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Victorian Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery - Softcover

Herbert, Christopher

 
9780226327334: Victorian Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0226327337 ISBN 13: 9780226327334
Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

One of the articles of faith of twentieth-century intellectual history is that the theory of relativity in physics sprang in its essentials from the unaided genius of Albert Einstein; another is that scientific relativity is unconnected to ethical, cultural, or epistemological relativisms. Victorian Relativity challenges these assumptions, unearthing a forgotten tradition of avant-garde speculation that took as its guiding principle "the negation of the absolute" and set itself under the militant banner of "relativity."

Christopher Herbert shows that the idea of relativity produced revolutionary changes in one field after another in the nineteenth century. Surveying a long line of thinkers including Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Alexander Bain, W. K. Clifford, W. S. Jevons, Karl Pearson, James Frazer, and Einstein himself, Victorian Relativity argues that the early relativity movement was bound closely to motives of political and cultural reform and, in particular, to radical critiques of the ideology of authoritarianism. Recuperating relativity from those who treat it as synonymous with nihilism, Herbert portrays it as the basis of some of our crucial intellectual and ethical traditions.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christopher Herbert is a professor of English at Northwestern University. He is the author of Trollope and Comic Pleasure and Culture and Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination in the Nineteenth Century.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

One of the articles of faith of twentieth-century intellectual history is that the theory of relativity in physics sprang from the unaided genius of Albert Einstein in 1905; another is that scientific relativity has no significant connection with ethical, cultural, or epistemological relativism. Victorian Relativity challenges these truisms, unearthing a forgotten tradition of avant-garde speculation that took as its guiding principle "the negation of the absolute" and set itself under the banner of "relativity." Christopher Herbert shows that the principle that nothing exists but relations formed the basis of nineteenth-century speculation across a wide range of fields; he argues that this defining idea of intellectual modernism was linked from the moment of its emergence to political and cultural radicalism.

Aus dem Klappentext

One of the articles of faith of twentieth-century intellectual history is that the theory of relativity in physics sprang from the unaided genius of Albert Einstein in 1905; another is that scientific relativity has no significant connection with ethical, cultural, or epistemological relativism. Victorian Relativity challenges these truisms, unearthing a forgotten tradition of avant-garde speculation that took as its guiding principle "the negation of the absolute" and set itself under the banner of "relativity." Christopher Herbert shows that the principle that nothing exists but relations formed the basis of nineteenth-century speculation across a wide range of fields; he argues that this defining idea of intellectual modernism was linked from the moment of its emergence to political and cultural radicalism.

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Verlag
University of Chicago Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2001
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0226327337
ISBN 13 
9780226327334
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
318
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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