Science in the age of sensibility [[electronic resource] ] : the sentimental empiricists of the French enlightment / / Jessica Riskin

• Autore: Riskin Jessica
• Pubblicazione: Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2002
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (355 p.)
• Disciplina: 509.44/09/033
• Soggetto topico: Science - France - History - 18th century; Enlightenment - France; Sensitivity (Personality trait)
• Soggetto non controllato: scientific, sentiment, sentimental, empiricist, french, france, enlightenment, facts, investigation, academic, scholarly, research, natural, knowledge, experience, emotion, institutional, politics, political, mental, moral, blind, physics, economy, economic, reform, reformer, language, science, social life, society, civic, education, history, historical
• Classificazione: TB 2360
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [289]-321) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Chapter One. Introduction: Sensibility and Enlightenment Science -- Chapter Two. The Blind and the Mathematically Inclined -- Chapter Three. Poor Richard's Leyden Jar -- Chapter Four. From Electricity to Economy -- Chapter Five. The Lawyer and the Lightning Rod -- Chapter Six. The Mesmerism Investigation and the Crisis of Sensibilist Science -- Chapter Seven. Languages of Science and Revolution -- Chapter Eight. Conclusion: The Legacy of the Sentimental Empiricists -- Bibliography -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: Empiricism today implies the dispassionate scrutiny of facts. But Jessica Riskin finds that in the French Enlightenment, empiricism was intimately bound up with sensibility. In what she calls a "sentimental empiricism," natural knowledge was taken to rest on a blend of experience and emotion. Riskin argues that sentimental empiricism brought together ideas and institutions, practices and politics. She shows, for instance, how the study of blindness, led by ideas about the mental and moral role of vision and by cataract surgeries, shaped the first school for the blind; how Benjamin Franklin's electrical physics, ascribing desires to nature, engaged French economic reformers; and how the question of the role of language in science and social life linked disputes over Antoine Lavoisier's new chemical names to the founding of France's modern system of civic education. Recasting the Age of Reason by stressing its conjunction with the Age of Sensibility, Riskin offers an entirely new perspective on the development of modern science and the history of the Enlightenment.
• Titolo autorizzato: Science in the age of sensibility
• ISBN: 1-282-93288-8; 9786612932885; 0-226-72085-3
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910785471903321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II