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Richard Sha explores the influence of science on Romanticism.
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
By Richard Holmes
Harper Press, 554pp, Pounds 25.00
ISBN 9780007149520
Published 6 October 2008
In The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes, perhaps best known for his magisterial biographies of Coleridge and Shelley, combines his keen sense of story, his erudition and his limpid prose to restore to our view a whole range of scientific conquests and debates that occurred during the Romantic period.
This is a timely and shrewd endeavour. Choosing "wonder" because it united poets and scientists, Holmes definitively puts to rest the idea that Romanticism was intensely hostile to science, and these stories testify to how impoverished a view of Romanticism that neglects science is. Educated readers and scholars alike will find this a reader-friendly intervention, and one that has the potential to thrust Romanticism back on to the radar of a wider audience. The scholarly apparatus does not obtrude, but is there for readers who want it. And Holmes' cast of characters and short bibliographies on each major subject give a rich sense of the minor players without impeding the narrative flow of his main stories.
Telling the history of science through biography makes for a compelling narrative. Framed by accounts of Joseph Banks, explorer and president of the Royal Society, William Herschel, astronomer and discoverer of Uranus, and Humphry Davy, the chemist, The Age of Wonder takes us on journeys of scientific discovery and makes us aware of the sacrifices made along the way.
Holmes opens in Tahiti, where Banks and Captain James Cook catalogued the flora and fauna. (Much of the time spent there, as Holmes details, was spent bargaining for sexual favours, and because the Tahitians needed and could not produce metal, the ship was almost stripped of nails.) We move through William and Caroline Herschel's construction of huge telescopes capable of finding planets and comets and mapping star systems. In 1781, William discovered the first planet to be found in 1,000 years, although he cautiously...