British Enlightenment Research Articles

The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment by Tita Chico

Reviewed by: The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment by Tita Chico Richard C. Sha Tita Chico, The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2018). Pp. 256. $60.00 cloth. Tita Chico's learned and eloquent book leverages the superior status of literature over science in the Enlightenment by thinking about how literature made natural philosophical knowledge itself possible. She submits that "representing natural philosophy occasions a deliberation about its efficacy and shortcoming, particularly in contrast to the insights and truths conveyed by literariness" (1). Chico argues that because science requires literary representation, "the representation of early science persistently discloses its literary status—not merely in the tropological nature of scientific writing and practice, but also through the metaphorics of science that allow writers to posit alternative models of authority and evidence" (1–2). For Chico, science is a "literary trope" (5). With this canny reversal of the expected hierarchy between literature and science, we are off to the races. The chase she sets in motion is nothing less than invigorating, and although I have misgivings about how her argument relies upon textualism—science and natural philosophy involve practices beyond language—the chase is worth it. To be fair, she does deal with the collecting of scientific instruments. To put my objection more sharply, this literary history of science gives literary critics more to cheer about than it might scientists, though she is right to insist that these categories were in flux. The quality of thought in this book is very high. Chico's deft recognition of the period's capacious understanding of something like literariness transforms what we think we know about literature and science. Chico argues astutely that "literariness enables a whole-scale imagining of the proper object of natural philosophical inquiry as well as the proper subject to carry it out" (13). Building upon Schaffer and Shapin's famous concepts of "literary technology" and "virtual witnessing," Chico considers how the imagination facilitates the telling of the scientific story through literary technologies that construct both the modest witness and the observed particular.1 In short, the witness to scientific experiment constructs him or herself into an urbane modern subject, with an attention to the present (23–25). She carries out this argument's promise by examining how satiric representations of science enables the identification of a kind of immodesty that foregrounds self-interest. Chico then pursues the degree to which fancy is necessary to understand abstractions like Newtonianism, Cartesianism, and Copernicanism. Consequently, she offers the concept of "scientific seduction" to think about how science compels [End Page 750] belief. She concludes this study by attending to poems like Pope's "Rape of the Lock" and James Thomson's The Seasons, which argue for the superiority of literariness over science. All in all, then, this is a book no scholar of the two cultures can afford to ignore. Chico confronts science's devotion to "natural" and unrhetorical language by highlighting how scientific language itself does this through tropes. She thus highlights how Boyle converts the telescope into a trope for clarity (27), and how scientific texts embrace tropes to translate scientific knowledge. Having deconstructed the relation of scientific to literary language, Chico explores how the two are inextricable. Boyle's challenge is to convey his discovery of the elasticity of air in literary language that will translate his scientific discovery (29). As she puts it, "literariness produces visibility, which, within an optical regime, connotes knowability" (32). She adds that selecting a metaphor reproduces the problem of producing an observed particular: the naturalist thus presents a singularity while suppressing the "imaginative process behind the scientific sense of a singular instance" (34). She offers a reading of Hooke's Micrographia which considers how the technology of the book and its illustrations represents the "instrumentation of a microscope" (35). In a compelling chapter on immodest witnesses, Chico explores how the gimcrack and the coquette enable good science to be separated from bad, and how these tropes facilitate the development of scientific observation. She insists that "gimcracks ignore society and social demands in favor of studying insects. And coquettes refuse to...

The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment by Tita Chico

The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment by Tita Chico

The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment by Tita Chico

The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment by Tita Chico

Automated Analysis of Narrative: NarrCat and the Identification of Infrahumanization Bias Within Text

The Narrative Categorical Content Analysis toolkit (abbreviated as NarrCat) decomposes narratives into distinct, quantifiable psychological processes. In this study, NarrCat was applied to analyze New Zealand’s historical “Speeches from the Throne” from 1854 to 1913 (68 speeches). Specifically, NarrCat’s cognition, emotion, and intention modules were applied to analyze patterns of psychological perspective, or psychological states, attributed to various groups in the speeches (Māori, British settlers, and British governing elites). This allowed us to examine infrahumanization bias, as denoted by patterns of language, in New Zealand’s governing discourses during colonization. Results showed that Māori were infrahumanized compared with the British settlers overall. However, only British Governing elites were attributed significantly greater agency (i.e., cognition and intention) in inferences of their psychological perspective compared with other groups. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed through the lens of infrahumanization theory, as well as colonizing discourses like the British Enlightenment and Good Māori–Bad Māori discourse.

