The Natural Laws of Plot

"Connecting the history of the novel to the history of science, this book argues that, in the novel from Defoe to Austen and Scott, plot explored alongside natural philosophy the idea of a unified and regular physical world. How do bodies move, stop, or combine? How do things exert force or resist it, decay, or combine with each other? How are natural kinds organized? How can experiences reveal something about the order of the world? Where do human wishing and action belong in it?"--Publisher marketing.