The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. Richard Holmes

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      The Age of

      Wonder

       How the Romantic Generation discoveredthe Beauty and Terror of Science

      Richard Holmes

      

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published by HarperPress in 2008

      Copyright © Richard Holmes 2008

      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

      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 ebook 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 ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007149537

      Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007349883 Version: 2017-08-14

      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

       3. Balloonists in Heaven

       4. Herschel Among the Stars

       5. Mungo Park in Africa

       6. Davy on the Gas

       7. Dr Frankenstein and the Soul

       8. Davy and the Lamp

       9. Sorcerer and Apprentice

       10.

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