Author: David N. StamosPublisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 143846391X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 604
Book Description
Explores the science and creative process behind Poes cosmological treatise. In 1848, almost a year and a half before Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of forty, his book Eureka was published. In it, he weaved together his scientific speculations about the universe with his own literary theory, theology, and philosophy of science. Although Poe himself considered it to be his magnum opus, Eureka has mostly been overlooked or underappreciated, sometimes even to the point of being thought an elaborate hoax. Remarkably, however, in Eureka Poe anticipated at least nine major theories and developments in twentieth-century science, including the Big Bang theory, multiverse theory, and the solution to Olbers paradox. In this bookthe first devoted specifically to Poes science sideDavid N. Stamos, a philosopher of science, combines scientific background with analysis of Poes life and work to highlight the creative and scientific achievements of this text. He examines Poes literary theory, theology, and intellectual development, and then compares Poes understanding of science with that of scientists and philosophers from his own time to the present. Next, Stamos pieces together and clarifies Poes theory of scientific imagination, which he then attempts to update and defend by providing numerous case studies of eureka moments in modern science and by seeking insights from comparative biography and psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolution. Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka, and Scientific Imagination is the most comprehensive treatment of Eureka that has yet been published. It is staggeringly thorough in its analysis of Poes book, but it also shows how Poes theories of cosmogony and cosmology ramify into his fiction and poetry, especially the tales of ratiocination. Stamos takes Eureka seriously, and he does so with the empirical undergirding of vast amounts of scientific scholarship and literary criticism. James M. Hutchisson, author of Poe
