| Victorian Scientific Naturalism: Community, Identity, Continuity Contributor(s): Lightman, Bernard (Editor), Dawson, Gowan (Editor) |
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ISBN: 022610950X ISBN-13: 9780226109503 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $51.48 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: April 2014 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Science | History - History | Europe - Great Britain - General - Science | Life Sciences - Evolution |
| Dewey: 501 |
| LCCN: 2013036679 |
| Physical Information: 0.99" H x 6.17" W x 9.41" (1.38 lbs) 368 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Victorian Scientific Naturalism examines the secular creeds of the generation of intellectuals who, in the wake of The Origin of Species, wrested cultural authority from the old Anglican establishment while installing themselves as a new professional scientific elite. These scientific naturalists--led by biologists, physicists, and mathematicians such as William Kingdon Clifford, Joseph Dalton Hooker, Thomas Henry Huxley, and John Tyndall--sought to persuade both the state and the public that scientists, not theologians, should be granted cultural authority, since their expertise gave them special insight into society, politics, and even ethics. In Victorian Scientific Naturalism, Gowan Dawson and Bernard Lightman bring together new essays by leading historians of science and literary critics that recall these scientific naturalists, in light of recent scholarship that has tended to sideline them, and that reevaluate their place in the broader landscape of nineteenth-century Britain. Ranging in topic from daring climbing expeditions in the Alps to the maintenance of aristocratic protocols of conduct at Kew Gardens, these essays offer a series of new perspectives on Victorian scientific naturalism--as well as its subsequent incarnations in the early twentieth century--that together provide an innovative understanding of the movement centering on the issues of community, identity, and continuity. |
Contributor Bio(s): Lightman, Bernard: - Bernard Lightman is distinguished research professor in the Humanities Department at York University and president of the History of Science Society.Dawson, Gowan: - Gowan Dawson is professor of Victorian literature and culture and director of the Victorian Studies Centre at the University of Leicester. He is coeditor of Victorian Scientific Naturalism, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and is the author of Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability. |
