The Perfecting of Nature

The Perfecting of Nature PDF Author: Josh Doty
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781469659619
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"The nineteenth century saw a marked change in how Americans viewed and understood the human corporal form. Cookbook writers drew from physiologists' studies of the nervous pathways between the stomach and the brain to promote their recipes as good for mental health. These new ways of understanding the body reflect how Americans were beginning to see the body's constituent parts as interconnected. From the Transcendentalists' idealized concept of self to the rise of Darwinian Theory after the Civil War, the era and its writers redefined the human body as a deeply reactive and malleable object. In this book, Josh Doty explores the 'plasticity' of the antebellum American body-the body's ability to react and change from interior and exterior forces-and argues that literature helped to shape the cultural reception of these ideas"--

The Perfecting of Nature

The Perfecting of Nature PDF Author: Josh Doty
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781469659619
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The nineteenth century saw a marked change in how Americans viewed and understood the human corporal form. Cookbook writers drew from physiologists' studies of the nervous pathways between the stomach and the brain to promote their recipes as good for mental health. These new ways of understanding the body reflect how Americans were beginning to see the body's constituent parts as interconnected. From the Transcendentalists' idealized concept of self to the rise of Darwinian Theory after the Civil War, the era and its writers redefined the human body as a deeply reactive and malleable object. In this book, Josh Doty explores the 'plasticity' of the antebellum American body-the body's ability to react and change from interior and exterior forces-and argues that literature helped to shape the cultural reception of these ideas"--

The Perfecting of Nature

The Perfecting of Nature PDF Author: Josh Doty
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146965962X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
The nineteenth century saw a marked change in how Americans viewed and understood the human form. These new ways of understanding the body reflect how Americans were beginning to see the body's constituent parts as interconnected. From the transcendentalists' idealized concept of self to the rise of Darwinian theory after the Civil War, the era and its writers redefined the human body as both deeply reactive and malleable. Josh Doty explores antebellum American conceptions of bioplasticity—the body's ability to react and change from interior and exterior forces—and argues that literature helped to shape the cultural reception of these ideas. These new ways of thinking about the body's responsiveness to its surroundings enabled exercise fanatics, cold-water bathers, cookbook authors, and everyday readers to understand the tractable body as a way to reform the United States at the physiological level. Doty weaves together analysis of religious texts, nutritional guides, and canonical literature to show the fluid relationship among bodies, literature, and culture in nineteenth-century America.

Promethean Ambitions

Promethean Ambitions PDF Author: William R. Newman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226577139
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
In an age when the nature of reality is complicated daily by advances in bioengineering, cloning, and artificial intelligence, it is easy to forget that the ever-evolving boundary between nature and technology has long been a source of ethical and scientific concern: modern anxieties about the possibility of artificial life and the dangers of tinkering with nature more generally were shared by opponents of alchemy long before genetic science delivered us a cloned sheep named Dolly. In Promethean Ambitions, William R. Newman ambitiously uses alchemy to investigate the thinning boundary between the natural and the artificial. Focusing primarily on the period between 1200 and 1700, Newman examines the labors of pioneering alchemists and the impassioned—and often negative—responses to their efforts. By the thirteenth century, Newman argues, alchemy had become a benchmark for determining the abilities of both men and demons, representing the epitome of creative power in the natural world. Newman frames the art-nature debate by contrasting the supposed transmutational power of alchemy with the merely representational abilities of the pictorial and plastic arts—a dispute which found artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Bernard Palissy attacking alchemy as an irreligious fraud. The later assertion by the Paracelsian school that one could make an artificial human being—the homunculus—led to further disparagement of alchemy, but as Newman shows, the immense power over nature promised by the field contributed directly to the technological apologetics of Francis Bacon and his followers. By the mid-seventeenth century, the famous "father of modern chemistry," Robert Boyle, was employing the arguments of medieval alchemists to support the identity of naturally occurring substances with those manufactured by "chymical" means. In using history to highlight the art-nature debate, Newman here shows that alchemy was not an unformed and capricious precursor to chemistry; it was an art founded on coherent philosophical and empirical principles, with vocal supporters and even louder critics, that attracted individuals of first-rate intellect. The historical relationship that Newman charts between human creation and nature has innumerable implications today, and he ably links contemporary issues to alchemical debates on the natural versus the artificial.

The Hungry Soul

The Hungry Soul PDF Author: Leon Kass
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226425689
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Originally published: New York: Free Press; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada; New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, c1994. With new foreword.

Nature and Creature

Nature and Creature PDF Author: Jan Aertsen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004084513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description


Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine & Feminine

Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine & Feminine PDF Author: Sarah Schneider
Publisher: Sarah (Susan) Schneider
ISBN: 9780765761484
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
This book not only publicizes Jewish texts that are indisputably authoritative, but also enables people who do not have the skills or resources to access this experience on their own to directly encounter kabbalistic source material. Its luminous wisdom is sure to inspire a respect and affection for the Torah and its traditions. In Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine and Feminine, the texts speak for themselves. Their authoritative voices are the soul and might of this work. As proof texts they verify statements made in their name, and as holy texts they transform all who take them to heart.

Deschler's Precedents of the United States House of Representatives

Deschler's Precedents of the United States House of Representatives PDF Author: Lewis Deschler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Parliamentary practice
Languages : en
Pages : 892

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Book Description


The Nature of Evil

The Nature of Evil PDF Author: D. Koehn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403979375
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
When human beings do horrifying things, are they evil? By exploring such popular literature as The Talented Mr. Ripley , Dante's Inferno , The Turn of the Screw , and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Koehn illustrates that the roots of human violence are not true evil but a symptom of our failure to really know who we are. It is this lack of understanding of ourselves that can lead humans to perform horrifying deeds, rather than 'evil' itself. This is a deep look into human nature, its beauty and its failings. The Nature of Evil offers an insightful and engaging exploration at a time when we are all struggling to understand the roots of violence and suffering.

The Principle of the Incarnation

The Principle of the Incarnation PDF Author: Henry Clark Powell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Incarnation
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description


The Harvard Classics: Literary and philosophical essays, French, German and Italian

The Harvard Classics: Literary and philosophical essays, French, German and Italian PDF Author: Charles William Eliot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literature
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
V. 49--Epic and saga.