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E-book Modernism, Fiction and Mathematics

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Penilaian

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‘Mighty are numbers; joined with art, resistless.’1 The quotation from Euripides’ play Hecuba joins the two elements at the heart of this book, and it expresses the pleasure resulting from the combination of mathematics and literature – domains that are often regarded as alien or opposed to each other. The context of the quotation reveals, however, that it does not refer to the rela-tion between maths and fiction, but is a threat that, with cunning, Hecuba’s numerous fellow Trojan women will help her ‘master men’ and avenge her son.2 The suggestion that number bears power also relates to the argument of this book: mathematics is generally regarded as certain and true and believed to constitute authoritative knowledge; yet, literature draws on the privileged position of number and calculation for its own purposes and in the course thereof questions the established power structure of the disciplines.If mathematics and literature are often viewed as diametrically opposed, a focus on modernist interrelations between these fields might appear particu-larly surprising: science and modernism can seem mutually contradictory, since modernism is commonly understood to react against a modernity rooted in the scientific revolution and Enlightenment valuation of reason. And as Isaac Newton’s immensely influential Principia Mathematica (1687) signals in its very title, early modern inquiries into nature allocated a central role to math-ematics and established its place at the extreme end of scientific rationality. On the other hand, however, the abstractness of maths has provoked ques-tions about its relation to reality, and it has been understood to deal with ideal constructs that escape the restrictions of the given world. This book explores how literature draws on the contradictory image of maths and reflects the sometimes surprising relations between the fields. With this focus, I seek to help redress an imbalance in scholarship: mathematics has received far less attention in the humanities than other sciences. While scholars from a range of disciplines have explored Charles Darwin’s work on evolution, the principles of quantum mechanics or Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and their connections with modernist literature and the arts, similarly decisive developments in mathemat-ics are less widely remembered. But these also shaped modern worldviews, and reverberations in the works of philosophers, artists and literary writers suggest that we have to pay greater attention to the cultural relations of mathematics and more closely consider its place among manifestations of modernism.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

809 ENG m

Penerbit

London : Edinburgh University Press., 2018

Deskripsi Fisik

202 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781474416245

Klasifikasi

809

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Critical Appraisal of More Than Two Literatures

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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