The Romantic Discovery of Science

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


Two things fill my mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and persistently I reflect upon them:  the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me...I see them in front of me an unite them immediately with the consciousness of my own existence.  - Immanuel Kant (1788)

My interest in the History of Science began with reading biographies of famous scientists like Faraday and Edison when I was not yet a teenager. This interest was intensified by college reading of Arthur Koestler, Loren Eiseley and others, and has continued to this day. Richard Holmes fine volume, The Age of Wonder, brings that interest together with my love of literature. In his prologue he describes the book as "a relay race of scientific stories". That it is and more, combining the literary milieu of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the increasingly wonderful scientific discoveries and enterprises from the voyages of Captain James Cook through the crossing of the English Channel by balloon through excursions into the study of gases and electricity, ending with the first voyage of Charles Darwin.

The cast of characters is too numerous to list, but includes geniuses of science from William Herschel to Humphrey Davy and on to Michael Faraday and other discoverers. The episodes include the discovery of the planet Uranus by Herschel and his sister, the study of Tahitian culture by Joseph Banks, the "vitalist" movement that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein, the practical development of safe lamps for coal miners by Davy, and other momentous moments of wonder that are still of  importance to us today. Making his stories more interesting is the influence and intersection of science with literature as evidenced by the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and others including Davy himself. He does not ignore the interaction with scientists from the continent like Lavoisier, Ritter, Baron Cuvier, and Goethe. Also present is the importance of the influence of philosophers, especially the Germans like Kant, both via the writings of Coleridge and through the readings of the scientists themselves.

It was an age when scientists were still considered philosophers, even masters of the humanities. This is seen in the musical creations of Herschel and the poetic charms of Davy; not to mention the writing abilities of all of them including explorers like Captain Cook with his journals of Pacific voyages, and Mungo Park whose journal of his explorations in Africa are a great read to this day.  It was also an age when the foundations of some of our greatest twentieth century scientific developments were laid by men like Charles Babbage, the mathematician who invented "difference engines" (we call them computers today).

The combination of Holmes' superb writing style with fascinating stories, many unfamiliar even to a reader like myself, and with the suspense of voyages and scientific advances that seem to happen an increasing pace makes it understandable why this book was the recipient of multiple awards. I would recommend this to all readers who look at the night sky and wonder about the mysteries of nature and the universe.

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Music for the New Year

As I carry with my on my search through life it is music that lifts me and helps me along the way.  As I walk toward the exercise arena each morning the tunes flow from and through my mind, following the constant motion and beat of my footsteps.  Music is consolation - yes, and inspiration that moves me forward.

The Kingdom is one of Music,

Meaning for minds melded with those

Able to share the sphere of nature

And being. I live in a world

Real with reason as the fuel

For the spirit of man.

(James Henderson, from The Kingdom of Music, 1992)

Rhythms and Chords of Life

Jean-Christophe 
by Romain Rolland

“Les rythmes et les accords, dans l’univers des âmes, voilà le plan sur lequel meut ma pensée” [Rhythms and chords in the universe of souls, that’s the plane on which my thoughts move] (Cahiers Romain Rolland 15, 1964, p. 211)


This is a massive multi-volume novel that, with music and humanity at its heart, is one of my favorites joining the pantheon beside Musil, Proust, and Shakespeare. The central character of the novel is Jean-Christophe Krafft, a German musician whose life is traced from his birth until his death. Using a wide canvas, Rolland broadened his scope to explore many aspects relating to different stages of life. The story starts when the hero is born in a small German village on the banks of the Rhine to an alcoholic musician father and loving, care-worn mother. Christophe discovers the world of fears, suffering and social injustice whilst at the same time his musical genius takes form. He also experiences childhood love, adolescent romances and the need to support the household as a musician following the death of, first, his grandfather, and then his father.
Romain Rolland did not see his novel as belonging to the accepted literary genres of the day. He was the first to designate it as a “roman-fleuve”. His “created” character took form as Rolland himself observed and experienced life and many of the comments in the novel reflect Rolland’s personal thoughts on social, political and cultural matters at the time of writing. Rolland’s musical background also played a determining role in how he structured Jean-Christophe.
Consistent with his overall philosophy Rolland's underlying message conveyed in the novel is that peoples of different countries and backgrounds could and should come together in harmony. The power of the novel derives from his thirst for truth, his need for morality and his love of humanity. The aesthetic life for him is not just to create beauty, but above all it is a means to create an act of humanity. The power and the beauty of his prose made this long novel one I will always remember.

Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland. Carroll & Graf, 1996 (1912).

Thinking About Being

Everywhere Being Is Dancing: 
Twenty Pieces of Thinking 
by Robert Bringhurst

"It is an article of faith with me that music and poetry spring from the same root.  The space between them now is filled with words--and words, of course, are not to be trusted, because words have been betrayed." (p 33)

"Being speaks and means -- it has no choice --

because WHAT IS exists and WHAT ISN'T doesn't.

These are things I believe you should ponder.

"The Fragments of Parmenides", p 147

The essays in this book stretch the bounds of thought. For example, music is discussed in relationship to language, literature, myth, philosophy, painting, and even typography. This discussion is of typography in the modern (or post-modern) sense that those who in the twenty-first century participate in the computer revolution are likely to have an interest in typography. Thus on page 118 we find this statement:
"But typography isn't something to watch; it's something to do, like writing and reading and cooking and music and literature. It's an intrinsically rewarding, honest craft. And the nature of craft is that mental and physical ways of being stay in touch; they hold each other by the hand."
So, yes typography is like music in that sense and slowly, as you peruse the other essays (that quote was from an essay titled, "To Tell the Truth by Lying: Gorgias the Sicilian and a Theory You Can't Refuse") you become entwined in the connections that everything worth thinking about has with everything else. The quoted essay leads up to the riff on typography through a discussion of Homer, Socrates, and Plato - author of the Gorgias. In fact this essay is a microcosm of the collection as a whole; essays are included with specific titles but with amorphous paths of prose as they get to their point. The path the essays lay down for the reader leads from Mythology to Haida Oral literature and the poet Gary Snyder -- on the way there are excursions through the philosophy of poetry, the art of Joan Miro, and Bach as interpreted by Glenn Gould.  And that is just the tip of the proverbial ice cube.
 The underlying theme of the collection is presented in the title of the book and if you are interested in the nature of being you may be just the reader to delight in Robert Bringhurst's Dance.

Everywhere Being is dancing by Robert Bringhurst. Counterpoint, 2008