Victorian Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific DiscoveryUniversity of Chicago Press, 15 nov 2010 - 264 pagina's One of the articles of faith of twentieth-century intellectual history is that the theory of relativity in physics sprang in its essentials from the unaided genius of Albert Einstein; another is that scientific relativity is unconnected to ethical, cultural, or epistemological relativisms. Victorian Relativity challenges these assumptions, unearthing a forgotten tradition of avant-garde speculation that took as its guiding principle "the negation of the absolute" and set itself under the militant banner of "relativity." Christopher Herbert shows that the idea of relativity produced revolutionary changes in one field after another in the nineteenth century. Surveying a long line of thinkers including Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Alexander Bain, W. K. Clifford, W. S. Jevons, Karl Pearson, James Frazer, and Einstein himself, Victorian Relativity argues that the early relativity movement was bound closely to motives of political and cultural reform and, in particular, to radical critiques of the ideology of authoritarianism. Recuperating relativity from those who treat it as synonymous with nihilism, Herbert portrays it as the basis of some of our crucial intellectual and ethical traditions. |
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Pagina 1
... interpretation” among late-Victorian scientists and a corresponding insistence on a rigidly puritanical code of objectivity as the prerequisite of achieving “truth to nature” in scientific representations. Scientists were required by ...
... interpretation” among late-Victorian scientists and a corresponding insistence on a rigidly puritanical code of objectivity as the prerequisite of achieving “truth to nature” in scientific representations. Scientists were required by ...
Pagina 2
... interpretation. Samuel Butler had ventured a similar thesis several years earlier, declaring that the notion of “truth” in science should be replaced by that of conceptual “convenience” and that scientific work was inherently a process ...
... interpretation. Samuel Butler had ventured a similar thesis several years earlier, declaring that the notion of “truth” in science should be replaced by that of conceptual “convenience” and that scientific work was inherently a process ...
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Inhoudsopgave
1 | |
Difference Unity Proliferation | 34 |
Relativity and Authority | 71 |
The Relativity of Logic | 105 |
Karl Pearson and the Human Form Divine | 145 |
Frazer and Einstein | 180 |
Overige edities - Alles bekijken
Victorian Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery Christopher Herbert Gedeeltelijke weergave - 2001 |
Victorian Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery Christopher Herbert Gedeeltelijke weergave - 2001 |
Veelvoorkomende woorden en zinsdelen
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