Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel

Klappentext Anne DeWitt examines how Victorian novelists challenged the claims of men of science to align scientific practice with moral excellence. Zusammenfassung How did Victorian novelists including Eliot, Hardy and Wells respond to contemporary men of science who aligned scientific practice with moral excellence in an endeavor to secure cultural authority for their discipline? Anne DeWitt argues that novelists came to reject this alignment, denying that science held widely accessible moral benefits.

Auteur

Anne DeWitt is a lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program, Princeton University, New Jersey.

Résumé
How did Victorian novelists including Eliot, Hardy and Wells respond to contemporary men of science who aligned scientific practice with moral excellence in an endeavor to secure cultural authority for their discipline? Anne DeWitt argues that novelists came to reject this alignment, denying that science held widely accessible moral benefits.

Contenu

Introduction; 1. The religion of science from natural theology to scientific naturalism; 2. Moral uses, narrative effects: natural history in the novels of George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell; 3. 'The actual sky is a horror': Thomas Hardy and the problems of scientific thinking; 4. 'The moral influence of those cruelties': the vivisection debate, antivivisection fiction, and the status of Victorian science; 5. Science, aestheticism, and the literary career of H. G. Wells; Epilogue.