Book ID: CBB896182798

Speculation: A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI (2021)

unapi

Rogers, Gayle (Author)


Columbia University Press


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 264
Language: English

In the modern world, why do we still resort to speculation? Advances in scientific and statistical reasoning are supposed to have provided greater certainty in making claims about the future. Yet we constantly spin out scenarios about tomorrow, for ourselves or for entire societies, with flimsy or no evidence. Insubstantial speculations—from utopian thinking to high-risk stock gambles—often provoke fierce backlash, even when they prove prophetic for the world we come to inhabit. Why does this hypothetical way of thinking generate such controversy?In this cultural, literary, and intellectual history, Gayle Rogers traces debates over speculation from antiquity to the present. Celebrated by Boethius as the height of humanity’s mental powers but denigrated as sinful by John Calvin, speculation eventually became central to the scientific revolution’s new methods of seeing the natural world. In the nineteenth century, writers such as Jane Austen used the concept to diagnose the marriage market, redefining speculation for the purpose of social critique. Speculation fueled the development of modern capitalism, spurring booms, busts, and bubbles, and recently artificial intelligence has automated the speculation previously done by humans, with uncertain and troubling consequences. Unraveling these histories and many other disputes, Rogers argues that what has always been at stake in arguments over speculation, and why it so often appears so threatening, is the authority to produce and control knowledge about the future.Recasting centuries of contests over the power to anticipate tomorrow, this book reveals the crucial role speculation has played in how we create—and potentially destroy—the future.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB896182798/

Similar Citations

Article Victor Petit; (2019)
Jean Gayon (1949-2018): Itinéraire d’un darwinien (/isis/citation/CBB150653875/)

Book Courtney Weiss Smith; (2015)
Empiricist Devotions: Science, Religion, and Poetry in Early Eighteenth-Century England (/isis/citation/CBB186685674/)

Book Karen ní Mheallaigh; (2020)
The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy (/isis/citation/CBB051021953/)

Book Debapriya Sarkar; (2023)
Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science (/isis/citation/CBB277855321/)

Chapter Lehoux, Daryn; (2011)
Myth and Explanation in Manilius (/isis/citation/CBB001201030/)

Book Chen, Ruilin; (2012)
Renzhi yu pingjia: Kexue lilun yu shiyan de donglixue (shang xia ce) (/isis/citation/CBB001551369/)

Chapter Morteza Gharib; Francis C. Wells; (2020)
Anticipating the Future: Leonardo’s Unpublished Anatomical and Mathematical Observations (/isis/citation/CBB245679851/)

Book Kellert, Stephen H.; (2008)
Borrowed Knowledge: Chaos Theory and the Challenge of Learning Across Disciplines (/isis/citation/CBB000820168/)

Article Siegert, Bernhard; (2013)
Mineral Sound or Missing Fundamental: Cultural History as Signal Analysis (/isis/citation/CBB001320385/)

Chapter Waugh, Patricia; (2011)
Mind in Modern Fiction: Literary and Philosophical Perspectives after Darwin (/isis/citation/CBB001202033/)

Article Alexander, Sarah C.; (2013)
The Residuum, Victorian Naturalism, and the Entropic Narrative (/isis/citation/CBB001200837/)

Article Lærke, Mogens; (2014)
Leibniz, the Encyclopedia, and the Natural Order of Thinking (/isis/citation/CBB001201304/)

Chapter Paolo Rossi; (2003)
Immagini della scienza e mondi immaginari (/isis/citation/CBB666357903/)

Article Colin Milburn; (2019)
Ahead of Time: Gerald Feinberg and the Governance of Futurity (/isis/citation/CBB761628864/)

Article Jamison Kantor; (2017)
Horace Walpole and the Fate of Finance (/isis/citation/CBB153117344/)

Authors & Contributors
Travis Benjamin Wilds
Wells, Francis C.
Petit, Victor
Michael Lucey
Robinson, Charles
Kantor, Jamison
Concepts
Science and literature
Science and culture
Philosophy of science
Intellectual history
Speculation
Science fiction
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
17th century
Early modern
20th century
Ancient
Places
England
Rome (Italy)
United States
Greece
Europe
China
Institutions
Institut Pasteur, Paris
Comments

Be the first to comment!

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

Log in or register to comment