"The Age of Wonder"...new book

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

by

Richard Holmes

ISBN-10: 0007149522
ISBN-13: 978-0007149520

"When Poets Were Scientists and Nature Their Mysterious Muse"

by

Janet Maslin

July 9th, 2009

The New York Times

William Herschel, the German-born, star-gazing musician who effectively doubled the size of the solar system with a single discovery in 1781, was not regarded as a scientist. That word had not been coined during most of the era that will now be known, thanks to Richard Holmes's amazingly ambitious, buoyant new fusion of history, art, science, philosophy and biography, as "The Age of Wonder." And Mr. 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.

In Herschel's day (and that of his sister, Caroline, who functioned as his doting assistant to the point of feeding him like a baby bird), science was deductively methodical. And astronomy was no amateur's game. But Herschel charted the skies as if making musical notations. And when he lacked instruments with enough precision, he painstakingly invented a telescope with startling new powers of magnification.

Looking through it, he noted a starlike object, twice as far from the Sun as Saturn, that appeared to be moving yet did not have a comet's tail. He identified this as the planet Georgium Sidus, first named for George III of Britain but later known as Uranus. (Mr. Holmes is much too spirited a writer to resist making a bon mot about the English pronunciation of that name.)

Beyond enlivening the story of Herschel's discovery into a gripping narrative, this book speculates fascinatingly about the ramifications of such a breakthrough. Thanks to Herschel the idea of a fixed universe was challenged, replaced by a cosmos in flux. Was that cause for wonder or terror? What were its theological implications? How would it influence a future generation of poets? (The thrill of this breakthrough would later figure in one of Keats's most famous sonnets, "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer.") Where would it figure in the relay race of scientific discoveries?

In order to structure his big, sweeping book about such issues, Mr. Holmes uses two exploratory voyages as bookends. The first, a trip to Tahiti in 1769 led by Capt. James Cook, brought the eager young botanist Joseph Banks to a place he would regard as a paradise, botanical and otherwise. (Mr. Holmes quotes deftly from Banks's delightfully candid journals, noting that Banks wrote with "gentlemanly jeu d’esprit.") The book then follows Banks back to England, where, at the age of 35, he became president of the Royal Society in 1778. He would hold that post for 41 years and encourage the other young pioneers whose stories Mr. Holmes has told.

"The Age of Wonder," a book with a distinct taste for high times, next moves to the golden age of ballooning, which began as an offshoot of paper-bag manufacturing. Gorgeously illustrated, "The Age of Wonder" captures the full gaudiness of early French ballooning experiments in Easter-egg-colored airborne specimens. And it finds an element of bawdy comedy in the era's gossipy whisperings about what might happen up in the air. ("So the first Mile High Club was also formed," Mr. Holmes writes of one such story.)

A wild anecdote about one American-British collaborative effort says of the two balloonists that "quite early on, each accidentally managed to drop the other’s national flag over the side of the basket and then profusely apologized." As to the rest of what was spilled overboard, Mr. Holmes's attention to detail raises the question of how exactingly such scientific endeavours really need to be documented.

But this book also understands the seriousness of these early experiments and the confusion they engendered: Was the eagerness to make a first crossing of the English Channel a sporting, scientific or diplomatic matter? What could balloon flight be used to measure? What would be its legacy? (The first test pilot with "the right stuff" can be found here.) And why should this kind of story not be told as enthusiastically as stories about artists and historical figures are? Over all "The Age of Wonder" makes a splendid case for treating the history of science in a bright new way.

Much of the book is also devoted to Humphry Davy, whose reputation is multifaceted. He wrote poetry; he had lively friendships with some of the best-known writers of his day; he invented a lamp that would prevent methane gas from exploding and save the lives of countless miners. Best immortalized here, though, are Davy's experiments with nitrous oxide, tests in which he eagerly served as guinea pig. Inhaling that substance gave him "a thrilling all over me most exquisitely pleasurable," he recorded. "I said to myself I was born to benefit the world by my great talents."

That Davy did not benefit the world by realizing surgical patients could be anesthetized is symptomatic, Mr. Holmes writes, of the strange, uncharted world that this book explores. Davy knew he was discovering something; what he did not know was what its practical applications might be. And with the kind of throwaway brilliance that makes this book so enthralling, Mr. Holmes uses only a footnote to conjure one of science’s least documented realms: that of failure. The cliché of the "Eureka!" moment easily obscures the doubt and uncertainty that are also part of the discovery process.

A particularly inspired section of the book relates Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to dissection, to the debate about the existence of a life force, and to the way fiction writers and poets could invoke spiritual power while avoiding making reference to God. But by the time the book reaches the Age of Wonder's concluding event, Charles Darwin's five-year voyage on the Beagle beginning in 1831, it has raised both the antecedents and ramifications of today's most enduring scientific debates, on subjects from global warming to extraterrestrial life to intelligent design. It is impossible to understand where these arguments are headed, "The Age of Wonder" maintains, without knowing where they began.

