1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910166649203321

Titolo

Strange Science : Investigating the Limits of Knowledge in the Victorian Age / / Lara P. Karpenko, Shalyn Claggett

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ann Arbor : , : University of Michigan Press, , c2017

ISBN

0-472-12245-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xiv, 293 pages :) : illustrations; digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

509.41/09034

Soggetti

Science and state - Great Britain

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Part I. Strange Plants: New Frontiers in the Natural World : -- 1. Victorian Orchids and the Forms of Ecological Society -- 2. Discriminating the "Minuter Beauties of Nature": Botany as Natural Theology in a Victorian Medical School -- 3. "A Perfect World of Wonders": Marianne North and the Pleasures and Pursuits of Botany -- 4. Killer Plants of the Late Nineteenth Century -- Part II. Strange Bodies: Rethinking Physiology : -- 5. Reading through Deafness: Francis Galton and the Strange Science of Psychophysics -- 6. Performing Phonographic Physiology -- 7. "So Extraordinary a Bond": Mesmerism and Sympathetic Identification in Charles Adams's Notting Hill Mystery -- 8. Immoral Science in The Picture of Dorian Gray -- Part III. Strange Energies: Reconceptualizing the Physical Universe : -- 9. Chaotic Fictions: Nonlinear Effects in Victorian Science and Literature -- 10. The Victorian Occult Atom: Annie Besant and Clairvoyant Atomic Research -- 11. nductive Science, Literary Theory, and the Occult in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "Suggestive" System -- 12. Psychical Research and the Fantastic Science of Spirits -- 13. The Energy of Belief: The Unseen Universe, and the Spirit of Thermodynamics.

Sommario/riassunto

Strange Science: Investigating the Limits of Knowledge in the Victorian Age is an unprecedented collection that examines 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 that we now view as uncontroversial, such as physics and botany, were often associated with unorthodox methods of inquiry. Whether incorporated into mainstream scientific thought, or relegated by 21st century historians to the category of the pseudo- or even anti-scientific, these sciences generated conversation, enthusiasm, and controversy within Victorian society.