Open Fields: Science in Cultural EncounterScience always raises more questions than it can contain. These acclaimed and challenging essays explore how ideas are transformed as they come under the stress of unforeseen readers. Using a wealth of material from diverse nineteenth- and twentieth-century writing, Gillian Beer tracks encounters between science, literature, and other forms of emotional experience. Her analysis discloses issues of chance, gender, nation, and desire. A substantial group of essays centres on Darwin and the incentives of his thinking from language theory to his encounters with Fuegians. Other essays include Hardy, Helmholtz, Hopkins, Clerk Maxwell, and Woolf. The collection throws a different light on Victorian experience and the rise of modernism, and engages with current controversies about the place of science in culture. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 11 | |
II DESCRIPTION AND ALLUSION IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING
| 147 |
III VICTORIAN PHYSICS AND FUTURES
| 217 |
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allusion animals anthropology argued argument assumptions Beagle become body Cambridge century Charles Darwin Clerk Maxwell Clym colour culture described discourse discussion emphasized energy English enquiry essay evolutionary theory example experience fascination fiction figure Fitzroy Frazer Fritz Haber Fuegians gambling George Eliot Gerard Manley Hopkins Hardy Hardy’s Helmholtz Hopkins Hopkins's human humankind Huxley idea imagination insistence intellectual interpretation James Clerk Maxwell Jemmy Button John Tyndall journals knowledge language theory later light linguistic literary literature London Max Müller Maxwell’s meaning metaphor mind missing link Müller myth narrative native natural nineteenth nineteenth-century novel observation Origin Origin of Species particular past physical play poem poet poetry primitive problem question races reader reading relations savage sense social Society solar species story suggests T. H. Huxley tion transformation Tyndall’s universe Victorian Victorian scientists voyage W. K. Clifford waves words