Genetics And The Literary Imagination

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Genetics and the Literary Imagination

Author : Clare Hanson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192542788
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis Genetics and the Literary Imagination by : Clare Hanson

Download or read book Genetics and the Literary Imagination written by Clare Hanson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Textual Perspectives is a series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures, and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental works and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question familiar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works. This is the first book to explore the dramatic impact of genetics on literary fiction over the past four decades. After James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 and the subsequent cracking of the genetic code, a gene-centric discourse developed which had a major impact not only on biological science but on wider culture. As figures like E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins popularised the neo-Darwinian view that behaviour was driven by genetic self-interest, novelists were both compelled and unnerved by such a vision of the origins and ends of life. This book maps the ways in which Doris Lessing, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro wrestled with the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of human nature and with the challenge it posed to humanist beliefs about identity, agency, and morality. It argues that these novelists were alienated to varying degrees by neo-Darwinian arguments but that the recent shift to postgenomic science has enabled a greater rapprochement between biological and (post)humanist concepts of human nature. The postgenomic view of organisms as agentic and interactive is echoed in the life-writing of Margaret Drabble and Jackie Kay, which also explores the ethical implications of this holistic biological perspective. As advances in postgenomics, especially epigenetics, provoke increasing public interest and concern, this book offers a timely analysis of debates that have fundamentally altered our understanding of what it means to be human.

Genetics and the Literary Imagination

Author : Clare Hanson
Publisher : Oxford Textual Perspectives
ISBN 13 : 0198813287
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis Genetics and the Literary Imagination by : Clare Hanson

Download or read book Genetics and the Literary Imagination written by Clare Hanson and published by Oxford Textual Perspectives. This book was released on 2020-05-13 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to explore the dramatic impact of genetics on literary fiction over the past four decades. After James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 and the subsequent cracking of the genetic code, a gene-centric discourse developed which had a major impact not only on biological science but on wider culture. As figures like E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins popularised the neo-Darwinian view that behaviour was driven by genetic self-interest, novelists were both compelled and unnerved by such a vision of the origins and ends of life. This book maps the ways in which Doris Lessing, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro wrestled with the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of human nature and with the challenge it posed to humanist beliefs about identity, agency, and morality. It argues that these novelists were alienated to varying degrees by neo-Darwinian arguments but that the recent shift to postgenomic science has enabled a greater rapprochement between biological and (post)humanist concepts of human nature. The postgenomic view of organisms as agentic and interactive is echoed in the life-writing of Margaret Drabble and Jackie Kay, which also explores the ethical implications of this holistic biological perspective.

Fictional Realities

Author : J. J. A. Mooij
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027222185
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Fictional Realities by : J. J. A. Mooij

Download or read book Fictional Realities written by J. J. A. Mooij and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of the role of the imagination. It focuses on the imaginative use of language in literature (poetry and narrative prose); but it also touches on some more comprehensive issues, for the questions it discusses are questions regarding the relationship between mind, reality and unreality. The first two chapters survey the thinking about the imagination in the history of philosophy. The main trends and the main problems are discussed, particularly in respect of the (positive or negative) evaluation of imagination. The subsequent chapters investigate the role of the imagination from a closer point of view. How is it that imagination appears in literary art? Central topics of discussion are the nature of narrativity, of fictional discourse and fictional objects, of realistic fiction, of symbolism and metaphor. Moreover, the similarities (both real and imagined) between literature and the other arts are explored. In all chapters attention is paid to the problem of the value of art and literary imagination. The last chapter addresses this issue head-on. In particular, it attempts to define the value of literature in relation to science.

Biofictions

Author : Lejla Kucukalic
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000441571
Total Pages : 138 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Biofictions by : Lejla Kucukalic

Download or read book Biofictions written by Lejla Kucukalic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-22 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biofictions introduces three novel concepts: ‘biofiction,’ ‘bioimagination,’ and ‘biodiscourse’ to talk about intersections of literary and visual texts and biotechnology. The book proposes a new interdisciplinary area of research that correlates processes of genetics and literature, based on two critical approaches. One, drawing parallels between the genetic codes, human language, formal (binary) language, and posthuman communication and the role of meaning and imagination in these forms of communication. Two, by defining ‘biofictions’ as a critical scientific-artistic concept and as a corpus of texts that engage ideas and developments in molecular biology. Syncretic connection between biotechnology and literature is especially evident in an open science movement and the literary artistic genre of biopunk, discussed across chapters. The study includes well-known contemporary texts, such as David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, that are recontextualized as biofiction; it offers a rereading of important but neglected novels such as Thomas Disch’s Camp Concentration (1967); and it analyzes new visual texts such as the TV series Altered Carbon and Ghost in the Shell films. Based on these wide-ranging examples and new critical concepts, the book argues that coming up with possible alterations for the genetic code or intended traits for the organism is a discursive practice that brings into being bionarratives that are both organic and literary. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Genetics and the Novel

Author : Paul Hamann-Rose
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031531000
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Genetics and the Novel by : Paul Hamann-Rose

Download or read book Genetics and the Novel written by Paul Hamann-Rose and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Goodness and the Literary Imagination

Author : Toni Morrison
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813943639
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Goodness and the Literary Imagination by : Toni Morrison

Download or read book Goodness and the Literary Imagination written by Toni Morrison and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What exactly is goodness? Where is it found in the literary imagination? Toni Morrison, one of American letters’ greatest voices, pondered these perplexing questions in her celebrated Ingersoll Lecture, delivered at Harvard University in 2012 and published now for the first time in book form. Perhaps because it is overshadowed by the more easily defined evil, goodness often escapes our attention. Recalling many literary examples, from Ahab to Coetzee’s Michael K, Morrison seeks the essence of goodness and ponders its significant place in her writing. She considers the concept in relation to unforgettable characters from her own works of fiction and arrives at conclusions that are both eloquent and edifying. In a lively interview conducted for this book, Morrison further elaborates on her lecture’s ideas, discussing goodness not only in literature but in society and history—particularly black history, which has responded to centuries of brutality with profound creativity. Morrison’s essay is followed by a series of responses by scholars in the fields of religion, ethics, history, and literature to her thoughts on goodness and evil, mercy and love, racism and self-destruction, language and liberation, together with close examination of literary and theoretical expressions from her works. Each of these contributions, written by a scholar of religion, considers the legacy of slavery and how it continues to shape our memories, our complicities, our outcries, our lives, our communities, our literature, and our faith. In addition, the contributors engage the religious orientation in Morrison’s novels so that readers who encounter her many memorable characters such as Sula, Beloved, or Frank Money will learn and appreciate how Morrison’s notions of goodness and mercy also reflect her understanding of the sacred and the human spirit.

Editing the Soul

Author : Everett Hamner
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271080523
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Editing the Soul by : Everett Hamner

Download or read book Editing the Soul written by Everett Hamner and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2017-09-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal genome testing, gene editing for life-threatening diseases, synthetic life: once the stuff of science fiction, twentieth- and twenty-first-century advancements blur the lines between scientific narrative and scientific fact. This examination of bioengineering in popular and literary culture shows that the influence of science on science fiction is more reciprocal than we might expect. Looking closely at the work of Margaret Atwood, Richard Powers, and other authors, as well as at film, comics, and serial television such as Orphan Black, Everett Hamner shows how the genome age is transforming both the most commercial and the most sophisticated stories we tell about the core of human personhood. As sublime technologies garner public awareness beyond the genre fiction shelves, they inspire new literary categories like “slipstream” and shape new definitions of the human, the animal, the natural, and the artificial. In turn, what we learn of bioengineering via popular and literary culture prepares the way for its official adoption or restriction—and for additional representations. By imagining the connections between emergent gene testing and editing capacities and long-standing conversations about freedom and determinism, these stories help build a cultural zeitgeist with a sharper, more balanced vision of predisposed agency. A compelling exploration of the interrelationships among science, popular culture, and self, Editing the Soul sheds vital light on what the genome age means to us, and what’s to come.

Double Helix History

Author : Jerome De Groot
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000643034
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Double Helix History by : Jerome De Groot

Download or read book Double Helix History written by Jerome De Groot and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-08-29 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Double Helix History examines the interface between genetics and history in order to investigate the plausibility of ‘new’ knowledge derived from scientific methods and to reflect upon what it might mean for the practice of history. Since the mapping of the human genome in 2001, there has been an expansion in the use of genetic information for historical investigation. Geneticists are confident that this has changed the way we know the past. This book considers the practicalities and implications of this seemingly new way of understanding the human past using genetics. It provides the first sustained engagement with these so-called ‘genomic histories’. The book investigates the ways that genetic awareness and practice is seemingly changing historical practice and conceptualisation. Linking six concepts – ‘Public’, ‘Practice’, ‘Ethics’, ‘Politics’, ‘Self’, and ‘Imagination – Double Helix History outlines the ways that genetic information, being postgenomic, the public life of DNA, and the genetic historical imaginary work on the body, on collective memory, on the historical imagination, on the ethics of historical investigation, on the articulation of history, and on the collection and interpretation of data regarding the ‘past’. This book will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in DNA, genetics, and historiography.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory

Author : Irene Rima Makaryk
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 9780802068606
Total Pages : 676 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (686 download)

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Book Synopsis Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory by : Irene Rima Makaryk

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory written by Irene Rima Makaryk and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last half of the twentieth century has seen the emergence of literary theory as a new discipline. As with any body of scholarship, various schools of thought exist, and sometimes conflict, within it. I.R. Makaryk has compiled a welcome guide to the field. Accessible and jargon-free, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory provides lucid, concise explanations of myriad approaches to literature that have arisen over the past forty years. Some 170 scholars from around the world have contributed their expertise to this volume. Their work is organized into three parts. In Part I, forty evaluative essays examine the historical and cultural context out of which new schools of and approaches to literature arose. The essays also discuss the uses and limitations of the various schools, and the key issues they address. Part II focuses on individual theorists. It provides a more detailed picture of the network of scholars not always easily pigeonholed into the categories of Part I. This second section analyses the individual achievements, as well as the influence, of specific scholars, and places them in a larger critical context. Part III deals with the vocabulary of literary theory. It identifies significant, complex terms, places them in context, and explains their origins and use. Accessibility is a key feature of the work. By avoiding jargon, providing mini-bibliographies, and cross-referencing throughout, Makaryk has provided an indispensable tool for literary theorists and historians and for all scholars and students of contemporary criticism and culture.

Life, Re-Scaled

Author : Liliane Campos
Publisher : Open Book Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1800647522
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Life, Re-Scaled by : Liliane Campos

Download or read book Life, Re-Scaled written by Liliane Campos and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume explores new engagements with the life sciences in contemporary fiction, poetry, comics and performance. The gathered case studies investigate how recent creative work reframes the human within microscopic or macroscopic scales, from cellular biology to systems ecology, and engages with the ethical, philosophical, and political issues raised by the twenty-first century’s shifting views of life. The collection thus examines literature and performance as spaces that shape our contemporary biological imagination. Comprised of thirteen chapters by an international group of academics, Life, Re-Scaled: The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance engages with four main areas of biological study: ‘Invisible scales: cells, microbes and mycelium’, ‘Neuro-medical imaging and diagnosis’, ‘Pandemic imaginaries’, and ‘Ecological scales’. The authors examine these concepts in emerging forms such as plant theatre, climate change art, ecofiction and pandemic fiction, including the work of Jeff Vandermeer, Jon McGregor, Jeff Lemire, and Extinction Rebellion’s Red Rebel Brigade performances. This valuable resource moves beyond the biological paradigms that were central to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to outline the specificity of a contemporary imagination. Life, Re-Scaled is crucial reading for academics, scholars, and authors alike, as it proposes an unprecedented overview of the relationship between literature, performance and the life sciences in the twenty-first century.

