The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes (PDF)

Description

The Age of Wonder is a colorful and utterly absorbing history of the men and women whose discoveries and inventions at the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to the Romantic Age of Science. When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes’s thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution. Through the lives of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who forever changed the public conception of the solar system; of Humphry Davy, whose near-suicidal gas experiments revolutionized chemistry; and of the great Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to Coleridge and Keats, who were inspired by the scientific breakthroughs of their day, Holmes brings to life the era in which we first realized both the awe-inspiring and the frightening possibilities of science—an era whose consequences are with us still.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Holmes’s enthralling book itself exemplifies those qualities fostered by a scientific culture: “the sense of individual wonder, the power of hope, and the vivid but questing belief in a future for the globe.” –The Washington Post “In this big two-hearted river of a book, the twin energies of scientific curiosity and poetic invention pulsate on every page.” —The New York Times Book Review”The Age of Wonder is the long-awaited fermentation of the author’s knowledge of the Romantic poets and his lifelong fascination with science.” —The Economist”Holmes, the biographer of Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley, has a firm grip on science in “The Age of Wonder” and a fluency in drawing the connections to literature and religion.” –Chemical and Engineering News”Gives us . . . a new model for scientific exploration and poetic expression in the Romantic period. Informative and invigorating, generous and beguiling, it is, indeed, wonderful.”—The Guardian”The most flat-out fascinating book so far this year…. Holmes’ account of experimental science at the end of 1700s is beyond riveting.”–Lev Grossman, Time Magazine”Holmes is certainly the man to undertake this intellectual salvage operation…Ambitious…Eloquent.” –Wall Street Journal”Holmes pursues his many-chambered nautilus of a tale with energy and great rigor, unearthing many lives and assembling remnant shards of biography, history, science, and literary criticism.” —Christian Science Monitor“Rich in human foibles and thrills…” –Cleveland Plain Dealer “Richard Holmes—who is almost unfairly gifted both as a writer of living, luminous prose and as a tireless researcher—braids Herschel’s story together with a dozen others to create the most joyful, exciting book of the year.” –Time Magazine, “The Top 10 Everything of 2009” “If, like me, you didn’t study much science after high school, this absorbing narrative will make you appreciate the gravity of your mistake. At one level, it is simply an enchanting group biography of the great British discoverers Joseph Banks, Humphrey Davy, and William Herschel, and their relationships with the likes of Keats, Coleridge, Byron and the Shelleys. At another, Holmes’s book is a persuasive plea to heal the pointless breach between the “two cultures” of science and the humanities. Reading it made we want to do college over, this time as a history of science major.” –Slate, Best Books of 2009″What’s superlative about “The Age of Wonder” is that Holmes, author of vivid biographies of Shelley and Coleridge, takes the air out of the terms “subjectivity” and “objectivity” and reveals the ways in which the artists were as enveloped in science as the men and women in the labs around them. In a harmony of scientific and artistic sensibilities, he shows, the Romantics tapped the marvels of nature and sounded the infinite benefits of science. It’s a song, if we can hear it, that can transform us today.” —Salon”For Holmes to bring those people back to life is a great achievement…this is the finest history of science book I’ve come across.” —Physics Today”The opening words of Richard Holmes’s “The Age of Wonder” couldn’t be calmer, but the charge embedded within them ignited an era that merits his soaring title. It was a singular time, and this is a singular book.” —CNNmoney.com “What Holmes has given us with this account of the Romantic scientists is, curiously enough, a thrilling new way to interpret the poets of the era. To bring new light to such a widely read group–and from the angle least expected, that of rigorous scientific study–is Holmes’s considerable gift.” —Poetry Foundation”It was a singular time, and this is a singular book.” —Fortune Magazine”[An] amazingly ambitious, buoyant new fusion of history, art, science, philosophy, and biography . . . . Holmes’s excitement at fusing long-familiar events and personages into something startlingly new is not unlike the exuberance of the age that animates his groundbreaking book.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times”The Romantics gave us many of our notions of how science is done, which makes the subject of this book—even leaving aside the brilliance with which much of it is told—significant beyond its importance as intellectual history.” –American Scholar “I’ve been fascinated by a new book, The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes. He talks about how scientists and poets were very much aligned in the Age of Enlightenment, around 1800. Coleridge, Byron and Shelley were all interested in scientific progress. What was discovered, whether in labs or in the cliffs of Tahiti, excited and inspired everyone. I was gripped by that, because it comes at a time when Harvard and other universities are starting to question why different university departments should feel so separate when the purpose of a university is supposedly to bring all the sciences and humanities together.” –Yo-Yo MaPraise from the United Kingdom for The Age of Wonder”Holmes suffuses his book with the joy, hope, and wonder of the revolutionary era. Reading it is like a holiday in a sunny landscape, full of fascinating bypaths that lead to unexpected vistas.”