Acolytes of nature : defining natural science in Germany, 1770-1850 / Denise Phillips.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Phillips, Denise, 1974-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Germany--History--18th century.

Science.

Science--Germany--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (366 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Although many of the practical and intellectual traditions that make up modern science date back centuries, the category of "science" itself is a relative novelty. In the early eighteenth century, the modern German word that would later mean "science," naturwissenschaft, was not even included in dictionaries. By 1850, however, the term was in use everywhere. Acolytes of Nature follows the emergence of this important new category within German-speaking Europe, tracing its rise from an insignificant eighteenth-century neologism to a defining rallying cry of modern German culture. Today's notion of a unified natural science has been deemed an invention of the mid-nineteenth century. Yet what Denise Phillips reveals here is that the idea of naturwissenschaft acquired a prominent place in German public life several decades earlier. Phillips uncovers the evolving outlines of the category of natural science and examines why Germans of varied social station and intellectual commitments came to find this label useful. An expanding education system, an increasingly vibrant consumer culture and urban social life, the early stages of industrialization, and the emergence of a liberal political movement all fundamentally altered the world in which educated Germans lived, and also reshaped the way they classified knowledge.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Natural Knowledge and the Learned Public in the Enlightenment

2. The Expanding Ranks of Nature's Friends

3. Defending Learned Dignity

4. Nature in a Local Microcosm

5. Wooing the Polite Public

6. The Nature of the Fatherland

7. The Wellspring of Modernity

8. The Particularity of Natural Science

Conclusion

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786613586971

9781280491740

1280491744

9780226667393

0226667391

OCLC:

793511379