley each exemplified a more holistic approach to the human experience. Echoing the seventeenth century scholar Sir Thomas Browne, they described human beings as amphibians, though each of them drew a different meaning from this metaphor. In addition to a more integrated vision of human nature, Julian and Aldous Huxley each helped to advance the environmentalist movement that emerged after 1945.Less
The focus of this chapter is the fundamental point of commonality between Julian and Aldous Huxley: their sense that the future wellbeing of the human race would depend on a more integrated approach to human experience, and the creation of a more ecologically sustainable form of civilization. In an age of increasing specialization and mutual hostility between what C. P. Snow would call “the two cultures” of the sciences and humanities, Julian and Aldous Huxley each exemplified a more holistic approach to the human experience. Echoing the seventeenth century scholar Sir Thomas Browne, they described human beings as amphibians, though each of them drew a different meaning from this metaphor. In addition to a more integrated vision of human nature, Julian and Aldous Huxley each helped to advance the environmentalist movement that emerged after 1945.
Jason Tougaw
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300221176
- eISBN:
- 9780300235609
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221176.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Chapter 1 examines influential texts published during the 1990s, by Oliver Sacks, Kay Redfield Jamison, Temple Grandin, Richard Powers, and David Lodge. The argument of the chapter is that these ...
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Chapter 1 examines influential texts published during the 1990s, by Oliver Sacks, Kay Redfield Jamison, Temple Grandin, Richard Powers, and David Lodge. The argument of the chapter is that these writers had not yet coalesced into a school or tradition but that they shared a set of implicit assumptions. All of these texts emphasize the fundamental roles of physiology in the making of identity but suggest also that physiology is meaningful only in the personal, social, and political contexts of live experience. In addition, they represent their writers’ attempts to blur lines between C.P. Snow’s infamous “two cultures”—science vs. the humanities—by emphasizing the phenomenology of living with a brain. While these texts helped established a zeal for neuroscience that would later be termed neuromania by theorists critical of simplistic cultural responses to neuroscience, they also contained the seeds of more sophisticated approaches to understanding relations between brain, self, and culture. Less
Chapter 1 examines influential texts published during the 1990s, by Oliver Sacks, Kay Redfield Jamison, Temple Grandin, Richard Powers, and David Lodge. The argument of the chapter is that these writers had not yet coalesced into a school or tradition but that they shared a set of implicit assumptions. All of these texts emphasize the fundamental roles of physiology in the making of identity but suggest also that physiology is meaningful only in the personal, social, and political contexts of live experience. In addition, they represent their writers’ attempts to blur lines between C.P. Snow’s infamous “two cultures”—science vs. the humanities—by emphasizing the phenomenology of living with a brain. While these texts helped established a zeal for neuroscience that would later be termed neuromania by theorists critical of simplistic cultural responses to neuroscience, they also contained the seeds of more sophisticated approaches to understanding relations between brain, self, and culture.
Daniel M. Gross
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226485034
- eISBN:
- 9780226485171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226485171.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The epilogue, co-authored with University of Michigan ecological neuroscientist Stephanie Preston, exemplifies collaborative work across emotion science and the humanities. By first outlining various ...
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The epilogue, co-authored with University of Michigan ecological neuroscientist Stephanie Preston, exemplifies collaborative work across emotion science and the humanities. By first outlining various limitations and constraints of laboratory science, this chapter highlight some recent hardening of the "two cultures" divide in emotion research. Then it discusses experiments that show how laboratory research on emotions can be modified by the critical and rhetorical methods that distinguish the humanities. Classic laboratory studies of fear, for example, document the persistence of unconscious white vs. black bias while, at the same time, neglecting circumstances like the history of racial slavery that could provide causal explanations of just the sort that these same scientists first raise, then anxiously defer. More promising from a humanities perspective are experiments that draw on a critically informed, situated emotions approach, which explicitly incorporates language and audience considerations into experimental design, and into interpretation.Less
The epilogue, co-authored with University of Michigan ecological neuroscientist Stephanie Preston, exemplifies collaborative work across emotion science and the humanities. By first outlining various limitations and constraints of laboratory science, this chapter highlight some recent hardening of the "two cultures" divide in emotion research. Then it discusses experiments that show how laboratory research on emotions can be modified by the critical and rhetorical methods that distinguish the humanities. Classic laboratory studies of fear, for example, document the persistence of unconscious white vs. black bias while, at the same time, neglecting circumstances like the history of racial slavery that could provide causal explanations of just the sort that these same scientists first raise, then anxiously defer. More promising from a humanities perspective are experiments that draw on a critically informed, situated emotions approach, which explicitly incorporates language and audience considerations into experimental design, and into interpretation.