—The Sunday Times”Gives us . . . a new model for scientific exploration and poetic expression in the Romantic period. Informative and invigoration, generous and beguiling, it is, indeed, wonderful.”—The Guardian”Romanticism and Science are justly reunited in Holmes’s new book . . . A revelation . . . Thrilling.”—The Independent”Exhilarating . . . Instructive and delightful . . . Finely observed . . . Generous and hugely enjoyable.”—The Daily Telegraph”Fascinating . . . This beautifully crafted book deserves all the praise it will undoubtedly attract. Well-researched and vividly written, The Age of Wonder will fascinate scientists and poets alike.”—The Literary Review About the Author Richard Holmes is the author of Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer; Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer; Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage; Shelley: The Pursuit (for which he received the Somerset Maugham Award); Coleridge: Early Visions; and Coleridge: Darker Reflections (a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist). He lives in England. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1 Joseph Banks in Paradise 1 On 13 April 1769, young Joseph Banks, official botanist to HM Bark Endeavour, first clapped eyes on the island of Tahiti, 17 degrees South, 149 degrees West. He had been told that this was the location of Paradise: a wonderful idea, although he did not quite believe it. Banks was twenty-six years old, tall and well-built, with an appealing bramble of dark curls. By temperament he was cheerful, confident and adventurous: a true child of the Enlightenment. Yet he had thoughtful eyes and, at moments, a certain brooding intensity: a premonition of a quite different sensibility, the dreaming inwardness of Romanticism. He did not like to give way to it. So he kept good company with his shipmates, and had carefully maintained his physical fitness throughout the first eight months of the voyage. He regarded himself – ‘thank god’ – as in as good mental and physical trim as a man could be. When occasionally depressed, he did vigorous jumping ‘rope exercises’ in his cabin, once nearly breaking his leg while skipping.He was capable of working patiently for hours on end in the extremely cramped conditions on board. The quarterdeck cabin, which he shared with his friend Dr Daniel Solander, was approximately eight feet by ten. He had adopted a strict daily routine of botanical drawing, electrical experiments, animal dissections, deck-walking, bird-shooting (when available) and journal-writing. He constantly fished specimens from the sea, shot or netted wild birds, and observed meteorological phenomena, such as the beautiful ‘lunar rainbows’. When his gums had begun bleeding ominously with the onset of scurvy, he had calmly treated himself with a specially pre-prepared syrup (‘Dr Hume’s mixture’) of concentrated lemon juice, taking precisely six ounces a day. Within a week he was cured.Just occasionally young Banks’s scientific enthusiasm turned to explosive impatience. When rudely prevented from carrying out any botanical field trips by the Spanish Consul at Rio de Janeiro, and confined for three weeks to the sweltering ship in the harbour at Rio, he wrote colourfully to a friend at the Royal Society: ‘You have heard of Tantalus in hell, you have heard of the French man laying swaddled in linen between two of his Mistresses both naked using every possible means to excite desire. But you have never heard of a tantalized wretch who has born his situation with less patience than I have done mine. I have cursed, swore, raved, stamped.’ Banks did however unofficially slip over the side at night to collect wild seeds and plants, a hoard which included the exotic purple bougainvillea.Once among the Polynesian isles, Banks spent hours at the topgallant masthead, his large form crouched awkwardly in the crow’s nest, looking for landfall beneath the heavy tropical cloudbase. At night the crew would hear distant surf roaring through the dark. Now at last he gazed out at the fabled blue lagoon, the black volcanic sand, and the intriguing palm trees (Linnaeus’s Arecaceae). Above the beach the precipitous hills, dense with dark-green foliage and gleaming with white streams, rose sharply to 7,000 feet. On the naval chart Banks noted that the place was marked, prosaically enough, ‘Port Royal Bay, King George the Third’s Island’. ‘As soon as the anchors were well down the boats were hoisted out and we all went ashore where we were met by some hundreds of the inhabitants whose faces at least gave evident signs that we were not unwelcome guests, tho they at first hardly dare approach us. After a little time they became very familiar. The first who aproachd us came creeping almost on his hands and knees and gave us a green bough the token of peace.’Taking the hint, all the British shore party pulled down green boughs from the surrounding palm trees and carried them along the beach, waving them like ceremonial