Age of Wonder, The (edition 2008)

Excellent book, wonderfully written about innovative scientists of the early1800s. The middle is a bit sagging, but it's worth reading to the end for the summing up and reading about the newly emerging at that time opinions about scientists, including the coinage of that term, not to mention the disruption of earlier religious and philosophical beliefs because of the revelations of geology and astronomy.

This book is perfect for any lover of the Patrick O'Brian books, as it features the irrepressible Joseph Banks throughout, not to mention the Herschels, who were an amazing family. It ends with a youthful Darwin, pointing out that "with the growing public knowledge of geology and astronomy, and the recognition of 'deep space' and 'deep time', fewer and fewer men of women of education can have believed in a literal, Biblical six days of creation. However, science itself had yet to produce its own theory (or myth) of creation, and there was no alternative Newtonian Book of Genesis--as yet. That is why Darwin's On The Origin of Species appeared so devastating when it was finally published in 1859. It was not that it reduced the six days of Biblical creation to myth: this had already been largely done by Lyell and the geologists. What it demonstrated was that there was no need for a divine creation at all."

Also the author makes an impassioned, important plea: "We need to consider how [scientists] are increasingly vital to any culture of progressive knowledge, to education...., and to the understanding of the planet and its future. For this, I believe, science needs to be presented and explored in a new way. We need not only a history of science, but a more enlarged and imaginative biographical writing about individual scientists. Here the perennially cited difficulties with the 'two cultures', and specifically with mathematics, can no longer be accepted as a valid limitation. We need to understand how science is actually made; how scientists themselves think and feel and speculate. We need to explore what makes scientists creative, as well as poets or painters, or musicians." ( )

This very good book describes science and leading scientists in the UK in the romantic era (roughly 1770 to 1830) with a not entirely successful attempt to highlight the links between the literary and scientific worlds. The scientific part of the book has similarities to Lisa Jardine's Ingenious Pursuits telling of 17th century science in England.
The slightly clunky attempt to bring the science and literary worlds together is saved by the author's extensive knowledge of both worlds and his generous approach to the foibles of the people and the times, and his eye for humour.
Read April 2013. ( )

This book covers the state of science in England from the late eighteenth century up to the voyage of Charles Darwin in the early 1830s. At that time there was a lot more cross-fertilization between science and art (particularly poetry) than there is now. It was an era where science, like any other high human endeavor, was expected to enrapture and ennoble the species and the spirit, rather than just unravel the truth.

Key figures dealt with in the book are John Banks and his voyage to Tahiti, William and Caroline Herschel and their telescopes, the balloonists who pioneered manned flight, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, poet and science buff William Taylor Coleridge, and chemist Humphry Davy.

Particularly interesting are the sexual license discovered and participated in by Banks in Tahiti, the role of Caroline Herschel as one of the first respected female scientists, and the wild nitrous oxide parties (disguised as experimentation) thrown by Humphry Davy.

I had read Darwin's On the Origin of Species recently, and it was enlightening to see exactly how he fit into his time. ( )

The Age of Wonder covers the period in British science from Captain Cook's voyage around the world with the young Joseph Banks sailing on the Endeavour as the expedition's naturalist up to shortly after an equally young Charles Darwin sailed on the Beagle as that expedition's naturalist. Richard Holmes focuses on a few of the leading figures of the time, including Banks, the Herschels (William and Caroline), Mungo Park, Davy, Mary Shelley (what ideas were current among literary,philosophical, and scientific circles that led to her famous novel?), Coleridge and his peers, and the next generation of scientists such as Faraday, Babbage, Darwin, and John Herschel along with Mary Somerville as a populariser of science.

Although I read this over several months with other reads between sections, in the end, I found it to be a great look at this period in the history of science. At the beginning of Banks career, first as a naturalist and then as the very influential President of the Royal Society, there was not really a separation of the various branches of intellectual life. The Society's lectures were not only attended by observers and experimenters in science but by poets, essayists, and interested members of the general public. Many of the literary figures dabbled in science and many of the scientists wrote poetry. In fact the very word scientist was invented towards the end of this period, being first suggested at an early meeting of the BAAS.

Not only am I interested in learning more about the various scientists mentioned in Holmes' narrative but I'm also interested in reading more about Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, the Shelleys, Byron, and Keats, and their works, but most especially the essays of Coleridge. This is a book I would like to have on my own shelves but, alas, it must go back to the library.

I rarely finish a non-fiction book. No matter how fascinating the subject matter, the writing must be exceptionally special to hold my attention. This is such a book. Not since "Undaunted Courage" have I been so swept up. ( )