Blurring Polarities: Two Cultures in Selected Works of Wilkie Collins

Abstract

This thesis describes some of Wilkie Collins' ideas and attitudes in the context of an accumulating mass of scientific knowledge. It is concerned with sources of knowledge and the changing relationship between art and science. For the majority of Victorians "science" meant something different from what we mean today.1 Now "science" is specifically a branch of knowledge systematised to deal mainly (but not exclusively) with the material and functions of the physical world and "science" is conducted on objective principles. For most Victorians, however, "science" continued to be the term used to cover the explosion of knowledge that was occurring. True to its root meaning, it could refer to any specified type of knowledge pursued in an organised fashion so that, in its broadest sense, "science" included branches as diverse as astronomy and dye stuffs, statistics and sanitation, optics and life expectancy, acoustics and numismatics, geodesy and philology, physiognomy and criminology, geology and graphology--or a host of other "ologies."