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The Age of Wonder
The romance of science
Richard HolmesHarperPress, 380pp, £25,
The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
Just what some- one who studied science should be called was mooted at the 1833 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. ‘Formerly the “learned” embraced in their wide grasp all the branches of the tree of knowledge, mathematicians as well as philologers, physical as well as antiquarian speculators,’ reported the geologist William Whewell. ‘But these days are past.’
The meeting was chaired by Coleridge, who vetoed the use of ‘philosopher’; ‘savants’ was instantly rejected as too French. But ‘some ingenious gentlemen’ (including Whewell himself) proposed ‘that, by analogy with “artist”, they might form “scientist” ’. Natural philosophers did not, with their new designation, become in the mind of the public another kind of artist, but a breed apart, divorced from the wider culture. This, according to Richard Holmes, is a tragedy. We should repudiate the rigid boundaries that divide science from literature, art, ethics and religion.
We need a wider, more generous, more imaginative perspective. Above all … we need the three things that a scientific culture can sustain: the sense of individual wonder, the power of hope, and the vivid but questing belief in a future for the globe.
The moment of naming marks the end of Holmes’s ‘age of wonder’. It begins with Joseph Banks’s masterful account of his exploration of Tahiti with Captain Cook. Gout-ridden and increasingly immobile, Banks would never go on another voyage. But as President of the Royal Society between 1778 and 1820 he nurtured talent, inspired explorers and inventors and ensured that science retained its primacy in the public imagination. Banks was a man of polymathic learning: he would surely reject the title of scientist, and the specialism it implied.
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Laurie Macdonell-Sanchez
October 30th, 2008 3:07pmA very timely book--can't wait to latch onto a copy. Most necessary in an age of dumbing-down w/shocking numbers of nominally intelligent people believing that we human beings needed the help of aliens to develop our current level of scientific & technological advancement. In my family I've an uncle who was a pioneer in sonar/radar/satellite & NASA telemetry, a cousin whose gene isolation technique helped make mapping the human genome possible, & a father & other uncles w/hundreds of patents to their credit, & not one of us is a Martian or what-have-you from anywhere but Earth! It is time to sing the praises of those w/unbridled imagination, privileged brain power & a strong work ethic, & hope & pray that our youth emulate them, rather than bully, torment & ostracize those like them among their peers as "nerds" or "geeks".