The Feminized Cosmopolite Eiron in Elizabeth Hamilton’s Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah

ABSTRACTThe eponymous Asian narrator of Elizabeth Hamilton’s epistolary Oriental satire embodies the role of a feminized cosmopolite outsider who seeks to understand British Enlightenment culture of the late eighteenth century. The Rajah’s letters offer a narrative of colonial counterflow through which Hamilton details an agenda of benevolent colonialism and spiritually-based cosmopolitanism. While recent studies have integrated genre and interdisciplinary approaches into their political analyses of Hamilton as a Scots Irish woman writer, satirist, and Orientalist scholar, this essay applies theories of classical and modern satire and cosmopolitanism to read Hamilton’s Hindoo Rajah as a free-roaming feminized eiron and cosmopolite. Through her genteel Eastern citizen of the world, Hamilton subtly asserts that politeness and virtue are foundational to Enlightenment cosmopolitan identity and, furthermore, that cosmopolitan spirituality is a necessary ingredient to civil society. The Rajah’s insistence on religious foundations for universal benevolence indicates Hamilton’s cultural biases. However, as a free-floating feminized eiron, the Rajah significantly broadens the potential of “embodied cosmopolitanism” beyond the tropes of cross-cultural matrimony and hybridized offspring, which critics have already noted in the work of post-French Revolution British female authors.

History of Medical Physics and Physics in Medicine in Ireland

Medical Physics and contributions from physics to medicine are relatively well developed in Ireland, although no comprehensive account of both is available. This paper will endeavour to address both, emphasising the former, but not overlooking the latter. The methods employed include documentary research and interviews with some of those that made significant contributions from time to time. Documentary evidence for historical aspects of the development of medical physics is relatively sparse. However, several good sources have been identified and accessed covering periods C, D, and E below. Good sources for Irish contributions/contributors from physics to medicine have been identified and are available over a longer period since the seventeenth century British enlightenment, and especially for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sources for G and H, education/training and international contributions, are limited but archival material is available. Professional bodies will be treated, where relevant, under each heading. This paper will present a summary of findings from these sources under headings including: A. The Enlightenment (17th century) period (Multiple sources) B. Nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Multiple sources) C. Twentieth century up to late 60’s/early 70’s ( > 5 sources) D. Twentieth century from 70’s to 90’s ( > 3 sources) E. Period since the 90’s ( > 3 sources) F. Statutory developments and National Benchmarks (Multiple sources) G. Education and training initiatives ( > 3 Sources and archival material) H. Contributions to the international community (Archival material) The findings from this investigation provide a rich context and heritage for medical physics in Ireland.

Æstheticising the Impossible: the Strange Case of the Gothic and Science Fiction

In the history of human creativity, the act of imagining the impossible has always been at the core of the physical and metaphysical perception of the unknown. The scholarly debate regarding the nature of the impossible gained particular relevance in the context of British Enlightenment when the expanding sciences, along with literature, attempted to provide empirical validation to inexplicable and supernatural phenomena. In this way, the discrepancies between the overlapping ontologies of the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason became apparent as the ancestral literary practice of the fantastic merged with the rising genre of the novel. The assimilation of the conventional tropes of supernatural literature within the narrative frame of formal realism led to the development of two fortunate sub-genres: the Gothic and Science Fiction. The former evolved around the mutual disruption of the empirically-based conception of reality and the transgression of the moral code implied in the construction of civic order. The latter derived from the relocation of specific gothic features into a larger dimension of social anxiety concerning the abuses of reason concealed as a path towards common good and future progress. By exploring the evolution of the gothic imagery and its dissolution into the narrative horizon of Science Fiction, this article will trace the early modern roots of the dialogue between science and literature in the human quest for the impossible. The thesis that Gothic and Science Fiction are historically interdependent will be reviewed in light of the common matrix of fear and desire which characterises their ideological function.

