Understanding Nature [electronic resource] : Case Studies in Comparative Epistemology / by Hub Zwart.

Comparative Epistemology -- Antecedents: Comparative Epistemology as an Outcome -- Animal Epistemology -- What is an Animal? A Comparative Epistemology of Animals -- What is a Whale? Moby-Dick, Marine Science and the Sublime -- What is a Dog? Animal Experiments and Animal Novels -- The Birth of a Research Animal -- Plants, Landscapes and Environments -- Aquaphobia, Tulipmania, Biophilia: A Moral Geography of the Dutch Landscape -- Taming Microbes: Ibsen's Dr. Stockmann as a Contemporary of Pasteur and Koch -- Pea Stories. Why was Mendel's Research Ignored in 1866 and Rediscovered in 1900? -- Jules Verne's Oeuvre: A Literary Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology -- Conclusion -- Epistemological Exercises: Towards a Typology of Knowledge Forms.

This book starts from the conviction that there are other ways of knowing about nature besides science. Notably, literary documents (novels, plays, poems) on nature and the natural entities (landscapes, animals, plant forms) may be based on careful observations, quite elaborate and true to life. Comparative epistemology is the discipline that tries to assess, in a critical manner, the relative validity and value of various knowledge forms. This volume presents a series of case studies in comparative epistemology, critically comparing the works of prominent representatives of the life sciences (such as Aristotle, Darwin, Mendel and many others) with the writings of their literary counterparts (Andersen, Melville, Verne, Ibsen, and many others). It constitutes a major contribution to the expanding field of Science and Literature Studies, allowing basic insights from the sciences and the humanities to mutually challenge and enlighten one another.