The poetry of Victorian scientists style, science and nonsense /
Daniel Brown.
- Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, (c)2013.
- 1 online resource (330 pages)
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Cover; Contents; Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Chapter 1 Professionals and amateurs, work and play: William Rowan Hamilton, Edward Lear and James Clerk Maxwell; Scientists and artists; Natural history and historic nonsense; Holotypes; 'Man's Place in Nature'; Knowledge from nonsense; Counterfactuals; 'The philosophy of toys'; Chapter 2 Edinburgh natural philosophy and Cambridge mathematics; Puns against pedantry; The Cambridge Mathematical Tripos; Punning machines; Analogies; Chapter 3 Knowing more than you think: James Clerk Maxwell on puns, analogies and dreams; The magazine of nature. Causes and forces'The black rocks of Ontology'; 'Empty bubbles, floating upwards through the current of the mind'; Truth and beauty; Crystals; Chapter 4 Red Lions: Edward Forbes and James Clerk Maxwell; 'The Fate of the Do-do'; 'To the Chief Musician upon Nabla'; Metropolitans and North Britons; Glacial relations; Chapter 5 Popular science lectures: 'A Tyndallic Ode'; A science eisteddfod; A song from the Chief Musician: Tait's 1876 lecture on Force; 'Ice reduced to liquid flowers'; Sensation and science; Dark science and light; William Crookes; 'Sounding Flames, andc.' Chapter 6 John Tyndall and 'the Scientific Use of the Imagination'Molecular machines and lascivious bodies; Tyndall's 'Scientific Imagination'; The Tyndallic 'fancy scientific'; The Tyndallic sublime; Chapter 7 'Molecular Evolution': Maxwell, Tyndall and Lucretius; 'Fortuitous embraces'; Atoms and associations; 'A swift metamorphosis'; Humean delirium; Chapter 8 James Joseph Sylvester: the romance of space; Projective geometry; 'Transcendental Space'; 'Still-more heaven-reaching theory'; Lost in space; Chapter 9 James Joseph Sylvester: the calculus of forms; Playing 'Syzygies' Ut pictura poesis'Studies in Monochrome'; The Hypersyzygetic Canonico-meio-catalecticizant; Airs and graces; Chapter 10 Science on Parnassus; The Unseen Universe; The vortex atom soul; The space of speculation; Novels, hymns and a prayer; Gods and demons; Pleasure and poise; Notes; Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3; Chapter 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6; Chapter 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Works cited; Unpublished materials; Published materials; Index.
The first study of poetry by Victorian scientists, a unique record of the nature and cultures of Victorian science.
9781139625548
English poetry--History and criticism.--19th century Literature and science--History--Great Britain--19th century. Scientists' writings. English poetry--History and criticism.--19th century Literature and science--History--Great Britain--19th century. Scientists' writings.