The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies

The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment by Tita Chico

<i>The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment</i> by Tita Chico

The ‘secular’ settlement and Australian political thought

ABSTRACTThis paper challenges the tendency among contemporary historians and political scientists to read secularism and religion in Australian political history in binary terms. It is argued that this framework is anachronistic, creating a barrier to a proper appreciation of religion in Australian political history. In keeping with much British Enlightenment thinking, religion through much of Australia’s history was deemed to have great social utility and its promotion was of central secular significance. This understanding framed the education debates of the second half of the nineteenth century as well as the social welfare reforms and institution building around the Federation period. Such developments cast doubt on claims that secularism of an exclusionary kind is a key element of the now widely invoked category of the Australian settlement.

Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue: Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment

Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue: Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment

Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue: Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment

Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue: Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment

Tita Chico. The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment

Tita Chico. The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment

Sarah Siddons, Sensibility and Enthusiastic Devotion in the British Enlightenment

AbstractA surprising number of understudied novels of the late eighteenth century contain scenes that feature celebrity actress Sarah Siddons and describe the emotional responses of her fans. This article argues that these scenes of effusive emotion, depicted positively, compel us to revisit our understandings of narratives of sensibility. Perhaps more importantly, these scenes reflect the extent to which manifestations of celebrity fandom mirror contemporary religious devotional practices, especially the enthusiastic worship of Methodist congregations. This essay therefore traces the slippage between secular and religious forms of devotion in the period, challenging more linear arguments of secularisation in eighteenth‐century Britain.

Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue: Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment by Mark Garrett Longaker

Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue: Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment by Mark Garrett Longaker

Hisao Ishizuka, Fiber, Medicine, and Culture in the British Enlightenment

Hisao Ishizuka, Fiber, Medicine, and Culture in the British Enlightenment

Russia and Euro-Centric Geography During the British Enlightenment

In this article, I shall examine the European part of the Russian Empire, Russian culture and Russians in eighteenth century handbooks of geography when “the Newtonian turn” took place in that discipline. Thanks to travel literature and history writing, we are used to thinking of the Russians as representing “otherness” in Europe. Still, in handbooks of geography, Russia was the gate between Asia and Europe. This article will explicate the stereotype(s) of the British characterisations of the Russian national character and the European part of the Russian Empire (excluding ethnic minorities in Russia), in order to reconstruct the idea of Russia in the British (and Irish) geography books.

General

I was very excited to get my hands on what was promising to be a magnificent and extremely helpfulHandbook of Rhetorical Studies, and my expectations were matched – and exceeded! This handbook contains no less than sixty contributions written by eminent experts and is divided into six parts. Each section opens with a brief orientation essay, tracing the development of rhetoric in a specific period, and is followed by individual chapters which are organized thematically. Part I contains eleven chapters on ‘Greek Rhetoric’, and the areas covered are law, politics, historiography, pedagogy, poetics, tragedy, Old Comedy, Plato, Aristotle, and closing with the Sophists. Part II contains thirteen chapters on ‘Ancient Roman Rhetoric’, which similarly covers law, politics, historiography, pedagogy, and the Second Sophistic, and adds Stoic philosophy, epic, lyric address, declamation, fiction, music and the arts, and Augustine to the list of topics. Part III, on ‘Medieval Rhetoric’, covers politics, literary criticism, poetics, and comedy; Part IV, on the Renaissance contains chapters on politics, law, pedagogy, science, poetics, theatre, and the visual arts. Part V consists of seven essays on the early modern and Enlightenment periods and is decidedly Britano-centric: politics, gender in British literature, architecture, origins of British Enlightenment rhetoric, philosophy (mostly British, too), science, and the elocutionary movement in Britain. With Chapter 45 we arrive at the modern age section (Part VI), with two chapters on feminism, one on race, and three on the standard topics (law, political theory, science), grouped together with those on presidential politics, New Testament studies, argumentation, semiotics, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, social epistemology, and environment, and closing with digital media. The volume also contains a glossary of Greek and Latin rhetorical terms. As the editor states in his Introduction, the aim of the volume is not only to provide a comprehensive history of rhetoric, but also to enable those interested in the role of rhetoric in specific disciplines or genres, such as law or theatre and performance, to easily find those sections in respective parts of the book and thus explore the intersection of rhetoric with one specific field in a chronological sequence.

