Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age
321
Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age
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Overview
In Visions of Science, James A. Secord offers a new way to capture this unique moment of change. He explores seven key books—among them Charles Babbage’s Reflections on the Decline of Science, Charles Lyell’s Principles ofGeology, Mary Somerville’s Connexion of the Physical Sciences, and Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus—and shows how literature that reflects on the wider meaning of science can be revelatory when granted the kind of close reading usually reserved for fiction and poetry. These books considered the meanings of science and its place in modern life, looking to the future, coordinating and connecting the sciences, and forging knowledge that would be appropriate for the new age. Their aim was often philosophical, but Secord shows it was just as often imaginative, projective, and practical: to suggest not only how to think about the natural world but also to indicate modes of action and potential consequences in an era of unparalleled change.
Visions of Science opens our eyes to how genteel ladies, working men, and the literary elite responded to these remarkable works. It reveals the importance of understanding the physical qualities of books and the key role of printers and publishers, from factories pouring out cheap compendia to fashionable publishing houses in London’s West End. Secord’s vivid account takes us to the heart of an information revolution that was to have profound consequences for the making of the modern world.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226203317 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 04/03/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 321 |
| File size: | 13 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Visions of Science
Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age
By James A. Secord
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2014 James A. SecordAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-20331-7
CHAPTER 1
Fantastic Voyages
Humphry Davy's Consolations in Travel
Reading Sir H. Davy's legacy 'Consolations in Travel'—what a sublime vision: I believe there is more than a vision in it; at least I hope so.
—The geologist Gideon Mantell, journal entry for 5 March 1830
Alone on the moonlit steps of the Coliseum in Rome, gripped by 'a wildness and a kind of indefinite sensation', a visitor reflects on the decline of great civilizations. Suddenly the ruins vanish, the light of the moon blazes into splendour, and a deep melody fills the air. All the senses are heightened; all sense of personal identity is lost. A soft, clear voice from the centre of the light begins to speak. 'I am an intelligence somewhat superior to you, though there are millions of beings as much above me in power and in intellect as man is above the meanest and weakest reptile that crawls beneath his feet; yet something I can teach you: yield your mind wholly to the influence which I shall exert upon it, and you shall be undeceived in your views of the history of the world, and of the system you inhabit.'
This scene is from the opening of Consolations in Travel, Or the Last Days of a Philosopher, a small book of dialogues that appeared in January 1830 as the final work of the chemist Humphry Davy. The vision continues as the narrator is guided by the spirit, the 'Genius', on a journey through the history of humanity, to be shown how civilization has proceeded from rude origins towards ever higher states of being. Midway through his passage across the centuries, the narrator sees again the Coliseum, but this time it is filled with a vast crowd watching the great gladiatorial combats, 'ornamented with all the spoils that the wealth of a world can give'. The works of Rome 'seemed more like the creation of a supernatural power than the work of human hands'. But then all is lost through luxury and dissipation. Gradually there is a revival, and although the great military exploits of the ancient world have passed, those belonging to the learning and the arts begin to blossom again. The key to the lasting success of Christian civilization is the printing press. One individual, Johann Faust (who was generally credited in popular legend with the invention) has transformed the world:
'Now,' the Genius said, 'society has taken its modern and permanent aspect. Consider for a moment its relations to letters and to arms as contrasted with those of the ancient world.' I looked, and saw, that in the place of the rolls of papyrus libraries were now filled with books. 'Behold,' the Genius said, 'the printing press; by the invention of Faust the productions of genius are, as it were, made imperishable, capable of indefinite multiplication, and rendered an unalienable heritage of the human mind. By this art, apparently so humble, the progress of society is secured, and man is spared the humiliation of witnessing again scenes like those which followed the destruction of the Roman Empire.'
The Genius goes on to explain the laws of history, how the races of northern Europe conquered the debilitated peoples of the Mediterranean, infusing them with the strength that ultimately led to the revival of learning in the modern era. It is a divine progression of happiness and spiritual enlightenment.
