The writing of science in the period 1580-1700 is artfully,
diffidently, carelessly, boldly, and above all self-consciously
literary. The Poetics of Scientific Investigation in
Seventeenth-Century English Literature considers the literary
textures of science writing - its rhetorical figures, neologisms,
its uses of parody, romance, and various kinds of verse. The
experimental and social practices of science are examined through
literary representations of the laboratory, of collaborative
retirement, of virtual, epistolary conversation, and of an imagined
paradise of investigative fellowship and learning. Claire Preston
argues that the rhetorical, generic, and formal qualities of
scientific writing are also the intellectual processes of
early-modern science itself. How was science to be written in this
period? That question, which piqued natural philosophers who were
searching for apt conventions of scientific language and report,
was initially resolved by the humanist rhetorical and generic
skills in which they were already highly trained. At the same time
non-scientific writers, enthralled by the developments of science,
were quick to deploy ideas and images from astronomy, optics,
chemistry, biology, and medical practices. Practising scientists
and inspired laymen or quasi-scientists produced new, adjusted, or
hybrid literary forms, often collapsing the distinction between the
factual and the imaginative, between the rhetorically ornate and
the plain. Early-modern science and its literary vehicles are
frequently indistinguishable, scientific practice and scientific
expression mutually involved. Among the major writers discussed are
Montaigne, Bacon, Donne, Browne, Lovelace, Boyle, Sprat, Oldenburg,
Evelyn, Cowley, and Dryden.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
