The history of science provides numerous examples of the way in which imagination, religion and mythology have sometimes helped and sometimes hindered scientific progress. While established ideas and beliefs clearly held back the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin, the intuitive knowledge found in mythology, art and religion has often proved useful in indicating new ways in which to explore or represent new knowledge of the world. Stories, fables and images have contributed to drawing a fuller picture of the past, understanding the present and imagining the future. The essays in this book, written by academics, writers and artists from various fields ranging from La Fontaine’s fables to nanotechnology and modern art, all point out the ways in which imagination works its way into all the fields of knowledge. At both ends of the spectrum, the hybrid nature of the chimera emerges as a pivotal symbol of both man’s predation instinct and a powerful symbol of his fear of extinction. This interdisciplinary book, weaving together visual representation, literature, mysticism, and science, will appeal to historians of science, philosophy, art and religion. It will also be of interest to scholars in cultural studies and anthropology. Drawing on recent scientific research and artistic production, the volume will additionally interest a wider audience wishing to learn more about man’s obsession and fascination with the potent symbolism of dinosaurs and dragons and all hybrid forms generated by the human imagination and recent technology.

The ancient form of the animal fable, in which the characteristics of humans and animals are playfully and educationally intertwined, took on a wholly new meaning after Darwin's theory of evolution changed forever the relationship between humans and animals. In this original study, Chris Danta provides an important and original account of how the fable was adopted and re-adapted by nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors to challenge traditional views of species hierarchy. The rise of the biological sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century provided literary writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Franz Kafka, Angela Carter and J. M. Coetzee with new material for the fable. By interrogating the form of the fable, and through it the idea of human exceptionalism, writers asked new questions about the place of the human in relation to its biological milieu.

Kantian Dignity and its Difficulties defends Kant's doctrine that all human beings have a moral capacity that gives them unconditional dignity. It explains how the reception of this influential doctrine was marred by serious misunderstandings, and how Kant himself fell prey to prejudices inconsistent with the doctrine. The works of J.G. Herder and Richard Price are discussed as providing an important supplement for, and parallel to, what is best in Kant. Thomas Mann's work is then discussed as a paradigmatic example of a transition from a chauvinist reading--influenced by the terrible but highly popular interpretation of Kant by Houston Stewart Chamberlain--to an enlightened understanding of Kant's philosophy, one heavily influenced by Walt Whitman and Novalis. This book is a combination of philosophical argument and historical analysis. The first chapter critically discusses a number of contemporary interpretations. It defends Kant's concept of dignity as rooted in a basic capacity of reason for morality, and therefore as an unconditional, all-or-nothing, and inviolable feature of all human beings, one that deserves universal respect. A systematic analysis based on close textual study defends Kant's position from interpretations that misconstrue it by overemphasizing mere rationality, contingent talents, or achievements. The next four chapters build on this systematic account by explaining how Kant's notion of dignity was further clarified, or seriously misunderstood or neglected, in a variety of significant international contexts: the Baltics (Herder and Prussia's relation to the east), Berlin (the rise of Fascism), Philadelphia (the Declaration of Independence), London (Richard Price and reactions to the American and French Revolutions), and Washington (reactions to World War I and II, discussed in three chapters on Thomas Mann). The book argues that Kant showed no interest in the "expanding blaze" of the American Revolution, and that, in addition to other prejudices, he had an elitist attitude that harmed his own cause. Tragically, it was the shock of German Fascism that forced Mann to emigrate and become the most influential public advocate of what is best in Kant's philosophy. Mann's "Democracy will win" campaign connected Kant's doctrine of dignity with the enlightened principles of American democracy.