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Customer Reviews:Average Customer Rating: An appetizer for the mind 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. Bridging The Cultural Gap 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. Range of people limited 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. Gives personality to scientific history 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. A powerful pick for any interested in how science and trends develop 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. | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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