Joseph Conrad and Scientific Naturalism: Revolutionising Epistemology inThe Secret Agent

This article approaches Joseph Conrad'sThe Secret Agent(1907) as an epistemologically Janus-faced text that retrospectively parodies the material-empiricist worldview of scientific naturalism while also anticipating the absolute limits of knowledge dealt with in quantum physics. While the novel depicts the sensationalism and pervasive influence of scientific naturalism in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Conrad uses such characterisations to implicitly critique the movement as a systemic cultural and epistemological form of imperialism. His reaction to scientific naturalism and its position in society, however, causes him to confront the existence and influence of things that are completely beyond the human capacity to know. In rebuffing the growing cultural authority of science inThe Secret Agent, Conrad establishes a narrative framework for understanding the collapse of Victorian scientific epistemologies and probes the possibility of artistically representing a revolutionary form of knowledge centred on that which cannot be known.