Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture & Technology in the Twentieth Century
A wide-ranging collection of intellectual essays exploring the transformation of culture and technology in the twentieth century. Crossing five domains — nature, history, language, art, and human evolution — the book examines how technology has fundamentally altered human values and ways of thinking. Drawing on the new science of chaos, computer art, and Baconian empiricism, it traces how modern people have, like figures disappearing through a skylight, drifted ever further from traditional conceptions of nature and culture. Written by a former director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, this stimulating work of cultural criticism blends literary scholarship with a deep engagement with science.
Work Information
Humanity is now disappearing through the skylight — slipping outside the culture it has nurtured — and almost no one has noticed.
O. B. Hardison Jr. was a professor of English literature at Georgetown University and served as director of the Folger Shakespeare Library from 1969 to 1983. This book, his final work, won the 1990 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Current Interest category. Reading the intellectual and technological revolutions of the twentieth century through five lenses — nature, history, language, art, and human evolution — the book examines how modern science and technology have transformed human self-understanding. Topics range from the Mandelbrot set and chaos theory to computer music, concrete poetry, and artificial intelligence, all illuminating a deeper cultural transformation beneath the surface. Hardison died in August 1990 at the age of 61; the LA Times Book Prize was announced just weeks before his death. The book was first published by Viking in 1989, and later issued in paperback by Penguin Books.
Review Summaries
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Reader response has been largely positive, with particular praise for the author's ability to write about cutting-edge science in accessible prose and for the bold sweep of the argument across five domains. Some readers find the range of topics leads to a somewhat diffuse overall argument.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Penguin Books
- Published
- 1990-12-01
- Pages
- 416 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 17.78 x 2.54 x 12.7 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780140115826
- ISBN-10
- 014011582X
- Price
- 6198 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Science/History & Philosophy/History of Technology
Offers a discursive account of modern man's progressive separation from nature and its impact on science and technology, art, music, history, and language