Customer Reviews

The Age of Wonder

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While explaining "how the Romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science," Richard Holmes focuses on what "became the first great age of the public scientific lecture, the laboratory demonstration and the introductory textbook, often written by women. It was the age when science began to be taught to children, and the `experimental method' became the basis of a new, secular philosophy of life, in which the infinite wonders of Creation (whether divine or not) were increasingly valued for their own sake...Finally, it was the age which challenged the elite monopoly of the Royal Society, and saw the foundation of scores of new scientific institutions, mechanics institutes and `philosophical' societies."

Although Holmes poses and then responds to hundreds of questions or has others do so, "the book remains a narrative, a piece of biographical storytelling. It tries to capture something of the inner life of science, its impact on the heart, as well as on the mind. In the broadest sense it aims to present scientific passion, so much if it which is summed up in that childlike, but infinitely complex word, [begin italics] wonder [end italics]."

In the Epilogue, offering an especially eloquent and compelling conclusion to his book, Holmes acknowledges that "there is a particular problem with finding endings in science. Where do these science stories really finish? Science is truly a relay race, with each discovery handed on to the next generation. Even as one door is closing, another door is already being thrown open....

"But science is now continually reshaping its history retrospectively. It is starting to look back and rediscover its beginnings, its earliest traditions and triumphs, but also its debates, its uncertainties and its errors...Similarly, it seems to me impossible to understand fully the contemporary debates about the environment, or climate change, or genetic engineering, or alternative medicine, or extraterrestrial life, or the future of consciousness, or even the existence of God, without knowing how these arose from the hopes and anxieties of the Romantic generation.

"But perhaps most important, right now, is the changing appreciation of how scientists themselves fit into society as a whole, and the nature of the particular creativity they bring to it. We need to consider how they are increasingly vital to any culture of progressive knowledge, to the education of young people (and the not so young), and to our understanding of the planet and its future. Foe this, I believe science needs to be presented and explored in a new way. We need not only a new history of science, but an enlarged and imaginative biographical writing about individual scientists...

"The old, rigid debates and boundaries - science versus religion, science versus the arts, science versus traditional ethics - are no longer enough. We should be impatient with them. We need a wider, more generous, more imaginative perspective. Above all, perhaps, we need the three things that a scientific culture can sustain: the sense of individual wonder, the power of hope, and the vivid but questing belief in a future for the globe. And that is how this book might possibly end." And indeed so it does.

Congratulations to Richard Holmes on a brilliant achievement. Bravo!

This is a ranging review of all that might be of interest to a history buff during the interval between the voyages of Cook in the Endeavour and Darwin in the Beagle. The author calls this the Age of Wonder. It was by his account a true age of wonder. Beware of reading this book in bed. You will alienate your partner by the frequency with which you say "listen to this" as you read another snippet.

Look, I get this is an academic subject but to draw me in you have to write a whole lot better. I gave up halfway through this book as although I found the information on the Mongolfier brothers' ballooning, Joseph Banks' life in Tahiti and William Herschel's exploration of the stars really wonderful, the chapters all began to sound exactly the same.

They'd all seem to start off introducing the topic or person with background on their parents and family life leading up to whatever it is they became famous for. Then we'd end all chapters with some connection to a Romantic poet.

I also found the whole book way too English-centric. Yes, there are French scientists and inventors thrown in but I just felt could it really be that Britain rules the science waves, too?

Anyway, another annoying point is the fact some totally fascinating aspects are never fully explained. Apparently back in 1700s, ordinary people attended scientific and medical lectures and this created "stars" of these people. It seems unfathomable in this day and age so was this the way the world was back then pre-movies/TV?

Then there's the whole ability to actually earn a living by having royalty pay for scientists to tinker around. Again, a different era as today scientists would be employed by the private sector or in universities. There's also the case of William Herschel originally making a living in music by farming himself out as a music teacher cum conductor in small towns around England. I found that totally fascinating as if every little town competed against every other town for some musical status.

These nuggets do make the book rise but then are dragged down by this dirge-like text. This book needed a much sharper editor to pare it down to crisper text. The thing is 466 pages long and has a 58-page index! That's all well and good if you doing an academic paper but this is put out by Harper Press for the general public. Cut the chafe and get to the wheat of the matter and this book would be a solid 5 stars.

Richard Holmes dates the period of Romantic science as extending (at least symbolically) between two celebrated voyages of exploration: Captain Cook's expedition around the world aboard the Endeavour which began in 1768, and Charles Darwin's voyage to the Galapagos Islands aboard the Beagle, which began in 1831.

