introduction from the age of scientific naturalism

8/13/2019 Introduction From the Age of Scientific Naturalism

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INTRODUCTION: JOHN TYNDALL,

SCIENTIFIC NATURALISM AND MODES OF

COMMUNICATION

Michael S. Reidy

By the autumn o 1872, John yndall (182093) was at the height o hisinuence. He had published two well-received books the previous year: hisadventuresomeHours of Exercise in the Alps, an account o his most breathtakingmountaineering exploits, and his more cerebral Fragments of Science, a candiddiscussion o his views on everything rom dust and disease to prayer and mira-cles. He dedicated the latter volume to his riends in the United States, wherehe was set to embark or the rst time, nally succumbing to repeated invitationsrom the nations leading intellectuals, including Joseph Henry, Louis Agassizand Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It was an opportune time or him to set sail. He had just returned rom anotherullling climbing season in his beloved Alps, and his rooms at the Royal Institu-tion where he lectured, researched and lived were undergoing renovation. Yeta more controversial reason to ee England simmered in the background, one that

would ollow him across the Atlantic. Tat July, three months beore he set sail,theLondon Contemporary Reviewpublished an anonymous letter, Te Prayer orthe Sick: Hints towards a Serious Attempt to Estimate its Value, along with anintroductory note by yndall. Te letter suggested that, i organized correctly,the effi cacy o the weekly prayers o all thirty thousand congregations throughoutEngland could be tested experimentally through quantitative methods. yn-dall had purposeully picked a ght what became know as the Prayer-GaugeDebate the contours o which helped shape the age o scientic naturalism.1

yndalls aggressive deence o science and ervent attacks on religionbrought him into heated conict with theologians, philosophers and even other

prominent physicists, including Lord Kelvin and James Clerk Maxwell. Teresponses to his call or an experimental verication o prayer were especiallyhostile. Tey appeared in all the major reviews and newspapers, rom the Con-temporary ReviewandFortnightly Reviewto the Spectatorand Guardian, writtenby all classes and conditions o men, rom a booksellers clerk to the highest dig-


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2 Te Age of Scientic Naturalism

nitaries o the English Church and peers o the realm. 2While some critics tossedthe experiment off as sarcasm, a sneer or proound irony, others were more

personally offended, attacking the suggestion as revolting and monstrous.3American Methodists, in particular, were outraged; they set up prayer meetingsin all the major cities on the East Coast to pray or poor yndalls soul.

Setting aside the personal attacks and the ate o yndall afer death, mostreviewers ocused more rationally on the distinct scientic perspective rom

which the proposal came. Scientists, they argued, had overstepped their limiteddomain. As the Rev. Richard Frederick Littledale warned, scientists would do

well to admit that some aspects o the world, even the natural world, could notbe measured. We cannot quantiy prayer, he reminded his readers in a prescientattack on reductionism, any more than we can poetry, art-eeling, or any otherlofy and imponderable gif.4

It was on the limited view o the scientist that most critics ocused theirattacks. Tey highlighted the tautology at work, where what scientists denedas natural turned out to be nothing more than what they could already explain,leaving the supernatural to stand or everything that remained.5For Littledaleand others, the very act o doing science produced a narrowing inuence on thescientists mind, which blinds them altogether to its subordinate position inthe domain o knowledge. Te debate increasingly rotated around the differentdomains within the larger hierarchy o understanding. One example Littledaleused was particularly jarring. I one were to ask scientists to gauge the useulness

o narcotics, such as beer, tobacco or opium, they would respond in naturalis-tic terms, pointing to the act that the very universality o the practice is anadequate proo that it ullls some useul purpose in animal economy. Arguethe same point about the effi cacy o prayer, a practice more prolic than the useo narcotics, and those same scientists would scoff at your narrow-mindedness.

yndall, well known or his love o good beer (and secretly devoted to other,more powerul narcotics), took to the offensive in the Contemporary Review,turning to history or his rebuttal.6While Galileo and others were once casti-gated or their views, they were eventually admired or improving rather thanimpairing our views o the universe and its Author.7According to yndall, thetheologians were the ones overstepping their bounds by arguing that prayer hadthe power to change physical laws. Both sides argued that each others vocation

and training necessarily limited their judgments, making them unable to see out-side o their own partial perspective. One side touted the limits o science andthe lofier knowledge attained through theology; the other boasted the power oscience and the restrictive inuence o religion.

