The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science,   ISBN:9780375422225

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This is a sort of appetizer for anyone interested in the cultural context of 19th century science. There are some howlers in the notes (for instance, the Doppler shift was *not* used to determine the distance between the Milky Way & the Andromeda Galaxy), so I wonder who was Holmes' scientific fact-checker. On the other hand, many biographies of great scientists are amazingly smallbore, & Age of Wonder broadens the view.

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The Romantic Age (1750-1820) in Europe was a time when science and literature rubbed excitedly together, attracted by a shared love of Nature and an urgent desire to explore her secrets; it was a time when poets studied science, and scientists wrote poetry. "The Age of Wonder" exhibits a winding path across this landscape, from which sublime vistas and lively views open up on every side: explorers encounter Tahiti, and vice-versa; balloonists discern the patterns of village, forest, and river from an aerial perspective; astronomers pioneer the knowledge of deep space, and geologists the knowledge of deep time, while chemists transmute the chaos of nature into the order of its newly-discovered chemical elements.

Richard Holmes guides the reader on this journey using a sequence of linked biographies - explorers Joseph Banks (Tahiti) and Mungo Park (Africa), astronomers William and Caroline Herschel, chemist Humphry Davy - to view the Romantic Age of science through the lens of their lives and personal writings. Literary stars like Byron, Keats, Percy and Mary Shelley, and Coleridge appear in turn, albeit as satellites of Romantic science (e.g., Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), rather than as entire galaxies of Romantic literature. The science in the book is presented by and for the enthusiast rather than the initiate, and is both effortlessly accessible and vastly entertaining (the first "Mile-High Club" in a balloon, Davy's "scientific" dedication to getting high on laughing gas).

There is not even a hint of the "academic" in Holmes' writing, although it is quite thoroughly informed (see his endnotes, index, bibliography, and capsule biographies for proof, if any is needed). There is much food for thought here, about topics ranging from Vitalism to the Argument From Design, C. P. Snow's "Two Cultures," experiment vs. theory in science, the growth and structure of scientific institutions, administration and research, and public support of science. The book touches on all these areas, and many more, as they naturally come up in the course of its narrative.

By design and intention, this is a book about English, not Continental, science; Holmes is a literary biographer who specializes in the English Romantic Age (I intend to immediately buy his volumes on Coleridge, just on the strength of "The Age of Wonder.") While scientifically literate, he is not a scientist or a philosopher or historian of science. What the reader gets in "The Age of Wonder" is a book that deftly, even stunningly, illuminates the spirit of English science in the Romantic Age. It is a real pleasure to recommend it.

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The number of persons in this marvelous age is limited to but only a few people, though important enough to expand on their achievements in great detail, perhaps more than I care to know.

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When I've taken science or history courses in school, I've found them to be anxious exercises in memorizing names, places, and dates that fail to take on much personal meaning as there is little time to delve into the characteristics and motivations of the people that shaped the informed world we live in today. Richard Holmes has fleshed out some of these outstanding figures for me in his elegant tapestry of biographies, his aim being not so much to explain science as to elaborate on the curiosity and bravery distincive to the world of the 17th century Romantic Era. Holmes uses everything at his disposal, from the journal entries and poetry of his subjects to his own experience as an editor, to create a read as compelling as the generation it depicts. Those who haven't been interesed in the subject matter before will find that reading this book makes the people of times past relatable and the discoveries they made fascinating.

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THE AGE OF WONDER: HOW THE ROMANTIC GENERATION DISCOVERED THE BEAUTY AND TERROR OF SCIENCE provides a riveting history of the men and women whose discoveries fostered the Romantic Age of Science. From a botanist's discoveries in 1769 to how the 'Age of Wonder' emerged from explorations and the efforts of William Herschel and sister Caroline and others, this is a powerful pick for any interested in how science and trends develop.