Helen Small
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199683864
- eISBN:
- 9780191764653
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683864.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book is a critical study of the justifications for the humanities that have been most influential in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and still exert persuasive power now. The main claims ...
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This book is a critical study of the justifications for the humanities that have been most influential in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and still exert persuasive power now. The main claims considered are: —that the humanities study the meaning-making practices of the culture, focusing on interpretation and evaluation, with an indispensable element of subjectivity; (relatedly) that there are grounds for discrimination here from the sciences and social sciences on the basis of the kind of work done, the culture of knowledge, and the character of the disciplines; —that the humanities are (laudably) at odds with, or at a remove from, instrumental use value; this has been a common line of resistance to political economists from Adam Smith onwards, and still tends to underwrite more recent descriptions of the humanities that demonstrate their contribution to the economy and to the social good; — that they contribute to the happiness of individuals and/or the general happiness of society; —that they are a force for democracy; —that they are good in themselves, or have value ‘for their own sake’. The Value of the Humanities has a dual purpose: it is a critical taxonomy, detailing the most commonly articulated arguments for the higher study of the humanities with the aim of clarifying their historical sources and lines of reasoning; it also seeks to test their validity for the present day, assessing their strengths and weaknesses and the part they can play in debate about the nature of public goods.Less
This book is a critical study of the justifications for the humanities that have been most influential in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and still exert persuasive power now. The main claims considered are: —that the humanities study the meaning-making practices of the culture, focusing on interpretation and evaluation, with an indispensable element of subjectivity; (relatedly) that there are grounds for discrimination here from the sciences and social sciences on the basis of the kind of work done, the culture of knowledge, and the character of the disciplines; —that the humanities are (laudably) at odds with, or at a remove from, instrumental use value; this has been a common line of resistance to political economists from Adam Smith onwards, and still tends to underwrite more recent descriptions of the humanities that demonstrate their contribution to the economy and to the social good; — that they contribute to the happiness of individuals and/or the general happiness of society; —that they are a force for democracy; —that they are good in themselves, or have value ‘for their own sake’. The Value of the Humanities has a dual purpose: it is a critical taxonomy, detailing the most commonly articulated arguments for the higher study of the humanities with the aim of clarifying their historical sources and lines of reasoning; it also seeks to test their validity for the present day, assessing their strengths and weaknesses and the part they can play in debate about the nature of public goods.
Murray Smith
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198790648
- eISBN:
- 9780191837791
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198790648.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Sixty years ago C. P. Snow began his campaign against the ‘two cultures’—the debilitating divide, as he saw it, between traditional ‘literary intellectual’ culture, and the culture of the ...