In deending the need or a rational verication o prayer, yndall simul-taneously poked un at the religious ervour o the day and tipped his hat tohis own growing agnosticism. Te ensuing debate, played out in attacks and


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Introduction 3

counter-attacks in the public press, sent shivers through Victorian culture, thesensation o the season, as one critic announced.8It also set the stage or the evenmore acrimonious debate that erupted ollowing yndalls presidential BelastAddress two years later. Tere, he was orced to deend the broad views andliterary training o his scientic colleagues, linking the expanding reach o scien-tic naturalism to the very denition o progress.

yndall argued that rom the simple premise o Nature act[ing] throughinvisible particles,9advances had been made in every branch o science, rst inthe physical sciences, then in the biological, and in yndalls own day, in the

physiological and sociological sciences, particularly through the pioneeringwork o Herbert Spencer. Tese advances culminated in the three great ounda-tional laws o science: atomic theory, evolutionary theory and the conservationo energy. yndall used this progress narrative to protect an increasingly broaddomain o science.

All religious theories, schemes and systems which embrace notions o cosmogony,or which otherwise reach into the domain o science, must, in so far as they do this,submit to the control o science, and relinquish all thought o controlling it.10

Tese were ghting words, and yndall placed himsel at the centre o the bat-tle. I regret very much that he [yndall] got into the Teological controversy asto prayer, Joseph Henry, the rst director o the Smithsonian Institution, con-ded to Benjamin Silliman, Jr afer yndalls visit to America, reasoning that

the subject o the connection o science and Teology is one which requiresto be treated with great delicacy.11Henry represented a large group o scien-tists, both in Britain and the United States, who sought to reconcile science andreligion. yndalls lack o delicacy made such reconciliation rustratingly di-cult. According to historian Frank urner, the controversy surrounding theBelast Address scandalized Christian clergymen and intellectuals, rivalling theupheaval over DarwinsOn the Origin of Species.12 In the public press, yndalland his riends were satirized as watchdogs or science who required muzzles(see Figure I.1).


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Figure I.1: Spencer caricature, An Appalling Attempt to Muzzle the Watch-Dog ofScience,Puck Magazine(14 March 1883). A cartoon about the threats of the Society forthe Suppression of Blasphemous Literature to prosecute Tyndall, Spencer and Huxley.Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Illus. in AP101.P7 1883

(Case X).

Tese two episodes the Prayer-Gauge Debate in 1872 and the Belast Addressin 1874 underscore three main points, which correspond to the three mainsections o this volume. First, they highlight yndalls uninching deence o anaturalistic world view. His centrality to the larger cultural debates surroundingthe role o science in Victorian society led to his participation in shaping whatbecame known in his day as scientic Naturalism. Second, by viewing the physi-

cist yndall as a principal gure alongside the biologist Tomas Huxley, thebotanist Joseph Hooker, and the sociologist Herbert Spencer the debates con-vey a more in-depth understanding o scientic naturalism itsel, extending itsreach across the scientic disciplines. Both debates suggest visions o science stillin the process o ormation, still in ux, still disputed within the larger hierarchyo knowledge. And third, they demonstrate the different modes o communica-tion public lectures, scientic meetings, personal correspondence, newspapereditorials, pamphlets, even town-hall meetings and church gatherings that sus-tained science in the period.


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Introduction 5

We have broken the volume into roughly three equal parts, John yndall,Scientic Naturalism and Communicating Science. Te rst section analysesthe signicant role that yndall played within the contested nature o sciencein the Victorian era. Te second section then highlights how our understandingo scientic naturalism has changed, including the shifing relevance and chang-ing make-up o the naturalist movement in general. Te third section moves tothe different modes used to communicate science in this period, and how thatinormed debates over sciences larger cultural signicance. Within this three-partorganization, the essays are held together by common themes that weave in andout o each chapter, including the blurring o distinctions between public and pri-

vate science, the laboratory and the eld, and the popularizer and the practitioner.

