Molar Heights and Molecular Lowlands: Scale and Imagination in Ruskin and John Tyndall

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Polly Gould
Keyword(s):  
John Tyndall

Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century

2009 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Science And Literature ◽  
Creative Writers ◽  
Humphry Davy ◽  
The Individual ◽  
John Tyndall ◽  
Michael Faraday

‘It has been said by its opponents that science divorces itself from literature; but the statement, like so many others, arises from lack of knowledge.’ John Tyndall, 1874 Although we are used to thinking of science and the humanities as separate disciplines, in the nineteenth century that division was not recognized. As the scientist John Tyndall pointed out, not only were science and literature both striving to better 'man's estate', they shared a common language and cultural heritage. The same subjects occupied the writing of scientists and novelists: the quest for 'origins', the nature of the relation between society and the individual, and what it meant to be human. This anthology brings together a generous selection of scientific and literary material to explore the exchanges and interactions between them. Fed by a common imagination, scientists and creative writers alike used stories, imagery, style, and structure to convey their meaning, and to produce work of enduring power. The anthology includes writing by Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin, Sir Humphry Davy, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Michael Faraday, Thomas Malthus, Louis Pasteur, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Mark Twain and many others, and introductions and notes guide the reader through the topic's many strands. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

SOME RUSKIN ANNOTATIONS OF JOHN TYNDALL

1997 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-349
Author(s):  
FRANCIS O'GORMAN
Keyword(s):  
John Tyndall

John Tyndall

2020 ◽  
pp. 346-434
Author(s):  
Graham Macklin
Keyword(s):  
John Tyndall

God and the Uniformity of Nature

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
Matthew Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
James Clerk Maxwell ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
William Thomson ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Religiously Based ◽  
John Tyndall ◽  
Lord Kelvin

Today the laws of physics are often seen as evidence for a naturalistic worldview. However, historically, physics was usually considered compatible with belief in God. Foundations of physics such as thermodynamics, uniformity of nature, and causality were seen as religiously based by physicists such as James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson, Lord Kelvin. These were usually interpreted as evidence of design by a creative deity. In the late nineteenth century, John Tyndall and other scientific naturalists made the argument that these foundations were more sympathetic to a non-religious understanding of the natural world. With the success of this approach, twentieth-century religious physicists tended to stress non-material and experiential connections rather than looking for evidence of design. Later parts of that century saw a revival of natural theological arguments in the form of the anthropic principle and the fine-tuning problem. While modern physics is naturalistic, this was not inevitable and there were several alternative approaches common in earlier times.

The creation of thermodynamics

2020 ◽  
pp. 422-437
Author(s):  
Robert T. Hanlon
Keyword(s):  
The North ◽  
Revisionist History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
John Tyndall

The North British group of scientists, including Thomson, Rankine, an adopted Joule, Tait, and Maxwell created in the written word the field of thermodynamics in which temperature plays a central role. Thomson experienced the first glimpse of dQ/T; however, a valid definition of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics remained absent. John Tyndall challenged the revisionist history of this group in which Joule was declared the first to discover heat–work equivalence and not the German Mayer. This led to the infamous Tait–Tyndall controversy.

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