Literature and Science Forthcoming Titles in ABC-CLIO’S
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Literature and Science Forthcoming titles in ABC-CLIO’s Science and Society: Impact and Interaction Series The Environment and Science, Christian C. Young Exploration and Science, Michael S. Reidy, Gary Kroll, and Erik M. Conway Imperialism and Science, George N. Vlahakis, Isabel Maria Malaquias, Nathan M. Brooks, François Regourd, Feza Gunergun, and David Wright Literature and Science Social Impact and Interaction John H. Cartwright and Brian Baker ABC-CLIO Santa Barbara, California • Denver, Colorado • Oxford, England Copyright 2005 by John H. Cartwright and Brian Baker All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani- cal, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cartwright, John H., 1953- Literature and science : social impact and interaction / John H. Cartwright and Brian Baker. p. cm. — (Science and society) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-85109-458-X (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-85109-463-6 (ebook) 1. Science and literature. I. Baker, Brian, 1969– II. Title. III. Series: Science and society (Santa Barbara, Calif.) PN55.C39 2005 809'.9336—dc22 2005000977 09—08—07—06—05——10—9—8—7—6—5—4—3—2—1 This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, Inc. 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Manufactured in the United States of America JHC: To Margaret BB: To Deniz, Sophie, and baby Contents Series Editor’s Preface, xiii Acknowledgments, xv Preface, xvii 1 Medieval Cosmology and European Literature: Dante and Chaucer, 1 Aristotelian Cosmology, 1 Dante and The Divine Comedy, 6 Chaucer, 12 Chaucer and Astrology, 12 The Humours, 18 Chaucer’s Doctor of Physic, 21 Alchemy, 24 Biography: Chaucer, 14 Biography: Dante, 8 2 Science and Literature in the Elizabethan Renaissance, 31 Natural Philosophy, 33 Elizabethan Commonplaces, 36 The Great Chain of Being, 36 Astrology, 39 Analogical Thinking and the Correspondences, 40 Hierarchy and Degree, 42 The Elements, 44 The Age of the World, 44 Medicine, 45 Music of the Spheres, 46 Satire, 46 Breaking Boundaries, 50 Marlowe’s Faustus, 51 Lear and the World Breaking Up, 56 vii viii Contents Biography: Marlowe, 52 Biography: Jonson, 48 3 Science and Literature in Seventeenth-Century England, 61 Affecting the Metaphysical, 61 The World’s Decay, 64 The Redemption of Natural Philosophy, 67 The Royal Society, 71 Satire and the Virtuosi, 73 Science and the Language of Literature, 81 Milton, 83 The Earl of Rochester, 88 Biography: John Donne, 62 Biography: Francis Bacon, 68 Biography: Margaret Cavendish, 74 4 Science and Literature 1680–1790, 93 “Of Newton, to the Muses Dear”, 93 Pope and the Essay on Man, 101 Jonathan Swift, 105 Nature Poems: Scientific and Moral, 112 Night Thoughts, 113 The Didactic Poem, 115 Biography: Newton, 94 Biography: Swift, 106 5 The Touch of Cold Philosophy: The Response to Science in Romantic Literature 1790–1840, 121 Unweaving the Rainbow, 121 The Romantic Revolution—Context and Characteristics, 125 Romantic Epistemologies, 127 Wordsworth, 127 Lyrical Ballads (1798), 131 Kant’s Revolution, 134 Wordsworth and Newton, 135 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 137 Biography: William Wordsworth, 128 Biography: Mary Shelley, 138 Biography: Humphrey Davy, 142 6 Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Science: Problems of Analogy, 151 The Analogical Method, 151 Changes in Nineteenth-Century Science, 153 Contents ix American Nature and Spirituality, 154 Moby-Dick and Classification Systems, 155 Moby-Dick: Analogy, Anatomy, and Autopsy, 157 Nature and the Transcendentalists, 158 Science and Religion: The Way to Hell, 161 Science, Non-science, and Nonsense: The Case of Edgar Allan Poe, 165 Conclusion, 167 Biography: Herman Melville, 156 Biography: Henry David Thoreau, 160 7 Those Dreadful Hammers: Geology and Evolution in Nineteenth-Century Literature, 171 Geology Comes of Age, 171 Lamarck and Chambers, 176 Tennyson, 177 Darwin and The Origin of Species, 183 Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), 187 Man’s Place in Nature, 187 Hardy and Sexual Selection, 191 Hardy and August Weismann, 193 Epilogue: Evolutionary Epistemology., 195 Biography: Thomas Hardy, 188 Biography: Charles Darwin, 184 8 Darwin’s Gothic: Science and Literature in the Late Nineteenth Century, 199 Darwin and “Progress,” 199 Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism, 200 The Time Machine, 201 The Time Machine and Evolution, 203 The Time Machine and Race, 204 Theories of Degeneration, 205 Cesare Lombroso’s Criminal Man, 208 Atavism and Dracula, 210 Degeneration and Sherlock Holmes, 211 Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, 214 Reversion and “The Creeping Man”, 215 Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 217 Conclusion, 219 Biography: H. G. Wells, 202 Biography: Cesare Lombroso, 209 Biography: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 216 x Contents 9 Themes in Science Fiction, 223 The Fantastic Journey, 224 Evolution and