The Age of Wonder

Summary

A sweeping group portrait of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century science, written for readers interested in the cultural history of discovery. Holmes follows figures such as Joseph Banks, William Herschel, and Humphry Davy, arguing that their work was driven by the same imaginative impulse that inspired Romantic poetry. The book recasts science not as cold rationalism but as an enterprise shared with literature, restoring wonder to the story of how the modern worldview took shape.