parasols. Eventually they were shown an idyllic spot close by a stream, where it was indicated that they could set up camp. The green boughs were thrown down in a great pile on the sand, ‘and thus peace was concluded’. Here the British settlement known as Fort Venus was to be established: ‘We then walkd into the woods followd by the whole train to whom we gave beads and small presents. In this manner we walked for 4 or 5 miles under groves of Cocoa nut and Bread fruit trees loaded with a profusion of fruit and giving the most gratefull shade I have ever experienced. Under these were the habitations of the people most of them without walls. In short the scene we saw was the truest picture of an Arcadia of which we were going to be Kings that the imagination can form.’As the men walked back, feeling dangerously like royalty, the Tahitian girls draped them with flowers, offered ‘all kind of civilities’ and gestured invitingly towards the coconut mats spread in the shade. Banks felt, reluctantly, that since islanders’ houses were ‘entirely without walls’ it was not quite the moment to ‘put their politeness to every test’. He would not have failed to have done so ‘had circumstances been more favourable’.2Tahiti lies roughly east–west just below the 17th parallel, one of the largest of what are now the Society Islands, roughly halfway between Peru and Australia. It is shaped not unlike a figure of eight, some 120 miles (‘40 leagues’) in circumference. Most of its foreshores are easily accessible, a series of broad, curving bays with black volcanic sands or pinkish-white coral beaches, fringed by coconut palms and breadfruit trees. But a few hundred yards inland, the ground rises sharply into an entirely different topography. The steep, densely wooded volcanic hills lead upwards to a remote and hostile landscape of deep gullies, sheer cliffs and perilous ledges.Contrary to legend, the Endeavour, commanded by Lieutenant James Cook, was not the first European ship to make landfall in Tahiti. Spanish expeditions, under Quiroz or Torres, had probably touched there in the late sixteenth century, and claimed it for Spain. A previous English expedition, under Captain Wallis of the Dolphin, had definitely landed there in 1767, when it was described as ‘romantic’, and claimed for England. A French expedition under Louis-Antoine de Bougainville had anchored there the following year, and claimed it for France.The French had racily christened Tahiti ‘La Nouvelle Cythère’, the New Island of Love. Banks’s opposite number, the French botanist Philibert Commerson (who named the bougainvillea after his captain), had published a sensational letter in the Mercure de France describing Tahiti as a sexual ‘Utopia’. It proved that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was right about the existence of the Noble Savage. But then, the French had only spent nine days on the island.Cook was more sceptical, and had every member of his crew (including the officers) examined for venereal infections four weeks before arriving, by their surgeon Jonathan Monkhouse. He issued a series of Landing Instructions, which stated that the first rule of conduct ashore was civilised behaviour: ‘To Endeavour by every fair means to cultivate a Friendship with the Natives and to treat them with all Imaginable Humanity.’ It was no coincidence that he enshrined the ship’s own name in this instruction.Joseph Banks had his own views on Paradise. He gave a whimsical account of his first night ashore in his Endeavour Journal. He dined deliciously on dressed fish and breadfruit, next to a Tahitian queen, who ‘did me the honour with very little invitation to squat down on the mats close by me’. However, the queen was ‘ugly enough in conscience’. Banks then noticed a very pretty girl, ‘with a fire in her eyes’ and white hibiscus in her hair, lingering in the ‘common crowd’ at the door. He encouraged her to come and sit on his other side, studiously ignored the queen for the rest of the evening, and ‘loaded’ the Polynesian beauty with bead necklaces and every compliment he could manage. ‘How this would have ended is hard to say,’ he observed later. In fact the amorous party broke up abruptly when it was discovered that his friend Solander had had a snuffbox picked from his pocket, and a fellow officer had lost ‘a pair of opera glasses’. It is not explained why he had brought opera glasses ashore in the first place.This thieving proved to be completely customary in Tahiti, and led to many painful misunderstandings on both sides. The first occurred the following day, when a Tahitian quite openly made off with a marine’s musket, and was immediately shot dead by a punctilious guard. Banks quickly grasped that some quite different notion of property must be involved, and noted grimly: ‘We retird to the ship not well pleasd with the days expedition, guilty no doubt in some measure of the death of a man who the most severe laws of equity would not have condemnd to so severe a punishment. No canoes about the ship this morning, indeed we could not expect any as it is probable that the news of our behaviour yesterday was now known every where, a circumstance which will doubtless not increase the confidence of our friends the Indians.’ Nonetheless, to Banks’s relief and evident surprise, good relations were restored within twenty-four hours.The Endeavour expedition remained for three months on Tahiti. Its main object was to observe a Transit of Venus across the face of the sun. (Cook stated that this was the reason their settlement was named Fort Venus, though his junior officers gave a different explanation.) This was due on the morning of 3 June 1769, and there would be no other transit for the next hundred years (not until 1874). It was a unique chance to establish the solar parallax, and hence the distance of the sun from the earth. This calculation depended on observing the exact timing at which the silhouette of Venus first entered, and then exited from, the sun’s disc.Banks was not part of the astronomical team, but when the expedition’s quadrant was stolen one night shortly before the transit was due, he reacted with characteristic energy and courage. He knew that without this large and exquisitely calibrated brass instrument, used to measure precise astronomical angles, the entire observation would be rendered valueless. Not waiting for Cook or his marine guards, Banks roused the expedition’s official astronomer, William Green, and set off immediately on foot in pursuit of the thief. In the dizzy heat, Banks followed the trail far up into the hills, accompanied only by a reluctant Green, one unarmed midshipman and a Tahitian interpreter. They penetrated seven miles inland through the Tahitian jungle, further than any European had been before: ‘The weather was excessive hot, the Thermometer before we left the tents up at 91 made our journey very tiresome. Sometimes we walk’d sometimes we ran when we imagind (which we sometimes did) that the chase was just before us till we arrivd at the top of a hill about 4 miles from the tents. From this place [the interpreter] Tubourai shew’d us a point about 3 miles off and made us understand that we were not to expect the instrument till we got there. We now considerd our situation. No arms among us but a pair of pocket pistols which I always carried; going at least 7 miles from our fort where the Indians might not be quite so submissive as at home; going also to take from them a prize for which they had ventured their lives.’Banks decided to send back the midshipman with a brief message to Cook that armed reinforcements would be welcome. Meanwhile he and Green would press on alone, ‘telling him at the same time that it was impossible we could return till dark night’.Before dusk, Banks ran the thief to ground in an unknown and potentially hostile village. A crowd quickly gathered round them, ‘rudely’ jostling them. Following a Tahitian custom he had already learned, Banks quickly drew out a ring on the grass, and surrounded by ‘some hundreds’ of faces, sat quietly down in the centre. Here, instead of threatening or blustering, he began to explain and negotiate. For some time nothing transpired. Then, piece by piece, starting with its heavy wooden deal case, the quadrant was solemnly returned. ‘Mr Green began to overlook the Instrument to see if any part or parts were wanting… The stand was not there but that we were informd had been left behind by the thief and we should have it on our return… Nothing else was wanting but what could easily be repaired, so we pack’d all up in grass as well as we could and proceeded homewards.’By the time armed marines came up, sweating and jittery, about two miles down the track, Banks had completed the transaction and made several new friends. Everyone returned peacefully to Fort Venus on the shore. For this exploit, all conducted with the greatest calm and good humour, Banks earned the profound gratitude of Cook, who noted that ‘Mr Banks is always very alert upon all occasions wherein the Natives are concerned.’ Banks concluded mildly in his journal: ‘All were, you may imagine, not a little pleased at the event of our excursion.’Banks and Cook were a seemingly ill-matched pair. They were divided by background, education, class and manners. Yet they formed a curiously effective team. Cook’s cool and formal manners towards the Tahitians were balanced by Banks’s natural openness and enthusiasm, which easily won friends. With their help he would gather a mass of plant and animal specimens, and make what was in effect an early anthropological study of Tahitian customs. His journal entries cover everything from clothes (or lack of them) and cookery to dancing, tattooing, sexual practices, fishing methods, wood-carving, and religious beliefs. His accounts of a dog being roasted, or a young woman having her buttocks tattooed, are frank and unforgettable. He attended Tahitian ceremonial events, slept in their huts, ate their food, recorded their customs and learned their language. He was pioneering a new kind of science. As he wrote in his journal: ‘I found them to be a people so free from deceit that I trusted myself among them almost as freely as I could do in my own countrey, sleeping continually in their houses in the woods with not so much as a single companion.’ Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐When I was in Junior HS I did a report on Kepler and his great and famous laws. The first batch are unmistakably brilliant, profound, and timeless. They have to do with mathematical generalizations he made from observations of the positions of planets. Orbits are ellipses. The sweep of an orbit covers uniform area in time independent of the distance from the sun. “The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.” [Wikipedia] But there was another law just as famous and “brilliant” in its time. It states that the reason there were six planets is that there are five Platonic solids. Utter nonsense! That someone as brilliant as Kepler would have gotten something so wrong is astounding. But when you think about it, what did he do in the three laws for which he is still famous? He generalized