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Sixty years ago C. P. Snow began his campaign against the ‘two cultures’—the debilitating divide, as he saw it, between traditional ‘literary intellectual’ culture, and the culture of the sciences—urging in its place a ‘third culture’ which would draw upon and integrate the resources of disciplines spanning the natural and social sciences, the arts, and the humanities. Murray Smith argues that, with the ever-increasing influence of evolutionary theory and neuroscience, and the pervasive presence of digital technologies, Snow’s challenge is more relevant than ever. Smith tackles this question in relation to the art, technology, and science of film in particular, and to the world of the arts and aesthetic activity more generally. In Part I he explores the general strategies and principles necessary to build a ‘third cultural’ or naturalized approach to film and art—one that roots itself in an appreciation of scientific knowledge and method. These strategies include ‘thick explanation’ (which combines everyday and scientific psychology) and the ‘triangulation’ of knowledge from experience, psychological theory, and neuroscientific data. In the second part of the work, Smith focuses on the role of emotion in film and the other arts, as an extended experiment in the third cultural integration of ideas on emotion spanning the arts, humanities, and sciences. Here Smith investigates, among other things, the role of facial expression in film in the light of Darwin’s work on the emotions, and the dynamics of suspense, shock, and empathy in film in relation to contemporary neuroscience. While acknowledging that not all of the questions we ask are scientific in nature, Smith contends that we cannot disregard the insights wrought by taking a naturalized approach to the aesthetics of film and the other arts.Less
Sixty years ago C. P. Snow began his campaign against the ‘two cultures’—the debilitating divide, as he saw it, between traditional ‘literary intellectual’ culture, and the culture of the sciences—urging in its place a ‘third culture’ which would draw upon and integrate the resources of disciplines spanning the natural and social sciences, the arts, and the humanities. Murray Smith argues that, with the ever-increasing influence of evolutionary theory and neuroscience, and the pervasive presence of digital technologies, Snow’s challenge is more relevant than ever. Smith tackles this question in relation to the art, technology, and science of film in particular, and to the world of the arts and aesthetic activity more generally. In Part I he explores the general strategies and principles necessary to build a ‘third cultural’ or naturalized approach to film and art—one that roots itself in an appreciation of scientific knowledge and method. These strategies include ‘thick explanation’ (which combines everyday and scientific psychology) and the ‘triangulation’ of knowledge from experience, psychological theory, and neuroscientific data. In the second part of the work, Smith focuses on the role of emotion in film and the other arts, as an extended experiment in the third cultural integration of ideas on emotion spanning the arts, humanities, and sciences. Here Smith investigates, among other things, the role of facial expression in film in the light of Darwin’s work on the emotions, and the dynamics of suspense, shock, and empathy in film in relation to contemporary neuroscience. While acknowledging that not all of the questions we ask are scientific in nature, Smith contends that we cannot disregard the insights wrought by taking a naturalized approach to the aesthetics of film and the other arts.
Massimo Pigliucci
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190231217
- eISBN:
- 9780190609061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190231217.003.0014
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
E.O. Wilson’s “consilience” project adopts a particular reductionist conception of the word consilience, as opposed to the more generally accepted meaning—among philosophers—of inference to the best ...
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E.O. Wilson’s “consilience” project adopts a particular reductionist conception of the word consilience, as opposed to the more generally accepted meaning—among philosophers—of inference to the best explanation. The author argues that Wilson’s project is a misguided throwback to the ideals of logical positivism, which have been shown by philosophers of science to be ultimately incoherent. Instead, the author proposes that a better way of thinking about the relations between the sciences and the humanities requires a broader view of what counts as knowledge, as well as situating knowledge itself within the even broader context of human experience and understanding.Less
E.O. Wilson’s “consilience” project adopts a particular reductionist conception of the word consilience, as opposed to the more generally accepted meaning—among philosophers—of inference to the best explanation. The author argues that Wilson’s project is a misguided throwback to the ideals of logical positivism, which have been shown by philosophers of science to be ultimately incoherent. Instead, the author proposes that a better way of thinking about the relations between the sciences and the humanities requires a broader view of what counts as knowledge, as well as situating knowledge itself within the even broader context of human experience and understanding.
Inge Hinterwaldner
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035040
- eISBN:
- 9780262335546
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035040.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
It can be shown that the different conceptions of ‘simulation’ (the one of culture critique on the one hand and the denomination of technical applications on the other) that seem to be incompatible ...
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It can be shown that the different conceptions of ‘simulation’ (the one of culture critique on the one hand and the denomination of technical applications on the other) that seem to be incompatible with each other can be reconciled on a single spectrum. Its basis in models, its replacement of reality, its lack of reference and of precession of the referent are some pejorative characteristics often emphasized in media philosophy with regard to simulations, for which the sciences applying computer simulations have no use for. It helps crossing over the views that first seem opposite to each other, but that turn out to be compatible if its root in reality is recognized and thus the representational logic is accepted at least according to the intention. The chapter combines ideas of the 'simulacrum' retrieved in the natural sciences with traces of cybernetic thinking in media studies. The whole study builds on a definition of computer simulation in the technical sense as the involvement with and the act of execution f a dynamic mathematic or procedural model that projects, depicts, or recreates a system or process.Less
It can be shown that the different conceptions of ‘simulation’ (the one of culture critique on the one hand and the denomination of technical applications on the other) that seem to be incompatible with each other can be reconciled on a single spectrum. Its basis in models, its replacement of reality, its lack of reference and of precession of the referent are some pejorative characteristics often emphasized in media philosophy with regard to simulations, for which the sciences applying computer simulations have no use for. It helps crossing over the views that first seem opposite to each other, but that turn out to be compatible if its root in reality is recognized and thus the representational logic is accepted at least according to the intention. The chapter combines ideas of the 'simulacrum' retrieved in the natural sciences with traces of cybernetic thinking in media studies. The whole study builds on a definition of computer simulation in the technical sense as the involvement with and the act of execution f a dynamic mathematic or procedural model that projects, depicts, or recreates a system or process.
