I neglected to review this great book about the luminaries of Enlightenment science and literature when I read it. Dava Sobel has just published a glowing review of it. She says:
The author describes his text as “a relay race of scientific stories,”
that “tries to capture something of the inner life of science, its
impact on the heart as well as on the mind.” In this the book succeeds
with verve. I didn't just read The Age of Wonder; I escaped to it, riding happily with its heroes through a blaze of adventures and ideas.
The book demonstrates marvellously not only the absence of two distinct cultures, arts and science, at the time, but also the mutually stimulating embrace between scientific and literary ideas. And of course the fever of discovery in the UK made it the world's industrial leader – something I'll come on to in a forthcoming post about Joel Mokyr's forthcoming book, The Enlightened Economy.
this looks most interesting – hope I can find it on Amazon –
“the absence of two distinct cultures, arts and science”
So when did this start? I was listening to Bill Thompson's talk about the new two cultures a couple of weeks ago and I've been ruminating since, having become convinced that the lack of scientific, technical (and, frankly, business) knowledge at the heart of the “establishment” is a significant factor in the state of our society. So something must have changed between approx 1800 and approx 1900?
Yes, I agree – something to do with the power of the landed aristocracy/monarchy/church in preventing the scientific and business newcomers from taking over 'the establishment'? It's a good research question for someone. And there's a separate policy question about how to fix the gap now.