Dying to know : scientific epistemology and narrative in Victorian England / George Levine.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levine, George, 1931-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Descartes, René, 1596-1650--Influence.

Descartes, René.

English prose literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English prose literature.

Literature and science--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and science.

Narration (Rhetoric)--History--19th century.

Narration (Rhetoric).

Knowledge, Theory of, in literature.

Science in literature.

Science--Philosophy.

Science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (339 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Dying to Know is the work of a distinguished scholar, at the peak of his powers, who is intimately familiar with his materials, and whose knowledge of Victorian fiction and scientific thought is remarkable. This elegant and evocative look at the move toward objectivity first pioneered by Descartes sheds new light on some old and still perplexing problems in modern science." Bernard Lightman, York University, Canada In Dying to Know, eminent critic George Levine makes a landmark contribution to the history and theory of scientific knowledge. This long-awaited book explores the paradoxes of our modern ideal of objectivity, in particular its emphasis on the impersonality and disinterestedness of truth. How, asks Levine, did this idea of selfless knowledge come to be established and moralized in the nineteenth century? Levine shows that for nineteenth-century scientists, novelists, poets, and philosophers, access to the truth depended on conditions of such profound self-abnegation that pursuit of it might be taken as tantamount to the pursuit of death. The Victorians, he argues, were dying to know in the sense that they could imagine achieving pure knowledge only in a condition where the body ceases to make its claims: to achieve enlightenment, virtue, and salvation, one must die. Dying to Know is ultimately a study of this moral ideal of epistemology. But it is also something much more: a spirited defense of the difficult pursuit of objectivity, the ethical significance of sacrifice, and the importance of finding a shareable form of knowledge.

Contents:

The narrative of scientific epistemology

Dying to know Descartes

Carlyle, Descartes, and objectivity : lessen thy denominator

Autobiography as epistemology : the effacement of self

My life as a machine : Francis Galton, with some reflections on A.R. Wallace

Self-effacement revisited : women and scientific autobiography

The test of truth : Our Mutual Friend

Daniel Deronda : a new epistemology

The Cartesian Hardy : I think, therefore I'm doomed

Daring to know : Karl Pearson and the romance of science

The epistemology of science and art : Pearson and Pater.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-315) and index.

ISBN:

9786612904608

9781282904606

1282904604

9780226475387

0226475387

OCLC:

690177213