Empiricist Devotions Science, Religion, and Poetry in Early Eighteenth-Century England / Courtney Weiss Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Courtney Weiss.

Series:

Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Great Britain--Intellectual life--18th century.

Great Britain.

Science and the humanities--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Science and the humanities.

Literature and science--England--History--18th century.

Literature and science.

English poetry--18th century--History and criticism.

English poetry.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (288 p.)

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2016

Place of Publication:

Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2016

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Featuring a moment in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England before the disciplinary divisions that we inherit today were established, Empiricist Devotions recovers a kind of empiricist thinking in which the techniques and emphases of science, religion, and literature combined and cooperated. This brand of empiricism was committed to particularized scrutiny and epistemological modesty. It was Protestant in its enabling premises and meditative practices. It earnestly affirmed that figurative language provided crucial tools for interpreting the divinely written world. Smith recovers this empiricism in Robert Boyle's analogies, Isaac Newton's metaphors, John Locke's narratives, Joseph Addison's personifications, Daniel Defoe's diction, John Gay's periphrases, and Alexander Pope's descriptive particulars. She thereby demonstrates that "literary" language played a key role in shaping and giving voice to the concerns of eighteenth-century science and religion alike. Empiricist Devotions combines intellectual history with close readings of a wide variety of texts, from sermons, devotional journals, and economic tracts to georgic poems, it-narratives, and microscopy treatises. This prizewinning book has important implications for our understanding of cultural and literary history, as scholars of the period's science have not fully appreciated figurative language's central role in empiricist thought, while scholars of its religion and literature have neglected the serious empiricist commitments motivating richly figurative devotional and poetic texts. Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an Outstanding Work of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Studies

Contents:

Occasional meditation, an empirical-devotional mode

Deus in machina: popular newtonianism's visions of the clockwork-world

Money, meaning, and a "foundation in nature"

Social contracts, empiricist subjects, and providential nature

Georgic realism, an empirical-devotional poetics.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780813938394

0813938392

OCLC:

940964483