The Age of Wonder, Part I

The Age of Wonder


By: Richard Holmes
Reviewed by: Felicity T., 16
Rating:


Alrighty, so here's the deal: "The Age of Wonder" is one of three-ish books assigned for summer reading for Clovis West's AP Language and Composition class this year. To be honest, I've been feeling very intimidated by its sheer 552-page bulk, and the shortness of the summer months that I have to read it in. Its large-ish chapters range from 15-70 pages long (*insert mental wail of agony*). Needless to say, I've been feeling a little tormented every time I glance at my desk and see this book (definitely the largest of the assigned stack) sitting there and... eyeing me.

Here is my confession: I just started the book today. I'm only about 30 pages into it. But here's my plan, if the librarians will let me go through with it: since this book is so large, and such a challenge, I'm going to split my review into several installments, several episodes, if you will. I figure this will work out as I get through every two or three chapters (there are 10, I think), so expect an episode every week or so. Hopefully, this will work out as a good analysis/introduction to those who have to-I mean, GET to-read it in the future, or to those of us out there who love history and some ideological challenge.

Quite honestly, I'm pretty excited about this book, now that I've started it. I read the Preface, which is a few pages long. Have no fear, readers! The author is an excellent writer, with a developed, but not-too-challenging vocabulary. If you appreciate the worldview/culture/ideology shifts that have occurred in Western history, you'll probably like this. Already, I've enjoyed Holmes' insight on Romanticism and its link to science in the mid-18th century.

This book is something of a historical/artistic/literary look into the past, after the Enlightenment, but before the Civil War, during the era between/during Captain Cook's and Charles Darwin's fateful voyages across the ocean. Holmes, the author, is interested in the way that this age was really one of the times in history when science and studying nature was first becoming mainstream and open to normal people, rather than the elite educated. Right alongside this trend, he studies its almost ironic link with the era's artistic/literary movement in Romanticism. (Ironic, because Romanticism emphasizes humans and emotions and the ideal, while science typically sticks to "objectivity" and nature and unemotional things like mathematics and calculations.) What Holmes does, or intends to do, is show that these two spheres of life really aren't exclusive, really are very intertwined and influence each other a great deal. (Which is quite incredible, I think.) The author examines the lives/circumstances/legacies of several different scientists and artists during this time, and how discoveries of the day influenced their own findings and understandings of the world.

I think it's very amazing to think that these people who lived centuries ago were actually very similar to humans today, even though our perspectives toward them are bogged down in stuffy history classrooms. I'm excited to see how their world is much the same as our world, and their discoveries are our discoveries. And that these were real, interesting people, who have shaped our society today. This is gonna be good. Just hang in there with me for the next month or so! (:

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