Imagining the Sciences: Expressions of New Knowledge in the 'Long' Eighteenth Century by Robert C. Leitz III, Kevin L. Cope

Abstract

MLR, IOI.3, 2oo6 827 Lane rehearsal practices (or, it seems, lack of them) in Fielding's day; few other scho lars would have got as far asMartyn's authorized London edition, surviving copies of which lack the complaint. ('Presumably Dublin was set from an early London issue, before Martyn had second thoughts about the prefatory carping', Lockwood plausibly conjectures.) Ambitious in conception and immaculate in execution, this volume raises the bar for the scholarly editing of Restoration and eighteenth-century drama, and indeed for the period's literature in general. Volume ii is planned to pick up inmid-season I73I with The Welsh Opera. STANNE'S COLLEGE, OXFORD TOM KEYMER Imagining theSciences: Expressions ofNew Knowledge in the 'Long'Eighteenth Century. Ed. by ROBERTC. LEITZ III and KEVIN L. COPE. New York: AMS. 2004. xvi+ 36I PP.; 23 ills. $9I.50. ISBN 0-404-63543-I. There is an exuberance about this book to match the exuberance of science and pseudo-science in the long eighteenth century. Carious teeth, mad physicians, chronic headache, and, of course, weather are some of the subjects explored in this welcome book on science and discourse. Here is an outline of the contents. Barbel Czennia's 'From Aeolus to Aeology; or, Boreas Meets the Barometer: Clouds, Winds, and Weather Observation in Eighteenth-Century Poetry' surveys emerging views of weather as a scientific phenomenon among poets of the seven teenth and eighteenth centuries. Ranging through Andrew Marvell, Ann Finch's 'Upon the Hurricane' (I703), James Thomson's The Seasons (I726-30), and culmi nating in Erasmus Darwin's The Botanic Garden (I791), the essay documents and anticipates changing sensibilities in awide-ranging survey that reveals much on the poetics of scientific discovery. Barbara Benedict's essay, 'The Mad Scientist: The Creation of a Literary Stereo type', offers sorcerers, scientists, and physicians, who may also be rogues, confidence artists, and quacks. The result features an abundance of illustrations to demonstrate a subtle sameness in the figure operating over four centuries, whether scientist or reprobate. To 'sketch out the horizon of a dark poetics and twilight philosophy on the [. . invisible side of experience' is Kevin L. Cope's purpose in awitty and perceptive account of three writers' attempts to portray invisibility. Cope confronts his lumi naries with an engaging mixture of delight and respect, especially in his capturing of Henry More's 'sociable' universe where space seeks to accommodate new worlds-an anticipation of the Hubble telescope's discovery of young stars eagerly forming new planets from reservoirs of dust and debris. In 'Science, Masculinity, and Empire in Elizabeth Hamilton's Hindoo Rajah' Pe terWalmsley explores Elizabeth Hamilton's earnest attempt to defend the East India Company from Edmund Burke's accusations of tyranny and idleness. She uses British scientific superiority expressed as a harmony of Lockean intellectual processes and Protestant virtue, to justify and encourage the East India Company's cultural hege mony in the subcontinent. Paul K. Johnston's 'AGod who Must: Science and Theological Imagination' demonstrates that Jonathan Edwards's passion for science was a bulwark to the Calvin ism of his famous sermon, 'Sinners in theHands of anAngry God'. Johnston reasons past the superficial to demonstrate how religious fundamentalism and science can harmonize through the application of a rigorous determinism. Anna Battigelli's 'The Furnace of Affliction: Anne Conway, Henry More, and the Problem of Pain' studies the unfolding of Anne Conway's spiritual development as 828 Reviews filtered through a chronic splitting headache, amovement away from the rational theology of her intimate friend, Henry More, towards Quaker beliefs in mystical transformations effected by inward light. Conway's attempts to deal with her pain resulted in a final understanding that converts chronic pain from mere sensation to a transformative perception of the redemptive power of Christ. 'The Consumption ofMeat in an Age ofMaterialism' by George Rousseau focuses on the proudly meat-eating English. Its most stirring and vivid images result from the absence of effective dentistry, capturing a long eighteenth century of decaying mouths rancid with cavities and distorted by wooden teeth. The last two essays explore the workings of imagination and scientific scepticism. Peter Fosl's 'Cracks in the Cement of the Universe...