Show Me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-century Britain and America - Couverture rigide

Dawson, Gowan

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 022633273X ISBN 13 : 9780226332734

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 2016

Synopsis

Nineteenth-century paleontologists boasted that, shown a single bone, they could identify or even reconstruct the extinct creature it came from with infallible certainty--"Show me the bone, and I will describe the animal!" Paleontologists such as Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen were heralded as scientific virtuosos, sometimes even veritable wizards, capable of resurrecting the denizens of an ancient past from a mere glance at a fragmentary bone. Such extraordinary feats of predictive reasoning relied on the law of correlation, which proposed that each element of an animal corresponds mutually with each of the others, so that a carnivorous tooth must be accompanied by a certain kind of jawbone, neck, stomach, limbs, and feet.

Show Me the Bone tells the story of the rise and fall of this famous claim, tracing its fortunes from Europe to America and showing how it persisted in popular science and literature and shaped the practices of paleontologists long after the method on which it was based had been refuted. In so doing, Gowan Dawson reveals how decisively the practices of the scientific elite were--and still are--shaped by their interactions with the general public.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Gowan Dawson is professor of Victorian literature and culture and director of the Victorian Studies Centre at the University of Leicester. He is coeditor of Victorian Scientific Naturalism, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and is the author of Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 2016
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 022633273X
• ISBN 13: 9780226332734
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 480
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible