Featuring a moment in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England before the disciplinary divisions that we inherit today were established, Empiricist Devotions recovers a kind of empiricist thinking in which the techniques and emphases of science, religion, and literature combined and cooperated. This brand of empiricism was committed to particularized scrutiny and epistemological modesty. It was Protestant in its enabling premises and meditative practices. It earnestly affirmed that figurative language provided crucial tools for interpreting the divinely written world. Smith recovers this empiricism in Robert Boyle’s analogies, Isaac Newton’s metaphors, John Locke’s narratives, Joseph Addison’s personifications, Daniel Defoe’s diction, John Gay’s periphrases, and Alexander Pope’s descriptive particulars. She thereby demonstrates that "literary" language played a key role in shaping and giving voice to the concerns of eighteenth-century science and religion alike. Empiricist Devotions combines intellectual history with close readings of a wide variety of texts, from sermons, devotional journals, and economic tracts to georgic poems, it-narratives, and microscopy treatises. This prizewinning book has important implications for our understanding of cultural and literary history, as scholars of the period’s science have not fully appreciated figurative language’s central role in empiricist thought, while scholars of its religion and literature have neglected the serious empiricist commitments motivating richly figurative devotional and poetic texts.
...More
Article
Girten, Kristin M.;
(2013)
Mingling with Matter: Tactile Microscopy and the Philosophic Mind in Brobdingnag and Beyond
(/isis/citation/CBB001201896/)
Book
Courtney Weiss Smith;
(2016)
Empiricist Devotions: Science, Religion, and Poetry in Early Eighteenth-Century England
(/isis/citation/CBB962866556/)
Book
Margaret Willes;
(2017)
The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn
(/isis/citation/CBB930897484/)
Article
Marc Parmentier;
(2015)
Leibniz et le virtuel
(/isis/citation/CBB764317706/)
Article
Lake, Crystal B.;
(2013)
Feeling Things: The Novel Objectives of Sentimental Objects
(/isis/citation/CBB001201889/)
Book
Alexander Wragge-Morley;
(2020)
Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650-1720
(/isis/citation/CBB757195097/)
Book
Anna K. Sagal;
(2021)
Botanical Entanglements: Women, Natural Science, and the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England
(/isis/citation/CBB259998433/)
Book
Jamie C. Kassler;
(2019)
Newton’s Sensorium: Anatomy of a Concept
(/isis/citation/CBB959510708/)
Book
David Alff;
(2017)
The Wreckage of Intentions: Projects in British Culture, 1660-1730
(/isis/citation/CBB427958548/)
Chapter
Raman, Shankar;
(2012)
Constructing Selves, Making Publics: Geometry and Poetry in Descartes and Sidney
(/isis/citation/CBB001201597/)
Chapter
Evans, Meredith;
(2013)
Matrices of Force: Spinozist Monism and Margaret Cavendish's Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World
(/isis/citation/CBB001201711/)
Chapter
Domski, Mary;
(2012)
Locke's Qualified Embrace of Newton's Principia
(/isis/citation/CBB001500340/)
Chapter
Vita Fortunati;
(2003)
La vecchiaia in Shakespeare fra mito e scienza
(/isis/citation/CBB558765478/)
Book
Picciotto, Joanna;
(2010)
Labors of Innocence in Early Modern England
(/isis/citation/CBB001023279/)
Book
Liz Bellamy;
(2019)
The Language of Fruit: Literature and Horticulture in the Long Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB200819656/)
Chapter
Elliott, Paul;
(2012)
Erasmus Darwin's Trees
(/isis/citation/CBB001421358/)
Chapter
Annalisa Nacinovich;
(2017)
Un amico ‘immaginario’ cui affidare un dibattito reale: le "Lettere familiari" di Lorenzo Magalotti
(/isis/citation/CBB622100286/)
Chapter
Ilaria Bortolotti;
(2017)
Viaggi e comunicazione scientifica nelle dissertazioni epistolari di Luigi Ferdinando Marsili
(/isis/citation/CBB010746049/)
Article
Antonio Di Meo;
(2020)
Communicating Science: A Modern Event
(/isis/citation/CBB151156196/)
Book
Faith Evelyn Beasley;
(2011)
Teaching Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers
(/isis/citation/CBB136489330/)
Be the first to comment!