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Uncertain Chances - Science, Skepticism, and Belief in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Paperback)
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Uncertain Chances - Science, Skepticism, and Belief in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Paperback)
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The role of chance changed in the nineteenth century, and American
literature changed with it. Long dismissed as a nominal concept,
chance was increasingly treated as a natural force to be managed
but never mastered. New theories of chance sparked religious and
philosophical controversies while revolutionizing the sciences as
probabilistic methods spread from mathematics, economics, and
sociology to physics and evolutionary biology. Chance also became
more visible in everyday life, as Americans attempted to control
its power through weather forecasting, insurance policies, military
strategy, and financial dealings. Uncertain Chances shows how the
rise of chance shaped the way nineteenth-century American writers
confronted questions of doubt and belief. Poe's detective fiction
critiques probabilistic methods; Melville's works struggle to
vindicate moral action under conditions of chance; Douglass and
other African American authors fight against statistical racism;
Thoreau learns to appreciate the play between nature's randomness
and order; and Dickinson works faithfully to render poetically the
affective experience of chance-surprise. These and other
nineteenth-century writers dramatize the inescapable dangers and
wonderful possibilities of chance. Their writings even help to
navigate extremes that remain with us today-fundamentalism and
relativism, determinism and chaos, terrorism and risk-management,
the rational confidence of the Enlightenment and the debilitating
doubts of modernity.
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