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Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences by Philip Fisher...
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About this item
Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing.
eBay item number:296966871789
Item specifics
- Condition
- Country of Origin
- United States
- Signed By
- No
- Signed
- No
- Book Series
- Historical
- Ex Libris
- No
- Narrative Type
- Nonfiction
- Original Language
- English
- Intended Audience
- Adults
- Inscribed
- No
- Edition
- First Edition
- Vintage
- Yes
- California Prop 65 Warning
- Does Not Apply
- Personalize
- No
- Type
- Activity Book
- Literary Movement
- Modernism, Naturalism
- Era
- 1990s
- Personalized
- No
- Features
- Dust Jacket, Illustrated, Unabridged
- ISBN
- 9780674955615
- Book Title
- Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences
- Publisher
- Harvard University Press
- Item Length
- 9 in
- Publication Year
- 1999
- Format
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- Illustrator
- Yes
- Item Height
- 0.7 in
- Genre
- Philosophy
- Topic
- Aesthetics
- Item Weight
- 17.5 Oz
- Item Width
- 6 in
- Number of Pages
- 208 Pages
About this product
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Harvard University Press
ISBN-10
0674955617
ISBN-13
9780674955615
eBay Product ID (ePID)
522423
Product Key Features
Book Title
Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences
Number of Pages
208 Pages
Language
English
Publication Year
1999
Topic
Aesthetics
Illustrator
Yes
Genre
Philosophy
Format
Hardcover
Dimensions
Item Height
0.7 in
Item Weight
17.5 Oz
Item Length
9 in
Item Width
6 in
Additional Product Features
Intended Audience
Trade
LCCN
98-022515
Dewey Edition
21
Reviews
Philip Fisher's new book not only is about wonder, but is in itself a wondrous performance-fresh, provocative, original, and sure to provoke lively debate in the fields of aesthetics and epistemology', At a time when so much writing in the theory of art and the criticism of culture can seem to sublime itself without managing to become interesting, Philip Fisher has produced an aesthetics of wonder that provides the freshness of experience he undertakes to explain., An impressive literary-philosophical-geometric thesis that argues for the primacy of the feeling of wonder on confronting rare beauty in art or in nature., Like Kant, Fisher wants to sketch out 'the lively border' between aesthetics and intelligibility, and he is to be applauded for pursuing this border in and of itself, without reducing aesthetic experience to ideology, sociology, or identity politics, as the greater part of university literary criticism has tended to do over the past decade. Unlike Kant, Fisher employs an eclectic discursive method, passing with admirable erudition from Descarte's account of the rainbow to Plato's geometrical problem of how to double the area of a square to an analysis of two abstract canvases by Cy Twombly., In Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences , Philip Fisher confronts one of our most fundamental cliches about the modern era: that science, by explaining the mechanics of the physical world, has demystified our world. We now know how tornadoes and rainbows work, how suns and planets are made, and how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Has this knowledge brought a loss of innocence'...Fisher argues the opposite...In this delightful history of attempts to understand the rainbow, Fisher shows that wonder and science walk hand in hand... Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences is an excellent exercise in stretching the mind, and it is full of extraordinary insights. With his study, Fisher has emulated the actors in the grand story of human learning--the pioneers who went after the wonderful, and in so doing, gave us more., Philip Fisher's book on wonder is a brilliant, original, and wide-ranging study of a subject that has only recently become visible to intellectual historians. It is also, like all Fisher's work, marvelously lucid and richly suggestive, In Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences, Philip Fisher confronts one of our most fundamental cliches about the modern era: that science, by explaining the mechanics of the physical world, has demystified our world. We now know how tornadoes and rainbows work, how suns and planets are made, and how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Has this knowledge brought a loss of innocence'...Fisher argues the opposite...In this delightful history of attempts to understand the rainbow, Fisher shows that wonder and science walk hand in hand...Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences is an excellent exercise in stretching the mind, and it is full of extraordinary insights. With his study, Fisher has emulated the actors in the grand story of human learning--the pioneers who went after the wonderful, and in so doing, gave us more., A short but ample book, in which Fisher ranges well beyond his home territory of literature into science, mathematics, philosophy, architecture, mythology, and modern art and where Shakespeare rubs shoulders with Frank Lloyd Wright, Nabokov with Aristotle, Newton with Cy Twombly. Fisher takes wonder where he finds it, in the Chicago skyline, Miranda's exclamations in The Tempest or Descartes's explanation of the rainbow. Experiences of wonder may be by definition rare, but for Fisher they are dispersed all over the map of knowledge...This is a learned, cultivated work.