While this is a group biography, covering a number of different scientists at work during this period, the lives and discoveries of three men are central. First is Joseph Banks (1743-1820) who, as a young botanist, was on board the Endeavour when she reached Tahiti in 1769. Banks features throughout much of the book: he was President of the Royal Society for over 40 years from 1778.
The other two central figures are William Herschel (1738-1822) and Humphry Davy (1778-1829). These men were stars of what Coleridge called the `second scientific revolution' in his Philosophical Lectures of 1819. Richard Holmes considers that this second revolution was primarily inspired by a series of breakthroughs in astronomy and chemistry.

`The notion of an infinite, mysterious Nature, waiting to be discovered or seduced into revealing all her secrets, was widely held.'

We follow a number of different journeys in this book: Banks, and the `ambiguous paradise' of Tahiti. William Herschel's ambition was to construct a reflector telescope, an instrument that `might plunge deep down into the sky and explore it like an unplumbed ocean of stars.' Hershel's work, together with that of his sister Caroline - herself an astronomer - is covered in detail here. Humphry Davy writes of his exploration of nitrous oxide: `By degrees as the pleasurable sensations increased, I lost all connection with external things; trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through my mind and were connected with words in such a manner as to produce perceptions perfectly novel. I existed in a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas.'

But it is the detail of Humphry Davy's invention of the miner's safety lamp that focussed my attention. Even more than the fact that the best mould for making a metal lens for a telescope involved pounded horse-dung.

Read, too, about the first balloonists, who went soaring from the earth in the 1780s. They learned far more about the earth than they expected, in their search for knowledge of the skies. And, there is also a chapter about Mungo Park's (1771-1806) expeditions in Africa. I had not previously heard of him.

The journeys are emotional, imaginative and intellectual as well as physical. There's a thought-provoking chapter entitled `Dr Frankenstein and the Soul', and consider the `Vitalism' debate. We now know that galvanic and electrical energy cannot create life from inert matter, but what imaginary monsters have been created as a consequence?

I thoroughly enjoyed this book: discovered some new learning of my own as well as finding a new context for some previously acquired knowledge.

In 1833, William Whewell coined the word `scientist'. Perhaps coining this term, even though it wasn't widely adopted until some years later, really defines the end of the period of Romantic science.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

June 24th 1833 was the date when the word 'scientist' was arguably coined. At a meeting for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, William Whewell was addressing the packed Senate House on the nature of science when the applause died down one sole figure remained standing, and to the surprise of everyone present, it was that of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He remarked of the members present in the room that the name they used for their profession was no longer appropriate, men knee deep in mud searching for fossils being called 'natural philosophers' didn't quite seem right and the other moniker 'men of science' hardly included the likes of Caroline Herschel; something better had to be devised. As an actual metaphysician himself Coleridge wanted a name that would more reflect the practical and hands-on nature of their work. Whewell's suggestion was that one could by analogy of art to artist go from science to scientist and thus the word was born.

This book deals with how we progressed from the pure philosophy of the inductive reasoning of Bacon and Newton and the rationalism and foundationalism of Descartes, through the independently wealthy and crown sponsored men of Royal Society to the more familiar profession of science of Whewhell, Charles Darwin and beyond. At the heart of this book are biographies of three of the guiding lights of Romantic science. The first is of Sir Joseph Banks whose botanical voyages in Tahiti with Captain Cook opened his eyes to a world of experience and adventure which, when he himself was crippled by gout and unable to travel, encouraged in others as the President of the Royal Society. The second is William Herschell and his redoubtable sister Caroline who brought skill, ingenuity and a complete thoroughness to the science of astrology through regular nightly sweeps of the sky and better telescopic technology that helped them discover Uranus and two of its moons as well as two moons of Saturn and a catalogue of over 500 new nebulae. Finally we meet Sir Humphry Davy and his experiments with gases and electricity that made him a veritable rock star.

Part of what makes this period so exciting is that the arts and sciences had an almost symbiotic existence. Erasmus Darwin and Humpry Davy both composed poetry whilst the likes of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Shelly wrote pamphlets on science and natural philosophy. It was a synthesis that was mutually beneficial which makes me think that Stephen Hawking was all the more wrong when in his most recent book 'The Grand Design' he made the pronouncement that 'philosophy is dead' a somewhat ironically self-defeating philosophical stance.

It was an exciting period in history, the exploration of Africa and the islands of the South Pacific. The advent of flight with the early experiments in Ballooning. There was also an exciting cast, not just the poets and triumvirate of scientists mentioned above but the likes of Michael Faraday, Thomas Beddoes, Mungo Park and the rest. Holmes infuses the narrative with his own sense of wonder and as the book ends with Charles Darwin heading off on the HMS Beagle he leaves us wanting to know what comes next.