Progress is a mysterious stew. For though we have some idea of the proper ingredients that contribute to its ignition -- good science, staunch capitalism, and steely determination to name but a few --, we lack the knowledge of how to mix these virtues together to create the special sauce that drives civilization onward. Instead, we throw into the pot those virtues we think best, set the concoction on high and hope for success, knowing that a great deal rides on our creation. For there are few powers in the world more transformative than progress which, though it lurches alarmingly from advancement to advancement, nonetheless, when galvanized, possesses the power to thrust back the gloom of the unknown and light the world with an understanding that betters us all. This is extensively demonstrated in Mr. Holmes' captivating biography of one of humanity's most important scientific awakenings. It is a performance few of its witnesses will soon forget.
However far we advance as a species, 18th century England will be remembered as a nexus point in human history. For on that particularly chilly island, at that particularly tempestuous time, social and scientific changes were afoot that would go on to re-shape the world. Out of England's schools and coffee shops, battlefields and farmfields, poured poets and revolutionaries, heros and innovators who, collectively, would come to be identified as representing the Romantic era. Cresting on the waves of fortune, challenged by only the power of Napoleonic France, these visionaries were mapping the world and pleading for the downtrodden, working on theories of science and evolution and harnessing the explosive potential of fossil fuels. They were giving form to revolutions in industry, science and thought that within 100 years, would see the world utterly remade.
Representing the two halves of this Romantic period were two scientists whose discoveries would fire minds and inquiries for decades to come. William Herschel, German by birth, was an astronomer who, after coming to england in the late 1700s, would go onto refine and reimagine the study of stars through the creation of new telescopes powerful enough to find, in the heavens, secrets stretching back to the dawn of time. Though he would eventually be remembered as the discoverer of Uranus, then thought to be the seventh planet in the solar system, his pioneering work in the field of astronomy directly lead to the challenging of dogmas revealed, by his work, to be frauds.
Humphrey Davy, meanwhile, was the embodiment of the Romantic era. A chemist by training, he invented the Davy lamp, discovered many elements on the Periodic Table, sponsored numerous understudies whose careers would prove to burn as brightly as his own, and do this all while possessing the heart of a poet. His many verses, though not bringing him anywhere near the fame that the presidency of the Royal Society did, secured him an active social life which would lead to marriage, children and a startlingly swift rise into high society. Though his accomplishments, along with those of his contemporaries, would later be somewhat eclipsed, at least in fame, by those of Charles Darwin, they would characterize an era of science, one that can rightfully claim to have laid down the cornerstones of inquiry that would later blossom into the society we enjoy today.
The Age of Wonder is an engrossing and inspiring journey into perhaps the most critical period of scientific progress our world has ever known. For though the rise out of dogmatic ignorance that had so dominated the prior centuries had already begun, in England and elsewhere, they were scattered and diffuse. In england, the proximity of so many powerful minds caused these revolutions to feed upon themselves, to spark new revelations that electrified the world into the age of power and headlong progress. Though the Romantic Era produced numerous other scientists who would have surely represented this era as winningly as Herschel and Davy, Mr. Holmes chose well. For the dour but dogged Herschel is a wonderful contrast to the quixotic Davy, a man as taken by ego and self-expression as he was with science. That progress can be represented by two such different but brilliant subjects is both enlightening and heartening.
But as much as Herschel and Davy star here, it is their supporting casts who truly shine. Caroline Herschel and Michael Faraday, brilliant in their own rights, nonetheless stand as blazing symbols of the tides of change rippling through the world at this time. Caroline, a tiny, unwanted daughter of an extensive family, became her brother's invaluable right hand, going on to make numerous discoveries of her own as she helped actualize many of her brother's experiments. Faraday, meanwhile, was born to a blacksmith's apprentice and yet became, thanks in part to Davy's tutilage, one of the key figures in the understanding and harnessing of electricity. Mr. Holmes lovingly tends to both understudies, bestowing upon them the same attention to detail as he gave his main subjects.
The Age of Wonder is brilliant work. For Mr. Holmes has chosen to narrate the history of an era through the examination of a handful of brilliant minds who stood at the heart of a remarkable web, strands connecting them to many more figures worthy of their own biographies. In his care, we come to understand the human element as well as the science, a blend that will surely inspire inquisitive minds to greater study of the subjects captured here so well.
A winning combination of humans and history... (5/5 Stars)
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