First astronomers...Aboriginal Australians?

"The Astronomy of Aboriginal Australia"

by

Ray P. Norris and Duane W. Hamacher

Abstract:

The traditional cultures of Aboriginal Australians include a significant astronomical component, which is usually reported in terms of songs or stories associated with stars and constellations. Here we argue that the astronomical components extend further, and include a search for meaning in the sky, beyond simply mirroring the earth-bound understanding. In particular, we have found that traditional Aboriginal cultures include a deep understanding of the motion of objects in the sky, and that this knowledge was used for practical purposes such as constructing calendars. We also present evidence that traditional Aboriginal Australians made careful records and measurements of cyclical phenomena, and paid careful attention to unexpected phenomena such as eclipses and meteorite impacts.

"Science history" poll

Do you find interest and value in science history?

Yes...4
No...0

Well, I guess this was a stupid poll.

Emilie du Châtelet...ties to Newton and Voltaire

Emilie du Châtelet
December 17th, 1706 to September 10th, 1749

March has been designated "Women in Science" month. Lots of women made their marks in science: Marie Curie or Lise Meitner...and, Emilie du Châtelet.

"Emilie du Châtelet: the genius without a beard"

by

Patricia Fara

June 10th, 2004

physicsworld.com

Encouraged by Voltaire, the 18th-century aristocrat Emilie du Châtelet led a covert scientific career that culminated in the first French translation of Newton's Principia. However, as Patricia Fara reveals, Du Châtelet has been unfairly cast as just Voltaire's mistress

According to Francois-Marie Voltaire - Enlightenment France's great writer and philosopher - Emilie du Châtelet "was a great man whose only fault was being a woman". Du Châtelet has paid the penalty for being a woman twice over. In her own lifetime she fought for the education and the publishing opportunities that she craved. Since her death, she has been cast in the shadow of two men - Voltaire, with whom she lived and studied, and Isaac Newton, whose work she criticized and interpreted. Her translation from Latin of Newton's Principia, his great work on gravity, remains the only complete version in French.

For more than two centuries, Du Châtelet (1706-49) has been cast as Voltaire's mistress, as though she were his possession or at best an intelligent secretary. But Voltaire himself knew better - he celebrated her as a "great and powerful genius". Together they wrote Elements of Newton's Philosophy (1738), an extremely influential book that persuaded French experimenters to abandon their own national hero, René Descartes, and pledge allegiance to Newton instead.

Although only Voltaire's name was on the title page, he paid tribute to Du Châtelet's scientific superiority – their book's frontispiece (shown) envisages her hovering above his head, casting Newton's divine wisdom down onto his hand. Du Châtelet's mirror identifies her as the goddess of truth, while Voltaire sports a poet's laurel wreath as he assiduously transcribes the words of his female muse. "She dictated and I wrote," he told a friend.

Tackling prejudice

Faced with overt exclusion from academic circles as well as ingrained doubts about her own ability, Du Châtelet was caught between conflicting, unsatisfactory stereotypes - the learned eccentric, the flamboyant lover, the devoted mother. Too many biographers have plumped for one or another of these hackneyed models, rather than listening to her quiet insistence of being "in my own right a whole person".

"Judge me for my own merits," protested Du Châtelet - but how should this be done?

Judging her by modern standards is not a valid approach. Women in the 18th century had virtually no educational opportunities and were believed to be intellectually as well as physically inferior to men. Just as importantly, there were no conventional career tracks to follow even for men who wanted to study science; like women, they had to carve out their own routes to success, especially if they were not born into rich families.

Trapped between the sexes, Du Châtelet conformed to the expectations of the time by loving to shop, dance and entertain. But she also transgressed social norms by dedicating herself to Newtonian natural philosophy. When submission deadlines were close she scarcely slept, plunging her hands into ice-cold water to keep herself awake.

In addition to her scientific research, she wrote and translated works on other subjects, such as ethics, the Bible and Greek poetry. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant admired her intellect, yet sneered that "a woman who conducts learned controversies on mechanics like the Marquise de Chatelier might as well have a beard".

Like many clever women today, even in the midst of achievement she lacked self-confidence - "God has refused me any kind of genius," she once confided. Despite her unconventional lifestyle, Du Châtelet still performed the traditional time-filling tasks expected of a wife and mother. Some of these she imposed on herself, but in other cases it seems that she yielded to pressure from her contemporaries, as if conditioned from birth into a form of psychological captivity. But she encouraged women to foster their own happiness by studying "to console them for everything that makes them dependent on men".

A scientific mind

Obviously brilliant as a child, Du Châtelet resented the discrimination that made it impossible for her to pursue the same career as a man. Born into a wealthy aristocratic family, she benefited from an enlightened father. Instead of sending her to a convent school he decided that she should be taught at home, and she received the sort of education that was more typical for boys. She could apparently speak six languages when she was only 12, but it was not until she reached her late 20s that she started to immerse herself in Newton's ideas. These were still extremely controversial: the Jesuits controlled France's education system, and their Cartesian science based on swirling vortices of tiny particles reigned well into the second half of the century.

