Live Radio Interview Monday

On Monday at 9am EST I will be talking about The Philosophical Breakfast Club live by telephone with Sean Moncrieff of Newstalk Radio, broadcast out of Dublin. You can listen in here.

“A Masterful Portrait” — New Scientist

A review in the February 12 issue of New Scientist calls The Philosophical Breakfast Club “a masterful portrait of nineteenth century science.”

The full-page review, written by Jonathon Keats, is titled Ham, tongue and Bacon (!).” As the title suggests, the reviewer was struck by the fact that at their breakfast meetings the men discussed Francis Bacon’s work and then spent their careers pursuing Bacon’s directive.”

I was so pleased that the author ended the review by agreeing with my claim in the epilogue of the book that there would be justice in looking back at the members of the Philosophical Breakfast Club for guidance on how to knit the sciences and humanities back together again.”

Keats writes, [Snyder] is right, and . . . the boundless curiosity the four shared throughout their lives—about absolutely everything—is surely a beginning.”

Read the complete review here.

Inventing the Scientist

It was June 24, 1833, at the meeting of the recently-founded British Association for the Advancement of Science. William Whewell (pronounced “who-ell”), a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and former professor of Mineralogy, had just finished a speech opening the conference. When the applause died down, the members were shocked to see a frail, grizzled man rise slowly to his feet. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the celebrated Romantic poet, had written a treatise on scientific method decades before. Coleridge had hardly left his home in Highgate for the past thirty years, yet he had felt obliged to make the journey to attend this meeting.

At that time, the practitioners of science were known primarily as “natural philosophers.” Coleridge remarked acidly that the members of the association should no longer refer to themselves this way. Men digging in fossil pits, or performing experiments with electrical apparatus, hardly fit the definition. They were not, he meant, “armchair philosophers,” pondering the mysteries of the universe, but practical men – with dirty hands, at that. As a “real metaphysician,” he forbade them the use of this honorific.

The hall erupted in a tumultuous din, as the assembled group took offense at the insult Coleridge clearly intended. Then Whewell rose again, quieting the crowd. He courteously agreed with the “distinguished gentleman” that a satisfactory term with which to describe the members of the association was wanting. If “philosophers” is taken to be “too wide and lofty a term,” then, Whewell suggested, “by analogy with artist, we may form scientist.”

It was fitting that the term was invented by Whewell who, along with three of his friends, transformed the natural philosopher into the modern scientist.

★★★★★ “Science was stagnating” — E. Bukowsky

A nice new review on Amazon here by E. Bukowsky

TOUR: New York Society Library, Mar. 10, 2011

Here is an update on my book tour event at the New York Society Library on March 10th. Those of you in the area who wish to register for the event can do so at this site. Or you can email Sara Holliday at the NYSL at sholliday@nysoclib.org. I hope to see some of you there!!

You can find the Library’s announcement here.