Do the laws of progress arise from physical organization, 'the machinery upon which thought and motion depend'? Or are mind and spirit specially created? To explain why neither of these explanations holds, the Genius offers a final journey beyond the veil of death. Raised high in a luminous column, the narrator sees a universe bursting with life, from the human-like creatures of Venus and Mars to the vast tentacles of the inhabitants of Saturn and the blazing intelligences of the sun. By the end, he travels as a beam of light into the realm of the angels. All these spheres are inhabited by ascending spiritual beings who have lived among the planets and are moving towards the sun. All is in progress, reborn spiritual natures rising towards infinite wisdom. The work of great men never disappears, but is preserved and built upon by future generations. Were the voyagers able to discern the fates of individual souls, they would discover the spirit that, having once taken the form in its earthly existence of the seventeenth-century natural philosopher and mathematician Isaac Newton, was 'now in a higher and better state of planetary existence drinking intellectual light from a purer source and approaching nearer to the infinite and divine Mind'.
This was the first of six dialogues in Consolations, which discuss the early geological history of the earth; problems of generation and reproduction; the role of great men in history and in science; and the nature of time and immortality. A dialogue format and visionary use of fact offered opportunities for speculation on the widest questions of philosophy and belief, something that was becoming more difficult to do in scientific papers, which were increasingly focused on specific discoveries in the laboratory, field, and museum. Consolations responds to the crisis at the time of its publication, but does so by rejecting attempts to democratize the readership for science and addressing instead those selected spirits who could guide the nation to a higher destiny.
Philosophy in the Pocket
The significance of Consolations is apparent from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë's shockingly controversial novel of 1848. Davy's work appears at a pivotal point in the plot, when the narrator, Gilbert Markham, discovers it on the table among the books of his beloved Helen Graham, whom he suspects is seeing another man. The volume is one he had not seen before in her collection, and in opening it Markham's worst fears seem realized, for it bears the signature of 'Frederick Lawrence'. This leads Markham to confront Graham. 'I felt disposed to dally with my victim like a cat. Shewing her the book that I still held in my hand, and pointing to the name on the fly leaf ... I asked—Do you know that gentleman?' Lawrence, it turns out, is only her brother, but as a result of the incident Graham gives him a sheaf of papers from her private diary that reveal the terrible story of her marriage. The presence of Consolations, mistakenly interpreted by Markham as a sign of scandal and secret, turns out to be one more proof of the tragic depths of Helen Graham's character, and a compliment to her tastes as a reader.
Anne Brontë had long shown an interest in the book, and her choice is not coincidental. Like Mantell and many other readers, she studied Consolations as part of an engagement with contemporary religious and philosophical discussion in relation to the sciences. Reading the book in her father's parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire, she wrote a manuscript dialogue of her own involving S and C, a 'Sceptic' and a 'Christian'. Here, she contrasted the Bible with other more 'tempting volumes', but also concluded with a long passage on geological progress drawn from Consolations. 'I know not any more sensitive or philosophical view,' the Christian in the dialogue states, than 'Humphry Davy's theory.'
The physical form of Consolations had been precisely engineered for use in such enquiries. A small octavo, typical of polite books of reflection and thought for genteel readers, it was published by John Murray II, the great gentleman publisher of Albemarle Street in London's fashionable West End. Murray was well known for his fastidious attention to propriety—it was after all in his fireplace that Lord Byron's infamous autobiographical memoir was burned to ashes. But Murray also prided himself on having his finger on the pulse of intellectual fashion, which made a contemplative work by as dashing a man of science as Humphry Davy a valuable addition to his list.
