Richard holmes the age of wonder the romanti nce (v5 0)

The Age of Wonder How the Romantic Generation discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science Richard Holmes To Jon Cook at Radio Flatlands Two things fill my mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and persistently I reflect upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me…I see them in front of me and unite them immediately with the consciousness of my own existence IMMANUEL KANT, Critique of Practical Reason (1788) He thought about himself, and the whole Earth, Of Man the wonderful, and of the Stars, And how the deuce they ever could have birth; And then he thought of Earthquakes, and of Wars, How many miles the Moon might have in girth, Of Air-balloons, and of the many bars To perfect Knowledge of the boundless Skies; And then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes BYRON, Don Juan (1819), Canto 1, stanza 92 Those to whom the harmonious doors Of Science have unbarred celestial stores… WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, ‘Lines Additional to an Evening Walk’ (1794) Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer HUMPHRY DAVY, lecture (1810) I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, letter (1800) …Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with wond’ring eyes He stared at the Pacific… JOHN KEATS, ms of sonnet (1816) To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling… a soap bubble…an apple…a pebble…He walks in the midst of wonders JOHN HERSCHEL, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830) Yes, there is a march of Science, but who shall beat the drums of its retreat? CHARLES LAMB, shortly before his death (1834) Table of Contents Cover Page Title Page Dedication Epigraph Prologue Joseph Banks in Paradise Herschel on the Moon Balloonists in Heaven Herschel Among the Stars Mungo Park in Africa Davy on the Gas Dr Frankenstein and the Soul Davy and the Lamp Sorcerer and Apprentice 10 Young Scientists Epilogue Cast List Bibliography References Acknowledgements Index ALSO BY RICHARD HOLMES Copyright About the Publisher Prologue In my first chemistry class, at the age of fourteen, I successfully precipitated a single crystal of mineral salts This elementary experiment was done by heating a solution of copper sulphate (I think) over a Bunsen burner, and leaving it to cool overnight The next morning there it lay at the bottom of my carefully labelled test tube: a single beautiful crystal, the size of a flattened Fox’s Glacier Mint, a miniature ziggurat with a faint blue opalescence, propped up against the inside of the glass (too big to lie flat), monumental and mysterious to my eyes No one else’s test tube held anything but a few feeble grains I was triumphant, my scientific future assured But it turned out that the chemistry master did not believe me The crystal was too big to be true He said (not at all unkindly) that I had obviously faked it, and slipped a piece of coloured glass into the test tube instead It was quite a good joke I implored him, ‘Oh, test it, sir; just test it!’ But he refused, and moved on to other matters In that moment of helpless disappointment I think I first glimpsed exactly what real science should be To add to it, years later I learned the motto of the Royal Society: Nullius in Verba-‘Nothing upon Another’s Word’ I have never forgotten this incident, and have often related it to scientific friends They nod sympathetically, though they tend to add that I did not (as a matter of chemical fact) precipitate a crystal at all-what I did was to seed one, a rather different process No doubt this is so But the eventual consequence, after many years of cooling, has certainly been to precipitate this book The Age of Wonder is a relay race of scientific stories, and they link together to explore a larger historical narrative This is my account of the second scientific revolution, which swept through Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, and produced a new vision which has rightly been called Romantic science.1 Romanticism as a cultural force is generally regarded as intensely hostile to science, its ideal of subjectivity eternally opposed to that of scientific objectivity But I not believe this was always the case, or that the terms are so mutually exclusive The notion of wonder seems to be something that once united them, and can still so In effect there is Romantic science in the same sense that there is Romantic poetry, and often for the same enduring reasons The first scientific revolution, of the seventeenth century, is familiarly associated with the names of Newton, Hooke, Locke and Descartes, and the almost simultaneous foundations of the Royal Society in London and the Académie des Sciences in Paris Its existence has long been accepted, and the biographies of its leading figures are well known.♣ But this second revolution was something different The first person who referred to a ‘second scientific revolution’ was probably the poet Coleridge in his Philosophical Lectures of 1819.2 It was inspired primarily by a sudden series of breakthroughs in the fields of astronomy and chemistry It was a movement that grew out of eighteenth-century Enlightenment rationalism, but largely transformed it, by bringing a new imaginative intensity and excitement to scientific work It was driven by a common ideal of intense, even reckless, personal commitment to discovery It was also a movement of transition It flourished for a relatively brief time, perhaps two generations, but produced long-lasting consequences-raising hopes and questions-that are still with us today Romantic science can be dated roughly, and certainly symbolically, between two celebrated voyages of exploration These were Captain James Cook’s first round-the-world expedition aboard the Endeavour, begun in 1768, and Charles Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos islands aboard the Beagle, begun in 1831 This is the time I have called the Age of Wonder, and with any luck we have not yet quite outgrown it The idea of the exploratory voyage, often lonely and perilous, is in one form or another a central and defining metaphor of Romantic science That is how William Wordsworth brilliantly transformed the great Enlightenment image of Sir Isaac Newton into a Romantic one While a university student in the 1780s Wordsworth had often contemplated the full-size marble statue of Newton, with his severely close-cropped hair, that still dominates the stone-flagged entrance hall to the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge As Wordsworth originally put it, he could see, a few yards from his bedroom window, over the brick wall of St John’s College, The Antechapel, where the Statue stood Of Newton, with his Prism and silent Face Sometime after 1805, Wordsworth animated this static figure, so monumentally fixed in his assured religious setting Newton became a haunted and restless Romantic traveller amidst the stars: And from my pillow, looking forth by light Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold The Antechapel where the Statue stood Of Newton, with his prism and his silent face, The marble index of a Mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.3 Around such a vision Romantic science created, or crystallised, several other crucial conceptions-or misconceptions-which are still with us First, the dazzling idea of the solitary scientific ‘genius’, thirsting and reckless for knowledge, for its own sake and perhaps at any cost This neo-Faustian idea, celebrated by many of the imaginative writers of the period, including Goethe and Mary Shelley, is certainly one of the great, ambiguous creations of Romantic science which we have all inherited Closely connected with this is the idea of the ‘Eureka moment’, the intuitive inspired instant of invention or discovery, for which no amount of preparation or preliminary analysis can really prepare Originally the cry of the Greek philosopher Archimedes, this became the ‘fire from heaven’ of Romanticism, the other true mark of scientific genius, which also allied it very closely to poetic inspiration and creativity Romantic science would seek to identify such moments of singular, almost mystical vision in its own history One of its first and most influential examples was to become the story of the solitary, brooding Newton in his orchard, seeing an apple fall and ‘suddenly’ having his vision of universal gravitation This story was never told by Newton at the time, but only began to emerge in the mid-eighteenth century, in a series of memoirs and reminiscences.♣ The notion of an infinite, mysterious Nature, waiting to be discovered or seduced into revealing all her secrets, was widely held Scientific instruments played an increasingly important role in this process of revelation, allowing man not merely to extend his senses passively-using the telescope, the microscope, the barometer-but to intervene actively, using the voltaic battery, the electrical generator, the scalpel or the air pump Even the Montgolfier balloon could be seen as an instrument of discovery, or indeed of seduction There was, too, a subtle reaction against the idea of a purely mechanistic universe, the mathematical world of Newtonian physics, the hard material world of objects and impacts These doubts, expressed especially in Germany, favoured a softer ‘dynamic’ science of invisible powers and mysterious energies, of fluidity and transformations, of growth and organic change This is one of the reasons that the study of electricity (and chemistry in general) became the signature science of the period; though astronomy itself, once the exemplary science of the Enlightenment, would also be changed by Romantic cosmology The ideal of a pure, ‘disinterested’ science, independent of political ideology and even religious doctrine, also began slowly to emerge The emphasis on a secular, humanist (even atheist) body of knowledge, dedicated to the ‘benefit of all mankind’, was particularly strong in Revolutionary France This would soon involve Romantic science in new kinds of controversy: for instance, whether it could be an instrument of the state, in the case of inventing weapons of war Or a handmaiden of the Church, supporting the widely held view of ‘Natural theology’, in which science reveals evidence of a divine Creation or intelligent design With these went the new notion of a popular science, a people’s science The scientific revolution of the late seventeenth century had promulgated an essentially private, elitist, specialist form of knowledge Its lingua franca was Latin, and its common currency mathematics Its audience was a small (if international) circle of scholars and savants Romantic science, on the other hand, had a new commitment to explain, to educate, to communicate to a general public This 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 It was a science that, for the first time, generated sustained public debates, such as the great Regency controversy over ‘Vitalism’: whether there was such a thing as a life force or principle, or whether men and women (or animals) had souls 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, most notably the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street in 1799, the Geological Society in 1807, the Astronomical Society in 1820, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831 Much of this transition from Enlightenment to Romantic science is expressed in the paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby Closely attached to the Lunar Society, and the friend of Erasmus Darwin and Joseph Priestley, Wright became a dramatic painter of experimental and laboratory scenes which reinterpreted late-eighteenth-century Enlightenment science as a series of mysterious, romantic moments of revelation and vision The calm, glowing light of reason is surrounded by the intense, psychological chiaroscuro associated with Georges de la Tour This is most evident in the famous series of scientific demonstration scenes painted at the height of his career: The Orrery (1766, Derby City Museum and the frontispiece of this book), The Air Pump (1767, National Gallery, London) and The Alchemist (1768, Derby City Museum) But these memorable paintings also ask whether Romantic science contained terror as well as wonder: if discovery and invention brought new dread as well as new hope into the world We have certainly inherited this dilemma The Age of Wonder aims to raise and reflect upon such questions Yet in the end 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 of which is summed up in that childlike, but infinitely complex word, wonder Plato argued that the notion of ‘wonder’ was central to all philosophical thought: ‘In Wonder all Philosophy began: in Wonder it ends…But the first Wonder is the Offspring of Ignorance; the last is the Parent of Adoration.’4 Wonder, in other words, goes through various stages, evolving both with age and with knowledge, but retaining an irreducible fire and spontaneity This seems to be the implication of Wordsworth’s famous lyric of 1802, which was inspired not by Newton’s prism, but by Nature’s: My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky; So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!…5 This book is centred on two scientific lives, those of the astronomer William Herschel and the chemist Humphry Davy Their discoveries dominate the period, yet they offer two almost diametrically opposed versions of the Romantic ‘scientist’, a term not coined until 1833, after they were both dead It also gives an account of their assistants and protégés, who eventually became much more than that, and handed on the flame to the very different world of professional Victorian science But it draws in many other lives, and it is interrupted by many episodes of scientific endeavour and high adventure so characteristic of the Romantic spirit: ballooning, exploring, soulhunting These were all part of the great journey.♣ It is also held together by, as a kind of chorus figure or guide, a scientific Virgil It is no coincidence that he began his career a young and naïve scientific traveller, an adventurer and secret journal-keeper However, he ended it as the longest-serving, most experienced and most domineering President of the Royal Society: the botanist, diplomat and éminence grise Sir Joseph Banks As a young man Banks sailed with Captain Cook round the world, setting out in 1768 on that perilous three-year voyage into the unknown This voyage may count as one of the earliest distinctive exploits of Romantic science, not least because it involved a long stay in a beautiful but ambiguous version of Paradise-Otaheite, or the South Pacific island of Tahiti Natural History Museum, South Kensington, 404n Nature: discovery of, xviii; tendency to move to higher state, 315; as female beset by male science, 436n Naturphilosophie, 315, 322, 329, 357, 426, 442, 443n nebulae: Herschel’s views on, 88, 123, 192-3, 196-8, 205, 208-9; Herschels catalogue, 176 Nelson, Admiral Horatio, Viscount: telescope at Copenhagen, 77; defeats French at Aboukir Bay (1799), 156, 253; killed at Trafalgar, 295 Nerval, Gérard de: Voyage en Orient, 227 New Monthly Magazine, 409 New York Sun, 464 New Zealand: exploration, 10, 38 Newcastle Chronicle, 371 Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, 371, 375 Newgate Prison: Davy oversees ventilation scheme, 299, 363 Newman, John, 363 Newton, Sir Isaac: Wordsworth on, xvii, 320, 469n; and falling apple story, xvii-xviii, 456; Herschel brothers argue over, 67; invents reflector telescope, 78; genius, 94n; celestial mechanics, 106; optical experiments, 200, 247, 319; on measuring speed of light, 210; Lavoisier admires, 249; in Haydon painting, 319; knighthood, 342; in Byron’s Don Juan, 385; John Herschel corrects on polarised light, 390; statue at new British Library, 404n; Davy on, 426; Coleridge on, 429 & n; Carlyle on, 436; Brewster writes biography, 454-6; in Mary Somerville’s On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, 458 Nicholson, William: experiments, 245, 274; Dictionary of Chemistry, 244 Nicholson’s Journal, 245, 260, 382 Niger, river: exploration, 212, 214, 216-17, 222, 224-6, 229, 231, 381 Niger, HMS, Nỵmes, 354 & n nitrous oxide (’laughing gas’): Davy’s experiments with, 258-67, 269-70, 315n, 348; as anaesthetic, 262, 282-4; experiments satirised, 273; Davy discounts for therapeutic purposes, 281 North-West Passage, 395 Northcote, James, 267 Northumberland, Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of, 351 Novalis (Baron Frederick Leopold von Hardenberg), 315, 328 Nuna (Tahitian woman), 21-2 Oamo (Tahitian), 28 Obadee (Tahitian), 23 Oborea, Tahitian queen, 19, 23-4, 28-9, 35 O’Brian, Patrick: Joseph Banks: A Life, 17n Oersted, Hans Christian, 439, 444 Oliver, Dr William, 241 Omai (Tahitian), 18n, 49-52, 54 Omai, or a Trip Round the World (pantomime), 54 Ordnance Survey (British): created, 160 Otheothea (Tahitian girl), 19, 23, 26, 28-9, 35 Oxford: balloon ascents from, 144-5, 156 oxygen: in respiration, 245-6; Lavoisier on, 254-5; Davy on, 255 pain: and consciousness and anaesthesia, 282-4, 305; Davy speculates on fishes’ experience of, 41718 Paine, Thomas, 16n Paley, William: Natural Theology, 450, 454 Palmer, John, 89 Palmerston, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount, 173 Pantisocracy, 252 Paolozzi, Sir Eduardo, 404n Papendiek, Charlotte, 182, 184 papyri: Davy investigates, 376, 378 Paracelsus, 248 parallax, 90 & n Paris: Herschel visits, 200-1; Davy in, 352-3 Paris, John Ayrton, 283, 400, 434 Park, Allison (née Anderson), 221-2, 226, 229, 231 Park, Mungo: first expedition to Africa, 211, 214-17, 230; background and character, 213; kindly treated by African women, 217-18; robbed and stripped by Moorish banditti, 218-19; religious inspiration, 219-20, 450; return to London, 220-1; later career as doctor, 221; marriage and children, 221; second expedition to Africa (1805), 222-7, 231; given captain’s rank, 223; and death of brother-in-law Alexander Anderson, 225-6; writes farewell letters, 226, 231; final fate unknown, 228, 232, 381; journals and papers lost, 228n, 229; rumoured survival, 229; behaviour and manner, 230; achievements and influence, 232-4; Journal of a Second Voyage, 229; Memoir, 381; Travels in the Interior of Africa, 215, 217, 221, 233 Park, Thomas (Mungo’s son): death seeking lost father, 229-31 Park Street, London, 397 Parkinson, Stanfield (ed.): Journal of a Voyage on…the Endeavour, 44 Parkinson, Sydney: on Endeavour voyage, 11, 14; on Banks’s humanity, 15; drawings, 15, 48; troubled by flies, 17; on promiscuity in Tahiti, 18; on Banks’s quarrel with Monkhouse, 29; on leaving Tahiti, 35; death in Batavia, 40, 45; drawings officially appropriated, 44; journal published, 44-5 Parliamentary Select Committee on Mining Accidents (1835), 375 Parry, William Edward, 51, 232, 395-6, 404-5 Paulze, Marie-Anne see Lavoisier, Marie-Anne Payne, William, 348 Peacock, Thomas Love, 233 Peel, Sir Robert: friendship with Davy, 403-4 Peninsular War, 347 Pennant, Thomas, 12, 40-1 Penzance, 236-7, 239, 241, 268, 400 & n Penzance Grammar School, 434 Periodic Table, 247 Philosophical Magazine, 286 Phipps, Captain Constantine John (later 2nd Baron Mulgrave), phlogiston theory, 245 Physical and Medical Knowledge, principally in the West of England (Beddoes’s annual), 154 Pilâtre de Rozier, Jean-Franỗois: ballooning, 129-31, 133, 148-9, 152, 161; killed on cross-Channel balloon flight, 153-5 Pisania, West Africa, 214-16 Pitt, John, 165, 182 Pitt, Mary see Herschel, Mary, Lady Pitt, Paul, 165, 183-4, 202 Pitt, William, the Younger, 138, 223, 252 placebo effect, 314n Plato: on wonder, xx Playfair, John, 294, 315, 338, 369-70 Pneumatic Institute, Bristol, 235, 251, 253, 255-7, 265, 272, 278, 282, 285-6 pneumatics: as science and study, 245 Poe, Edgar Allan, 464 polar exploration, 395, 404-5 Pole Star: Herschel identifies as two, 87 Polidori, Dr William: travels with Byron, 307, 327; and Ritter, 330; ‘The Vampyre’, 327 Polwhele, Richard: ‘The Pneumatic Revellers’, 273 Poole, Tom, 265, 293, 353, 362, 401, 419-20, 424 Pope, Alexander: Essay on Man, 322 Porter, Roy: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, 303n potassium: Davy discovers, 297-8 Potin (Swedish scientist), 296 Presumption: or The Fate of Frankenstein (play), 334-5 Priestley, Joseph: friendship with Joseph Wright of Derby, xix; Banks recruits for expedition, 47; discovers hydrogen with Cavendish, 127; and early ballooning, 137, 158; Blake satirises, 143; library burned by mob, 199; and phlogiston theory, 245; on photosynthesis, 245; on transformation processes, 247; Marie-Anne Paulze (Lavoisier) translates into French, 248; considers nitrous oxide lethal, 259; in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 328; Davy praises, 344; British Association drinks to health of, 447; Experiments on Different Kinds of Air, 127 Prix Napoléon: awarded to Davy, 299, 353 Provence, Josephine (of Savoy), Comtesse de (‘Madame’), 129 Public Characters: Biographical Memoirs of Distinguished Subjects (series), 200, 303 Quarterly Review, 317-18, 446, 449 Queensberry, William Douglas, 4th Duke of, 177 race: classification, 311 Radcliffe, Ann, 53 Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford, 404 rainbow, 319, 321, 323-4, 443 Ray, Martha, 53 Regent’s Park: zoological gardens, 404 religion: and science, 313 & n, 317-20, 449-50, 459 Rennell, Major John: ‘Sketch of the Northern Parts of Africa’, 212 Resolution, HMS, 47 Resonico, Prince, 168 respiration, 245-6, 259 Revesby, 52 Reynolds, Sir Joshua: portrait of Banks, 43; portrait of Omai, 51; impressed by Lunardi’s ballooning, 140-1 Richmond, Tom, 14 Rickman, John, 53, 264 Ridley, Matthew, 429n Ritchie, Joseph, 234 Ritter, Johann Wilhelm, 315, 328-30; Fragments of a Young Physicist, 329 Robert, M (Alexandre Charles’s ballooning assistant), 131-2 Roberts, Upton, 375 Robespierre, Maximilien, 247 Robinson, Henry Crabb, 348 Rodin, Auguste: The Thinker (sculpture), 404n Roget, Dr Peter Mark, 264, 302, 402 Romain, Pierre, 153-4 Romanticism: supposed hostility to science, xv-xvii; and science biography, 94n; and scientific discovery, 208, 318; wanderers in Italy, 425 Rome: Davy’s old age in, 432 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: on Noble Savage, 3-4; on property and ownership, 16n; writes on South Seas, 46n Rowlandson, Thomas, 291 Royal Astronomical Society: founded, xix, 393, 407; awards Gold Medal to Caroline Herschel, 41011 Royal College of Surgeons, London, 308-9, 317, 336 Royal Geographical Society: merges with Africa Association, 58, 212 Royal Institution: foundation, xix, 199, 285; Humphry Davy at, 241n, 272, 277, 285, 291, 294; finances improve, 291; Coleridge lectures on ‘Poetry and the Imagination’ at, 295, 299-300, 467; deterioration in conditions, 348; Faraday appointed to, 348-9, 358; Davy appointed VicePresident, 359; service to British industry, 362; and Davy’s development of miners’ safety lamp, 370, 372-3; Faraday appointed Director, 405; Faraday’s electromagnetic researches at, 453; Christmas Lectures for Children, 454; atomic clock, 467-8; author lectures on Coleridge at, 467; Proceedings, 467n Royal Navy: commissions Davy to investigate corrosion of ships’copper hulls, 411-12, 414 Royal Society: supports Endeavour voyage, 9-10, 190; honours Banks and Solander, 43; Banks elected President, 54-5; moves to Somerset House, 55; and Herschel’s discovery of Uranus, 98100; Herschel elected to membership and awarded Copley Medal, 102-3, 105; members sceptical of Herschel’s accomplishments, 108; and early ballooning, 133, 134, 147, 155; elects Jeffries to Fellowship, 152-3; adopts Caroline Herschel’s Star Catalogue, 194; and scientific observation, 249; Beddoes applies to for financial support, 251-2; awards Copley Medal to Davy, 295; Davy delivers Bakerian Lectures, 295-9, 359; medical scientists in, 306-7; Davy reports to on safety-lamp investigation, 363-5; Davy’s prototype safety lamp presented to, 368; awards Rumford Medal to Davy, 369; Banks attempts to maintain pre-eminence and unity, 3937; composition, 394; Davy succeeds Banks as President, 397-9; Davy’s unpopularity at, 412-13; Davy resigns presidency, 419; Davy sends late papers to, 431-2; Davy endows Medal, 434; role, 435; John Herschel’s presidential candidacy (1829), 436; elects Duke of Sussex President, 437; Babbage attacks, 438-9; fails to promote scientific endeavour, 438-9; Faraday delivers Bakerian Lectures, 453; John Herschel elected President, 465; Philosophical Transactions, 61, 100, 121-2, 152, 173, 198, 274, 286, 307, 413 Royal Zoological Society, 404 Rumford, Benjamin Thompson, Count: visits Herschel, 199; demonstrates heating effect of friction, 250; interviews Davy, 277; and founding of Royal Institution, 285; attends Davy’s Royal Institution lecture, 286; and finances of Royal Institution, 291; in Gillray cartoon, 292; second marriage (to Marie-Anne Lavoisier), 384 Rumford, Countess (formerly Lavoisier) see Lavoisier, Marie-Anne Rylands, Miss (of Bristol), 265 Sacks, Oliver: Uncle Tungsten, 298n Sadler, James, 144-5, 149, 156-8 Sadler, Windham, 158 Sage, Laetitia: makes first female balloon ascent, 141-3 Saint-Fond, Faujas de, 132, 196 Saint-Hilaire, Madame de, 129 Sandemanians, 352 Sandwich, John Montagu, 4th Earl of, 9, 43, 47, 50, 53 Sansanding, West Africa, 224, 226-7, 231 Satterley, John, 40 Saussure, Horace de, 12 Saxe-Gotha, Francis Frederick, Duke of, 168 Sceptic, The (anon pamphlet), 273 Schelling, Friedrich, 315, 322, 329, 410 Schiller, Friedrich, 315; Wallenstein, 267 science: objectivity, xviii; dissemination of, xix; second revolution, xv-xvi; and error, 93, 94n; and biography, 94n; and observation, 249 & n; Coleridge defends, 267; Davy on philosophy and romance of, 288-90, 371; and religion, 312-13, 317-20, 449-50, 459; Davy writes on limits of contemporary knowledge, 355-6; rivalries and priority disputes in, 373 & n; application in British Empire and colonies, 386; and relations between master and apprentice researchers, 403 & n; debate on apparent decline in Britain, 435, 437-45; and feminism, 436n; Victorian expansion, 446, 468; and search for unifying laws, 458; continuation and global interest, 468-9 Science Museum, South Kensington, 404n scientific instruments, xviii scientist: as term, 253, 450 Scoresby, William, 455 Scotland: Davy honeymoons and holidays in, 346, 361 Scott, George: accompanies Park on second African expedition, 222; death, 224-5 Scott, Sir Walter: treated by Mungo Park, 221-2; Davy meets, 295; supposed authorship of Frankenstein, 325; friendship with Jane Apreece, 338; earnings, 344; entertains Davy and Jane on holiday, 398; on Davy’s decline, 414; depicted in Davy’s Salmonia, 417; reviews Davy’s Salmonia, 423; unsuccessfully urges Jane to publish account of Davy, 434 Scrope, Paul, 455 scurvy, Sedgwick, Adam, 446-7, 449-50, 460 Sego, West Africa, 217, 224 Seven Years War (1756-63), 68 Seward, Anna, 50 Shakespeare, William, 429, 431, 443-4 Sheffield, William, 47-8 Sheldon, John, 146, 155 Shelley, Clara (Mary’s daughter), 327 Shelley, Harriet, 158 Shelley, Mary: on solitary scientific genius, xvii; told of James Lind, 121n; on Hypatia of Alexandria, 248; departs for Italy, 311; hears Davy lecture, 325-6; in Switzerland, 326-7; conceives sciencefiction story, 327; pregnancy and birth of baby, 327, 331; and Vitalism, 327; and German origins of Frankenstein experiment, 329-30; and development of Dr Frankenstein’s Creature, 331-3; Frankenstein, 325-8, 456-7; stage and film adaptations, 334-5 Shelley, Percy Bysshe: taught by James Lind, 121n; and ballooning, 157-8, 162; on clouds, 160; and extraterrestrial beings, 167; treated by Lawrence, 311, 331; absent from Haydon’s ‘Immortal Dinner’, 318, 320; anti-Christian views, 320, 450; and authorship of Frankenstein, 325; speculative scientific/psychological essays, 326-7; in Switzerland, 326, 457; incorporates Davy’s ideas into work, 344; in Naples, 378-80; on Lac Leman with Byron, 383; revolutionary and atheistical ideas, 390-2; appends Notes to poems, 391; contracts ophthalmia, 407; drowned, 355, 408; obituary, 408; Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude, 233, 311; ‘Epipsychidion’, 379-80, 425; ‘Essay on the Devil and Devils’, 391; ‘Essay on a Future State’, 311, 391; ‘The Magnetic Lady to her Patient’, 315n; ‘Mont Blanc’, 327; ‘The Necessity of Atheism’, 390; ‘Ode to the West Wind’, 356; ‘Ozymandias’, 404; Prometheus Unbound, 344, 391-3; Queen Mab, 344, 391 Shepherd, Antony, 168 Sheridan, Elizabeth (née Linley; RBS’s first wife), 76 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 76 Shortland, Michael and Richard Yeo (eds): Telling Lives in Science, 303n Silla, West Africa, 218 Simond, Louis, 292 Sir Lawrence (brig), 47 slave trade: Park’s influence on abolitionists, 233; Banks’s views on, 386-7 Slough: Caroline Herschel moves into rooms in, 188, 194-5; see also Grove, The smallpox: inoculation against, 285 Smiles, Samuel, 372 Smith, Adam: on property, 16n; Philosophical Enquiries, 172 Smith, Charlotte, 267 Smith, Robert, 61; Compleat System of Opticks, 74, 79, 88; Harmonics, 70, 74, 82 Smith, Sydney, 338, 341, 376 Snow, Stephanie J.: Operations without Pain, 284n Söderqvist, Thomas (ed.): The Poetics of Scientific Biography, 94n sodium: Davy discovers, 297-8 Soho Square, London: Banks’s house in, 54, 58, 381 Sokoto, West Africa, 230 Solander, Daniel: on Endeavour voyage, 1, 4, 9-10, 13-14, 23, 38n, 39; Banks nurses during illness, 40; advises Harriet Blosset to break with Banks, 42; celebrity on return from voyage, 42-3; journal appropriated, 44; helps Banks with publication of journal, 46; activities in London, 49; meets Omai, 50; in Parry portrait with Omai, 51; on Banks’s parting from Sarah Wells, 55; death, 56, 396 solar system: Herschel’s view of, 122 Somerset, Charlotte, Duchess of, 384 Somerset, Edward Adolphus, 11th Duke of, 393 Somerville, Mary, 179, 407, 447, 452, 454, 458; On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, 394, 458, 459 Somerville, William, 447 Sotheby, William, 452 soul: concept of, 309, 311, 314, 316 South Africa: John Herschel sets up observatory in, 462-5 South America: Humboldt in, 406 Southey, Edith, 263 Southey, Robert: poems inspired by Bryan Edwards, 212; and Pantisocracy, 252, 259; edits Annual Anthology, 259, 269, 275; experiments with nitrous oxide, 263-5; describes Valley of the Rocks, 266; on difference between scientific and artistic temperaments, 274; believes Davy abandoning poetry, 275, 320; Davy corresponds with, 293; Davy climbs Helvellyn with, 295; Anna Beddoes requests to write biography of husband, 302; quotes Wordsworth’s ‘The Tables Turned’, 320; Davy introduces Jane to, 340; Thalaba the Destroyer, 232, 275 Southey, Thomas, 264 Spain: ship reaches Tahiti, spectography, 440n Sporcken, General A.F von, 70 Spöring, Herman, 10, 14, 40 Sprat, Mrs and Mrs (of Slough), 188, 195 Spufford, Francis: Cultural Babbage (with Jenny Uglow), 438n Staël, Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de: Corinne, 338 Stansfield, Dorothy, 303n steam power: development, 382 Steffens, Henrick, 315 Steiner, George, 429n, 469n Stephenson, George: accuses Davy of plagiarising safety lamp, 371-5 Stock, John: Memoir on Beddoes, 302 Stowe, Misses (sisters), 182, 188 Strangelove, Dr (fictional figure), 465n Stukeley, William, xviiin, 456 Styria, 377 Success colliery, Newbottles, 361 Sumatra, 214 sun, the: Herschel believes inhabited, 199, 391; Herschel on effects on political revolutions, 204 Sun Fire Office (Guildhall), 376 surgery: without anaesthetic, 283, 305-6 Sussex, Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of, 436-7 Sydney Cove see Botany Bay Tabourai (Tahitian interpreter), Tahiti (Otaheite): Banks visits, xxi, 1-7, 10, 13-14; thieving, 4-6, 16, 24, 27-8; Cook’s security measures, 15-16; sexual practices, 17-18, 25-6, 37, 42, 44, 46n; venereal disease in, 18; language, 19; trading, 19-20; grief practices, 22-3; surfing, 24-5; ceremonies and customs, 26-7, 32, 37-8; violations in, 27-8; differences and disharmony in, 28-9; food and cooking, 28; Cook and Banks circumnavigate, 29-32; evidence of cannibalism, 30; native structures, 31-2; tattooing, 32-3; Endeavour leaves, 35; Banks’s written accounts of, 36-7, 45; infanticide, 37-8; Parkinson’s published account of, 45; Omai returns to, 52, 54; as legend, 54; traditional ways destroyed, 59n Tambora volcano (Indonesia): erupts (1815), 383 Tarróa, Tahitian king, 212 Tasmania: exploration, 10 Tayeto (Tupia’s son), 40 Taylor, William, 275 telescopes: Herschel constructs, 60-1, 77, 83-5, 94; refractor type, 77-8; reflector type, 78; Herschel constructs forty-foot Newtonian form model, 163, 176-7, 181-2; forty-foot instrument put into operation, 190-1; management and maintenance problems, 191; forty-foot instrument dismantled, 465-6 Telescopium Herschelii (The Telescope; constellation), 409 Tennyson, Alfred, 1st Baron: In Memoriam, 451n; ‘The Kraken’, 384; ‘Timbucto’, 227-9 Terapo (Tahitian woman), 22 Thelwall, John, 307, 316 Thénard, Louis-Jacques, 297 Thompson, Benjamin see Rumford, Count Thompson, John, 40 Thomson, James: The Seasons, 171, 172n, 243; ‘To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton’, 440n Thornton, Dr Robert, 11, 41-2 Thrale, Susannah, 114 Ticknor, George, 359-60 Tierra del Fuego, 13, 15 Timbuctoo, 212, 215-16, 218, 220, 225, 227 Times, The: on Mungo Park’s return, 220; attacks Davy for accepting Prix Napoléon, 353; obituary of William Herschel, 408; on deaths of leading scientists, 435; reports on meetings of British Association, 447, 453 Tissandier, Gaston: Histoire des Ballons et Aeronauts Célèbres, 156 Tobin, James, 257, 431 Tobin, John, 431 Tonkin, John, 238-9, 241-4, 250, 253, 285 Tooke, John Horne, 307 Town and Country Magazine, 49 Trinity College, Dublin, 304 True Briton (journal), 220 Tuareg tribesmen, 227-8 Tupia (Tahitian priest), 34, 40 Turner, Joseph Mallord William: cloud paintings, 160 Uglow, Jenny: Cultural Babbage (with Francis Spufford), 438n; The Lunar Men, 246n ultraviolet light, 329 Underwood, Thomas, 272 universe (celestial system): Herschel’s views on, 11-12, 122-4, 204, 208-10 Uranus: Herschel discovers, 96-106, 207; name, 97 & n, 102n, 103; international acceptance of, 101; earlier sightings and recordings, 102; as symbol of Romantic science, 106 utilitarianism, 435 Venice, 380 Venus, Transit of (1768), 5, 10, 21-2, 91 Versailles: balloon ascents at, 126, 135 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (anon.), 451 Vesuvius: Davy visits, 356, 358, 378, 381 Victoria, Queen: takes chloroform during childbirth, 284 Vineyard Nurseries, Hammersmith, 11 Vitalism (Life Force), xix, 307, 309-18, 321-3, 325, 327, 354, 356, 421, 428, 431 Volta, Alessandro, 173, 295, 314, 355 voltaic batteries, 245, 273-4, 286, 295, 297, 299, 317, 328-9 Voltaire, Franỗois Marie Arouet: in Haydon painting, 319; Candide, 68; Letters on the English Nation, xviiin; Micromégas, 426 Voyager (spacecraft), 190 Wagner, Richard: Tristan and Isolde (opera), 242 Wakefield, Priscilla, 179 Wakley, Thomas, 336 Walker, William: Eminent Men of Science Living in 1807-8 (painting), 303 Waller, Edmund, 424 Wallis, Captain Samuel, 3, 17 Walls End colliery, Northumberland, 361-2, 368-9 Walmer Castle, Kent, 200 Walpole, Horace, 135-8, 140, 338 Walton, Izaak, 276; The Compleat Angler, 339 Wansey (musician), 265 Waterton, Charles, 232, 382; Wanderings in South America, 382 Watson, James: The Double Helix, 373n Watson, Sir William, 60-1, 101 Watson, Sir William, junior: friendship with Herschel, 60-2, 92-3, 98, 100-1, 108-9, 135, 164, 166, 178, 180; and Herschel’s marriage to Mary Pitt, 185-6; and philosophical significance of astronomy, 203 Watt, Gregory: friendship with Davy, 150, 263-4, 266, 275, 362; death, 293-4 Watt, James: recommends Beddoes to Banks, 235; son stays with Davy’s mother, 250; Beddoes seeks financial support from, 251; encourages Beddoes to recruit Davy, 252; Davy visits, 256; in Davy’s nitrous oxide experiments, 263; designs portable gas chamber, 269; letter from Banks on Beddoes’s project, 281 weather forecasting, 160n Webb, T.H., 87 Wedgwood, Thomas, 263, 281 Wedgwood family, 256 Wells, Dr Horace, 283 Wells, Sarah, 49, 53-6, 384 Whewell, William: and John Herschel, 387; supports Wollaston for presidency of Royal Society, 397; and John Herschel’s Study of Natural Philosophy, 441; and formation of British Association, 446-7, 449; and Bridgewater Treatises, 452; reviews Mary Somerville, 459; befriends Charles Darwin, 460; On the Plurality of Worlds, 209 White, Gilbert, 12, 48, 136, 146, 249n Whitehaven Collieries, 369 Wilberforce, William, 386 Wilson, Frances: The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, 187n Windham, William, 140 Wiverou (Tahitian chief), 30 Wollaston, William Hyde, 369, 374, 397-9, 401-2, 417, 436, 438-9 Wollstonecraft, Mary: published by Johnson, 106, 271; earnings, 179; Godwin writes Memoir of, 267; Davy supports, 304 women: earnings and professional status, 179-80; Davy advocates scientific knowledge for education of, 304; and third British Association meeting, 447, 452; membership of British Association, 459 wonder: nature of, xx Woodford, Revd James, 136 Wooster, David: Paula Trevelyan, 460n Wordsworth, Dora (William’s daughter), 203n Wordsworth, Dorothy, 186n, 203n, 249n Wordsworth, John (William’s son), 203n Wordsworth, Mary (née Hutchinson), 186n Wordsworth, William: on Newton, xvi-xvii, 320, 469n; published by Johnson, 106, 271; marriage to Mary Hutchinson, 186n; regional roots, 236; Coleridge visits in Lake District, 267; influence on Davy’s poetry, 276; Davy visits in Lake District, 295; at Haydon’s ‘Immortal Dinner’, 318; in Haydon painting, 319; quarrel with Coleridge, 340; honoured with dinner, 348; on Davy’s decline, 414; John Davy acts as doctor to, 433; effect of poetry on John Stuart Mill, 441; Coleridge on poetry of, 449; Lyrical Ballads (with Coleridge), 254, 275, 291; On Church and State, 449; Peter Bell, 162; The Prelude, 232, 320, 431, 469n; ‘The Tables Turned’, 320; ‘Tintern Abbey’, 316 Wright, Joseph (of Derby): paintings, xix; influenced by Priestley, 246 Wright, Thomas, 77; Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, 91 Wynn, William, 265 Yansong, West Africa, 230 York, Edward, Duke of (George III’s brother), 75, 177 Young, Edward: Night Thoughts, 92 & n Young, Thomas, 436 Zoffany, Johann, 8, 47 ALSO BY RICHARD HOLMES One for Sorrow (poems) Shelley: The Pursuit Shelley on Love (editor) Gautier: My Fantoms (translations) Nerval: The Chimeras (with Peter Jay) Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin: A Short Residence in Sweden and Memoirs (editor, Penguin Classics) De Feministe en de Filosoof Dr Johnson & Mr Savage Coleridge: Early Visions Coleridge: Darker Reflections Coleridge: Selected Poems (editor, Penguin Classics) Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer Insights: The Romantic Poets and their Circle Classic Biographies (series editor) Copyright HarperPress An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk Published by HarperPress in 2008 Copyright © Richard Holmes 2008 FIRST EDITION The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-34988-3 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au Canada HarperCollins Canada Bloor Street East - 20th Floor Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O Box Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com .. .The Age of Wonder How the Romantic Generation discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science Richard Holmes To Jon Cook at Radio Flatlands Two things fill my mind with ever new and increasing wonder. .. Romantic science in new kinds of controversy: for instance, whether it could be an instrument of the state, in the case of inventing weapons of war Or a handmaiden of the Church, supporting the widely... word, wonder Plato argued that the notion of wonder was central to all philosophical thought: ‘In Wonder all Philosophy began: in Wonder it ends…But the first Wonder is the Offspring of Ignorance;