Read more
In this cultural, literary, and intellectual history, Gayle Rogers traces debates over speculation from antiquity to the present. Celebrated by Boethius as the height of humanity's mental powers but denigrated as sinful by John Calvin, speculation eventually became central to the scientific revolution's new methods of seeing the natural world. In the nineteenth century, writers such as Jane Austen used the concept to diagnose the marriage market, redefining speculation for the purpose of social critique. Speculation fueled the development of modern capitalism, spurring booms, busts, and bubbles, and recently artificial intelligence has automated the speculation previously done by humans, with uncertain and troubling consequences. Unraveling these histories and many other disputes, Rogers argues that what has always been at stake in arguments over speculation, and why it so often appears so threatening, is the authority to produce and control knowledge about the future.
List of contents
Introduction
1. The Mirror and the Watchtower
2. Experimenting on Thought
3. Gambling on a Word
4. America the Speculative
5. Speculitis, or The Technologies of Prophecy
6. The Lady Speculator
Conclusion: Speculative Risks, Inhuman Imaginations
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the author
Gayle Rogers is Andrew W. Mellon Professor and chair of English at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature (Columbia, 2016) and Modernism and the New Spain: Britain, Cosmopolitan Europe, and Literary History (2012).
Summary
In this cultural, literary, and intellectual history, Gayle Rogers traces the debates over speculation from antiquity to the present. Recasting centuries of contests over the power to anticipate tomorrow, this book reveals the crucial role speculation has played in how we create—and potentially destroy—the future.
Additional text
Any reader interested in a different conceptual introduction in the history of economics may take up this book. Equally enjoyable for language and philosophy enthusiasts.
