Strange Science: Investigating The Limits Of Knowledge In The Victorian Age

ISBN: 9780472130177 出版年：2017 页码：312 Karpenko, Lara Pauline Claggett, Shalyn Rae University of Michigan Press

The essays in strange science examine marginal, fringe, and unconventional forms of scientific inquiry, as well as their cultural representations, in the victorian period. Although now relegated to the category of the pseudoscientific, fields like mesmerism and psychical research captured the imagination of the victorian public. Conversely, many branches of science now viewed as uncontroversial, such as physics and botany, were often associated with unorthodox methods of inquiry. Whether ultimately incorporated into mainstream scientific thought or categorized by 21st century historians as pseudo- or even anti-scientific, these sciences generated conversation, enthusiasm, and controversy within victorian society. To date, scholarship addressing victorian pseudoscience tends to focus either on a particular popular science within its social context or on how mainstream scientific practice distinguished itself from more contested forms.