Victorian relativity : radical thought and scientific discovery / Christopher Herbert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Herbert, Christopher, 1941-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Relativity--History--19th century.

Relativity.

Knowledge, Theory of--History--19th century.

Knowledge, Theory of.

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 302 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Summary:

One of the articles of faith of twentieth-century intellectual history is that the theory of relativity in physics sprang from the unaided genius of Albert Einstein in 1905; another is that scientific relativity has no significant connection with ethical, cultural, or epistemological relativism. "Victorian Relativity" challenges these truisms, unearthing a forgotten tradition of avant-garde speculation that took as its guiding principle "the negation of the absolute" and set itself under the banner of "relativity." Christopher Herbert shows that the principle that nothing exists but relations formed the basis of nineteenth-century speculation across a wide range of fields; he argues that this defining idea of intellectual modernism was linked from the moment of its emergence to political and cultural radicalism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-277) and index.

ISBN:

0226327329

0226327337

OCLC:

45420159