Richard Jefferies Critical Essay | Critical Essay by James Krasner

Critical Essay by James Krasner

SOURCE: "Blossoms of Mutation: Field Theory in the Works of Richard Jefferies, W. H. Hudson, and D. H. Lawrence," in The Entangled Eye: Visual Perception and the Representation of Nature in Post-Darwinian Narrative, Oxford University Press, Inc., 1992, pp. 139-72.

In the following excerpt, Krasner explores Jefferies's view of nature, noting that he perceives "natural energy rather than natural form."

Albert Einstein [in The Evolution of Physics, 1961] explains the emergence of field theory as follows.

The old mechanical view attempted to reduce all events in nature to forces acting between material particles.… The field did not exist for the physicist of the early years of the nineteenth century. For him only substance and its changes were real.… In the new field language it is the description of the field between the two charges, and not the charges themselves, which is essential for an understanding of their action. The...
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