The Theater of Experiment explores the crucial role of spectacle in the establishment of modern science. It analyzes eighteenth-century theatrical representations of science in order to demonstrate how experimental natural philosophy was itself a kind of performing art that was shaped by a wider culture of spectacle in the Enlightenment.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Introduction
- Science as Performance; Science in Performance
- Against the Virtuosi
- A Matter of Concern
- Prologue: "Bare Unfinish'd Histories": The Rehearsal of Natural Philosophy
- Buckingham amid the Virtuosi
- Bacon, Dryden, Sprat and the Labyrinth of Induction
- 1. The Spectacle of Experiment and the Politics of Virtuoso Satire in the 1670s
- The Modest Witness as Eager Spectator: Boyle in the Theater of Experiment
- The Virtuoso Discovered: Shadwell, Hooke and the Royal Society
- The Virtuoso Beyond Science: Bad Men and Bad Manners
- The Virtuoso as Reactionary: D'Urfey's Madam Fickle
- Virtuoso Satire and the Purification of Natural Philosophy
- 2. Retraining the Virtuoso's Gaze: The Emperor of the Moon and the
- Spectacles of Science and Politics
- The Virtuoso's Gaze Reformed: Tory Politics and Natural Philosophy
- "Hold Doting Fool, put on your Spectacles": The Show of Politics in the 1680s
- Spectacle against Enthusiasm: Behn's Emperor and the Exclusion Crisis
- Dryden's Albion to the Moon: Political and Theatrical Pressures in 1687
- 3. Physiology, Commerce and Comedy: Three Hours after Marriage and
- A Bold Stroke for a Wife
- The Virtuoso Vindicated
- From the Old Physiology to the New Psychology
- Soft Comedy and Whig Science
- Scriblerian Lampoon as Humoral Purge
- Centlivre's Humorous Circulation
- 4. Harlequin Newton: Faustus Pantomimes and Public Science in the 1720s
- "To Gaze Surpriz'd": The Panorama of Science, Magic and Pantomime
- "Surprizing Phaenomena" and the Attraction of Popular Newtonianism
- "One Wide Conflagration": The Pleasures of Harlequin Faustus
- Defoe, Conjuring and the Science of the Pantomimes
- The Force Field of Public Science
- 5. Modest Witnesses and Eager Spectators: Engendering Enlightenment
- Science
- "This Woman-hood of Yours Seems to be Mightily in the Way
- Appropriating Moliere's Learned Ladies
- Cibber, Centlivre and The Vanishing Virtuosa
- Enlightenment Periodicals and Science "for the Ladies"
- Embodying the Eager Spectator
- Epilogue: Rehearsing Spectacle
- From Spectacles to Spectators
- Reflexive Empiricism and Fielding's Spectators
- Bibliography
