In the early decades of the twentieth century, engagement with science was commonly used as an emblem of modernity. This phenomenon is now attracting increased attention in different historical specialties. Being Modern builds on this recent interest to explore engagements with science across culture from the end of the nineteenth century to approximately 1940. Addressing the breadth of cultural forms in Britain and the western world from the architecture of Le Corbusier to working class British science fiction, Being Modern paints a rich picture. Seventeen distinguished contributors from a range of fields, including the history of science and technology, art, architecture, and English culture and literature examine the issues involved. The book will be a valuable resource for further examination of culture as an interconnected web of which science was a critical part.
Author(s): Robert Bud
Publisher: UCL Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 440
Tags: Modern, Cultural Impact, Science
Cover......Page 1
Half-Title......Page 2
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Foreword......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 8
Contents......Page 10
List of illustrations......Page 14
Contributors......Page 18
Being Modern: Introduction......Page 22
Section 1: Science, modernity and culture......Page 42
1 Multiple modernisms in concert: the sciences, technology and culture in Vienna around 1900......Page 44
2 The cinematic sound of industrial modernity: first notes......Page 61
3 Woolf’s atom, Eliot’s catalyst and Richardson’s waves of light: science and modernism in 1919......Page 79
4 T.S. Eliot: modernist literature, disciplines and the systematic pursuit of knowledge......Page 98
Section 2: Tensions over science......Page 114
5 Modernity and the ambivalent significance of applied science: motors, wireless, telephones and poison gas......Page 116
6 ‘The springtime of science’: modernity and the future and past of science......Page 151
7 ‘Come on you demented modernists, let’s hear from you’:
science fans as literary critics in the 1930s......Page 168
Section 3: Mathematics and physics......Page 188
8 Modern by numbers: modern mathematics as a model for literary modernism......Page 190
9 Sculpture in the Belle Epoque: mathematics, art and apparitions in school and gallery......Page 209
10 Architecture, science and purity......Page 228
11 A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Ham: wireless, modernity and interwar nuclear physics......Page 266
12 Whose modernism, whose speed? Designing mobility for the future, 1880s–1945......Page 295
Section 4: Life, biology and the organicist metaphor......Page 312
13 Ludwig Koch’s birdsong on wartime BBC radio: knowledge, citizenship and solace......Page 314
14 ‘More Modern than the Moderns’: performing cultural evolution in the Kibbo Kift Kindred......Page 332
15 Organicism and the modern world: from A.N. Whitehead to Wyndham Lewis and D.H. Lawrence......Page 358
16 Liquid crystal as chemical form and model of thinking in Alfred Döblin’s modernist science......Page 378
17 ‘I am attracted to the natural order of things’:
Le Corbusier’s rejection of the machine......Page 394
Epilogue: Science after modernity......Page 407
Select bibliography......Page 415
Index......Page 425
Back-Cover......Page 440
