Title

Login

Join

Book's by Professor Iwan Rhys Morus

Covers

List

Sparks of Life

Darwinism and the Victorian Debates Over Spontaneous Generation

By: James E. Strick,Professor in the Dept of Earth and Environment and Chair of the Program in Science Technology and Society James E Strick, PhD

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Sparks of Life

Darwinism and the Victorian Debates Over Spontaneous Generation

By: James E. Strick,Professor in the Dept of Earth and Environment and Chair of the Program in Science Technology and Society James E Strick, PhD

How, asks James E. Strick, could spontaneous generation--the idea that living things can suddenly arise from nonliving materials--come to take root for a time (even a brief one) in so thoroughly unsuitable a field as British natural theology? No less an authority than Aristotle claimed that cases of spontaneous generation were to be observed in nature, and the idea held sway for centuries. Beginning around the time of the Scientific Revolution, however, the doctrine was increasingly challenged; attempts to prove or disprove it led to important breakthroughs in experimental design and laboratory techniques, most notably sterilization methods, that became the cornerstones of modern microbiology and sped the ascendancy of the germ theory of disease. The Victorian debates, Strick shows, were entwined with the public controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution. While other histories of the debates between 1860 and 1880 have focused largely on the experiments of John Tyndall, Henry Charlton Bastian, and others, Sparks of Life emphasizes previously understudied changes in the theories that underlay the debates. Strick argues that the disputes cannot be understood without full knowledge of the factional infighting among Darwinians themselves, as they struggled to create a socially and scientifically viable form of Darwinian science. He shows that even the terms of the debate, such as biogenesis, usually but incorrectly attributed to Huxley, were intensely contested.

Average ratings

N/A

5

0%

4

0%

3

0%

2

0%

1

0%

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

297

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674044088

ISBN 13

9780674044081

The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells

Science, Evolution, and Ecology

By: Professor Michael R Page

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells

Science, Evolution, and Ecology

By: Professor Michael R Page

At the close of the eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin declared that he would 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science,' beginning, Michael Page argues, a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology, and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Examining the interchange between emerging scientific ideas-specifically evolution and ecology-new technologies, and literature in nineteenth-century Britain, Page shows how British writers from Darwin to H.G. Wells confronted the burgeoning expansion of scientific knowledge that was radically redefining human understanding and experience of the natural world, of human species, and of the self. The wide range of authors covered in Page's ambitious study permits him to explore an impressive array of topics that include the role of the Romantic era in the molding of scientific and cultural perspectives; the engagement of William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley with questions raised by contemporary science; Mary Shelley's conflicted views on the unfolding prospects of modernity; and how Victorian writers like Charles Kingsley, Samuel Butler, and W.H. Hudson responded to the implications of evolutionary theory. Page concludes with the scientific romances of H.G. Wells, to demonstrate how evolutionary fantasies reached the pinnacle of synthesis between evolutionary science and the imagination at the close of the century.

Average ratings

N/A

5

0%

4

0%

3

0%

2

0%

1

0%

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

240

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409479218

ISBN 13

9781409479215