Literary Infinities

Literary Infinities PDF

Author: Baylee Brits

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-11-16

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1501331477

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Today, we have forgotten that mathematics was once aligned with the arts, rather than with the sciences. Literary Infinities analyses the connection between the late 19th-century revolution in the mathematics of the infinite and the literature of 20th-century modernism, opening up a novel path of influence and inquiry in modernist literature. Baylee Brits considers the role of numbers and the concept of the infinite in key modernists, including James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett and J.M. Coetzee. She begins by recuperating the difficult and rebellious German mathematician, Georg Cantor, for the broader artistic, cultural and philosophical project of modernism. Cantor revolutionized the mathematics of the infinite, creating reverberations across the numerical sciences, philosophy, religion and literary modernism. This 'modernist' infinity is shown to undergird and shape key innovations in narrative form, creating a bridge between the mathematical and the literary, presentation and representation, formalism and the tactile imagination.

The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Mathematics

The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Mathematics PDF

Author: Robert Tubbs

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 628

ISBN-13: 3030554783

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This handbook features essays written by both literary scholars and mathematicians that examine multiple facets of the connections between literature and mathematics. These connections range from mathematics and poetic meter to mathematics and modernism to mathematics as literature. Some chapters focus on a single author, such as mathematics and Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, or Charles Dickens, while others consider a mathematical topic common to two or more authors, such as squaring the circle, chaos theory, Newton’s calculus, or stochastic processes. With appeal for scholars and students in literature, mathematics, cultural history, and history of mathematics, this important volume aims to introduce the range, fertility, and complexity of the connections between mathematics, literature, and literary theory. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via [link.springer.com|http://link.springer.com/].

Being Modern

Being Modern PDF

Author: Robert Bud

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2018-10-10

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 1787353931

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In the early decades of the twentieth century, engagement with science was commonly used as an emblem of modernity. This phenomenon is now attracting increasing attention in different historical specialties. Being Modern builds on this recent scholarly interest to explore engagement with science across culture from the end of the nineteenth century to approximately 1940. Addressing the breadth of cultural forms in Britain and the western world from the architecture of Le Corbusier to working class British science fiction, Being Modern paints a rich picture. Seventeen distinguished contributors from a range of fields including the cultural study of science and technology, art and architecture, English culture and literature examine the issues involved. The book will be a valuable resource for students, and a spur to scholars to further examination of culture as an interconnected web of which science is a critical part, and to supersede such tired formulations as 'Science and culture'.

The Richness of the History of Mathematics

The Richness of the History of Mathematics PDF

Author: Karine Chemla

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-11-27

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 3031408551

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This book, a tribute to historian of mathematics Jeremy Gray, offers an overview of the history of mathematics and its inseparable connection to philosophy and other disciplines. Many different approaches to the study of the history of mathematics have been developed. Understanding this diversity is central to learning about these fields, but very few books deal with their richness and concrete suggestions for the “what, why and how” of these domains of inquiry. The editors and authors approach the basic question of what the history of mathematics is by means of concrete examples. For the “how” question, basic methodological issues are addressed, from the different perspectives of mathematicians and historians. Containing essays by leading scholars, this book provides a multitude of perspectives on mathematics, its role in culture and development, and connections with other sciences, making it an important resource for students and academics in the history and philosophy of mathematics.

Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century

Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century PDF

Author: A. Reeve-Tucker

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-05-07

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1137336625

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Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century considers the links between utopianism and modernism in two ways: as an under-theorized nexus of aesthetic and political interactions; and as a sphere of confluences that challenges accepted critical models of modernist and twentieth-century literary history. An international group of scholars considers works by E. M. Forster, Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, Naomi Mitchison, Katharine Burdekin, Rex Warner, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Thomas Pynchon, Elizabeth Bowen, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Ernst Bloch. In doing so, this volume's contributors prompt new reflections on key aspects of utopianism in experimental twentieth-century literature and non-fictional writing; deepen literary-historical understandings of modernism's socio-political implications; and bear out the on-going relevance of modernism's explorations of utopian thought. Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century will appeal to anyone with an interest in how deeply and how differently modernist writers, as well as writers influenced by or resistant to modernist styles, engaged with issues of utopianism, perfectibility, and social betterment.

Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought

Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought PDF

Author: Vladimir Tasic

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001-08-30

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0199881510

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This is a charming and insightful contribution to an understanding of the "Science Wars" between postmodernist humanism and science, driving toward a resolution of the mutual misunderstanding that has driven the controversy. It traces the root of postmodern theory to a debate on the foundations of mathematics early in the 20th century, then compares developments in mathematics to what took place in the arts and humanities, discussing issues as diverse as literary theory, arts, and artificial intelligence. This is a straightforward, easily understood presentation of what can be difficult theoretical concepts It demonstrates that a pattern of misreading mathematics can be seen both on the part of science and on the part of postmodern thinking. This is a humorous, playful yet deeply serious look at the intellectual foundations of mathematics for those in the humanities and the perfect critical introduction to the bases of modernism and postmodernism for those in the sciences.

Sciences of Modernism

Sciences of Modernism PDF

Author: Paul Peppis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-02-28

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1107660084

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Sciences of Modernism examines key points of contact between British literature and the human sciences of ethnography, sexology and psychology at the dawn of the twentieth century. The book is divided into sections that pair exemplary scientific texts from the period with literary ones, charting numerous collaborations and competitions occurring between science and early modernist literature. Paul Peppis investigates this exchange through close readings of literary works by Claude McKay, E. M. Forster, Mina Loy, Rebecca West and Wilfred Owen, alongside science books by Alfred Haddon, Havelock Ellis, Marie Stopes, Bernard Hart and William Brown. In so doing, Peppis shows how these competing disciplines participated in the formation and consolidation of modernism as a broad cultural movement across a range of critical discourses. His study will interest students and scholars of the history of science, literary modernism, and English literature more broadly.

The Art of Uncertainty

The Art of Uncertainty PDF

Author: Daniel Williams

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-02-29

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1009436112

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Daniel Williams shows how, in a profoundly numerical age, Victorian novels imagined thought and action in the face of uncertainty.