A study of the word pair "action and reaction" embracing
philosophy, semantics, literature, and science. What do biologists
mean when they say that to live is to react? Why was the term
abreaction invented and later abandoned by the first generation of
psychoanalysts? What is meant by reactionary politics? These are
but a few of the questions the internationally renowned scholar
Jean Starobinski answers in his conceptual history of the word
pair, action and reaction. Not simply a history of ideas, Action
and Reaction is also a semantic and philological history, a
literary history, a history of medicine, and a history of the
biological sciences. By concentrating on the moment when scientific
language and ordinary language diverge, Starobinski uncovers a
genealogy of the human and natural sciences through their usage of
action and reaction as metaphors. Newton's law-to every action
there is an equal and opposite reaction-becomes a point of
departure for an exploration of the lexical and metaphorical traces
left in its wake. Starobinski analyzes the scientific, literary,
and political effects of the use of the terms action and reaction
to describe and explain the material universe, the living body,
historical events, and psychological behavior. In what he calls a
"polyphonic score"-a kind of mosaic-he uses his subject to offer
new insights into the work of philosophers (Aristotle, Leibniz,
Kant, Nietzsche, Jaspers), scientists (Newton, Bichat, Bernard,
Bernheim, Freud), and writers (Diderot, Constant, Balzac, Poe,
Valry). Ultimately, the book explores the power and danger of
metaphorical language and questions the convergence and collapse of
scientific and moral explanations of the universe.
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