Modernism, Science, and Technology

Description

From quantum physics and genetics to psychology and the social sciences, from the development of atomic weapons to the growing mass media of film and radio, the early 20th century was a period of intense scientific and technological change. Modernism, Science, and Technology surveys the scientific contexts of writers from H.G. Wells and Gertrude Stein to James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and the ways in modernist writers responded to these paradigm shifts. Introducing key concepts from science studies and their implications for the study of modernist literature, the book includes chapters covering the physical sciences, mathematics, life sciences, social sciences and ‘pseudosciences’. Including a timeline of key developments and guides to further reading, this is an essential guide to students and researchers studying the topic at all levels. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Modernist culture, modernist science Science in transition Tools for modernist studies New modernist studies, science, and technology Two cultures? Print culture of modernism and science Summing up Overview Notes Chapter 2 The physical sciences and mathematics Nineteenth-century paradigms Modernism and entropy The spatial fourth dimension and ether physics Radioactivity and the subatomic world Relativity and quantum mechanics New research on the new physics The new physics of modernism Periodicals and the new physics Notes Chapter 3 The life sciences A word about the porosity of scientific disciplinary boundaries Nineteenth-century cells Vitalism, mechanism, organicism, and the new biology Optics and physiology Reproductive technology Environmental science Notes Chapter 4 The social sciences Sociology, anthropology, psychology Institutionalizing sociology and anthropology Historicizing psychology and its practices Intersections of biology and the social sciences Back to nature Notes Coda Critical disability studies One culture? Note Glossary of key terms from science studies Works cited Index