Speculative Truth

Speculative Truth
Author: Russell McCormmach
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2004-03-18
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0190289511

With a never-before published paper by Lord Henry Cavendish, as well as a biography on him, this book offers a fascinating discourse on the rise of scientific attitudes and ways of knowing. A pioneering British physicist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Cavendish was widely considered to be the first full-time scientist in the modern sense. Through the lens of this unique thinker and writer, this book is about the birth of modern science.

Frankenstein's Science

Frankenstein's Science
Author: Christa Knellwolf King
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780754654476

Frankenstein's Science contextualizes this widely taught novel in contemporary scientific and literary debates, providing new historical scholarship into areas of science and pseudo-science that generated fierce controversy in Mary Shelley's time: anatomy

Sound Knowledge

Sound Knowledge
Author: J. Q. Davies
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2017-01-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 022640210X

What does it mean to hear scientifically? What does it mean to see musically? This volume uncovers a new side to the long nineteenth century in London, a hidden history in which virtuosic musical entertainment and scientific discovery intersected in remarkable ways. Sound Knowledge examines how scientific truth was accrued by means of visual and aural experience, and, in turn, how musical knowledge was located in relation to empirical scientific practice. James Q. Davies and Ellen Lockhart gather work by leading scholars to explore a crucial sixty-year period, beginning with Charles Burney’s ambitious General History of Music, a four-volume study of music around the globe, and extending to the Great Exhibition of 1851, where musical instruments were assembled alongside the technologies of science and industry in the immense glass-encased collections of the Crystal Palace. Importantly, as the contributions show, both the power of science and the power of music relied on performance, spectacle, and experiment. Ultimately, this volume sets the stage for a new picture of modern disciplinarity, shining light on an era before the division of aural and visual knowledge.

Shelley and Vitality

Shelley and Vitality
Author: S. Ruston
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2005-04-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 023050518X

Shelley and Vitality reassesses Percy Shelley's engagement with early nineteenth-century science and medicine, specifically his knowledge and use of theories on the nature of life presented in the debate between surgeons John Abernethy and William Lawrence. Sharon Ruston offers new biographical information to link Shelley to a medical circle and explores the ways in which Shelley exploits the language and ideas of vitality. Major canonical works are reconsidered to address Shelley's politicised understanding of contemporary scientific discourse.