Victorian Science And Imagery

Author : Nancy Rose Marshall
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2021-07-27
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780822987994

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Victorian Science and Imagery by Nancy Rose Marshall Pdf

The nineteenth century was a period of science and imagery: when scientific theories and discoveries challenged longstanding boundaries between animal, plant, and human, and when art and visual culture produced new notions about the place of the human in the natural world. Just as scientists relied on graphic representation to conceptualize their ideas, artists moved seamlessly between scientific debate and creative expression to support or contradict popular scientific theories—such as Darwin’s theory of evolution and sexual selection—deliberately drawing on concepts in ways that allowed them to refute popular claims or disrupt conventional knowledges. Focusing on the close kinship between the arts and sciences during the Victorian period, the art historians contributing to this volume reveal the unique ways in which nineteenth-century British and American visual culture participated in making science, and in which science informed art at a crucial moment in the history of the development of the modern world. Together, they explore topics in geology, meteorology, medicine, anatomy, evolution, and zoology, as well as a range of media from photography to oil painting. They remind us that science and art are not tightly compartmentalized, separate influences. Rather, these are fields that share forms, manifest as waves, layers, lines, or geometries; that invest in the idea of the evolution of form; and that generate surprisingly kindred responses, such as pain, pleasure, empathy, and sympathy.

Author : Bernard Lightman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 499 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2008-07-31
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226481104

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Victorian Science in Context by Bernard Lightman Pdf

Victorians were fascinated by the flood of strange new worlds that science was opening to them. Exotic plants and animals poured into London from all corners of the Empire, while revolutionary theories such as the radical idea that humans might be descended from apes drew crowds to heated debates. Men and women of all social classes avidly collected scientific specimens for display in their homes and devoured literature about science and its practitioners. Victorian Science in Context captures the essence of this fascination, charting the many ways in which science influenced and was influenced by the larger Victorian culture. Contributions from leading scholars in history, literature, and the history of science explore questions such as: What did science mean to the Victorians? For whom was Victorian science written? What ideological messages did it convey? The contributors show how practical concerns interacted with contextual issues to mold Victorian science—which in turn shaped much of the relationship between modern science and culture.

Author : Lara Pauline Karpenko,Shalyn Rae Claggett
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780472130177

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Strange Science by Lara Pauline Karpenko,Shalyn Rae Claggett Pdf

A fascinating look at scientific inquiry during the Victorian period and the shifting boundary between mainstream and unorthodox sciences of the time

Author : Jennifer Tucker
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2013-08-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781421413211

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Nature Exposed by Jennifer Tucker Pdf

Recovering the controversies and commentary surrounding the early creation of scientific photography and drawing on a wide range of new sources and critical theories, Tucker establishes a greater understanding of the rich visual culture of Victorian science and alternative forms of knowledge, including psychical research.

Author : James A. Secord
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226203287

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Visions of Science by James A. Secord Pdf

The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed an extraordinary transformation in British political, literary, and intellectual life. There was widespread social unrest, and debates raged regarding education, the lives of the working class, and the new industrial, machine-governed world. At the same time, modern science emerged in Europe in more or less its current form, as new disciplines and revolutionary concepts, including evolution and the vastness of geologic time, began to take shape. In Visions of Science, James A. Secord offers a new way to capture this unique moment of change. He explores seven key books—among them Charles Babbage’s Reflections on the Decline of Science, Charles Lyell’s Principles ofGeology, Mary Somerville’s Connexion of the Physical Sciences, and Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus—and shows how literature that reflects on the wider meaning of science can be revelatory when granted the kind of close reading usually reserved for fiction and poetry. These books considered the meanings of science and its place in modern life, looking to the future, coordinating and connecting the sciences, and forging knowledge that would be appropriate for the new age. Their aim was often philosophical, but Secord shows it was just as often imaginative, projective, and practical: to suggest not only how to think about the natural world but also to indicate modes of action and potential consequences in an era of unparalleled change. Visions of Science opens our eyes to how genteel ladies, working men, and the literary elite responded to these remarkable works. It reveals the importance of understanding the physical qualities of books and the key role of printers and publishers, from factories pouring out cheap compendia to fashionable publishing houses in London’s West End. Secord’s vivid account takes us to the heart of an information revolution that was to have profound consequences for the making of the modern world.

