The Age of Wonder

Kick Off

Recent events have inspired me to start a blog. I was on a flight to San Francisco and, with limited movie choice, decided to watch Julie and Julia. The idea of writing a blog about a project was interesting and certainly got me thinking. The next inspiration occurred in Schiphol airport - I bought a book called The Age of Wonder (Holmes, Richard). This is a thrilling history of scientific discovery in the Romantic era, and shows how these discoveries affected the arts (literature and music in particular). It is a gripping book with an extensive bibliography.

This has led to my new project - I will purchase every book in the bibliography and write down my thoughts on them. I will also try to link the books to current scientific thinking and see if they give me a new perspective on things.

The books I will start with are

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn

The Discovery of Nature, Albert Bettex

Count Rumford Revealed

My new books still haven't arrived, but I am keeping busy with the book that started it all - The Age of Wonder. Today I found out a surprising fact about a famous figure from the history of Munich.  I have been living in Munich for 8 years now, and one of my favorite places is the English garden. The name makes it sound like a small, well laid out bit of greenery - or possibly even an allotment. The reality is one of the largest parks in Europe. It is bigger than central park and has an added bonus of 4 beer gardens.

Soon after arriving I found out that the gardens were designed by an American (called Count Rumford) in the English style - this is a more naturalistic style as opposed to the French style of more formal gardens (the French rarely get things right and this is a case in point).

8 years ago wikipedia was not as complete as it is now, and details on Count Rumford were sketchy. All I could learn was that he was American, a scientist, and also a military advisor.

Now I find that Count Rumford was actually Benjamin Thomson. This was surprising to me on quite a few layers

1. Thomson is reasonably well known in scientific circles due to his work on the theory of heat and for helping to establish the Royal Instution of Great Britain. I knew about him but didn't know that he was also a Count who designed gardens.

2. I thought that Thomson was English, but now find out he was American.

3. None of my German colleagues knew about this

It is well-worn observation that you learn something new every day, but it is rare to have an 8 year old question answered so unexpectedly and for it to be such a pleasurable answer

First Book On Its Way

The first book (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) is on its way - Amazon just let me know it has been dispatched. This has raised my own excitement levels - it is always nice to see things happen. I mentioned to a few people that I have started this blog, but haven't given the url yet. I feel that my writing style is a little bit dry and formal, and want to wait until it has improved before letting any one see what I am up to

Getting started and My first books

One thing is for sure - I need to be focused in order to finish this project. There are over 100 books to read, and many of these will take a long time to finish. At the same time I will need to keep the blog up to date - this is a lot to do. Still, I waste huge amounts of my time in playing my xbox (although call of duty is so good perhaps I should blog about that as well), so I should have time to get all this done.

Anway, I have officially started the project. It was easy enough to order "The structure of Scientific Revolutions" - Amazon have it in stock. The Discovery of Nature was a little bit harder - searching for the title gave me many childrens books with different titles. I search based on the authors name - Albert Bettex - and found a second-hand supplier. I also saw that he wrote "The Discovery of the World" - something I might look at when this project finishes.

I soon run into more problems - the second hand supplier doesn't ship to Germany. In the Romantic era it was possible to order books from foreign countries and have them shipped, but it seems that this is another area where we are backsliding. Still, I will have the book sent to my Mum - she can bring it to me next time she comes to visit.

My last problem is that I am not too enthusiastic about reading Thomas Kuhn's book - I know enough about his theory to be a real sceptic of it. I am certainly more in Poppers camp. Still, a new persperctive is always interesting, so let's see what Kuhn has to say for himself.