Unlike the productions of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, with their cramped format and cheap paper, Consolations was a handsome production, though it was short and thus not particularly costly. It was printed by Thomas Davison of Whitefriars in London, who was known for the 'singular beauty and correctness of his works', including the use of a special ink that made the printed words on the page more sharply defined and easy to read. The results are evident in the final product: widely spaced lines, generous margins, cold-pressed paper, a small page size that was easy to hold in the hand. The original binding was simple paper-covered boards, which purchasers were generally expected to have rebound, typically in leather. The format had been used by Davison for another late work by Davy, the pseudonymous Salmonia: or Days of Fly Fishing of 1828, a small octavo that had been based in turn on the recent, hugely selling editions of Lord Byron's poems, also published by Murray and printed by Davison. At six shillings, Consolations was inexpensive enough to be bought by the upper middle classes, and it was held by the libraries of almost all provincial philosophical societies and mechanics' institutes. It was not really a cheap book, though, as it would have been possible to print the text in far fewer pages. Nor was it the larger size and shape characteristic of systematic, academic philosophy. Consolations sold exceptionally well, with seven editions in forty years, and a total sale in Britain alone of over eight thousand copies, not to mention its appearance in the author's collected works. The book was widely circulated in the German-speaking world, and there were also early translations into Dutch and Swedish.
The elegant format made Consolations instantly recognizable as an appropriate item on Helen Graham's fictional table. The book appears to have regularly served as a gift between the sexes, and many copies were owned by women. The kind of flighty reader that it is stereotypically understood to have attracted is shown in a print, 'Sketches from a Fashionable Conversatione', published a few years earlier (Plate 5). 'Oh!' says the woman on the left, 'I pant for Soul, Mind, Sentiment. I die for expression, delicacy, tenderness, and intellectuality.' No wonder that Gilbert Markham was suspicious about it being a present from a male competitor, even before he opened the covers to see the flyleaf. That title, Consolations in Travel, Or the Last Days of a Philosopher, needed no explanation to Brontë's readers, but it did indicate a sense of considerable complexity in relation to other works. Consolations had a clear reference to Boethius' Latin classic of the sixth century, the Consolation of Philosophy, with its spiritual guide; and also to various other works in the same tradition, such as Dante's Divine Comedy. Passages describing the history of civilization and of ancient life clearly relate to contemporary epic, and particularly to universal history. It also referred to projects by Davy's close friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge earlier in the century, especially Consolations and Comforts from the Exercise of and Right Application of the Reason, the Imagination, and the Moral Feelings.
But why consolations in travel? The reading of the book, even in a comfortable library or drawing room, was designed to call up the experience of reflective travel, being in size and shape a volume that might be taken on a journey. The small size of Consolations aimed at lightness and elegance. It was printed in what would have been known as a 'pocket' edition, which meant that readers could take it with them anywhere as a companion. As the pattern of exchanges in Consolations makes clear, travel creates a distance from home that is essential to true reflection. England—the centre of the narrator's previous life—lacks the conditions (and not least the weather) vital to social stability and mental repose:
Of all the climates of Europe, England seems to me most fitted for the activity of the mind, and the least suited to repose. The alterations of a climate so various and rapid, continually awake new sensations, and the changes in the sky from dryness to moisture, seem to keep the nervous system in a constant state of disturbance ... in the changeful and tumultuous atmosphere of England, to be tranquil is a labour, and employment is necessary to ward off the attacks of ennui. The English as a nation is preeminently active, and the natives of no other country follow their objects with so much force, fire and constancy. And, as human powers are limited, there are few examples of very distinguished men living in this country to old age; they usually fail, droop and die before they have attained the period naturally marked for the end of human existence.
London is a city of death: the narrator returns there only for the funeral of a friend, and leaves immediately afterwards because bodily and mental equilibrium can be retained only in tranquil landscapes and a contented society. Only in milder climates, or scenes of natural beauty, could 'the pains of disease' be replaced by 'repose and oblivion'.
Each of the dialogues begins in a closely specified picturesque setting that creates mental repose and occasions philosophical reflection and discussion. The significance of the book's geography was highlighted in editions from 1851 onwards by wood-engraved illustrations at the front of each chapter; these were added by the hostess and naturalist Charlotte Murchison and other friends, based on drawings of their own continental tours. The territory, especially in the early chapters, was familiar to anyone who knew the writings of the enlightened deists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Thus, the first dialogue, 'The Vision', takes place in the winter near the Coliseum in Rome, at the heart of classical civilization and the setting for the opening of Edward Gibbon's notoriously anti-Christian but widely read Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and the form is modelled on Voltaire's Micromegas, which uses interplanetary travel to comment on the follies of mankind.
