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Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2005
About this book
This far-reaching study redraws the intellectual map of the Enlightenment and boldly reassesses the legacy of that highly influential period for us today. Peter Hanns Reill argues that in the middle of the eighteenth century, a major shift occurred in the way Enlightenment thinkers conceived of nature that caused many of them to reject the prevailing doctrine of mechanism and turn to a vitalistic model to account for phenomena in natural history, the life sciences, and chemistry. As he traces the ramifications of this new way of thinking through time and across disciplines, Reill provocatively complicates our understanding of the way key Enlightenment thinkers viewed nature. His sophisticated analysis ultimately questions postmodern narratives that have assumed a monolithic Enlightenment—characterized by the dominance of instrumental reason—that has led to many of the disasters of modern life.
Author / Editor information
Contributor: Peter H. Reill
Peter Hanns Reill is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is also Director of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Reill is author of The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (1975), and editor or coeditor of What's Left of Enlightenment? A Postmodern Question (2001), Wissenschaft als kulturelle Praxis, 1750-1900 (1999), Encyclopedia of Enlightenment (1996), and Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature (1996).
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
vii -
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Acknowledgments
ix -
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Introduction
1 -
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Prologue: The Humboldt Brothers Confront Nature's Sublimity
17 -
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I. Storming "the Temple of Error": Buffon, the Histoire naturelle, and the Midcentury Origins of Enlightenment Vitalism
33 -
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2. Learning to "Read the Book of Nature": Vitalizing Chemistry in the Late Enlightenment
71 -
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3. "Within the Circle of Organized Life"
119 -
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4. The Metamorphoses of Change
159 -
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5. From Enlightenment Vitalism to Romantic Naturphilosophie
199 -
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Notes
257 -
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Bibliography
327 -
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Index
367
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
August 5, 2019
eBook ISBN:
9780520931008
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
398
eBook ISBN:
9780520931008
Keywords for this book
mechanism; life science; chemistry; scientific disciplines; reason; modernity; vitalism; natural world; relationship with nature; physiology; life force; natural philosophy; stahlian chemistry; animism; charles louis dumas; william cullen; generation; reproduction; epigenesis; religion and science; spark of life; romanticism; counter enlightenment; naturphilosophie; cuvier; history; 18th century; nature; enlightenment; philosophy; early modern enlightenment; science; history of science; natural history
