Mechanism and the Novel: Science in the Narrative Process

Martha Turner’s book examines the relationship between British fiction and the tradition of mechanistic science derived from Isaac Newton, and provides a bridge between the mechanical philosophy of the eighteenth century and present-day habits of thought.Tracing the evolution of the concept of mechanism among science writers and novelists of the past 200 years, it shows how the pre-mechanistic world of Pride and Prejudice and the relatively unproblematic empiricism of The Bride of Lammermoor were succeeded by the quandaries of Bleak House, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, and The Egoist, and how alternatives to the mechanistic tradition were worked out in The Secret Agent and Women in Love. Analysis of Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos: Archives identifies features of the tradition which still survive.