Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology (Oxford World's Classics)

619 Pages·2002·1.61 MB·English

by  Laura Otis (editor)

oxford world’s classics
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
The material in this anthology comes from novels, plays, poetry,
essays, scientific articles, lectures, treatises, and textbooks written
throughout the course of the nineteenth century. It demonstrates
the fertile exchange of ideas that took place between writers in very
different disciplines, and reveals fascinating dialogues and conflu-
ences, as well as instructive distinctions.
It was not until the 1830s that the word ‘science’ began to take on
its modern meaning, and by the end of the century it had already
divided into the branches we recognize today: medicine and psych-
ology, zoology, geology, astronomy, mathematics and technology,
sociology, and genetics. At the same time creative writers were
exploring these emerging fields in their fiction and verse and using
images, metaphors, and narrative techniques that fed both kinds of
writing. Both scientists and literary authors wrote for a common
audience, and their work was published side by side in periodicals
and journals such as Household Words and the Westminster Review.
Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century shows how such
juxtapositions fed a hunger for knowledge, and with what excite-
ment writers sought to communicate their discoveries.
Laura Otis is Associate Professor of English at Hofstra Uni-
versity, and the author of Organic Memory (1994), Membranes
(1999), and Networking: Communicating with Bodies and Machines in
the Nineteenth Century (2001). Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for
her interdisciplinary studies of the nervous system, she is currently
working at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in
Berlin.
oxford world’s classics
For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought
readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700
titles––from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the
twentieth century’s greatest novels––the series makes available
lesser-known as well as celebrated writing.
The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained
introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene,
and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading.
Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and
reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry,
religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive
commentary and essential background information to meet the
changing needs of readers.
OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
Literature and Science
in the Nineteenth Century
An Anthology
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
LAURA OTIS
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
OxfordNew York
AucklandBangkokBuenosAiresCapeTownChennai
DaresSalaamDelhiHongKongIstanbulKarachiKolkata
KualaLumpurMadridMelbourneMexicoCityMumbaiNairobi
SãoPauloShanghaiSingaporeTaipeiTokyoToronto
with an associated company in Berlin
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
Editorial material and selection © Laura Otis 2002
For additional copyright information see p. 576
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 0–19–283979–9
13579108642
Typeset in Ehrhardt
by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd.
Reading, Berkshire
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This anthology could never have emerged without all of the people
who have suggested new ways to see the relationship between
nineteenth-century literature and science. First, I would like to
thank Robert Mighall, who recommended me as a potential editor,
and my own editor Judith Luna, whose forthright advice and persist-
ent enthusiasm for the project have kept me working these past four
years. I am also deeply grateful to Hofstra University, which has
granted me a full four years of research leave to work on this and
other projects.
Research for this anthology was conducted almost entirely at the
University of Chicago Libraries, and I would like to thank all of the
librarians there who helped me locate texts. I am especially indebted
to Jay Satterfield, Krista Ovist, Barbara Gilbert, Jessica Westphal,
and Debra Levine in the Department of Special Collections. I am
grateful to the University of Chicago Libraries for allowing me to
reproduce these texts, and I thank Françoise Meltzer for inviting me
to work at the University of Chicago as a fellow of the Comparative
Literature Department. Some work was done at the New York Pub-
lic Library, the Great Neck Public Library, and the New York Acad-
emy of Medicine, and there I would like to thank Caroline
Duroselle-Melish, Reference Librarian of Historical Collections. I
am also grateful to the Cambridge University Library for allowing
me to browse its collection of nineteenth-century journals, and to
Ellen Garske at the Max Planck Institute Library in Berlin for her
assistance in obtaining additional sources.
