When Todd Weir asked me to contribute to the symposium for which this chapter was prepared, I was intrigued, because the term monism has not featured very often in the work I have done on British science and its implications in the early twentieth century. I checked the index of my book Reconciling Science and Religion to bolster my impression that the term was not widely used, and was reassured when I found just four entries. Of course that does not mean that the ideas associated with the term were absent from British debates, only that the term monism itself does not seen to have caught on among British scientists. When one begins to dig a little more deeply, one does find British and American philosophers and scientists who endorsed monism, and who indeed regarded monism as a key feature of the emerging scientific attitude to the world. In this chapter I hope to show that a study of those scientists who may be associated with the philosophy (if not the term) may throw light on the complex history of how monism has been used and perceived both in Britain and elsewhere. Here, as in America and on the Continent, monism was developed in several different forms, and indeed there was some debate over what the philosophy actually implied for certain issues of concern to scientists and for their moral and ideological implications.
...MoreBook Weir, Todd H. (2012) Monism: Science, Philosophy, Religion, and the History of a Worldview.
Similar Citations
Chapter
Wadge, Elisabeth;
(2006)
A Fair Trial for Spiritualism? Fighting Dirty in the “Pall Mall Gazette”
(/isis/citation/CBB001232433/)
Chapter
Gregory, Frederick;
(2012)
Proto-Monism in German Philosophy, Theology, and Science, 1800--1845
(/isis/citation/CBB001201835/)
Article
Morrisson, Mark S.;
(2008)
The Periodical Culture of the Occult Revival: Esoteric Wisdom, Modernity and Counter-Public Spheres
(/isis/citation/CBB001320695/)
Chapter
McCalman, Iain;
(2011)
Alfred Wallace's Conversion: Plebeian Radicalism and the Spiritual Evolution of the Mind
(/isis/citation/CBB001201381/)
Book
Joshua Nall;
(2019)
News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860-1910
(/isis/citation/CBB549536322/)
Book
Weber, Heiko;
(2000)
Monistische und antimonistische Weltanschauung: Eine Auswahlbibliographie
(/isis/citation/CBB000110659/)
Chapter
Erik C. Banks;
(2018)
The Case for Mach's Neutral Monism
(/isis/citation/CBB571671358/)
Chapter
Ziche, Paul;
(2012)
Monist Philosophy of Science: Between Worldview and Scientific Meta-Reflection
(/isis/citation/CBB001201840/)
Article
Liv Grjebine;
(2022)
A Darwinian Murder: The Role of the Barré-Lebiez Affair in the Diffusion of Darwinism in Nineteenth-Century France
(/isis/citation/CBB374593926/)
Book
Keiko Sato;
(2015)
Hekkeru to shinka no fantaji: Ichigenron, ekoroji, keitouju ヘッケルと進化の夢:一元論,エコロジー,系統樹 Haeckel and the Fantasy of Evolution: Monism, Ecology, and the Genealogical Tree
(/isis/citation/CBB052999110/)
Book
Wazeck, Milena;
(2014)
Einstein's Opponents: The Public Controversy about the Theory of Relativity in the 1920s
(/isis/citation/CBB001500393/)
Article
Bowler, Peter J.;
(2013)
Popular Science Magazines in Interwar Britain: Authors and Readerships
(/isis/citation/CBB001320568/)
Article
Peter J. Bowler;
(2016)
Discovering Science from an Armchair: Popular Science in British Magazines of the Interwar Years
(/isis/citation/CBB945191998/)
Article
Endersby, Jim;
(2013)
Mutant Utopias: Evening Primroses and Imagined Futures in Early Twentieth-Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB001321212/)
Chapter
Anderson, Katharine;
(2004)
Almanacs and the Profits of Natural Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB000450155/)
Article
Cavell, Janice;
(2013)
Publishing Sir John Franklin's Fate: Cannibalism, Journalism, and the 1881 Edition of Leopold McClintock's The Voyage of the “Fox” in the Arctic Seas
(/isis/citation/CBB001201827/)
Chapter
Sheffield, Suzanne Le-May;
(2004)
The “Empty-Headed Beauty” and the “Sweet Girl Graduate”: Women's Science Education in Punch, 1860--90
(/isis/citation/CBB000450149/)
Book
Clifford, David;
(2006)
Repositioning Victorian Sciences: Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Thinking
(/isis/citation/CBB001232425/)
Book
Beegan, Gerry;
(2007)
The Mass Image. A Social History of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London
(/isis/citation/CBB001201134/)
Chapter
Tilley, Elizabeth;
(2004)
Science, Industry, and Nationalism in the Dublin Penny Journal
(/isis/citation/CBB000450158/)
Be the first to comment!