An edition of Strange science (2016)

Strange science

investigating the limits of knowledge in the Victorian Age

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Strange science
Lara Pauline Karpenko, Shalyn ...
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Last edited by MARC Bot
December 20, 2022 | History
An edition of Strange science (2016)

Strange science

investigating the limits of knowledge in the Victorian Age

  • 0 Ratings
  • 0 Want to read
  • 0 Currently reading
  • 0 Have read

The essays examine marginal, fringe, and unconventional forms of scientific inquiry, as well as their cultural representations, in the Victorian period. Although now relegated to the category of the pseudoscientific, fields like mesmerism and psychical research captured the imagination of the Victorian public. Conversely, many branches of science now viewed as uncontroversial, such as physics and botany, were often associated with unorthodox methods of inquiry. Whether ultimately incorporated into mainstream scientific thought or categorized by 21st century historians as pseudo- or even anti-scientific, these sciences generated conversation, enthusiasm, and controversy within Victorian society. To date, scholarship addressing Victorian pseudoscience tends to focus either on a particular popular science within its social context or on how mainstream scientific practice distinguished itself from more contested forms. "Strange Science" takes a different approach by placing a range of sciences in conversation with one another and examining the similar unconventional methods of inquiry adopted by both now-established scientific fields and their marginalized counterparts during the Victorian period. In doing so, Strange Science reveals the degree to which scientific discourse of this period was radically speculative, frequently attempting to challenge or extend the apparent boundaries of the natural world.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
293

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Edition Availability
Cover of: Strange science
Cover of: Strange Science
Strange Science: Investigating the Limits of Knowledge in the Victorian Age
2016, University of Michigan Press
in English

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Book Details


Table of Contents

Foreword / Dame Gillian Beer
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Lara Karpenko and Shalyn Claggett
Part I. Strange plants : new frontiers in the natural world. 1. Victorian orchids and the forms of ecological society / Lynn Voskuil ; 2. Discriminating the "minuter beauties of nature" : botany as natural theology in a Victorian medical school / Meegan Kennedy ; 3. "A perfect world of wonders" : Marianne North and the pleasures and pursuits of botany / Narin Hassan ; 4. Killer plants of the late nineteenth century / Elizabeth Chang
Part II. Strange bodies : rethinking physiology. 5. Reading through deafness : Francis Galton and the strange science of psychophysics / Danielle Coriale ; 6. Performing phonographic physiology / James Emmott ; 7. "So extraordinary a bond" : mesmerism and sympathetic identification in Charles Adams's Notting Hill mystery / Lara Karpenko ; 8. Immoral science in The picture of Dorian Gray / Suzanne Raitt
Part III. Strange energies : reconceptualizing the physical universe. 9. Chaotic fictions : nonlinear effects in Victorian science and literature / Barri J. Gold ; 10. The Victorian occult atom : Annie Besant and clairvoyant atomic research / Sumangala Bhattacharya ; 11. Inductive science, literary theory, and the occult in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "suggestive" system / Anna Maria Jones ; 12. Psychical research and the fantastic science of spirits / L. Anne Delgado ; 13. The energy of belief : The unseen universe and the spirit of thermodynamics / Tamara Ketabgian
Contributors
Index.

Edition Notes

"With a foreword by Dame Gillian Beer"--Cover.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
509.41/09034
Library of Congress
Q127.G5 S77 2017, Q127.G5S77 2017

The Physical Object

Pagination
xiv, 293 pages
Number of pages
293

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL26939816M
ISBN 10
047213017X
ISBN 13
9780472130177
LCCN
2016035928
OCLC/WorldCat
936350603

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December 20, 2022 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
February 27, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
May 24, 2019 Created by MARC Bot import new book