Victorian Relativity : Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery - Christopher Herbert

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Victorian Relativity

Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery

By: Christopher Herbert

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Hardcover | 1 June 2001 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
264 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.4 x 15.8 x 2.3

Hardcover

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One of the articles of faith of twentieth-century intellectual history is that the theory of relativity in physics sprang in its essentials from the unaided genius of Albert Einstein; another is that scientific relativity is unconnected to ethical, cultural, or epistemological relativisms. "Victorian Relativity" challenges these assumptions, unearthing a forgotten tradition of avant-garde speculation that took as its guiding principle "the negation of the absolute" and set itself under the militant banner of "relativity."
Christopher Herbert shows that the idea of relativity produced revolutionary changes in one field after another in the nineteenth century. Surveying a long line of thinkers including Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Alexander Bain, W. K. Clifford, W. S. Jevons, Karl Pearson, James Frazer, and Einstein himself, "Victorian Relativity" argues that the early relativity movement was bound closely to motives of political and cultural reform and, in particular, to radical critiques of the ideology of authoritarianism. Recuperating relativity from those who treat it as synonymous with nihilism, Herbert portrays it as the basis of some of our crucial intellectual and ethical traditions.

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Acknowledgments
Preface: Relativity and Ideology
Introduction: The Conspiracy against Truth
Difference, Unity, Proliferation
Relativity and Authority
The Relativity of Logic
Karl Pearson and the Human Form Divine
Frazer and Einstein
Afterword: Protagoras and History-Writing
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Victorian Relativity

Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery

At a Glance

Hardcover

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

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