The Natural Philosophical Essay—Reflections on a Genre

Philosophy and Rhetoric 55 (3):303-311 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article reflects on the natural scientific variant of the philosophical essay, with discussions of the essays of James Clerk Marxwell, Steven Jay Gould, and Carlo Rovelli. It suggests that the natural scientific essay is an important source of the philosophical essay eclipsed by the prominence of the essay form in art and literary criticism. It assesses the role of chance and improvisation in the natural scientific essay and considers its potential as an avenue both of scientific research and of the wider dissemination of scientific thought.

Categories

Add categories

Keywords

Reprint years

DOI

10.5325/philrhet.55.3.0303

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 92,150

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

My notes

Similar books and articles

The Essay and the Art of Interpretation: Caygill and Nietzsche.Stephen Howard - 2022 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 55 (3):274-285.
The Philosophical Essay.Jon Cook - 2022 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 55 (3):286-302.
The distinction between the Gothic as a genre and the Horror as a separate Literary genre.Subhasis Chattopadhyay - manuscript
Natural law: the scientific ways of treating natural law, its place in moral philosophy, and its relation to the positive sciences of law.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (ed.) - 1975 - [Philadelphia]: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Melancholy cosmopolitanism: reflections on a genre of European literary fiction.Ian Ellison - 2021 - History of European Ideas 47 (6):1022-1037.
A Postscript to Max Scheler’s “On the Rehabilitation of Virtue”.Eugene Kelly - 2005 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79 (1):39-43.
Natural Theology & Classical Apologetics.Joshua Synon - unknown
The methodological dimension of the Newtonian revolution: Review Essay of Steffen Ducheyne: The main business of natural philosophy: Isaac Newton's natural-philosophical methodology.Eric Schliesser - 2013 - Metascience (2):329-333.
Reflections on Popular Culture and Philosophy.Alexander Christian - 2021 - Kriterion – Journal of Philosophy 35 (4):335-357.
Hegel's Critique of Fichte in the 1802/3 Essay on Natural Right.James Clarke - 2011 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 54 (3):207 - 225.
Writing Scientific Biography.Mott T. Greene - 2007 - Journal of the History of Biology 40 (4):727 - 759.
Philosophical Writing - an Introduction.Aloysius Martinich - 1996 - Cambridge, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Philosophical Writing: An Introduction.Aloysius Martinich - 1996 - Cambridge, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
The Trials of Modernity: The Emergence of the Essay in Seventeenth-Century England.Scott Manning Stevens - 1997 - Dissertation, Harvard University
Analysis of an academic genre.Dominique Maingueneau - 2002 - Discourse Studies 4 (3):319-341.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-10-18

Downloads
13 (#1,039,189)

6 months
8 (#365,731)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Howard Caygill
Kingston University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references