Ebook321 pages9 hours
Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
()
About this ebook
"Dying to Know is the work of a distinguished scholar, at the peak of his powers, who is intimately familiar with his materials, and whose knowledge of Victorian fiction and scientific thought is remarkable. This elegant and evocative look at the move toward objectivity first pioneered by Descartes sheds new light on some old and still perplexing problems in modern science." Bernard Lightman, York University, Canada
In Dying to Know, eminent critic George Levine makes a landmark contribution to the history and theory of scientific knowledge. This long-awaited book explores the paradoxes of our modern ideal of objectivity, in particular its emphasis on the impersonality and disinterestedness of truth. How, asks Levine, did this idea of selfless knowledge come to be established and moralized in the nineteenth century?
Levine shows that for nineteenth-century scientists, novelists, poets, and philosophers, access to the truth depended on conditions of such profound self-abnegation that pursuit of it might be taken as tantamount to the pursuit of death. The Victorians, he argues, were dying to know in the sense that they could imagine achieving pure knowledge only in a condition where the body ceases to make its claims: to achieve enlightenment, virtue, and salvation, one must die.
Dying to Know is ultimately a study of this moral ideal of epistemology. But it is also something much more: a spirited defense of the difficult pursuit of objectivity, the ethical significance of sacrifice, and the importance of finding a shareable form of knowledge.
In Dying to Know, eminent critic George Levine makes a landmark contribution to the history and theory of scientific knowledge. This long-awaited book explores the paradoxes of our modern ideal of objectivity, in particular its emphasis on the impersonality and disinterestedness of truth. How, asks Levine, did this idea of selfless knowledge come to be established and moralized in the nineteenth century?
Levine shows that for nineteenth-century scientists, novelists, poets, and philosophers, access to the truth depended on conditions of such profound self-abnegation that pursuit of it might be taken as tantamount to the pursuit of death. The Victorians, he argues, were dying to know in the sense that they could imagine achieving pure knowledge only in a condition where the body ceases to make its claims: to achieve enlightenment, virtue, and salvation, one must die.
Dying to Know is ultimately a study of this moral ideal of epistemology. But it is also something much more: a spirited defense of the difficult pursuit of objectivity, the ethical significance of sacrifice, and the importance of finding a shareable form of knowledge.
Related to Dying to Know
Related ebooks
Vistas in Astronomy: Volume 28 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReckoning with Matter: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking about Thinking from Pascal to Babbage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mentor: Photography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArchaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhotogravure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeeling Time: Duration, the Novel, and Eighteenth-Century Sensibility Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Content Machine: Towards a Theory of Publishing from the Printing Press to the Digital Network Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Care of Fine Books Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRembrandt Sings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Against the Uprooted Word: Giving Language Time in Transatlantic Romanticism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPepys's Later Diaries Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Transient Images: Personal Media in Public Frameworks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Library of Richard Porson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe secret vice: Masturbation in Victorian fiction and medical culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe English Church in the Eighteenth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHenry Chadwick: Selected Writings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHuman Condition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCharles Dickens: Part Two Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cinema Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrench Book-plates Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Caldwell Objects and How to Observe Them Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Phantom Image: Seeing the Dead in Ancient Rome Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoments Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Other Journal: Body Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Animal Gazer Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Historic London: An Explorer's Companion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeonardo Da Vinci's Elements of the Science of Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Science & Mathematics For You
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Book of Hacks: 264 Amazing DIY Tech Projects Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Activate Your Brain: How Understanding Your Brain Can Improve Your Work - and Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Systems Thinker: Essential Thinking Skills For Solving Problems, Managing Chaos, Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Gov't Told Me: And the Better Future Coming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Psychology of Totalitarianism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Free Will Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Monsters: The Origins of the Creatures We Love to Fear Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/52084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Crack In Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Dying to Know
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Dying to Know - George Levine
Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1