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 xi
... phenomenon, though of course other scientific fields from biology to economics underwent revolutionary change in this period. My project takes its thematic cues and its polemical raison d'être from postmodern literary theory and, in ...
... phenomenon, though of course other scientific fields from biology to economics underwent revolutionary change in this period. My project takes its thematic cues and its polemical raison d'être from postmodern literary theory and, in ...
Pagina xii
... phenomenon. “The so-called freethinker is as often as any other man the slave of some self-chosen master,” he observes, “and many who scorn the imputation of believing anything merely because it is found in the Bible, would find it hard ...
... phenomenon. “The so-called freethinker is as often as any other man the slave of some self-chosen master,” he observes, “and many who scorn the imputation of believing anything merely because it is found in the Bible, would find it hard ...
Pagina 2
... phenomena as the aesthetic movement. The trend of latecentury scientific discourse toward a theory of intensified self-repression, portrayed in Daston's and Galison's essay as a natural emanation of the moral sensibility of the period ...
... phenomena as the aesthetic movement. The trend of latecentury scientific discourse toward a theory of intensified self-repression, portrayed in Daston's and Galison's essay as a natural emanation of the moral sensibility of the period ...
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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
absolute according analysis appearance argues argument asserts authority become belief body Bough called century chapter character Christian claim Clifford concept condition construct contemporary course critique cultural defining definite discourse doctrine effect Einstein essay ethical evidence example existence experience expresses fact Feuerbach field force Frazer freedom fundamental give given Golden human idea ideal ideological imagination implications insistence intellectual interpretation knowledge later less logic matter means mechanical method Mill mind mode moral motion movement nature never Newman nineteenth-century notes objects observers original Pearson phenomena philosophical physics Poincaré political possible practical principle radical rational reality reason reference relations relativism relativistic relativity religion religious represents rule says Schiller scientific seems sense social society special relativity Spencer Stallo structure symbolic theme theory things thinking thought true truth universe values Victorian violence writers