| Description |
1 online resource (ix, 460 pages) |
| Series |
Science and culture in the nineteenth century |
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Science and culture in the nineteenth century.
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| Contents |
Organic vitality in the late eighteenth century : Lebenskräfte and experimental reasoning -- Kant's Critique of the power of judgment : organisms as reciprocally means and ends of themselves -- Blurring the boundaries of life : organic vitality and instruments of inquiry in the 1790s -- Jena connections : a science of knowledge, romantic aesthetics, and languages of nature -- Schelling's philosophy of life : boundary concepts and the natural history of the world soul -- The science of biology : organic vitality and the boundaries of life -- Conclusion: Afterlife |
| Summary |
"Attempts to distinguish a science of life at the turn of the nineteenth century faced a number of challenges. A central difficulty was clearly demarcating the living from the nonliving experimentally and conceptually. The more closely the boundaries between organic and inorganic phenomena were examined, the more they expanded and thwarted any clear delineation. Experimenting at the Boundaries of Life traces the debates surrounding the first articulations of a science of life in a variety of texts and practices centered on German contexts. Joan Steigerwald examines the experiments on the processes of organic vitality, such as excitability and generation, undertaken across the fields of natural history, physiology, physics and chemistry. She highlights the sophisticated reflections on the problem of experimenting on living beings by investigators, and relates these epistemic concerns directly to the philosophies of nature of Kant and Schelling. Her book skillfully ties these epistemic reflections to arguments by the Romantic writers Novalis and Goethe for the aesthetic aspects of inquiries into the living world and the figurative languages in which understandings of nature were expressed"-- Provided by publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO; viewed July 2, 2019) |
| Subject |
Life sciences -- Germany -- History -- 18th century
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Life sciences -- Germany -- History -- 19th century
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Philosophy and the life sciences -- Germany -- History
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Biology -- Philosophy -- History
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Vitalism.
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Vitalism
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SCIENCE -- General.
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Biology -- Philosophy
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Life sciences
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Philosophy and the life sciences
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Vitalism
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Germany
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| Genre/Form |
History
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| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9780822986621 |
|
0822986620 |
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