the age of wonder

Centers around three titans of Romantic-era science: Joseph Banks, William Herschel, and the wonderfully-named Humphry Davy. The only one whose name really rang a bell was Davy, although some of the more minor characters were of course very recognizable: Faraday, Darwin (and, more importantly for this book, Erasmus Darwin, i.e., Darwin's grandfather), Ben Franklin, the Montgolfiers, James Cook, and also Coleridge, Percy and Mary Shelley, Keats, and Byron. The latter group were, surprisingly to me, quite intimately tied up in the science of the time -- Keats was a medical student, in fact, and Coleridge was a lifelong friend and co-experimenter of Davy. And that's part of Holmes's point: Science is best when tied up with creative expression. To quote, "In the broadest sense [the book] aims to present scientific passion, so much of which is summed up in that child-like, but infinitely complex word, wonder. ... Wonder...goes through various stages, evolving both with age and with knowledge, but retaining and irreducible fire and spontaneity." (Emphasis his.) And then he quotes Wordsworth.

A few too many things were "characteristic" or "uncharacteristic" of someone, or else they were "haunting." But quibbles aside I really liked this book.