observations with math (equations). The emerging theory is testable and falsifiable and can be used to make predictions. How is his Platonic solids hypothesis different? It is predictive: no other planets will be discovered. It is falsifiable; and was falsified by Herschel’s discovery of Uranus, if not before with the discovery of some asteroids. But while the ellipse theories–which can all be derived immediately from Newton’s gravity equation–are all solid to the modern scientific sensibility, the hokum about Platonic solids is not. Why not? Taking this thread in a more immediate direction: today we are faced with scientific denialism not seen in a century. News is false. Science is false. Climate change is just made up by paranoid liberals and grant grubbing scientists. But crucially – How is the public to be able to tell the difference? Between charlatanry and brilliance? In the end, all complex truth comes down to authority. We are taught that proof-by-authority is the weakest type of “proof.” That it is laughable. And yet – science would be nowhere without it. We don’t have time to read every manuscript or fund every proposal that comes our way. How can we tell the bizarre truth from the crackpot? We cannot reproduce every experiment. These are two BIG ideas both having to do with the nature of belief in science. And as can be seen from Richard Holmes’s book, they are also evolving. To summarize the points so far: what is the “intuition” of scientific belief, both by the scientist and the non-scientist? (Of course the great thing about science is that it advances even with very poor intuition, but it might take eons longer to get anywhere.) The short description of “The Age of Wonder” is a collection of intertwined biographies of English scientists around the Romantic Era. The stars are Joseph Banks, Anthropologist (before there was such a thing); William Herschel, Astronomer; and Humphry Davy, Chemist. Just below the marquee are Mungo Park, explorer and William Lawrence, physician. There is a huge cast of vital supporting actors, led by the heroic Caroline Herschel, Astronomer, assistant to brother William, and both beloved and abused. Others are the balloonists; certain secondary intellects; the previous generation, including Erasmus Darwin; the next generation, the most prominent of whom is the great physicist Michael Faraday; the romantic poets and authors, Coleridge, Shelly, Mary Shelly, Wordsworth, Byron, and many others; and wives, friends, family, patrons, children, etc. Of the leads, Herschel is by far the best known today: he discovered Uranus and so upended the eternal truth of the number of planets. He also discovered the shape of our galaxy with its spiral arms. And conjectured that nebulae were themselves galaxies and so made the universe virtually infinite. An astounding career that makes Herschel one of the great astronomers in history. However, the nebula conjecture, as plausible (and true!!) as it was, and as influential, would not be proven until the era of Hubbell a hundred years later. But Herschel is also, perhaps, the best demonstration of the first point in this review: why did (do?) scientists believe stupid things? Although the “island universe” conjecture was one of the most amazing findings in the history of science, it was just that, a conjecture. Herschel also believed he could see forests on the moon. And published papers on those forests. Why is one monumental and the other ridiculous? With hindsight, the problems are obvious. Although the scientific method was widely worshiped, there was no peer review. There was little validation. Grants were given on the whim (often good whim) of a single patron or a tiny elite. Specifically, forests on the moon can be verified (someone else can look), while external nebulae must remain a hypothesis. This is the real subject of the book: the last era of science before it was really modern science. The last era before it was called science; scientists were natural philosophers. The last era where the public, or at least amateur patrons, but often the general middle class public, were actively engaged in science. And scientists were poets and writers. And friends of poets and writers and artists. It was the time when investigating recreational drugs was mainstream science. When scientists were rock stars, complete with groupies. When scientists and poets were all amazed at the wonder of nature. The book is divided into ten chapters. Most have a single scientist as its primary subject, with some repeats. Many begin broadly, often with many characters, but then usually converge to the subject, and a specific story. There are many terrific parts: Banks in Tahiti, anything having to do with the Herschels, and the vitalism controversy are some of my favorites. Also excellent are his forays into the supporting cast, especially the continental scientists (too brief), and Faraday. There is plenty of personal detail. These really are biographies. And plenty of racy stuff. Did Davy have sex or, at least, molest, his nubile subjects of NO2 tests? Interestingly, I think the weakest parts are where the subject matter intersects with Holmes’s expertise, literature of the English Romantic. He searches for influences of current science in romantic poems. The results are almost always slight. And presents the poetry of the scientists. Most of which is, not surprisingly, forgettable. But to end this review positively, as I mean it to be: the stories are great, the context is wonderful, and the points well made. And to use the cliché’, especially relevant today.

