Dying to Know - Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England (Hardcover, 2nd ed.)

""Dying to Know" is the work of a distinguished scholar, at the peak of his powers, who is intimately familiar with his materials, and whose knowledge of Victorian fiction and scientific thought is remarkable. This elegant and evocative look at the move toward objectivity first pioneered by Descartes sheds new light on some old and still perplexing problems in modern science."--Bernard Lightman, York University, Canada
In "Dying to Know," eminent critic George Levine makes a landmark contribution to the history and theory of scientific knowledge. This long-awaited book explores the paradoxes of our modern ideal of objectivity, in particular its emphasis on the impersonality and disinterestedness of truth. How, asks Levine, did this idea of selfless knowledge come to be established and moralized in the nineteenth century?
Levine shows that for nineteenth-century scientists, novelists, poets, and philosophers, access to the truth depended on conditions of such profound self-abnegation that pursuit of it might be taken as tantamount to the pursuit of death. The Victorians, he argues, were dying to know in the sense that they could imagine achieving pure knowledge only in a condition where the body ceases to make its claims: to achieve enlightenment, virtue, and salvation, one must die.
"Dying to Know" is ultimately a study of this moral ideal of epistemology. But it is also something much more: a spirited defense of the difficult pursuit of objectivity, the ethical significance of sacrifice, and the importance of finding a shareable form of knowledge.

General

Imprint:	University of Chicago Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	September 2002
First published:	September 2002
Authors:	George Levine
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 25mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	320
Edition:	2nd ed.
ISBN-13:	978-0-226-47536-3
Categories:	Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > History of science Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 19th century Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Novels, other prose & writers > General Promotions
LSN:	0-226-47536-0
Barcode:	9780226475363

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