Nervous Conditions : Science and the Body Politic in Early Industrial Britain

by Green Musselman, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780791466797
• ISBN10: 0791466795
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-30
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Nervous Conditions explores the role of the body in the development of modern science, challenging the myth that modern science is built on a bedrock of objectivity and confident empiricism. In this fascinating look into the private world of British natural philosophers-including John Dalton, Lord Kelvin, Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and many others - Elizabeth Green Musselman shows how the internal workings of their bodies played an important part in the sciences' movement to the center of modern life, and how a scientific community and a nation struggled their way into existence.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Green Musselman is Associate Professor of History at Southwestern University.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Embodied Epistemology
The Nervous Man of Science	p. 3
The Social Hierarchy of Subjectivity	p. 30
The Nervous Conditions
Provincialism and Color Blindness	p. 55
Mental Governance and Hemiopsy	p. 101
Rational Faith and Hallucination	p. 146
Conclusion	p. 189
Notes	p. 199
Bibliography	p. 229
Index	p. 267
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