Nervous conditions : science and the body politic in early industrial Britain / / Elizabeth Green Musselman

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910971074003321
• Autore: Musselman Elizabeth Green <1971->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Albany, : State University of New York Press, c2006
• ISBN: 9780791482063; 0791482065; 9781429411752; 1429411759
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (290 p.)
• Collana: SUNY series, studies in the long nineteenth century; SUNY series in science, technology, and society
• Disciplina: 616.8/001/9
• Soggetti: Scientists - Mental health - Great Britain - History - 19th century; Nervous system - Philosophy - History - 19th century; Science - Philosophy - History - 19th century
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-266) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Embodied epistemology -- The nervous man of science -- The social hierarchy of subjectivity -- The nervous conditions -- Provincialism and color blindness -- Mental governance and hemiopsy -- Rational faith and hallucination.
• Sommario/riassunto: Nervous Conditions explores the role of the body in the development of modern science, challenging the myth that modern science is built on a bedrock of objectivity and confident empiricism. In this fascinating look into the private world of British natural philosophers—including John Dalton, Lord Kelvin, Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and many others—Elizabeth Green Musselman shows how the internal workings of their bodies played an important part in the sciences' movement to the center of modern life, and how a scientific community and a nation struggled their way into existence.Many of these natural philosophers endured serious nervous difficulties, particularly vision problems. They turned these weaknesses into strengths, however, by claiming that their well-disciplined mental skills enabled them to transcend their bodily frailties. Their adeptness at transcendence, they asserted, ; explained why men of science belonged at the heart of modern life, and qualified them to address such problems as unifying the British provinces into one nation, managing the industrial workplace, and accommodating religious plurality.