John yndall

John yndall became one o the most inuential experimental physicists in theVictorian era. Born in Ireland under relatively poor circumstances, in the early1840s he worked stints on both the Irish and the English Ordnance Surveys. He

was red or insubordination rom the latter when he joined in a protest againstthe way that the Irish assistants were treated. He then took a job at QueenwoodCollege in the south-east o England teaching or a year, drawing on his sur-

veying skills. With no degree and very little knowledge o German, he abruptlydeparted in 1848 to attain his PhD at the University o Marburg, where he wasinuenced by the renowned German chemist Robert Bunsen. His return to

England two years later to build a career as a scientist did not go smoothly. Heapplied or positions all over the world, rom Ireland to oronto, but was deniedat every turn. His rst break came in February 1853, when he was invited tolecture at the Royal Institution o Great Britain, one o the oremost institutionso science in England. He gave an extraordinary perormance. Te ollowing

year he was elected Proessor o Natural Philosophy at the venerable institution,working alongside the legendary Michael Faraday. From humble beginnings inIreland, yndall had risen to hold a premier scientic position in England.13

For the next thirty years, yndall undertook sophisticated experimentalresearch in physics in his laboratory at the Royal Institution. He became ascinated

with the seemingly analogous processes involved in the cleavage planes o slate andthe veined structures o glaciers. From the mid-1850s, he visited the Swiss Alpsin the summer to conduct observations on glaciers, spending his winter months

perorming laboratory experiments on ice in his London laboratory. Te resultsappeared in his highly successul Glaciers of the Alps(1860) and led to a lie-long

priority dispute with James David Forbes over the mechanisms o glacier motion.By 1859, his work on glaciers had led him to the topic o radiant heat,

particularly the manner in which simple gases absorb inrared radiation. He


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extended this study in the early 1860s to an examination o atmospheric gasesmore generally, including water vapour, carbon dioxide and ozone. Te delicatemeasurements required such ne-tuned precision that yndall had to inventhis own intricate experimental apparatus. He laboured or months to constructa ratio photospectrometer, the rst o its kind, which he used to demonstratethe powerul absorbing power o gases. Tis painstaking work on radiant heatalso suggested his next several research topics, including the role o airbornemicrobes in causing ermentation and the scattering o light by large particlesin the atmosphere. Te rst led to a new means o sterilization, now known asyndallization, and the second, termed the yndall effect, demonstrated experi-mentally why the sky is blue. His peers recognized what he called his Hours oExercise in the Attic and the Laboratory14by awarding him the Rumord Medalo the Royal Society in 1869. Te government recognized his expertise as well.Te number o British vessels wrecked at sea had soared to over 1,200 per year bymid-century, and yndall was appointed in 1866 as the scientic advisor to rin-ity House, the body in charge o the lighthouses and og signals that dotted thecoasts o Great Britain.15He thus became an established gure not only withinthe scientic community, but within inuential circles o government as well.

yndall was respected within science or his experimental research in thephysical sciences, but he became known more broadly through his public lec-tures at the Royal Institution. It was through these lectures that ashionableaudiences in London experienced the latest revolutionary discoveries in the bur-

geoning elds o physics and chemistry. His amboyant lectures, which mixedpractised showmanship with extravagant experiments, presented science as anexhilarating spectacle. His prominent position as an experimentalist and pub-lic lecturer ofen contrasted sharply with his work behind the lecture curtain,outside the venue o the Royal Institution, where he became one o the mostoutspoken advocates and controversial deenders o science in the nineteenthcentury. As the Prayer-Gauge Debate suggests, in newspaper editorials and

periodical publications, he was ofen more combative than eloquent.16Te rst set o essays in this volume ocus specically on yndalls research

in the physical sciences and the creation o his public persona, situating bothwithin the intellectual and cultural context o nineteenth-century science. Eliza-beth Neswald opens with an analysis o yndalls popular expositions o recent

advances in thermodynamics, noting the paradoxical nature o his silence con-cerning the second law. Rather than engaging in the implications o the entropylaw, with its heat deaths and possible links with millennial, theistic notions,yndall ocused his popular work almost exclusively on the rst law, the conser-

vation law, which he viewed as ar more theologically benign. While Neswalduncovers a previously unknown aspect o yndalls popular musings, she alsoshows how a ocus on yndall helps us connect him with other philosophical


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Introduction 7

threads and ideological biases o the time. His connection with German physi-cists, or instance, is a point also ound in the essays by Joshua Howe and Michaelaylor. Neswald advances our understanding o yndalls public presentationsand speculative stances during a period the early 1860s when he was at theheight o his alpinism, struggling with glaciers, perecting his work on radiantheat, and ormulating his agnosticism.

