Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Metafact: Essayistic Science in Eighteenth-Century France

Metafact: Essayistic Science in Eighteenth-Century France

Erickson, Lars O.

Paperback

Series: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatu, Book 278

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 0807892823
ISBN13: 9780807892824
Publisher: Univ Of North Carolina Pr
Published: Jul 19 2004
Pages: 200
Weight: 0.82
Height: 0.59 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.18
Language: English
Why is science often considered the opposite of literature? Lars O. Erickson examines the relationship between these two fields in eighteenth-century France and finds that the major intellectual and scientific transitions of the period can be better understood by paying attention to literary developments, particularly in genres not traditionally associated with learned societies. Erickson examines works by Diderot and Maupertuis and identifies a shared renegade spirit he calls essayistic science. He demonstrates how the essay, a vague genre characterized by an openness to lay audiences, a self-reflective character, and an insistence on broad overviews, was used to react to a crisis in knowledge and to question the production of facts. Consequently, essayistic science does not deal with facts but with metafacts, breaking down scientific traditions and bridging objective science with subjective literature.

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