The Sidereal Visions of Kant, Humboldt, and Einstein: An Introduction to German Cosmological Prose

Beginning with an examination of the problems inherent in the unorthodox approach "science as literature," this dissertation attempts an examination of creative language use and speculative fantasy in that field of the physical sciences which is perhaps man's boldest fiction, i.e., cosmography. Germany's contribution to the modern version of this creative effort has been significant, beginning with Johannes Kepler and gaining mature vernacular expression with the Newtonian Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (1755) by Immanuel Kant, a work that initiated the still current "nebular hypothesis" of cosmogony, suggested systematic replication on a galactic scale, and also predicted planets beyond Saturn. In the mid-nineteenth century, Alexander von Humboldt synthesized contemporary knowledge of the natural world in a consciously aesthetic description of the cosmic "landscape," Kosmos (1845-1858). Early in the twentieth century, Albert Einstein's numerous essays (1905-1917) and his paradigmatic "Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitatstheorie" (1916) revolutionized modern cosmology with a fanciful vision of gravitationally curved space, time dilation, and ultimate equivalence of mass and energy.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

German

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Mcculloh, Mark Richard

• Literature, Germanic
• History of Science

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8309983

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/71045