Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical
Subtitle: Reading the Magazine of Nature (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: October 28, 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 346
ISBN-13: 9780521836371
Subjects: Collections & anthologies of various literary forms; History of science; c 1800 to c 1900; English periodicals; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Journalism, Scientific; British Isles; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism & Collections / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; 19th century; Great Britain; History
First sentence: In an early essay, the physicist James Clerk Maxwell pondered the intelligibility of the universe, contrasting the reassuring image of the book of nature with an intriguing, if somewhat disturbing alternative, the magazine of nature: Perhaps the 'book', as it has been called, of nature is regularly paged; if so, no doubt the introductory parts will explain those that follow, and the methods taught in the first chapters will be taken for granted and used as illustrations in the more advanced parts of the course; but if it is not a 'book' at all, but a magazine, nothing is more foolish to suppose than that one part can throw light on another.