A01=Daniel Tiffany
animal magnetism
atoms
Author_Daniel Tiffany
automata
Category=DSA
Category=JHM
Category=NHT
Category=QDTM
classical antiquity
cloud chamber photography
cultural studies
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
fireworks
imagination
lyric poetry
material substance
materialism
materialist philosophy
materiality
matter and metaphor
mechanical dolls
mind and matter
modern lyric
philosophy
poetics
popular culture
science and the arts
scientific materialism
snowflakes
toys
virtuoso
weather
western culture
western philosophy
Product details
- ISBN 9780520219229
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 08 Mar 2000
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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What begins with an unlikely collection of unrelated phenomena--mechanical dolls, weather, atoms, lyric poetry--blossoms in the course of Toy Medium into a subtle and persuasive meditation on one of Western philosophy's biggest puzzles: the relation of mind and matter. What is the role of the imagination in defining material substance? In a dazzling study of the poetics of materialist philosophy and of the materialism of lyric poetry, Daniel Tiffany traces the historical conjunction of matter and metaphor through a remarkable range of topics: automata in classical antiquity and the eighteenth century; Kepler's treatise on snowflakes; animal magnetism; fireworks and cloud-chamber photographs; the origins of the microscope as a philosophical toy and its bearing on the figure of the virtuoso. At critical junctures in modern Western culture, Tiffany finds uncanny parallels between the metaphorics of science and visions of material substance rooted in popular culture and lyric poetry. Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000
Daniel Tiffany is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Radio Corpse: Imagism and the Cryptaesthetic of Ezra Pound (1995).