Humanity, 227 Science Fiction and Time, 230 The Robots, 235 Dystopia: The Machine State, 239 Biography: Isaac Asimov, 237 Biography: Werner Heisenberg, 234 10 Science and Literature in the Twentieth Century: From Entropy to Chaos, 243 Thermodynamics and Entropy, 243 Entropy and Postwar Literature, 247 Entropy and Information, 250 Cybernetics and Cyborgs, 254 Cyberpunk, Bifurcation Points, and Chaos Theory, 258 Back to the Future: The Difference Engine, 260 Biography: James Clerk Maxwell, 252 Biography: William Gibson, 256 11 The Two Cultures Debates, 265 Two Cultures: An Anatomy of a Cultural Divide, 265 The Battle of the Books, 266 The Romantic Revolution and Varieties of Truth, 268 The Huxley-Arnold Debate, 270 C. P. Snow and Two Cultures, 276 Biography: Matthew Arnold, 274 Biography: Thomas Huxley, 271 Biography: C. P. Snow, 277 12 Science Wars and Imperial Ambitions, 281 Realism and Social Constructivism, 281 Human Nature and Human Knowledge: The Allure of Social Constructivism, 288 The Counterattack, 290 Sokal’s Modest Experiment, 292 Can Literature be Explored Scientifically?, 297 E. O. Wilson and Consilience, 297 The Third Culture and Popularizations of Science, 301 The Third Culture, 301 Popular Culture and the Literature of Science, 302 Biography: E.O. Wilson, 298 Contents xi Epilogue: A Time for Cultural Exchange, 307 Appendix: Spherical Astronomy and “Saving the Appearances,” 311 Chronology of Significant Events, 325 General Bibliographic Essay, 335 Glossary, 337 Primary Source Documents, 349 Bibliography, 437 Index, 447 About the Editors, 471 Series Editor’s Preface he discipline of the history of science emerged from the natural sci- ences with the founding of the journal Isis by George Sarton in 1912. T Two and a half decades later in a lecture at Harvard Sarton explained, “We shall not be able to understand our own science of today (I do not say to use it, but to understand it) if we do not succeed in penetrating its genesis and evolution.” Historians of science, many of the first trained by Sarton and then by his students, study how science developed during the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries and how the evolution of the physical, biological, and social sciences over the past 350 years has been powerfully influenced by various social and intellectual contexts. Throughout the twentieth century the new field of the history of science grew with the establishment of dozens of new journals, graduate programs, and eventually the emergence of undergraduate majors in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science, technology, and medicine. Sar- ton’s call to understand the origins and development of modern science has been answered by the development of not simply one discipline, but several. Despite their successes in training scholars and professionalizing the field, historians of science have not been particularly successful in getting their work, especially their depictions of the interactions between science and society, into history textbooks. Pick up any U.S. history textbook and examine some of the topics that have been well explored by historians of science, such as scientific racism, the Scopes trial, nuclear weapons, eugenics, industrialization, or the relationship between science and technology. The depictions of these topics offered by the average history textbook have remained unchanged over the last fifty years, while the professional literature related to them that historians of science produce has made considerable revision to basic assumptions about each of these subjects. The large and growing gap between what historians of science say about certain scientific and technological subjects and the portrayal of these subjects in most survey courses led us to organize the Science and Society series. Obvi- ously, the rich body of literature that historians of science have amassed is not xiii xiv Series Editor’s Preface regularly consulted in the production of history texts or lectures. The authors and editors of this series seek to overcome this disparity by offering a synthetic, readable, and chronological history of the physical, social, and biological sci- ences as they developed within particular social, political, institutional, intel- lectual, and economic contexts over the past 350 years. Each volume stresses the reciprocal relationship between science and context; that is, while various circumstances and perspectives have influenced the evolution of the sciences, scientific disciplines have conversely influenced the contexts within which they developed. Volumes within this series each begin with a chronological narrative of the evolution of the natural and social sciences that focuses on the particu- lar ways in which contexts influenced and were influenced by the development of scientific explanations and institutions. Spread throughout the narrative readers will encounter short biographies of significant and iconic individuals whose work demonstrates the ways in which the scientific enterprise has been pursued by men and women throughout the last three centuries.