Deirdre David
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198729617
- eISBN:
- 9780191843280
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198729617.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Women's Literature
In 1959, Snow delivered his famous lecture ‘Two Cultures’ in which he called for a civilized conversation between the sciences and the humanities. In response to Snow’s lecture, the well-known ...
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In 1959, Snow delivered his famous lecture ‘Two Cultures’ in which he called for a civilized conversation between the sciences and the humanities. In response to Snow’s lecture, the well-known literary critic F.R. Leavis savagely attacked Snow not only for what he saw as simple-minded ideas but also for his lack of distinction as a novelist. Both Pamela and Snow began to feel increasingly under unfair attack—for their political support of Russian writers and for what some regarded as social climbing (for sending their son to Eton, for example). As always, Pamela continued writing and published a comic novel titled Cork Street, Next to the Hatter’s which featured a return of some characters from The Unspeakable Skipton and the beginnings of her controversial attack upon the rampant dissemination of pornography.Less
In 1959, Snow delivered his famous lecture ‘Two Cultures’ in which he called for a civilized conversation between the sciences and the humanities. In response to Snow’s lecture, the well-known literary critic F.R. Leavis savagely attacked Snow not only for what he saw as simple-minded ideas but also for his lack of distinction as a novelist. Both Pamela and Snow began to feel increasingly under unfair attack—for their political support of Russian writers and for what some regarded as social climbing (for sending their son to Eton, for example). As always, Pamela continued writing and published a comic novel titled Cork Street, Next to the Hatter’s which featured a return of some characters from The Unspeakable Skipton and the beginnings of her controversial attack upon the rampant dissemination of pornography.
Dan C. Christensen
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199669264
- eISBN:
- 9780191748745
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199669264.003.0001
- Subject:
- Physics, History of Physics
The prologue introduces Hans Christian Ørsted and his main accomplishments in scientific research and education. Although this is the first comprehensive and contextual biography his achievements ...
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The prologue introduces Hans Christian Ørsted and his main accomplishments in scientific research and education. Although this is the first comprehensive and contextual biography his achievements have, of course, been widely discussed by a number of historians of science. This historiography is briefly introduced and the key questions raised by Danish as well as international scholars (Meyer, Oswald, Stauffer, Williams, Caneva, Wilson, Friedman, Gower) are brought out. The assertion that Ørsted was strongly influenced by Naturphilosophie is preliminarily contested, and attention is drawn to the inspiration he drew from Kantian metaphysics against the prevailing Laplacean views entertained at the University of Copenhagen in which he was enrolled. Moreover, I argue that right from the outset Hans Christian in a lifelong cooperation with his brother, Anders Sandøe, the leading jurist, engulfed himself in philosophical dualism, which came to dominate Danish cultural life in the so-called Danish Golden Age.Less
The prologue introduces Hans Christian Ørsted and his main accomplishments in scientific research and education. Although this is the first comprehensive and contextual biography his achievements have, of course, been widely discussed by a number of historians of science. This historiography is briefly introduced and the key questions raised by Danish as well as international scholars (Meyer, Oswald, Stauffer, Williams, Caneva, Wilson, Friedman, Gower) are brought out. The assertion that Ørsted was strongly influenced by Naturphilosophie is preliminarily contested, and attention is drawn to the inspiration he drew from Kantian metaphysics against the prevailing Laplacean views entertained at the University of Copenhagen in which he was enrolled. Moreover, I argue that right from the outset Hans Christian in a lifelong cooperation with his brother, Anders Sandøe, the leading jurist, engulfed himself in philosophical dualism, which came to dominate Danish cultural life in the so-called Danish Golden Age.
