O'Connell, Caryn Maureen (Author)
Cormack, Bradin (Advisor)
Scodel, Joshua (Advisor)
University of Chicago
Cormack, Bradin
Scodel, Joshua
Physical Details: 241 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation brings to light a range of seventeenth-century British writers who energetically take up some of the least perceptible natural phenomena in order to establish a fresh conception of what we call the biological. When Thomas Browne, Henry Vaughan, and John Milton set out to represent a hawthorn’s growth in space or the distribution of nutrients in a human, they do so in order to challenge long-standing ideas of vegetative life as deficient in nature because lacking in sensation and reason. They do so, moreover, at a moment in which life was conceptually up for grabs, in a century crowded with competing physical and metaphysical systems. What they develop is not another rival system for describing life but, rather, a new means for rendering that radically mundane object appreciable. At the same time, they produce a wholly original impression of the domain of natural science—of who and what can be said to practice science and to possess it; and of where, in the world of natural bodies, knowledge of nature can hail from. At the heart of the rise of objectivity, this dissertation unearths a model of inquiry grounded on an idea of embodied knowledge that, counterintuitively for modern thought, vegetal life exemplifies. Contrary to prevailing accounts of the new science, it further suggests that such inquiry takes shape not in spite of but because of the legacy of Francis Bacon. The project is in four chapters and draws from an archive of literary, scientific, philosophical, theological, and technical materials. Focusing on Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum, Browne’s The Garden of Cyrus, Vaughan’s Silex Scintillans and medical translations, and Milton’s Paradise Lost, it tracks the intertwining arcs and arts of vegetal life and a Baconian intimate science, showing how the former demands the latter just as the latter makes the former visible as an object.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Thesis
Buttery, Amy V.;
(1996)
Revisions of the Book of Nature in 17th-century England
(/isis/citation/CBB001565866/)
Book
Lipking, Lawrence;
(2014)
What Galileo Saw: Imagining the Scientific Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001510101/)
Thesis
Daniel D. Lee;
(2019)
Making Experience Literate: Poetry and New Science in Early Modern England
(/isis/citation/CBB322645098/)
Thesis
Jackson, Roger Marcus;
(2010)
The Prolongation of Life in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, with Emphasis on Francis Bacon
(/isis/citation/CBB001561052/)
Thesis
Dye, Amy;
(2005)
Writing Creation in England, 1580--1680
(/isis/citation/CBB001560880/)
Article
Sarah E. Parker;
(2016)
The Reader as Authorial Figure in Scientific Debate
(/isis/citation/CBB342643342/)
Book
Benedino Gemelli;
(1996)
Aspetti dell'atomismo classico nella filosofia di Francis Bacon e nel Seicento
(/isis/citation/CBB689205138/)
Chapter
Vickers, Brian;
(2007)
Francis Bacon, Mirror of Each Age
(/isis/citation/CBB000775024/)
Article
Perry Guevara;
(2020)
Milton's Plant Eyes: Minimal Cognition, Similitude, and Sexuality in the Garden
(/isis/citation/CBB113300543/)
Thesis
McHenry, James P.;
(1994)
“Still to tend plant, herb and flour”: Horticulture and botany in the poetry of John Milton
(/isis/citation/CBB001564630/)
Book
David Carroll Simon;
(2018)
Light without Heat: The Observational Mood from Bacon to Milton
(/isis/citation/CBB010485781/)
Book
Cummins, Juliet;
Burchell, David;
(2007)
Science, Literature, and Rhetoric in Early Modern England
(/isis/citation/CBB000774600/)
Chapter
Swann, Marjorie;
(2008)
“Procreate Like Trees”: Generation and Society in Thomas Browne's Religio Medici
(/isis/citation/CBB000950493/)
Article
Luo, Xingbo;
(2011)
The Development of the Research Methods of British Science in Late 17th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001221314/)
Article
Antonio Clericuzio;
(2018)
Plant and Soil Chemistry in Seventeenth-Century England: Worsley, Boyle and Coxe
(/isis/citation/CBB365909346/)
Article
Kazuhiro Shibata;
(2023)
Spirits and the Prolongation of Life in Francis Bacon: Commonality and Difference between the Inanimate and the Animate
(/isis/citation/CBB419100100/)
Chapter
Giglioni, Guido;
(2005)
The Hidden Life of Matter: Techniques for Prolonging of Life in the Writings of Francis Bacon
(/isis/citation/CBB000772022/)
Thesis
Jacqueline L. Cowan;
(2015)
No "Idle Fancy:" The Imagination's Work in Poetry and Natural Philosophy from Sidney to Sprat
(/isis/citation/CBB947007104/)
Article
Lukas M. Verburgt;
(2021)
The Works of Francis Bacon: A Victorian Classic in the History of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB801042380/)
Article
Doina-Cristina Rusu;
(2018)
Same Spirit, Different Structure: Francis Bacon on Inanimate and Animate Matter
(/isis/citation/CBB723943257/)
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
History of European Ideas
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
Chinese Journal for the History of Science and Technology
Be the first to comment!