The Writing of Spirit by Sarah M. Pourciau - 9780823275625

The Writing of SpiritSoul, System, and the Roots of Language Science\nAuthor(s): Sarah M. Pourciau\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Fordham University Press, United States\nImprint: Fordham University Press\nISBN-13: 9780823275625, 978-0823275625\nSynopsis\nContemporary thought has been profoundly shaped by the early-twentieth-century turn toward synchronic models of explanation, which analyze phenomena as they appear at a single moment, rather than diachronically as they develop through time. But the relationship between time and system remains unexplained by the standard account of this shift. Through a new history of systematic thinking across the humanities and sciences, The Writing of Spirit argues that nineteenth-century historicism wasn't simply replaced by a more modern synchronic perspective. The structuralist revolution consisted rather in a turn toward time's absolutely minimal conditions, and thus also toward a new theory of diachrony.\n Pourciau arrives at this surprising a.