Joshua Howes chapter dovetails perectly with Neswalds, as it also dealswith yndalls work in thermodynamics during this momentous period o hislie. Howe exposes the problem o viewing yndall as the progenitor o global

warming, ofen celebrated as his most signicant accomplishment. Howe situatesyndalls experimental work on the absorption o atmospheric gases more broadly

within the conused and conicted contemporary debates in the geophysical sci-ences. In Howes hands, yndalls ratio photospectrometer is no longer merely aninstrument to measure the absorption o heat in the atmosphere; it becomes a toolto organize yndalls overarching research goals, uniying his varied pursuits as hestrove to understand the molecular bases o matter and energy.

Jeremiah Rankin and Ruth Barton offer a comparison between the popularscience writings o yndall and those o George Henry Lewes, revealing signi-cant differences in how they claimed scientic authority and sel-ashioned theirscientic identity. While yndall advanced a hierarchical, specialized approachto science, Lewes embraced a more republican and egalitarian view. Te com-

parison highlights the permeability o boundaries between public and private

science, the laboratory and the eld, and the popularizer and practitioner anddraws attention to the variety o skills, motives and personalities associated withthe naturalist movement in the mid-Victorian era. It thereby serves as a ttingtransition to the next section o essays, which ocuses especially on the make-up,denition and inuence o scientic naturalism.

Scientic Naturalism

Frank urner helped shape our understanding o the Victorian era through hisseminal work on scientic naturalism, including his ocus on those Victorianintellectuals who critiqued the naturalist programme. He dened the termlargely through its central coterie, showing how they used science as a means toashion a secular world view. As he suggested, the group was made up o scientists

who knew and visited one another, enjoyed mutual riends, cited one another intheir books and articles, and sparred with mutual enemies.17urners work hasbeen so inuential that we ofen orget that scientic naturalism was an actorscategory that predated the 1850s.18Most o urners main actors, however, along

with many o those eatured in the recent collection on scientic naturalism byBernard Lightman and Gowan Dawson, were working in the natural historical


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sciences. Because yndall was primarily a physicist, interested more in naturalphilosophy than natural history, a renewed emphasis on yndall signicantlybroadens our view o the naturalist movement, extending its range and inuenceacross the scientic disciplines. A researchers naturalistic stance, it turns out,could inuence his approach to the physical and mathematical sciences just asmuch as it could direct his research in the biological sciences.

Scholars, many o whom are well represented in this volume, are beginningto move beyond urners analysis and reassess their previously held assump-tions about who gained authority in the Victorian era and how they attainedit.19While we are relatively well versed concerning scientic naturalism rom the

perspective o the human and biological sciences, we are ar less amiliar with therelationship between naturalism and the physical sciences. Tis second groupo essays ocuses heavily on the physical sciences, particularly on how scienticnaturalism inuenced the actual practice o physics. In the process, it highlightssome o the less obvious scientic naturalists, providing evidence that the con-

ventional view ocusing on Huxley and Darwin is overly myopic and has blindedus to the actual make-up and signicance o the naturalist movement. 20 Teyoffer new insights into gures such as William Kingdon Clifford, William Hug-gins and Alred Newton, as well as a resh reading o Herbert Spencer, urthersuggesting that we must expand our understanding o this group, their roots,aims and broader signicance.

Although yndall and his allies were actively orging their own identity, set-

ting up boundaries and dening their disciplines,21

not everyone accepted theirdenition o science. yndalls preerred narrative, where scientic progressoverpowered outmoded theological views, made or good headlines, but sucha simplistic picture never actually existed. Or, rather, the details o the morecomplex story are ar more insightul. Disagreements continued over what con-stituted science, and within competing groups different actions suraced. As thechapters in this volume suggest, the make-up o scientic naturalism was ar more

variable and its signicance ar more complex than we previously thought.22

Michael aylor opens the section with just this theme as his ocus. His analy-sis o the British and German scholarship which inuenced Herbert Spencershows how a rationalist and metaphysical tint came together in Spencers overall

philosophy, bringing it in line with yndalls own mixture o rationalism and

secular spiritualism. Spencer so smart, so troubled, so important, and still sounderstudied dened scientic naturalism or the broader reading public inBritain. Te roots o his naturalism, thereore, which were ar rom empiricistand materialist and included large doses oNaturphilosophieand evolutionarydeism, underscores the popular and uid denitions o scientic naturalism.Rather than a representative o modernity, Spencer emerges as a transitionalgure who owes his goal-directed and inherently moral version o evolution tothinkers rom the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.


