1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910151611703321

Autore

Boddice Rob

Titolo

The Science of Sympathy [[electronic resource] ] : Morality, Evolution, and Victorian Civilization / / Rob Boddice

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Urbana, Chicaggo, Springfield, [Illinois] : , : University of Illinois Press, , 2016

©2016

ISBN

0-252-09902-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (155 pages)

Collana

History of emotions

Disciplina

201.65

Soggetti

Religion and science - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Ethics - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Sympathy - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2016.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Emotions, morals, practices -- Sympathy for a devil's chaplain -- Common compassion and the mad scientist -- Sympathy as callousness? physiology and vivisection -- Sympathy, liberty, and compulsion: vaccination -- Sympathetic selection: eugenics -- Scientism and practice.

Sommario/riassunto

In his 'Descent of Man', Charles Darwin placed sympathy at the crux of morality in civilized society. His idea buttressed the belief that white, upper-class, educated men deserved their sense of superiority by virtue of good breeding. It also implied that progress could be steered by envisioning a new blueprint for sympathy that redefined moral actions carried out in sympathy's name. Rob Boddice joins a daring intellectual history of sympathy to a portrait of how the first Darwinists defined and employed it. Combining the history of emotions, the history of medicine, the history of science and the history of morality, Boddice shows how specific interpretations of Darwinism sparked a cacophonous discourse intent on displacing previous notions of sympathy.