By the time that she started to tackle Newton, Du Châtelet was married to an older army officer, had given birth to three children, and was simultaneously developing friendships with two other men. She persuaded one of them to teach her mathematics privately, and fell passionately in love with the other, Voltaire. He was in serious trouble, hunted by the police because of his unpatriotic political views, and Du Châtelet sent him off to hide at her country estate. The next summer she joined him there, and for 15 years they lived together, embroiled in a private world of intense intellectual activity entwined with romance.

Their first priority was to stock their library. They amassed 21,000 books - more than in most European universities - and they each had separate rooms packed with scientific equipment. Du Châtelet took over the great hall, where she tested Newton's theories with wooden balls swinging from the rafters and metal apparatus forged from the nearby iron mines.

In 1738 Voltaire published their extraordinarily successful Elements of Newton's Philosophy. Well illustrated, it clearly explained the basic principles of Newton's discoveries in mathematical astronomy and optics, so that for the first time the new physics became accessible to a wide range of French people. Voltaire hero-worshipped Newton but recognized that he himself could not match Du Châtelet intellectually. "I used to teach myself with you," he wrote 10 years later, "but now you have flown up where I can no longer follow."

Du Châtelet grappled with the philosophical relationships between the Cartesian, Leibnizian and Newtonian systems. Unlike Voltaire, she believed that good science needs metaphysical foundations. Newtonianism, she pointed out, purports to be based solely on experimental observations, yet inevitably entails metaphysical assumptions about the existence of scientific laws. For about a year and a half she prepared a new manuscript, Foundations of Physics, in which she tried to integrate the ideas of Descartes, Leibniz and Newton.

A tough world for female scholars

Du Châtelet wrote in complete secrecy, trapped in a dilemma: she desperately needed constructive criticism, but risked painful mockery by revealing that a woman was daring to engage in such innovative work. Many female scholars experienced similar conflicts. Almost 100 years later, the English mathematical physicist Mary Somerville was working on a mirror-imageproject - elucidating for an English audience the cosmological ideas of the self-styled "French Newton", Pierre Laplace. "I hid my papers as soon as the bell announced a visitor," Somerville confessed, "lest anyone should discover my secret." Although she doubted her own genius, Somerville was valued so highly that an Oxford college was named after her.

By welding together three conflicting systems, Du Châtelet suggested a novel yet welcome approach. Helped by the book that Du Châtelet and Voltaire had published earlier, Newtonian ideas were spreading through Europe, but there were fundamental clashes between the clockwork universes proposed by Europe's three most eminent natural philosophers. By incorporating Leibnizian ideas about active substances, Du Châtelet helped to forge a new version of Newtonian physics that resolved the problems of describing force and movement. Published anonymously, her book received glowing reviews in prestigious journals.

Finally she embarked on her most ambitious project - translating Newton's Principia into French. Because the English translation was faulty, she worked directly from the original Latin. For Du Châtelet, translation meant more than just converting words into another language. She believed that she should create her own version of a text, one that incorporated her own ideas as well as those of the original author. Constrained by family duties, her work was intermittent - but it was very thorough.

Spreading the Newtonian word

Du Châtelet decided to undertake not only the literal translation of the text itself, but also three types of interpretation. For newcomers she converted the complex mathematics into elegant prose, supplemented by her own examples. Next, she turned to calculus, translating Newton's geometry into the new continental algebra. Finally, she summarized recent mathematical research and experimental vindications of Newton's theories.

But to her dismay, Du Châtelet discovered that she was pregnant. Then aged 43, she was an elderly women by contemporary standards. Although Voltaire was not the father, he helped Du Châtelet deceive her husband into thinking that the baby was legitimate. Plagued by gloomy premonitions, Du Châtelet intensified her work schedule, working 18 hours a day to finish in time. Although she did succeed, she died soon after the baby was born. On her last day she recorded the date on her Newton commentary. Her Principia was published 10 years later, in 1759, to coincide with the return of a comet vindicating Newton's physics.

Good translations are vital for spreading new ideas, and modern international science could not have developed without them. To understand how science came to form the backbone of our modern world, we need to describe not only what happened inside laboratories and libraries, but also what happened outside. Science now dominates popular media as well as educational syllabuses, but this is only because female teachers, editors, illustrators and translators - women like Du Châtelet - enabled scientists and students to learn about the latest research. Understanding science's past entails recognizing and crediting their involvement. Women made different contributions from men, but different need not mean insignificant.

[Patricia Fara is a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. This article is based on a chapter in her book Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment.]

Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment

by

Patricia Fara

ISBN-10: 1844130827
ISBN-13: 978-1844130825

Émilie du Châtelet


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"Importance of science history" poll

Is the history of science essential for today's scientists?

Yes....4 [100%]
No....0

A unanimous vote but some of the people in science I have met don't have a clue about science history and could care less.