The most important model was the Comte de Volney's famous work of the late Enlightenment, The Ruins: A Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, first issued in Paris in 1791 and repeatedly republished in English during the following decades. Like Consolations, the Ruins begins with a 'profound reverie' above the ruins of a once-great city—in this case, Palmyra in the Syrian desert—and the narrator is guided by a Genius, a 'pale apparition, enveloped in an immense drapery' (Fig. 6). In Volney's vision, kingcraft and priestcraft will pass away, to be replaced by a faith unified around a God known not through Scripture or dogma, but the laws of nature. The Ruins appeared at the height of the revolution in France, which it sees as the culminating event of global history. Particularly with its appended The Law of Nature, the French revolutionary catechism, Ruins became a classic of freethinking religion, among the most widely circulated and reviled books of the early nineteenth century. The London printer Arthur Seale, known for his list of revolutionary and millenarian works, announced an edition of 1795 as 'sold by all political booksellers'. Thomas Jefferson kept his involvement in another translation secret, presumably lest opponents use it to undermine his presidency of the United States. In Mary Shelley'sFrankenstein of 1818, the monster overhears the Ruins being read in a peasant's cottage in Switzerland, and learns of the rights of man, the origins of social inequality, and the catastrophe of organized religion. Percy Shelley, Mary's husband, had used the Ruins as the basis for his own arguments for the necessity of atheism in Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem, which had been issued when the author was only eighteen. When the courts used the poem to prove that Shelley was an unsuitable father, cheap reprints from the pauper presses made it by far his most widely read work.
As a travel companion, Consolations provided a striking counterrevolutionary alternative. The vision is set within the context of three English friends meeting to appreciate the ruins of Rome, each with contrasting views in contemporary religious debates: Onuphrio, a liberal aristocrat; Ambrosio, a Roman Catholic; and the narrator, Philalethes. They begin by discussing the relation between spiritual and material progress, an issue about which they differ passionately. Onuphrio, the sceptic, argues that the modern Rome will someday lie in the same broken state as its ancient counterpart. For the devout Ambrosio, in contrast, modern Rome will last until the end of days. Christianity is a final state of belief, the culmination of spiritual progress, and 'a creed fitted for the most enlightened state of the human mind and equally adapted to every climate and every people'. Onuphrio does not deny the value of religion, including Christianity: he acknowledges its importance in all its forms, from Hinduism to Islam, as 'belonging to the human mind in the same manner as instincts belong to the brute creation'. But he does not believe that Christianity occupies any special position in relation to the material survival of civilization: the wood of the cross will decay as surely as the idols of eastern religions. This increasingly fraught exchange ends when Onuphrio and Ambrosio leave for a crowded soirée—precisely the kind of social distraction the narrator is eager to avoid. Staying behind, Philalethes experiences his fantastic vision. But here too, the contrast with Volney's Ruins and similar late Enlightenment works is evident, as the orientalist figure of an eastern sage is reinvented as a harp-like voice, ungendered and sexually ambiguous, adopted from the safely Christian traditions of the West. This is the philosophy of the Grand Tour reconfigured for the new age.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Visions of Science by James A. Secord. Copyright © 2014 James A. Secord. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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Table of Contents
PrefaceList of Figures
List of Plates
Introduction
1. Fantastic Voyages: Humphry Davy’s Consolations in Travel
2. The Economy of Intelligence: Charles Babbage’s Reflections on the Decline of Science in England
3. The Conduct of Everyday Life: John Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy
4. Mathematics for the Million? Mary Somerville’s On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences
5. A Philosophy for a New Science: Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology
6. The Problem of Mind: George Combe’s Constitution of Man
7. The Torch of Science: Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus
Epilogue
Chronology
Further Reading
Abbreviations
Endnotes
Bibliography of Works Published after 1900
Index