Life and Matter: A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe

Oliver Joseph LodgeProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
159K words
Chapters
16

Tags

English Originals Popular Science Science and PhilosophyScience EnlightenmentNatural PhilosophyCritique of MaterialismWestern ThoughtMoral DilemmaAcademic MonographAcademic StudyIntellectual CommentaryCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Life and Matter: A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe"Author: Lodge, Oliver, Sir, 1851-1940,Language: English, Class: BD: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Speculative Philosophy, General Philosophical works, Release Date: Aug 15, 2008

Editor's review

This book is the British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge's critical response to Haeckel's The Riddle of the Universe. Haeckel explained the universe, life, and mind through monistic materialism, whereas Lodge, from a physicist's perspective, questions the simple equation of life with matter and discusses fundamental questions such as the nature of life and the relationship between consciousness and matter. Its value lies not in offering definitive conclusions but in presenting one facet of the early twentieth-century encounter between science and philosophy, allowing readers to see how a scientist draws boundaries between empirical method and metaphysical questions. The writing is polemical in character, with clear logical progression, but it involves a great deal of the intellectual background of the time and requires some patience. It is suitable as supplementary reading for research in the history of science, the history of philosophy, or the relationship between science and religion, and also for readers interested in the monistic materialism controversy to read alongside Haeckel's original work. The free electronic edition facilitates searching and excerpting, making it suitable for note-taking close reading rather than quick commuting reading.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the relevant chapters or summaries of Haeckel's The Riddle of the Universe first, then enter this book's critique; comparative reading makes the arguments easier to grasp.
  2. Take brief notes by chapter, marking Lodge's core claims about life, consciousness, and matter for later review.
  3. When encountering late nineteenth-century intellectual figures and terms, check the background as you go; do not insist on understanding everything in one reading.
  4. Treat the book as historical material rather than definitive conclusions; after finishing, look for modern scientific and philosophical discussions for reference.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
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  15. 15
  16. 16

FAQ

Is this book a Chinese translation of Haeckel's The Riddle of the Universe? No. This book is a critical work written by Lodge in English, raising objections to Haeckel's The Riddle of the Universe. It is not a translation of the original work and contains no Chinese translation.
Can I understand it without a philosophy background? Yes, but patience is required. The book involves concepts such as monism and materialism and the polemical context of the time. It is advisable to first understand Haeckel's basic claims and to use reference works for terminology; reading will then be smoother.
Is this book suitable for understanding modern life science? Not very. It is a document of early twentieth-century scientific and philosophical debate, focused on philosophical analysis of the relationship between life and matter rather than experimental conclusions from modern biology or neuroscience.
What practical advice is there for reading the electronic edition? Use the search function to locate keywords such as life, consciousness, and matter, and combine this with annotations for thematic reading. Because it is a public-domain e-book, choose an edition with clear typesetting and stable page numbers for citation.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Oliver Joseph Lodge Author · British · 1851–1940

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) was a British physicist and writer and one of the pioneers of radio. Born in Staffordshire and died in Wiltshire, he was a professor at the University of Liverpool and the University of Birmingham. He is known for improving radio wave detectors and for holding tuning patents, and he was knighted in 1902. His more than forty books range over the history of science, physics and faith, philosophical debate, and psychical research; representative works include Pioneers of Science, The Ether of Space, Life and Matter, and Raymond. His writing combines specialist exposition with accessible presentation for general readers, often linking scientific ideas to philosophical and religious concerns, and he had some influence on early twentieth-century science communication and discussions of psychical research.