The man who flattened the earth [[electronic resource] ] : Maupertuis and the sciences in the enlightenment / / Mary Terrall

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910785472603321
• Autore: Terrall Mary
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, c2002
• ISBN: 1-282-93294-2; 9786612932946; 0-226-79362-1
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (420 p.)
• Disciplina: 509.2; B
• Soggetti: Scientists - France
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 371-392) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- A Note on Translations -- 1. Portrait of a Man of Science -- 2. From Saint-Malo to Paris -- 3. Mathematics and Mechanics in the Paris Academy of Sciences -- 4. The Expedition to Lapland -- 5. The Polemical Aftermath of the Lapland Expedition -- 6. Beyond Newton and on to Berlin -- 7. Toward a Science of Living Things -- 8. The Berlin Academy of Sciences -- 9. Teleology, Cosmology, and Least Action -- 10. Heredity and Materialism -- 11. The Final Years -- Bibliography -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, philosopher, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. Offering an elegant and accessible portrait of this remarkable man, Mary Terrall uses the story of Maupertuis's life, self-fashioning, and scientific works to explore what it meant to do science and to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe. Beginning his scientific career as a mathematician in Paris, Maupertuis entered the public eye with a much-discussed expedition to Lapland, which confirmed Newton's calculation that the earth was flattened at the poles. He also made significant, and often intentionally controversial, contributions to physics, life science, ; navigation, astronomy, and metaphysics. Called to Berlin by Frederick the Great, Maupertuis moved to Prussia to preside over the Academy of Sciences there. Equally at home in salons, cafés, scientific academies, and royal courts, Maupertuis used his social connections and his printed works to enhance a carefully constructed reputation as both a man of letters and a man of science. His social and institutional affiliations, in turn, affected how Maupertuis formulated his ideas, how he presented them to his contemporaries, and the reactions they provoked. Terrall not only illuminates the life and work of a colorful and important Enlightenment figure, but also uses his story to delve into many wider issues, including the development of scientific institutions, the impact of print culture on science, and the interactions of science and government. Smart and highly readable, Maupertuis will appeal to anyone interested in eighteenth-century science and culture. "Terrall's work is scholarship in the best sense. Her explanations of arcane 18th-century French physics, mathematics, astronomy, and biology are among the most lucid available in any language."-Virginia Dawson, American Historical Review Winner of the 2003 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society

Employment of English : theory, jobs, and the future of literary studies / / Michael Bérubé

• Record Nr.: UNISA996588069903316
• Autore: Bérubé Michael
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New York, NY : , : New York University Press, , [1997]; ©1997
• ISBN: 0-585-33777-2; 0-8147-2342-X
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (272 p.)
• Collana: Cultural Front ; ; 13
• Classificazione: HG 130
• Disciplina: 807
• Soggetti: Language and culture - United States; English philology - Vocational guidance; Interdisciplinary approach in education; English teachers - Employment - United States; English language - Political aspects - United States; English literature - History and criticism - Theory, etc; English philology - Study and teaching - Political aspects - United States
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [243]-251) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- 1. CULTURAL STUDIES AND CULTURAL CAPITAL -- 2. THE BLESSED OF THE EARTH -- 3. PROFESSIONAL OBLIGATIONS AND ACADEMIC STANDARDS -- 4. PEER PRESSURE -- 5. STRAIGHT OUTTA NORMAL -- 6. ENGLISH FOR EMPLOYMENT -- 7. PROFESSIONAL ADVOCATES -- 8. FREE SPEECH AND DISCIPLINE -- 9. EXTREME PREJUDICE -- 10. CULTURAL CRITICISM AND THE POLITICS OF SELLING OUT -- WORKS CITED -- INDEX -- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• Sommario/riassunto: What sorts of cultural criticism are teachers and scholars to produce, and how can that criticism be "employed" in the culture at large? In recent years, debates about the role and direction of English departments have mushroomed into a broader controversy over the public legitimacy of literary criticism. At first glance this might seem odd: few taxpayers and legislators care whether the nation's English ; professors are doing justice to the project of identifying the beautiful and the sublime. But in the context of the legitimation crisis in American higher education, the image of English departments has in fact played a major role in determining public attitudes toward colleges and college faculty. Similarly, the changing economic conditions of universities have prompted many English professors to rethink their relations to their "clients," asking how literary study can serve the American public. What sorts of cultural criticism are teachers and scholars to produce, and how can that criticism be "employed" in the culture at large? In The Employment of English, Michael Bérubé, one of our most eloquent and gifted critics, examines the cultural legitimacy of literary study. In witty, engaging prose, Bérubé asserts that we must situate these questions in a context in which nearly half of all college professors are part-time labor and in which English departments are torn between their traditional mission of defining movements of literary history and protocols of textual interpretation, and their newer tasks of interrogating wider systems of signification under rubrics like "gender," "hegemony," "rhetoric," "textuality" (including film and video), and "culture." Are these new roles a betrayal of the field's founding principles, in effect a short-sighted sell-out of the discipline? Do they represent little more that an attempt to shore up the status of--and student enrollments in--English? Or are they legitimate objects of literary study, in need of public support? Simultaneously investigating the economic and the intellectual ramifications of current debates, The Employment of English provides the clearest and most condensed account of this controversy to date.