Author : Bernard Lightman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 565 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2009-10-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226481173

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Victorian Popularizers of Science by Bernard Lightman Pdf

The ideas of Charles Darwin and his fellow Victorian scientists have had an abiding effect on the modern world. But at the time The Origin of Species was published in 1859, the British public looked not to practicing scientists but to a growing group of professional writers and journalists to interpret the larger meaning of scientific theories in terms they could understand and in ways they could appreciate. Victorian Popularizers of Science focuses on this important group of men and women who wrote about science for a general audience in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bernard Lightman examines more than thirty of the most prolific, influential, and interesting popularizers of the day, investigating the dramatic lecturing techniques, vivid illustrations, and accessible literary styles they used to communicate with their audience. By focusing on a forgotten coterie of science writers, their publishers, and their public, Lightman offers new insights into the role of women in scientific inquiry, the market for scientific knowledge, tensions between religion and science, and the complexities of scientific authority in nineteenth-century Britain.

Author : Lee T. Macdonald
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2018-08-31
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780822983491

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Kew Observatory and the Evolution of Victorian Science, 1840–1910 by Lee T. Macdonald Pdf

Kew Observatory was originally built in 1769 for King George III, a keen amateur astronomer, so that he could observe the transit of Venus. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was a world-leading center for four major sciences: geomagnetism, meteorology, solar physics, and standardization. Long before government cutbacks forced its closure in 1980, the observatory was run by both major bodies responsible for the management of science in Britain: first the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and then, from 1871, the Royal Society. Kew Observatory influenced and was influenced by many of the larger developments in the physical sciences during the second half of the nineteenth century, while many of the major figures involved were in some way affiliated with Kew. Lee T. Macdonald explores the extraordinary story of this important scientific institution as it rose to prominence during the Victorian era. His book offers fresh new insights into key historical issues in nineteenth-century science: the patronage of science; relations between science and government; the evolution of the observatory sciences; and the origins and early years of the National Physical Laboratory, once an extension of Kew and now the largest applied physics organization in the United Kingdom.

Author : Robert Hugh Kargon
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 1977
Category : Manchester (England)
ISBN : 0719007011

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Science in Victorian Manchester by Robert Hugh Kargon Pdf

Author : Ian Hesketh
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2015-07-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317322962

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The Science of History in Victorian Britain by Ian Hesketh Pdf

Hesketh challenges accepted notions of a single scientific approach to history. Instead, he draws on a variety of sources – monographs, lectures, correspondence – from eminent Victorian historians to uncover numerous competing discourses.

Author : Carla Yanni
Publisher : Princeton Architectural Press
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2005-09-09
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 1568984723

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Nature's Museums by Carla Yanni Pdf

Yanni (art history, Rutgers U.) examines the relationship between architecture and science in the 19th century by considering the physical placement and display of natural artifacts in Victorian natural history museums. She begins by discussing the problem of classification, the social history of collecting, as well as architectural competitions an

Author : Pamela K. Stone,Lise Shapiro Sanders
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 105 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2020-10-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780429676994

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Bodies and Lives in Victorian England by Pamela K. Stone,Lise Shapiro Sanders Pdf

