Literature's contributions to scientific knowledge : how novels explored new ideas about human nature / by Dario Maestripieri.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maestripieri, Dario, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and science.

Genre:

Libros electrónicos.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (147 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Newcastle upon Tyne, England : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, [2019]

Summary:

The most important intellectual development in the academy in the 21st century has been the forging of new relationships between the sciences and the humanities and the realization that interdisciplinary scholarship holds the promise of the unification of all knowledge. This groundbreaking book shows how this can be fulfilled. Through a wide-ranging analysis of arguments concerning the complementarity of arts and sciences advanced by Schelling and Goethe and those about the cognitive value of literature articulated by contemporary philosophers, the book shows that literary fiction can contribute to the scientific understanding of human nature. With a careful and original examination of autobiographical material and literary texts, it demonstrates that European novelists such as Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Italo Svevo, and Elias Canetti conducted ambitious and innovative literary explorations of the human mind and human behavior using Darwinian theory as their scientific framework, and, in doing so, they anticipated the theoretical developments and empirical findings of cognitive, social, and evolutionary psychology by almost 100 years. The work of these novelists was largely misunderstood by literary scholars, but this book's re-discovery and illustration of what these writers attempted to accomplish and how they did it show one important path leading to the future unification of all knowledge about the human condition.

Contents:

Intro

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

References

Acknowledgments.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-5275-2800-6

OCLC:

1183031007