![]() ![]() Early scientists used metaphor to define the phenomenon they studied. They both drew on empirical experience, of course, but weighed much more heavily on the imaginative possibilities afforded by literary knowledge. Early science’s observed particular and modest witness together formed the backbone of evidence and authority in this new episteme. More radically, I argue, the main technologies that made natural philosophy intellectually possible were so because they could be articulated in literary terms. ![]() ![]() What does this mean? Natural philosophy in the late seventeenth century-the term for science at this time-relied on literariness to present experimental findings the textual representation of such discoveries necessitated an extensive use of figurative language. I begin with the argument that early science formulated itself through literary knowledge. It tells the story of how literariness came to be distinguished from its epistemological sibling, science, as a source of truth about the natural and social worlds. ![]() This is a book about the experimental imagination in the British Enlightenment. The memory, senses, and understanding are, therefore, all of them founded on the imagination, or the vivacity of our ideas.ĭavid Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) ![]()
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