Intangible Materialism: The Body, Scientific Knowledge, and the Power of Language

Description

Taking as his point of departure Norbert Weiner's statement that information is basic to understanding materialism in our era, Ronald Schleifer shows how discoveries of modern physics have altered conceptions of matter and energy and the ways in which both information theory and the study of literature can enrich these conceptions. Expanding the reductive notion of "the material" as simply matter and energy, he formulates a new, more inclusive idea of materialism.

Ronald Schleifer is George Lynn Cross Professor of English and adjunct professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma.