Recent Darwin scholarship has provided grounds for recognising the Origin as a literary as well as a scientific achievement. While Darwin was an acute observer, a gifted experimentalist and indefatigable theorist, this essay argues that it was also crucial to his impact that the Origin transcended the putative divide between the scientific and the literary. Analysis of Darwin's development as a writer between his journal-keeping on HMS Beagle and his construction of the Origin argues the latter draws on the pattern (...) of the Romantic or Kantian sublime. The Origin repeatedly uses strategies which challenge the natural-theological appeal to the imagination in conceiving nature. Darwin's sublime coaches the Origin's readers into a position from which to envision nature that reduces and contains its otherwise overwhelming complexity. As such, it was Darwin's literary achievement that enabled him to fashion a new 'habit of looking at things in a given way' that is the centrepiece of the scientific revolution bearing his name. (shrink)

Recent Darwin scholarship has provided grounds for recognising the Origin as a literary as well as a scientific achievement. While Darwin was an acute observer, a gifted experimentalist and indefatigable theorist, this essay argues that it was also crucial to his impact that the Origin transcended the putative divide between the scientific and the literary. Analysis of Darwin’s development as a writer between his journal-keeping on HMS Beagle and his construction of the Origin argues the latter draws on the pattern (...) of the Romantic or Kantian sublime. The Origin repeatedly uses strategies which challenge the natural-theological appeal to the imagination in conceiving nature. Darwin’s sublime coaches the Origin’s readers into a position from which to envision nature that reduces and contains its otherwise overwhelming complexity. As such, it was Darwin’s literary achievement that enabled him to fashion a new ‘habit of looking at things in a given way’ that is the centrepiece of the scientific revolution bearing his name. (shrink)

In this paper I contrast conceptions of self from two perspectives: an individualistic orientation and a communitarian approach. In doing so, the philosophical justification is Wittgenstein’s idea that individualism is produced and reinforced as a way of being, thinking and interacting in community. With this contextual frame, I argue that we are shaped by the language practices of our community to ascribe meaning and interpret our own relationships with others through our language lexicon and grammar. To illustrate the communitarian perspective (...) I refer to Māori perspectives in which connectedness is axiomatic: in particular the concepts of whanaungatanga and whakapapa, as described by Ka’ai and Metge. On the basis that such concepts are predicated on language use, I suggest that we can learn the grammar of engagement in a discursive context that emphasises connectedness just as easily as in one which is founded on separateness. I argue that interacting with an other is to engage with the ideas, beliefs, and values that shape their language, even as we expose our own. Engaging between individualistic and communitarian understandings is presented as learning to bridge language gaps between different social constructs and understandings of reality. (shrink)

Recent rhetorical critiques of philosophy and science assume a contrast between rational argument and rhetoric that is inherited from an antirhetorical tradition in philosophy. This article rejects that assumption. Rhetoric is compatible with reasoned discourse in a strong sense originally outlined by Aristotle. Rhetorical analysis reveals the inadequacy of purely demonstrative accounts of rational argument and cognitive accounts of the conditions for rational assent to propo sitions. Social studies of the rhetoric of science, and in particular of credibility claims, need (...) not fall into the forms of relativism and global antirealism with which they have become associated. (shrink)

My thesis explores the concept and manifestations of Transcendence in selected poems and prose written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge between 1796 and 1817. Amid the dissenting atmosphere in Britain, in the wake of the French Revolution, religious Truth is rigorously contested by Romantic writers and thinkers. For Kant, Transcendence is displaced by Transcendentalism in order to separate speculative reasoning from rational metaphysics. Aspiring to defend religious Truth, Coleridge feels the need to keep the transcendent faith in a living God alive (...) in ways that find congruence with transcendental philosophy. Accordingly, Coleridge explores the meaning of Truth in his writings and seeks to salvage Religion from being sheer dogmatism or superstition. Tracing different versions of Transcendence across the development of the term’s transformation in Coleridge’s thoughts and poetry is central to my reassessment of the religious and spiritual aspects of the Coleridgean Imagination. My Introduction explores the dual meanings of ‘Versions of Transcendence’ in terms of the critical approach adopted in this thesis and its content. Chapter one focuses on ‘Religious Musings’, ‘The Eolian Harp’ and ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’ to demonstrate Coleridge’s Theism and his concept of Transcendence in the late 1790s. Chapter two and three explore the ways in which Original Sin can be viewed as the impediment of Transcendence in ‘The Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Kubla Khan’ during the period 1798-1804. Chapter four and five argues for the compatibility between Transcendence and Transcendentalism in ‘A Letter to——’, ‘Dejection: An Ode’ and ‘To W. Wordsworth’ during the 1800s. Chapter six explores Coleridge’s struggles to reconcile the Fall with God’s benevolence in Christabel. Chapter seven offers a coda to the thesis and suggests through a discussion of Biographia Literaria that, for Coleridge, the highest worth of the human mind is to know the invisible God through an intuitive knowledge accessible through the Imagination. (shrink)