Abstract:Joseph Addison’s and Richard Steele’s The Spectator turned anecdotes into the moral equivalents of experiments in the science of human nature. Just as the experimental reports of the early Royal Society described exceptions to the ordinary workings of nature, The Spectator anecdotes describe incidents that unsettle normative assumptions about how beings do or ought to act, and so help generate new knowledge of human nature. Mr. Spectator’s anecdotal method gave the papers the appearance of novelty for its orig… Show more
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