Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-315) and index.

The narrative of scientific epistemology -- Dying to know Descartes -- Carlyle, Descartes, and objectivity : lessen thy denominator -- Autobiography as epistemology : the effacement of self -- My life as a machine : Francis Galton, with some reflections on A.R. Wallace -- Self-effacement revisited : women and scientific autobiography -- The test of truth : Our Mutual Friend -- Daniel Deronda : a new epistemology -- The Cartesian Hardy : I think, therefore I'm doomed -- Daring to know : Karl Pearson and the romance of science -- The epistemology of science and art : Pearson and Pater.

"Levine shows that for nineteenth-century scientists, novelists, poets, and philosophers, access to the truth depended on conditions of such profound self-abnegation that pursuit of it might be taken as tantamount to the pursuit of death. The Victorians, he argues, were dying to know in the sense that they could imagine achieving pure knowledge only in a condition where the body ceases to make its claims: to achieve enlightenment, virtue, and salvation, one must die."--Jacket.

Description based on print version record.