Dewey Decimal
111/.85
Table Of Content
The Aesthetics of Rare Experiences Wonder and the Sublime Philosophy Begins in Wonder Visual Experience: Wonder and the Ordinary The Instant of Wonder and the Instant of Thought The Rainbow and Cartesian Wonder The Aesthetics of the Rainbow Noah's Rainbow and Religious Intelligibility From Wonder to Thought Descartes and the Scientific Passion of Wonder Descartes's Definition of Wonder Pascal's Alternative: Imagination, Terror, Abyss Wonder Fades with Age Wonder and the Steps of Thought The Template of Wonder: To Be Human Is to Learn One and Only One Step Plato's Meno and Learning by Wonder Socratic Silence Explanation and Demystification Explanation and the Aesthetics of the Rainbow Fear of Explanation and Explanation by Fear The Dull Catalogue of Common Things: Genus, or Explanation by Kind Singularity and the Everyday Rainbow and Raindrop: Explanation by Substitution Aristotle's Geometry of the Experience of Rainbows: Explanation by Structure From Wonder to Explanation Transition to Aesthetic Wonder Seeing What Cannot Be Seen The Visual, the Visible, and the Intelligible Ruling Out Memory Intelligibility, Wonder, and Recognition Rainbow, Explanation, Error Recognition: Can Only Memory Guide Intelligibility? The Newness Effect in Modern Art Thinking through the Work of Art Cy Twombly's "Blackboard Painting" Blackboards and Temporary Writing Master Metaphors and Bright Ideas The Work of Art as a Field of Details The Return of Recognition and Memory Notes Acknowledgments Index
Synopsis
Why pause and study this particular painting among so many others ranged on a gallery wall? Wonder, which Descartes called the first of the passions, is at play; it couples surprise with a wish to know more, the pleasurable promise that what is novel or rare may become familiar. This is a book about the aesthetics of wonder, about wonder as it figures in our relation to the visual world and to rare or new experiences. In three instructive instances--a pair of paintings by Cy Twombly, the famous problem of doubling the area of a square, and the history of attempts to explain rainbows--Philip Fisher examines the experience of wonder as it draws together pleasure, thinking, and the aesthetic features of thought. Through these examples he places wonder in relation to the ordinary and the everyday as well as to its opposite, fear. The remarkable story of how rainbows came to be explained, fraught with errors, half-knowledge, and incomplete understanding, suggests that certain knowledge cannot be what we expect when wonder engages us. Instead, Fisher argues, a detailed familiarity, similar to knowing our way around a building or a painting, is the ultimate meeting point for aesthetic and scientific encounters with novelty, rare experiences, and the genuinely new.
LC Classification Number
BH301.W65 1998
Item description from the seller
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- i***d (75)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseItem as described. Shipped very fast, and packaged well!
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- g***n (448)- Feedback left by buyer.Past yearVerified purchaseBook as described and was packed pretty good. Shipped promptly. This book is a fascinating read. The author of this book, Simon Goodman, was featured on the PBS series Secrets of the Dead: Plunderer The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief, Part 2. Watch this PBS program then read this book on the Goodman family. Many thanks to book seller Magdalena156.SIGNED The Orpheus Clock : The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by.. (#296383541075)
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