A Final Story charts the formation and contestation of scientific universal histories from the nineteenth century to the present. It traces the emergence of the so-called “scientific epic,” a story of “cosmic evolution” or a “new cosmic myth.” The scientific epic is examined as a modern frame for synthesizing different branches of scientific knowledge according to a narrative, historical structure. The narrative is itself an instance of a “genre of synthesis,” a mode of unification appealing to representations such as specific images, rhetorical figures, and other discursive devices to structu ... More

A Final Story charts the formation and contestation of scientific universal histories from the nineteenth century to the present. It traces the emergence of the so-called “scientific epic,” a story of “cosmic evolution” or a “new cosmic myth.” The scientific epic is examined as a modern frame for synthesizing different branches of scientific knowledge according to a narrative, historical structure. The narrative is itself an instance of a “genre of synthesis,” a mode of unification appealing to representations such as specific images, rhetorical figures, and other discursive devices to structure and organize scientific labor and research. Scientists, popularizers, and educators produced such representations of the material and organic origins of the cosmos, scientific universal histories attempting to provide a finalizing narrative true for every person and thing. A Final Story examines the resulting reconfigurations of humanist and natural philosophical categories of knowledge in a nineteenth-century European context and, thereafter, among a network of Anglo-American and émigré scholars in the twentieth century to the present. The study concludes with an emphasis on the synthetic scientific discourse and the documentary film tradition of scientific history from the second half of the twentieth century, with a view to the still more recent emergence of humanities-centered universalizing histories and a contemporary scientific myth. That myth institutes different devices for domesticating the expanse of universal history, for contending with conceptual tensions implicit and overt in the nature of its form, while positing a culturally charged and problematized species-voice.