fiefoe

I don't care for Davy much in his own words, even though he was certainly impressive.

Davy developed.. an entire cosmological vision, in which the whole universe was powered by starlight as well as Newtonian gravity, and would eventually be understood as a single unified idea.
Davy had in effect described what is now known as the 'carbon cycle.'
Coleridge thought that science, as a human activity, 'being necessarily performed with the passion of Hope, it was poetical." It directed a particular kind of moral energy and imaginative longing into the future.
'Mrs Beddoes says "I do admire Mrs Apreece, I think her very pleasing, feel her abilities and almost believe if I knew her I should love her - more I suppose than she should love me."'
In carrying the water by canal and six main aqueducts from Uzes to Nimes, a distance of over 50 km, they exploited the very small fall in land levels - required to make the water flow smoothly southwards - by consistently achieving gradients of between 10-20 cm over 1 km.
This application of metal gauze.. (to a safety lamp) was the key discovery.
Davy: 'The art of living happy is, I believe, the art of being agreeably deluded; and faith in all things is superior to Reason, which, after all, is but a dead weight in advanced life, though as the pendulum to the clock in youth.'

Of course Fanny Burney's first hand account of her operation without anesthetic had to be mentioned.

Theory of Natruphilosophie : 'The diamond is a piece of carbon that has come to its sense.' Reply:'Then a quartz, therefore, must be a diamond run mad.'
Coleridge on a rainbow: quietness the Daughter of Storm
Keats: Unweave a rainbow, as it erstwhile made
Carlyle: "The Progress of Science.. is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration."
Anyone could acquire 'a comet's trail of upwards 40 letters' as initials after his name.
'Scientist' came into use: 'Such a coinage has always taken place at the great epochs of discovery: like the medals that are struck at the beginning of a new reign."
Farady's 'Christmas Lectures for Children'
In Anne Bronte's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)", (Lyell's Principles of Geology') lies on the drawing-room table like a guarantee of serious intent in the household.

"Age of Wonder" [.] (Reply)