Overview
Explores the lives of astronomers and science writers and their complex inter-relationships between psyche and soma
Recognises the impact of existential trauma, life threatening illness and psychoactive substances
Achieves a greater understanding of these underlying phenomena which actuated intellectual developments
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Introduction
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Front Matter
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The Extraterrestrial Life Debate
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Front Matter
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The Ages of the Earth and Sun
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book argues that while the historiography of the development of scientific ideas has for some time acknowledged the important influences of socio-cultural and material contexts, the significant impact of traumatic events, life threatening illnesses and other psychotropic stimuli on the development of scientific thought may not have been fully recognised. Howard Carlton examines the available primary sources which provide insight into the lives of a number of nineteenth-century astronomers, theologians and physicists to study the complex interactions within their ‘biocultural’ brain-body systems which drove parallel changes of perspective in theology, metaphysics, and cosmology. In doing so, he also explores three topics of great scientific interest during this period: the question of the possible existence of life on other planets; the deployment of the nebular hypothesis as a theory of cosmogony; and the religiously charged debates about the ages of the earth and sun. From this body of evidence we gain a greater understanding of the underlying phenomena which actuated intellectual developments in the past and which are still relevant to today’s knowledge-making processes.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Cosmology and the Scientific Self in the Nineteenth Century
Book Subtitle: Astronomic Emotions
Authors: Howard Carlton
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05280-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05279-8Published: 04 August 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05282-8Published: 05 August 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-05280-4Published: 03 August 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 315
Topics: European History, History of Science, Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology, Social History