[PDF] Fictions Of Certitude eBook

Author : Frédérique Aït-Touati
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 38,21 MB
Release : 2011-10-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 0226011240

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In today’s academe, the fields of science and literature are considered unconnected, one relying on raw data and fact, the other focusing on fiction. During the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, however, the two fields were not so distinct. Just as the natural philosophers of the era were discovering in and adopting from literature new strategies and techniques for their discourse, so too were poets and storytellers finding inspiration in natural philosophy, particularly in astronomy. A work that speaks to the history of science and literary studies, Fictions of the Cosmos explores the evolving relationship that ensued between fiction and astronomical authority. By examining writings of Kepler, Godwin, Hooke, Cyrano, Cavendish, Fontenelle, and others, Frédérique Aït-Touati shows that it was through the telling of stories—such as through accounts of celestial journeys—that the Copernican hypothesis, for example, found an ontological weight that its geometric models did not provide. Aït-Touati draws from both cosmological treatises and fictions of travel and knowledge, as well as personal correspondences, drawings, and instruments, to emphasize the multiple borrowings between scientific and literary discourses. This volume sheds new light on the practices of scientific invention, experimentation, and hypothesis formation by situating them according to their fictional or factual tendencies.

Author : John S. Haller
Publisher : University Alabama Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 35,40 MB
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 0817320539

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The search for belief and meaning among nineteenth-century intellectuals The nineteenth century's explosion of scientific theories and new technologies undermined many deep-seated beliefs that had long formed the basis of Western society, making it impossible for many to retain the unconditional faith of their forebears. A myriad of discoveries--including Faraday's electromagnetic induction, Joule's law of conservation of energy, Pasteur's germ theory, Darwin's and Wallace's theories of evolution by natural selection, and Planck's work on quantum theory--shattered conventional understandings of the world that had been dictated by traditional religious teachings and philosophical systems for centuries. Fictions of Certitude: Science, Faith, and the Search for Meaning, 1840-1920 investigates the fin de siècle search for truth and meaning in a world that had been radically transformed. John S. Haller Jr. examines the moral and philosophical journeys of nine European and American intellectuals who sought deeper understanding amid such paradigmatic upheaval. Auguste Comte, John Henry Newman, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Russel Wallace, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Fiske, William James, Lester Frank Ward, and Paul Carus all belonged to an age in which one world was passing, while another world that was both astounding and threatening was rising to take its place. For Haller, what makes the work of these nine thinkers worthy of examination is how they strove in different ways to find certitude and belief in the face of an epochal sea change. Some found ways to reconceptualize a world in which God and nature coexist. For others, the challenge was to discern meaning in a world in which no higher power or purpose can be found. As explained by D. H. Myer, "The later Victorians were perhaps the last generation among English-speaking intellectuals able to believe that man was capable of understanding his universe, just as they were the first generation collectively to suspect that he never would."

Author : Patrick Modiano
Publisher : David R. Godine Publisher
Page : 76 pages
File Size : 22,41 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9780879239596

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Watching her daughter attempt some jazz steps in her ballet school on a snowy afternoon in New York reminds Catherine of her own childhood in Paris, where she and her rather mysterious father lived happily together.

Author : John J. Han
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 28,53 MB
Release : 2024-02-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN :

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Mystery fiction as a genre renders moral judgments not only about detectives and criminals but also concerning the cultural structures within which these mysteries unfold. In contrast to other volumes which examine morality in crime fiction through the lenses of personal guilt and personal justice, Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction analyzes the effect of moral imagination on the moral structures implicit in the genre. In recent years, public awareness has attended to the relationship between social structures and justice, and this collection centers on how personal ethics and social ethics are bound together amidst the shifting moral landscapes of mystery fiction. Contributors discuss the interplay between personal guilt and social guilt – considering morality and justice on an individual level and at a societal level – using frameworks of certainty and ambiguity. They show how individual characters in works by Agatha Christie, Gabriel García Márquez, Natsuo Kirino, F.H. Batacan, and Stephen King, among others, may view their moral standing with certainty but clash with the established mores of their culture. Featuring essays on Japanese, Filipino, Indian, and Colombian mystery fiction, as well as American and British fiction, this volume analyzes social guilt and justice across cultures, showing how individuals grapple with the certainty, and, at times, the moral ambiguity, of their respective cultures.

Author : George Levine
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 35,47 MB
Release : 2015-12-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 140087680X

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How does Carlyle, Macaulay, Newman sustain the values of old traditions and at the same time meet the challenge of contemporary Victorian experience is the subject of Professor Levine's book. Like the novelists of the period upon whom they had great influence, these three writers were seeking stability and permanence in an age of tremendous change. They were trying to sustain the values and order of old traditions and at the same time meet the challenge of contemporary Victorian experience. How each one met this challenge is essentially the subject of Professor Levine’s book. The author begins with a close analysis of the style and structure of the writers’ key works, essentially dissimilar in nature, then moves on to an exploration of what they had in common. Originally published in 1968. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.