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Suffering for science : reason and sacrifice in modern America / Rebecca M. Herzig.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Herzig, Rebecca M., 1971-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Science--Social aspects--United States--History--19th century.
- Science.
- Human body--Social aspects--United States--History--19th century.
- Human body.
- Self--History--19th century.
- Self.
- United States--History--19th century.
- United States.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (207 p.)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2005.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- From gruesome self-experimentation to exhausting theoretical calculations, stories abound of scientists willfully surrendering health, well-being, and personal interests for the sake of their work. What accounts for the prevalence of this coupling of knowledge and pain-and for the peculiar assumption that science requires such suffering? In this lucid and absorbing history, Rebecca M. Herzig explores the rise of an ethic of "self-sacrifice" in American science. Delving into some of the more bewildering practices of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, she describes when and how science-the supposed standard of all things judicious and disinterested-came to rely on an enthralled investigator willing to embrace toil, danger, and even lethal dismemberment. With attention to shifting racial, sexual, and transnational politics, Herzig examines the suffering scientist as a way to understand the rapid transformation of American life between the Civil War and World War I. Suffering for Science reveals more than the passion evident in many scientific vocations; it also illuminates a nation's changing understandings of the purposes of suffering, the limits of reason, and the nature of freedom in the aftermath of slavery.
- Contents:
- Willing captives
- The bonds of science
- Purists
- Explorers
- Martyrs
- Barbarians.
- Notes:
- Description based upon print version of record.
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-186) and index.
- Description based on print version record.
- ISBN:
- 1-283-54341-9
- 9786613855862
- 0-8135-3764-9
- OCLC:
- 809774594
- Access Restriction:
- Open Access Unrestricted online access
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