University of Virginia Press
Reading Popular Newtonianism: Print, the Principia, and the Dissemination of Newtonian Science
Key Metrics
- Laura Miller
- University of Virginia Press
- Hardcover
- 9780813941257
- 8.8 X 6.5 X 0.8 inches
- 1 pounds
- Literary Criticism > Books & Reading
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Sir Isaac Newton's publications, and those he inspired, were among the most significant works published during the long eighteenth century in Britain. Concepts such as attraction and extrapolation--detailed in his landmark monograph Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica--found their way into both scientific and cultural discourse. Understanding the trajectory of Newton's diverse critical and popular reception in print demands consideration of how his ideas were disseminated in a marketplace comprised of readers with varying levels of interest and expertise.
Reading Popular Newtonianism focuses on the reception of Newton's works in a context framed by authorship, print, editorial practices, and reading. Informed by sustained archival work and multiple critical approaches, Laura Miller asserts that print facilitated the mainstreaming of Newton's ideas. In addition to his reading habits and his manipulation of print conventions in the Principia, Miller analyzes the implied readership of various popularizations as well as readers traced through the New York Society Library's borrowing records. Many of the works considered--including encyclopedias, poems, and a work written for the ladies--are not scientifically innovative but are essential to eighteenth-century readers' engagement with Newtonian ideas. Revising the timeline in which Newton's scientific ideas entered eighteenth-century culture, Reading Popular Newtonianism is the first book to interrogate at length the importance of print to his consequential career.
Author Bio
Dr. Laura Miller received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1988. She came to UMSL in August 2010. Endowed Chair in Japanese Studies.
After graduation from the University of California, Santa Barbara with BA degrees in Anthropology and Asian Studies, Dr. Miller taught English and supervised an English language program for Teijin Educational Systems in Osaka, Japan (1977-1981). She began teaching anthropology in the 1980s in Los Angeles, and has been a faculty member at several universities. At UMSL, she will teach new courses on Japanese culture and linguistic anthropology.
Dr Miller is currently working on two new book projects. Japanese Girl Stuff builds on multiple interests and expertise in linguistic anthropology, Japanese popular culture, and gender and media. She is also co-editing (with Alisa Freedman and Christine Yano) the volume Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan, a collection which crosses the fields of history, anthropology, literature, and visual studies, investigating the lived experiences and cultural depictions of women who worked in service industries related to ideas of mobility.
Source: University of Missouri - St Louis
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