⭐In this fascinating work, Richard Holmes explores the Romantic period from the latter part of the 1700’s to the mid-point of the 1800’s and how the work of various scientists changed the worldview forever. This was the time when major discoveries were being made but also a time of great discoveries and work in the arts with many of the well known poets doing their strongest work. Holmes explores the intersection of science and poetry and what men believed before and after these great discoveries were made.The work revolves around the lives of several scientific giants. The first is Joseph Banks. A wealthy man, he went on Captain Cook’s exploration of such cultures as Tahiti. His scientific interests were wide ranging and he returned as a society lion with all the wonders he brought back and could talk about. He went on to become the President of the Royal Society which was the premier association of scientists. His interest in all areas of science and his network of scientists worldwide made him the preeminent figure of his time.William Herschel and his sister Caroline were astronomers. Herschel discovered the planet Uransus and constructed huge telescopes never before possible that allowed him to write the definitive numbering of the astral bodies. His sister Caroline was one of the first women scientists in this area and was known for discovering new comets. Their work was fascinating to King George III and his royal patronage made their work possible.Humphrey Davy revolutionized the field of chemistry. He worked on gases and discovered various uses for what is called ‘laughing gas’. He experimented on himself with this and his work was famous. His most successful experiments were his work in making mining safer. As men tunneled further and deeper, methane gas became a major issue with huge explosions periodically killing massive numbers of miners. Davy created a safe lamp that allowed the miners to work more safely and was a hero in that industry.Along with these three giants were many other scientists. Some most will have heard about were Michael Farraday, the African explorer Mungo Park and Charles Babbage, the mathematician whose work led to the first ‘calculating machine’ or computer. But what was also fascinating were the topics that the famous poets of the era were exploring due to these scientific discoveries. Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth and the Shelleys Percy and Mary, were exploring the relationship between nature and the ideas of a deity that were considered set in stone. Many of the scientists and poets started to question this certainty as their work didn’t support the idea of a Creator who set everything in motion in six days. Herschel talked about the enormity of the universe and how many millions of years it took for light from the stars to get to Earth.Richard Holmes has made his literary career in biographies. His area of interest has been the poets of this era. This work, exploring the interaction of science and art, and the opening of the questions of how man came to exist and how the universe truly worked, is a fascinating exploration of the topic and its figures. This book is recommended for history and science nonfiction readers.

⭐This is in many ways an admirable and exciting account of the half century or so in which the arts and what became the ‘sciences’ were strongly connected and influenced each other, before coming to be seen as separate domains of human thought and action. The personal relationships between the great poets of the later Georgian period and the great scientific pioneers is a surprise. However the account fails to provide the same level of attention to the great European figures despite showing that there was a Europe wide network of writers, philosophers and experimenters which interacted with those in Britain. To do so would require a much longer book, but would have been so much more revealing, and truer to the extent of the nascent European ‘scientific’ community.

⭐The late 18th and early 19th Centuries saw science change our understanding of the world – the universe – we inhabit at a fundamental level. The Herschells mapped the stars, discovered new plaets and comets, and proved that our galaxy is just one of millions. Humphrey Davy discovered new elements and introduced us to the beginnings of electricity. Anatomists studied circulation, and wondered what particular form of electricity animated the human body – and the human soul. Balloonists conquered the skies thanks to science, and science influenced the Romantic poets too – Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Southey. Above it all sat the hugely influential Royal Society and the polymath Joseph Banks. And as a subtext underneath it all lay the studiously avoided question of God’s role in all this, which came to the fore in the next generation of scientists.Richard Holmes’s book shows us this world, where science and the arts were not yet distinct but complementary. A world where people were both fascinated, repelled and terrified of these discoveries. A world which he portrays brilliantly. I’m not a scientist, but I understood all the science, and I found myself wanting to know more. The stars of this book, the men and women making all these discoveries, are drawn with affection that is not blinded by admiration, and in every case, the narrative ensures that the reader is aware of the wider context, the wider implications. It’s a very close world in many ways, a world where it sometimes seems as if everyone corresponds with everyone else, or is a member of the same club, or is best friends with, or married to, another star.This is a book that anyone interested in the age where the Englightenment gave way to the Romantics. It is a book whose successor I would love to read, though it seems it’s not yet written. But hopefully soon. It’s a book I’d highly recommend.

⭐A little bit of a ramble through a few “heros” of the 18th century – some obvious, some less so. It goes into their lives in a lot more detail than their science although both are covered so you get a lot of background on the people and their lives. I confess to skipping some pages that were less than spell-binding discussing the relationship between people like Coleridge and Davy.Overall pretty interesting and readable, combining loads of different styles of discovery including- always fatal African explorations- the hot air ballooning crazes- astronomy and evolving ideas about the universe- chemistry, electricity and addictions to nitrous oxideIn summary it’s very readable if not spell binding and you’ll learn something new about the period when we changed our ideas about everything.

⭐This is a brilliant book for anyone interested in ‘things’ and the history behind them. Good for dipping into. Fascinating history of ballooning and I see the author has written a book on that subject which I will buy soon. Te chapters on Herschel and Joseph Banks are fascinating – I have yet to read the rest of the book but am looking forward to finding out more on Davy and his lamp and Mungo Park. This copy i bought for my son for Christmas as he loves astronomy and I know he will enjoy the chapters on Herschel.

⭐Reading this book reminded me of Cyril Connolly’s adage that inside every fat man is a thin one wildly signalling to be let out. There is much good writing here, about an exciting period for the emergence of modern science, populated by many fascinating characters. And it appears to be based on a lot of original research. But what a pity that one of the first requirements of modern popular histories is that they should extend to 500 pages. Poetry by Sir Humphrey Davy? For the most part we could do without it. Similarly, in this context, that of Byron and Shelley; some dreary speculation on the lines of “as he did such and such a thing, he must have been thinking….”; the author’s evangelistic promotion of atheism; and the inclusion, especially in the early chapters, of any available sexual titillation, much of which is in any case based only on speculation.But the book is worth reading. The Age of Wonder, well named, opens with Joseph Banks’ stay on Tahiti in 1769. He was a member of an expedition sponsored by the Royal Society and led by Captain James Cook, the primary objective of which was to observe the transit of Venus across the sun. Banks returned to England with a huge number of botanical and other specimens, and much carefully recorded anthropological and other information, founding his reputation as a popular, if essentially untrained and amateur scientist (throughout his lifetime scientists were known as philosophers). He was in due course rewarded with the Presidency of the Royal Society and it is through his Presidency that the link is made with much of the other material in this book. He and the Society did much to encourage and facilitate the work of the young Humphrey Davy, who eventually succeeded Banks to the Presidency. Davy died in 1829 and it is with his death that The Age of Wonder as a book essentially ends. Many related developments were still to come – in particular, Michael Faraday had yet to produce the work on electricity and electromagnetism for which he is best known – and Holmes rightly anticipates much that at the time lay in the future.Besides Banks, Davy, his famous miner’s lamp and other discoveries, the book majors on William Hershel, his development of telescopes and discovery of Uranus; also sister Caroline and her independent discovery of eight comets; Central African explorer Mungo Park; and the early development of hot air and hydrogen ballooning. Many other late eighteenth and early nineteenth century players also feature. For some it might be possible to discover as much, if not more, from other sources, but this book – which is exceptionally well indexed and has a useful Cast List as an Appendix – would still be worth checking as a route to discovering how individuals interrelated – Sir Humphrey Davy to Sir Walter Scott, for example, or Joseph Banks to King George III, who in turn was not averse to popping round to a garden party at the home of William and Caroline Herschel. It was indeed an Age of Wonder.

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