Perception And Analogy Poetry Science And Religion In The Eighteenth Century Rosalind Powell by Rosalind Powell 9781526157058, 1526157055 instant download after payment.

Perception and analogy explores ways of seeing scientifically in the
eighteenth century. It discusses literary, theological, and didactic
texts alongside popular works on astronomy, optics, ophthalmology, and
the body to demonstrate how readers are prompted to take on a range of
perspectives in their acquisition of scientific knowledge. With
reference to topics from colour perception to cataract surgery, the book
examines how sensory experience was conceptualised during the
eighteenth century. It argues that by paying attention to the period’s
documentation of perception as an embodied phenomenon we can better
understand the creative methods employed by disseminators of diverse
natural philosophical ideas. This book argues for the central role of
analogy in conceptualising and explaining new scientific ideas. It
centres on religious and topographical poetry by writers including James
Thomson, Richard Blackmore, Mark Akenside, Henry Brooke, David Mallet,
Elizabeth Carter, and Christopher Smart. Together with its readings of
popular educational dialogues on scientific topics, the book also
addresses how this analogical approach is reflected in material culture
through objects – such as orreries, camera obscuras, and Aeolian harps –
that facilitate acts of perception and tactile engagement within polite
spaces. The book shows how scientific concepts become intertwined with
Christian discourse through reinterpretations of origins and signs, the
scope of the created universe, and the limits of embodied knowledge.