Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter

ISBN-13: 9780198186359 / Angielski / Miękka / 1999 / 352 str.

Gillian Beer

Opis

Science always raises more questions than it can contain. These challenging essays explore how ideas are transformed as they come under the stress of unforeseen readers. Using a wealth of material from diverse nineteenth- and twentieth-century writing, Beer tracks encounters between science, literature, and other forms of emotional experience. Her analysis discloses issues of change, gender, nation, and desire. A substantial group of the essays centers on Darwin; other essays look at Hardy, Helmholtz, Hopkins, Clerk Maxwell, and Woolf. The collection throws a different light on Victorian experience and the rise of modernism and engages with current controversies about the place of science in culture.

Recenzje

admirably written essays... First published in 1996, it has now deservedly appeared as a paperback. ... the essays fuse together well and express a consistent intellectual stance. ... Gillian Beer is an observant and most intelligent guide ... Not only does she write well, but she also skilfuly avoids giving offence to activists in minority groups ... The secret of the book's success is in the writing, lucid, beguiling and so cleverly inoffensive.