Description
Book SynopsisTraces how our understanding of the causes of human behavior has changed radically over the course of European and American cultural history since 1830. This work examines the causal factors or motives for murder - ancestry, childhood, language, sexuality, emotion, mind, society, and ideology.
Trade Review"[An] ambitious book... [Kern's] focus on murder keeps things pleasantly lurid, and his erudition and passion shine through on every page."--Publishers Weekly "Thoughtful and carefully done, the fruit of considerable research."--Richard A. Posner, Science "Kern has mastered the novels, the critical literature, and the works by philosophers and sociologists bearing on his thesis... [R]eaders familiar with the novels will see them in a new light."--Jonathan Beard, Scientific American "As a history of science and ideas, Kern's study succeeds brilliantly. Gathering the disparate knowledge systems of nearly two centuries into discrete categories, Kern produces a taxonomy of causality that is cogent and convincing... From Enlightenment positivism to quantum discontinuity; from religion to existentialism, and phrenology to cybernetics; from Freud to Nietzsche to Foucault, and from Darwin to Durkheim to Derrida: Kern ranges comfortably (and profitably) among them all. Specialists and novice alike will find much hereto learn and admire."--Peter Okun, American Historical Review "Murder stories, Kern argues, are a sort of cultural repository of thoughts about causality, of how things fit together. From the pseudo-scientific deductions of Conan Doyle to the postmodern self-reflections of Don DeLillo, Philip Kerr and Robert Coover, detective stories demonstrate how we cope with the biggest contingency of all: conscious killing."--Mark Kingwell, The Globe and Mail "Causality, Stephen Kern concedes, is hard to define and even harder to prove... [T]his book is highly recommended to everyone interested in smart and engaging interdisciplinary scholarship."--Peter Okun, American Historical Review "[An] impressive study of causality... Kern offers some fascinating insights into the relationship between science and literature, as well as the history of our attempts to explain the why and wherefore."--PD Smith, The Guardian
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Ancestry 27 Chapter 2: Childhood 64 Chapter 3: Language 108 Chapter 4: Sexuality 147 Chapter 5: Emotion 189 Chapter 6: Mind 226 Chapter 7: Society 266 Chapter 8: Ideas 304 Conclusion 359 Notes 377 Bibliography 419 Index 425
