Customer Reviews:
 A truly compelling history of science in the Enlightenment December 17, 2008
Henry Turner (Manchester, UK)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
I'm not a scientist. I have only a passing interest in the history of science. However, I'm c250 pages in and I am gripped. Holmes has the narrative skill of a great novelist, conjuring worlds and characters out of what could have so easily have been dry facts. Starting with Joseph Banks' experiences in Tahiti (he travelled as part of Cook's expedition), Holmes takes the reader into the mindset of the European encountering new, unknown worlds. In particular - in this case - their complex responses to the Tahitians' more open attitudes towards sex and sexuality. And that is one of the greatest strengths of the book. Whether it's dealing with Herschel and the discovery or Uranus or Davy and his lamp, The Age of Wonder is as much about the late 18th/early 19th century mind as it is about the science and scientists. Indeed, the book sees science through the eyes of the romantic movement (and a Britain in love with romanticism), so Coleridge, Keats and the Shelleys become major players in the narrative. Despite the focus on Herschel and Davy and their particular discoveries, the reader is compellingly immersed in a far wider exploration of ideas and culture in this period. The widespread excitement that scientific discovery generated is palpable and you can't help feeling that we have lost something very important in a world where science and the arts are so often perceived as near polar opposites. Wholeheartedly recommended to anyone in search of a rattling good read this Christmas, especially those who don't think that science is their pigeon.
A fascinating read December 16, 2008
ED
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Given this book as a birthday present I started to read it as I had half an hour to kill and was immediately gripped. This is a wonderfully written and thoroughly interesting collection of stories, anecdotes and brief biographies woven together with skill and care. I have learned a lot whilst reading this book and enjoyed myself in the process, I heartily recommend it.
Comments by Michael Calum Jacques, author of '1st Century Radical'. December 4, 2008
Michael Calum Jacques (UK)
25 out of 32 found this review helpful
This reviewer found this work to be an altogether fascinating book, scanning and encompassing a myriad of topics and even ideas "heterogeneously yoked by violence together", cemented through the sheer quality and vivacity of the author's writing merits.
Holmes has been described as 'a literary traveller'. Best known for a number of important works on the topic of War, Wellington et al, The Age of Wonder is a different case altogether. To risk being oversimplistic, and depending on one's own standpoint, it deals with the the embracing of scientific principles by the Romantics or, for some, nearer to Johnson's definition, the collision of the two value systems and a resultant synthesis of sorts.
Like the Romantic poets themselves, the author also presents scientific research as comprising of a world of opportunities, as a type of challenging, new expedition. Holmes draws attention to William Wordsworth's depiction of Isaac Newton as a lonesome explorer and, indeed, Holmes goes actually on to label two huge expeditions as sorts of watermarks. viz. Captain James Cook's first encircling of the world, between 1768 and 1771, and Charles Darwin's celebrated voyage and research conducted on the Beagle, between 1831 and 1836.
These selections concentrate Holmes attention on what is chronicled elsewhere as having been an intensely noteworthy span of some s60 years when science became practised by 'professionals, not merely by rich, at ease 'amateurs' who happened to have the luxury of time at their disposal. Detailed examples from the book could fill the space and time available for this review and many more. The book is quite compendious in its stated field of interest but indulges in the study of particular subjects (human and topical ones) to ensure its depth.
Of course, the impact of science in the Victorian age (and beyond) has many more facets to it that one volume could ever hope to encompass. The impact of science upon faith, for example, especially upon Christian Faith, is a subject still yearning for greater definition and delineation.
The 550+, information and anecdote clad, pages to be found within 'The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science' by Richard Holmes, come strongly commended by this reviewer. It does 'all that it says on the cover' and far, far more besides. Richard Holmes has never written better and, if you've enjoyed his previous works, you'll find this an absorbing read.
Michael Calum Jacques (author of 1st Century Radical)
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