IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB532696700

Davy Takes to the Hills: Dialogic Enquiry and the Aesthetics of the Prospect View (2019)

Fulford, Tim (Author)

Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Volume: 66
Issue: 2-3
Pages: 158-180

DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2019.1616946

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2019.1616946

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Certainty; uncertainty Discourse analysis Rhetoric in scientific discourse Facts (philosophy) Methodology of science; scientific method 19th century

I discuss some of the versions of scientific enquiry used and promoted by Davy, arguing that his self-fashioning as a “genius” and “hero of science” in the years 1801–1820, paralleling the self-fashioning of his friend Wordsworth, created a public persona that tended to occlude a practice of group enquiry to which, however, he publicly returned in his last years – significantly revising it so that it became a dialogic form of writing. This form, I suggest, construed knowledge not as the production of facts – or elements – by inductive method and controlled experiment, but as a conversational process between trusted peers, in which it is not just possible but fundamental to express doubt. Requiring no absolute commitment to a single view, dialogic exploration embraced uncertainty to engender new questions and ambivalence to generate new modes of enquiry.

...More

Included in

Article Frank A. J. L. James; Sharon Ruston (2019) New Studies on Humphry Davy: Introduction. Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (pp. 95-102). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB532696700/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Wilson, Leigh; (2013)
“There the Facts Are”: Andrew Lang, Facts and Fantasy (/isis/citation/CBB001320818/)

Thesis Woodrow D. Brown; (2020)
"Finding Is the First Act": Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Discourse of Science (/isis/citation/CBB387565727/)

Article Rose, Anne C.; (2011)
The Invention of Uncertainty in American Psychology: Intellectual Conflict and Rhetorical Resolution, 1890--1930 (/isis/citation/CBB001220672/)

Article Andrea M. Bertotti; Skye A. Miner; (April 2019)
Constructing contentious and noncontentious facts: How gynecology textbooks create certainty around pharma-contraceptive safety: Research Note (/isis/citation/CBB188878802/)

Article Alter, Stephen G.; (2007)
The Advantages of Obscurity: Charles Darwin's Negative Inference from the Histories of Domestic Breeds (/isis/citation/CBB000771335/)

Article David R. Gruber; (2023)
Material Foundations of Scientific Metaphors: A New Materialist Metaphor Studies (/isis/citation/CBB996969228/)

Article Alena Kamenshchikova; Petra F. G. Wolffs; Christian J. P. A. Hoebe; John Penders; Klasien Horstman; (2023)
Metaphors of foreign strangers: antimicrobial resistance in biomedical discourses (/isis/citation/CBB115826698/)

Thesis Lauren Kilian; (2017)
The "Narrative Impulse" and Literary Intervention in the Public Science Discourse (/isis/citation/CBB949971040/)

Book Collin Rice; (2021)
Leveraging Distortions: Explanation, Idealization, and Universality in Science (/isis/citation/CBB912709886/)

Book Mansoor Niaz; (2019)
Evolving Nature of Objectivity in the History of Science and its Implications for Science Education (/isis/citation/CBB181627786/)

Book Boumans, Marcel; Hon, Giora; Petersen, Arthur; (2013)
Error and Uncertainty in Scientific Practice (/isis/citation/CBB001422491/)

Article Baptiste Bedessem; Stéphanie Ruphy; (2019)
Scientific autonomy and the unpredictability of scientific inquiry: The unexpected might not be where you would expect (/isis/citation/CBB397945367/)

Article Robert Hudson; (2015)
Why We Should Not Reject the Value-Free Ideal of Science (/isis/citation/CBB919709045/)

Article Kruse, Corinna; (2004)
Making It Work: Balancing Uncertainty and Resources in Genetic Research (/isis/citation/CBB000770378/)

Article Csiszar, Alex; (2003)
Stylizing Rigor; or, Why Mathematicians Write So Well (/isis/citation/CBB000500955/)

Article Ariew, Roger; (2005)
Descartes's Fable and Scientific Methodology (/isis/citation/CBB000670804/)

Book Alex de Waal; (2021)
New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives (/isis/citation/CBB645621187/)

Article Thea Goldring; (2020)
Recovered or Perfected: The Discourse of Chemistry in the Nineteenth-Century Revival of Stained Glass in Britain and France (/isis/citation/CBB755976997/)

Article Frank Cabrera; (2020)
Evidence and Explanation in Cicero's On Divination (/isis/citation/CBB028919561/)

Article Giglioni, Guido; (2014)
From the Woods of Experience to the Open Fields of Metaphysics: Bacon's Notion of Silva (/isis/citation/CBB001201350/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}