I would like to thank Thomas D. Brock for permission to repro-
duce his translation of Louis Pasteur’s ‘On the Organized Bodies
Which Exist in the Atmosphere’ (1861), originally published in
his anthology, Milestones in Microbiology, Madison, University of
Wisconsin Press, 1989.
I am deeply indebted to all of the scholars who have offered feed-
back and introduced me to new texts. I am most grateful to my
reader Helen Small, whose comments have made this a much more
representative, thought-provoking anthology than it might have
been. As an honest and helpful critic, Helen has greatly enhanced my
vi Acknowledgements
knowledge of nineteenth-century British culture. I am also indebted
to her as a writer, for all of my introductions have benefited from her
insightful rephrasing. Her assistance with the selection and analysis
of texts cannot be underestimated. I would like to thank Helen’s
student, Julia Reid, for suggesting Richard A. Proctor’s essay ‘The
Photographic Eyes of Science,’ and Alison Winter for her sugges-
tions of texts illustrating Victorian thoughts about mesmerism. I am
grateful to Pamela K. Gilbert for introducing me to sensation novels,
particularly to the work of Braddon. I owe a great deal to Gillian
Beer, whose lectures at the University of Chicago in May 1998
opened my eyes to many issues in nineteenth-century mathematics
and physics. I am grateful for her suggestions about Carroll’s,
Maxwell’s, and Kipling’s works and for her own inspiring studies of
nineteenth-century literature and science. I thank her student Jeff
Mackowiak for his friendly support and his interesting study of
Maxwell’s poetry. I am indebted to the many scholars at the
University of Chicago whose feedback has shaped this anthology,
particularly Larry Rothfield. I thank my colleague George Greaney
at Hofstra for his assistance with the classical references, and John
Bryant, Scott Harshbarger, JoAnn Krieg, and Julia Markus for their
suggestions about Melville, Wordsworth, Whitman, and Browning
respectively. I am grateful to my friends in the Society for Literature
and Science whose thoughts have inspired my work during the past
four years, among them Carol Colatrella, N. Katherine Hayles, Steve
Kern, Tim Lenoir, George Levine, Richard Menke, Sid Perkowitz,
David Porush, and Susan Squier. Finally, I would like to thank
Sander Gilman, whose undying friendship and support have kept up
my spirits as I have followed the connections between literature and
science.
CONTENTS
Introduction xvii
Select Bibliography xxix
Chronology xxxix
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
PROLOGUE: LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
edgar allan poe
Sonnet––To Science (1829) 3
john tyndall
The Belfast Address (1874) 3
thomas henry huxley
From Science and Culture (1880) 4
matthew arnold
Literature and Science (1882) 6
MATHEMATICS, PHYSICAL SCIENCE, AND
TECHNOLOGY 9
Mathematics
ada lovelace
Sketch of the Analytical Engine (1843) 15
augustus de morgan
From Formal Logic (1847) 19
george boole
From An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854) 24
john venn
From The Logic of Chance (1866) 27
lewis carroll
From Through the Looking-Glass (1871) 29
From The Game of Logic (1886) 32
viii Contents
george eliot
From Daniel Deronda (1876) 35
h. g. wells
From The Time Machine (1895) 40
Physical Science
sir william herschel
From On the Power of Penetrating into Space by Telescopes
(1800) 43
thomas carlyle
From Past and Present (1843) 47
sir john herschel
From Outlines of Astronomy (1849) 51
michael faraday
From Experimental Researches in Electricity (1839–55)
(1852) 55
william thomson, lord kelvin
On the Age of the Sun’s Heat (1862) 60
john tyndall
On Chemical Rays, and the Light of the Sky (1869) 63
On the Scientific Use of the Imagination (1870) 68
james clerk maxwell
From Theory of Heat (1871) 70
To the Chief Musician upon Nabla: A Tyndallic Ode (1874) 74
Professor Tait, Loquitur (1877) 76
Answer to Tait 77
To Hermann Stoffkraft (1878) 78
william thomson, lord kelvin
The Sorting Demon of Maxwell (1879) 79
thomas hardy
From Two on a Tower (1882) 81
richard a. proctor
The Photographic Eyes of Science (1883) 84
wilhelm conrad roentgen
On a New Kind of Rays (1895) 88
Contents ix
Telecommunications
samuel f. b. morse
Letter to Hon. Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the US
Treasury, 27 September 1837 91
anonymous
The Telephone from Westminster Review (1878) 95
mark twain
Mental Telegraphy (1891) 99
rudyard kipling
The Deep-Sea Cables (1896) 104
henry james
In the Cage (1898) 104
Bodies and Machines
charles babbage
From On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
(1832) 109
charles dickens
From Dombey and Son (1847–8) 116
hermann von helmholtz
On the Conservation of Force (1847) 121
samuel butler
From Erewhon (1872) 124
walt whitman
To a Locomotive in Winter (1876) 128
SCIENCES OF THE BODY 130
Animal Electricity
luigi galvani
From De Viribus Electricitatis (1791) 135
sir humphry davy
From Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on
Chemistry (1802) 140