The Nature of Notebooks: How Enlightenment Schoolchildren Transformed theTabula Rasa

AbstractJohn Locke's comparison of the mind to a blank piece of paper, thetabula rasa, was one of the most recognizable metaphors of the British Enlightenment. Though scholars embrace its impact on the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, they seldom consider why the metaphor was so successful. Concentrating on the notebooks made and used by the schoolchildren of Enlightenment Scotland, this essay contends that the answer lies in the material and visual conditions that gave rise to the metaphor's usage. By the time students had finished school, they had learned to conceptualize the pages, the script, and the figures of their notebooks as indispensable learning tools that could be manipulated by scores of adaptable folding, writing, and drawing techniques. In this article, I reveal that historicizing the epistemology and manipulability of student manuscript culture makes it possible to see that the success of Locke's metaphor was founded on its appeal to everyday note-keeping activities performed by British schoolchildren.

Introduction: "The Commerce of Life": Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800)

Introduction"The Commerce of Life": Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800) Nicole Pohl (bio) There is a much higher character than that of a wit or a poet, or a savant, which is that of a rational and sociable being, willing to carry on the commerce of life with all the sweetness and condescension decency and virtue will permit.1 john doran's characterization of Elizabeth Montagu aptly reflects her multifaceted and versatile role in eighteenth-century society. Montagu was and still is known as a prominent author, critic, patron, businesswoman, and salonnière. Through birth, friendship, and marriage she was part of and, at times, the center of important political, literary, and social crosscutting networks that connected the public sphere and the court. She corresponded extensively with leaders of British Enlightenment coteries, such as Edmund Burke, Gilbert West, David Garrick, and Horace Walpole, as well as the Bluestocking inner circle—Elizabeth Carter, Sarah Scott, Hannah More, Hester Thrale Piozzi, Frances Burney, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Vesey, and Frances Boscawen. Her vast correspondence (ca. 8,000 extant letters) is now collected in various archives and private collections across the U.K. and the United States; only a few of these have been printed, often in heavily edited versions.2 With such wealth of epistolary material, it is not surprising that her letters [End Page 443] have been described by Barbara Brandon Schnorrenberg as "among the most important surviving collections from the eighteenth century"3 and that Elizabeth Eger's forthcoming biography is entitled Elizabeth Montagu: A Life in Letters. Doran accentuated Montagu's participation in "the commerce of life" of eighteenth-century polite society with, indeed, "decency and virtue." The meaning of commerce is undeniably multilayered, ranging in the eighteenth century from conversation to "exchange of one thing for another; interchange of any thing" and, of course, to economic trade, according to Johnson's Dictionary (1755).4 In this sense, and as the philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith argued, sociability and conversation, virtue and sympathy were not necessarily seen in contradiction to, but rather helped to embed (and in some ways, justify), commercial activities and pursuit of self-interest for the purpose of the public good. Thus, Montagu elegantly spanned all rubrics of eighteenth-century commerce that Johnson identified; to trade, to correspond and to exchange ideas as a literary critic and essayist, to be a businesswoman, a patron of the arts, and a literary hostess. These economic but, more importantly, social activities produced, according to eighteenth-century political philosophy, civility and refinement of manners, morals, and the arts: "doux commerce."5 It was predominantly the douceur of women that appointed them to exert civilizing influence through mixed-gender sociability in polite society. Montagu exceeded this gender-limited role. While her patriotic and public sociability, particularly in her Bluestocking assemblies, was admired by contemporaries and exemplary, she also sought to influence and correct through her active participation in business, politics, [End Page 444] and the arts.6 In a letter to her husband, Montagu enthusiastically praises the benefits to humankind of his coal business, which, after his death, she took over and expanded successfully: Riches drawn from the bowels of the earth, or gained by commerce, where exchange is still a mutual benefit, present agreeable views of the arts and policy of mankind. Though the coldness of our climate may set coals in a favourable light, I shall be glad to see as many of them turned to the precious metal as possible. I have not enough of the miser, to love treasures hidden and buried. Money is convertible to credit and pleasure; useful in the hands of the prudent; noble in the hands of the generous; pernicious with the bad; ridiculous with the prodigal, and contemptible with the miser.7 Montagu was aware that commerce in the business sense, the transaction of money and the management of industry, shaped civic virtue and moral responsibility as much as her conversations and assemblies civilized the nation. This special issue of the Huntington Library Quarterly addresses Elizabeth Montagu's complex and innovative position in eighteenth-century polite society and complements "Reconsidering the Bluestockings" (2002), edited by Nicole Pohl and Betty A. Schellenberg, also...