This volume offers an overview of what it was like to be female and to live and die in Victorian England (c. 1837-1901), by situating this experience within the scientific and social contexts of the times. With a temporal focus on women’s life experience, the book moves from childhood and youth, through puberty and adolescence, to pregnancy, birth, and motherhood, into senescence. Drawing on osteological sources, medical discourses, and examples from the literature and cultural history of the period, alongside social and environmental data derived from ethnographic and archival investigations, the authors explore the experience of being female in the Victorian era for women across classes. In synthesizing current research on demographic statistics, maternal morbidity and mortality, and bioarchaeological evidence on patterns of aging and death, they analyze how changing social ideals, cultural and environmental variability, shifting economies, and evolving medical and scientific understanding about the body combined to shape female health and identity in the nineteenth century. Victorian women faced a variety of challenges, including changing attitudes regarding appropriate behavior, social roles, and beauty standards, while grappling with new understandings of the role played by gender and sexuality in shaping women’s lives from youth to old age. The book concludes by considering the relevance of how Victorian narratives of womanhood and the experience of being female have influenced perceptions of female health and cultural constructions of identity today.

Author : Melanie Keene
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780199662654

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Science in Wonderland by Melanie Keene Pdf

Presents a new perspective on Victorian scientific discoveries and inventions; includes a range of Victorian scientific fairy-tales and stories; looks at why fairies and their tales were chosen as an appropriate new form for capturing and presenting scientific and technological knowledge to young audiences; examines a range of scientific subjects, from palaeontology to entomology to astronomy.--Provided by publisher.

Author : Barry H. Wiley
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2012-10-06
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780786490639

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The Thought Reader Craze by Barry H. Wiley Pdf

Beginning in 1870, the hunger for scientific discovery in Great Britain drove prominent scientists, philosophers and others to promote the legitimacy of telepathy. At the same time, mind-reading as a form of entertainment gained increasing popularity as persuasive performers like John Randall Brown, W.I. Bishop, and Stuart C. Cumberland convinced reporters that they truly could read the thoughts of others. The widely publicized, sometimes bizarre, interactions between scientists and these charlatans ushered in the Thought Reader Craze, a period that lasted through about 1910 and saw entertainers make and lose fortunes and scientists make and lose reputations. This volume explores this unusual cultural phenomenon, showing how it was aided through the years by public scientific pronouncements, astonishing performances by the thought readers, and the rapidly changing industrial society.

Author : Gowan Dawson,Bernard Lightman,Claire Brock,Marwa Elshakry,Sujit Sivasundaram,Roger Luckhurst,Ralph O'Connor,Justin Sausman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2012-06
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1138765856

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Victorian Science and Literature, Part II Vol 7 by Gowan Dawson,Bernard Lightman,Claire Brock,Marwa Elshakry,Sujit Sivasundaram,Roger Luckhurst,Ralph O'Connor,Justin Sausman Pdf

This eight-volume, reset edition in two parts collects rare primary sources on Victorian science, literature and culture. The sources cover both scientific writing that has an aesthetic component - what might be called 'the literature of science' - and more overtly literary texts that deal with scientific matters.

Author : Ruth Barton
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 617 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2018-11-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226551753

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The X Club by Ruth Barton Pdf

In 1864, amid headline-grabbing heresy trials, members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science were asked to sign a declaration affirming that science and scripture were in agreement. Many criticized the new test of orthodoxy; nine decided that collaborative action was required. The X Club tells their story. These six ambitious professionals and three wealthy amateurs—J. D. Hooker, T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, John Lubbock, William Spottiswoode, Edward Frankland, George Busk, T. A. Hirst, and Herbert Spencer—wanted to guide the development of science and public opinion on issues where science impinged on daily life, religious belief, and politics. They formed a private dining club, which they named the X Club, to discuss and further their plans. As Ruth Barton shows, they had a clear objective: they wanted to promote “scientific habits of mind,” which they sought to do through lectures, journalism, and science education. They devoted enormous effort to the expansion of science education, with real, but mixed, success. ​For twenty years, the X Club was the most powerful network in Victorian science—the men succeeded each other in the presidency of the Royal Society for a dozen years. Barton’s group biography traces the roots of their success and the lasting effects of their championing of science against those who attempted to limit or control it, along the way shedding light on the social organization of science, the interactions of science and the state, and the places of science and scientific men in elite culture in the Victorian era.