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Lädt ... Fact and Feeling: Baconian Science and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imaginationvon Jonathan Smith
Keine Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch.  Stevil2001 | Jul 15, 2016 |  keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Counter In his famous lecture on "The Two Cultures," C.P. Snow argued that the modern intellectual gulf between writers and artists on the one hand, scientists and engineers on the other, had its roots in the nineteenth century. Jonathan Smith challenges that view by examining the cultural debate about scientific method in nineteenth-century Britain.
Focusing on the status of Francis Bacon and his inductive methodology, Smith shows that literary figures were involved, both directly and indirectly, in the effort to construct a methodology that would serve both science and literature by bringing together fact and feeling, reason and imagination. Smith opens with a historical overview of the debate that includes such figures as_ Samuel Coleridge, John Herschel, William Whewell, J.S. Mill, Thomas Macaulay, G.H. Lewes, John Tyndall, Stanley Jevons, and Karl Pearson. Then, in a series of chapters that spans the century, Smith examines the various and complex ways in which a wide range of writers reacted to and participated in this Baconian debate. From the prose of Wordsworth and Coleridge to the fantasy of Edwin Abbott's Flatland and the detective fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle, from the travel narrative of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle to the art criticism of John Ruskin and the novels of George Eliot, Smith uncovers more convergence than divergence in nineteenth-century scientific and literary methods.
By drawing heavily on the writings of both contemporary scientists and modern historians of science, Smith contends that, in the thirty-five years since Snow's lecture, much of the literary criticism concerned with denying the existence of the two cultures has in fact reinforced that cultural gulf in subtle and self-defeating ways. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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 Google Books — Lädt ...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)820.9Literature English English literature in more than one form History, description, critical appraisal of works in more than one formKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt: Keine Bewertungen.Bist das du?Werde ein LibraryThing-Autor. |
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The most interesting of the later chapters (to me, of course) were the ones on John Ruskin and Sherlock Holmes. In the Ruskin chapter, Smith is able to carefully delineate Ruskin's point of view on science. Ruskin wasn't opposed to science in general, but what he saw as foolish science: science that subordinated vision to inductive reason, prioritizing what could not be seen over what could be seen. This feels kind of reasonable on the face of it, until you remember that Ruskin rejected the idea of glaciers moving because he couldn't see them moving. Ruskin prioritized sight, and felt that scientists like Tyndall were too rapid and superficial in their observations.
His chapter on Holmes admirably and thoroughly lays out what it means for Holmes to think "scientifically": Holmes claims to be a naive Baconian that doesn't let theories affect his sight, that jars with the very strong personality Holmes portrays throughout the stories. Smith shows how Holmes both decries the dangers of the imagination and utterly relies upon the imagination to make the leaps of logic that the police (who Holmes derides as naive Baconians) cannot. It's a compelling discussion of why we shouldn't take Holmes (or Doyle) at his word when describing his detective method, but should instead look at what he actually does and how it interacts with the philosophy of science of the day (or, rather, the past, since naive Baconianism was mostly out by the 1890s).