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism

Author : Rachel Carroll
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000991458
Total Pages : 703 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis The Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism by : Rachel Carroll

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism written by Rachel Carroll and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism brings unique literary, critical, and historical perspectives to the relationship between women’s writing and women’s rights in British contexts from the late eighteenth century to the present. Thematically organised around five central concepts—Rights, Networks, Bodies, Production, and Activism—the Companion tracks vital questions and debates, offering fresh perspectives on changing priorities and enduring continuities in relation to women’s ongoing struggle for liberty and equality. This groundbreaking collection brings into focus the historical and cultural conditions which have shaped the formation of British literary feminisms, including the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and Empire. From the political novel of the 1790s to early twentieth-century suffrage theatre and contemporary ecofeminism, and from the mid-Victorian antislavery movement to anti-fascist activism in the 1930s and working-class women’s writing groups in the 1980s, this book testifies to the diverse and dynamic character of the relationship between literature and feminism. Featuring contributions from leading feminist scholars, the Companion offers new insights into the crucial role played by women’s literary production in the evolving history of women’s rights discourses, feminist activism, and movements for gender equality. It will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of women’s writing, British literature, cultural history, and gender and feminist studies.

On Parchment

Author : Bruce Holsinger
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300271484
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis On Parchment by : Bruce Holsinger

Download or read book On Parchment written by Bruce Holsinger and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-21 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping exploration of the shaping role of animal skins in written culture and human imagination over three millennia “Richly detailed and illustrated. . . . An engaging exploration of book history.”—Kirkus Reviews For centuries, premodern societies recorded and preserved much of their written cultures on parchment: the rendered skins of sheep, cows, goats, camels, deer, gazelles, and other creatures. These remains make up a significant portion of the era’s surviving historical record. In a study spanning three millennia and twenty languages, Bruce Holsinger explores this animal archive as it shaped the inheritance of the Euro-Mediterranean world, from the leather rolls of ancient Egypt to the Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom. Holsinger discusses the making of parchment past and present, the nature of the medium as a biomolecular record of faunal life and environmental history, the knotty question of “uterine vellum,” and the imaginative role of parchment in the works of St. Augustine, William Shakespeare, and a range of Jewish rabbinic writers of the medieval era. Closely informed by the handicraft of contemporary makers, painters, and sculptors, the book draws on a vast array of sources—codices and scrolls, documents and ephemera, works of craft and art—that speak to the vitality of parchment across epochs and continents. At the center of On Parchment is the vexed relationship of human beings to the myriad slaughtered beasts whose remains make up this vast record: a relationship of dominion and compassion, of brutality and empathy.

Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (ICOLLITE 2022)

Author : Nuria Haristiani
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 2494069912
Total Pages : 685 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (ICOLLITE 2022) by : Nuria Haristiani

Download or read book Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (ICOLLITE 2022) written by Nuria Haristiani and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-14 with total page 685 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access book. The rapid advancement of technology has created new civilization in this digital era which affects almost all aspects of life including language, literature, culture, and education. The digital era brings opportunities as well as challenges that people have to deal with. Thus, some adjustments need to be done in order to keep up with those changes. Studies on language, literature, culture, and education need to be continuously conducted and developed to revitalize those aspects in facing the dynamic changes of the digital era. In relation to this, Faculty of Language and Literature Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (FPBS UPI) hosts this year’s International Conference on Language, Literature and Culture (ICOLLITE) with the theme “Revitalization of Language, Literature, Culture, and Education in the Digital Era” as a forum for experts and professionals to share their research, ideas, and experiences on this issue. Presenters and participants are welcome to discuss and disseminate current issues and offer solutions to the challenges of our time. Discussions on current trends in digital literacies are expected to pave way to learn from each other for betterment as one big society of humankinds, regardless of their social, economic, and cultural backgrounds.

Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children's Literature

Author : Jessica Straley
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107127521
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children's Literature by : Jessica Straley

Download or read book Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children's Literature written by Jessica Straley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-06 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary study that explores the impact of evolutionary theory on Victorian children's literature.

Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination

Author : Ewa Barbara Luczak
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137545798
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (375 download)

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Book Synopsis Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination by : Ewa Barbara Luczak

Download or read book Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination written by Ewa Barbara Luczak and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A disturbing but ultimately discredited strain in American thought, eugenics was a crucial ideological force in the early twentieth century. Luczak investigates the work of writers like Jack London and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, to consider the impact of eugenic racial discourse on American literary production from 1900-1940.

The Gene

Author : Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476733538
Total Pages : 624 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (767 download)

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Book Synopsis The Gene by : Siddhartha Mukherjee

Download or read book The Gene written by Siddhartha Mukherjee and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller The basis for the PBS Ken Burns Documentary The Gene: An Intimate History Now includes an excerpt from Siddhartha Mukherjee’s new book Song of the Cell! From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a fascinating history of the gene and “a magisterial account of how human minds have laboriously, ingeniously picked apart what makes us tick” (Elle). “Sid Mukherjee has the uncanny ability to bring together science, history, and the future in a way that is understandable and riveting, guiding us through both time and the mystery of life itself.” —Ken Burns “Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee dazzled readers with his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies in 2010. That achievement was evidently just a warm-up for his virtuoso performance in The Gene: An Intimate History, in which he braids science, history, and memoir into an epic with all the range and biblical thunder of Paradise Lost” (The New York Times). In this biography Mukherjee brings to life the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices. “Mukherjee expresses abstract intellectual ideas through emotional stories…[and] swaddles his medical rigor with rhapsodic tenderness, surprising vulnerability, and occasional flashes of pure poetry” (The Washington Post). Throughout, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—reminds us of the questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In riveting and dramatic prose, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome. “A fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making us who we are—and what our manipulation of those genes might mean for our future” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), The Gene is the revelatory and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master. “The Gene is a book we all should read” (USA TODAY).

Magic, Science, and Empire in Postcolonial Literature

Author : Kathleen Renk
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136582312
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (365 download)

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Book Synopsis Magic, Science, and Empire in Postcolonial Literature by : Kathleen Renk

Download or read book Magic, Science, and Empire in Postcolonial Literature written by Kathleen Renk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the ways in which contemporary British and British postcolonial writers in the after-empire era draw connections between magic (defined here as Renaissance Hermetic philosophy) and science. Writers such as Tom Stoppard, Zadie Smith, and Margaret Atwood critique both imperial science, or science used in service to empire, and what Renk calls "imperical science," a distortion of rational science which denies that reality is holistic and claims that nature can and should be conquered. In warning of the dangers of imperical science, these writers restore the connection between magic and science as they examine major shifts in scientific thinking across the centuries. They reflect on the Copernican Revolution and the historic split between magic and science, scrutinize Darwinism, consider the relationship between Victorian science and pseudo-science, analyze twentieth-century Uncertainty theories, reject bio/genetic engineering, call for a new approach to science that reconnects science and art, and ultimately endeavor to bring an end to the imperial age. Overall, these writers forge a new discourse that merges science with the arts and emphasizes a holistic philosophy, a view shared by both Hermetic philosophy and recent scientific theories, such as chaos or complexity theory. Along with recent books that focus on the relationship between contemporary literature and science, this work focuses on contemporary British literature’s critique of science and the ways in which postcolonial literature addresses the relationship between magic, science, and empire.