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Introduction 9

Josipa Petrunics essay introduces us to a protg o Spencers, and one othe Victorian eras most neglected philosophers. She illuminates the role oscientic naturalism in William Kingdon Cliffords unconventional views onmathematics. Clifford died rom pulmonary disease at the young age o 33, buthis short lie burned brightly, offering Victorian society its rst evolutionarymathematics. By undermining belie in the traditional God, scientic natural-ism seemed to its critics to lead to moral decay. Te only reasonable response,Clifford argued, was to nd the oundation or morality within scientic natu-ralism itsel, one based on nature rather than God, on observation rather thanbelie, on science rather than theology. Inuenced by a distinctly Spencerian

process o evolution, Clifford believed that men o science had a moral dutyto question all axiomatic rules. Only then would they be able to discover newconcepts and thus advance the human race.

A ocus on a similarly understudied and ofen misunderstood character ol-lows in Robert W. Smiths essay on the astronomer William Huggins. Smith

places Hugginss research in support o the nebular hypothesis within the largerdebates over scientic naturalism, tracing his transition rom natural theolo-gian to evolutionary naturalist. Although he demonstrated that nebulae werecomposed o luminous gas, not stars evidence he used to support the nebu-lar hypothesis he did not accept the radicalism usually associated with thattheory. Instead, he applied an idealist conception o unity o plan to the heavens,conceiving o nebulae as ounded on unied types created by divine design. In

Smiths analysis, Huggins represents those gures in the physical sciences whosenaturalistic ideologies undamentally inormed their approach to scientic ques-tions, their interpretation o data and, importantly, their creation o their ownscientic identity in the public press.

Te essay by Jonathan Smith closes the section, continuing similar themesthrough a detailed study o the Cambridge ornithologist Alred Newton. Newtonis usually viewed as one o the earliest Darwinians, a position he sel-ashionedlate in his career. Smith argues, however, that although Newton may have been aDarwinian, he certainly was not a scientic naturalist. Newton applied Darwinismto his own work in ornithology, but elt no need to deend the naturalistic stancein public. Smith situates his analysis around Newtons candidacy in 1865 or thenew chair o zoology and comparative anatomy at Cambridge, weaving a ascinat-

ing narrative about the nature and quality o personal relationships, the creationo support networks, and the behind-the-door negotiations surrounding the ll-ing o scientic positions. As Smiths analysis demonstrates, Newtons lie and

work challenges the conict model usually associated with gures like Huxley andyndall. Te central ocus on personal relationships echoes discussions ound inearlier chapters and serves as a tting transition to a discussion o the many differ-ent modes o communication used by scientists in the age o scientic naturalism.


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Modes o Communication

All the essays in this volume highlight yndalls and his contemporaries expan-sive network o riends and seeming enemies, drawing on their interactionsthrough correspondence, scientic and popular publications and other venues.Scientic practitioners shared their insights in different ways depending on theorum, underscoring the disparate modes in which science was communicatedin this period. On the lecture platorm or in the pages o the liberal journals,their tone was arrogant, their condence unbounded, and their metaphysicsreductionist, noted Frank urner. Tis was their public side. In the privacy oletters and conversation, they were less ulsome, more introspective, and even

sel-doubting.23Tough such public and private expressions comprises one othe themes which unite all the essays in the volume, we reserved the last sectionspecically to accentuate how an emphasis on communication adds breadth anddepth to our understanding o gentlemanly science, the evolutionary naturalists,

private versus public knowledge, the boundary making process, and the cultureo debate in the nineteenth century.

Janet Browne opens the section by offering a broad and multilayered viewo the roles correspondence has played: as surrogates or specimens, as pre-

publications and, most importantly, as a community-generating engine thatconsolidated the creation o scientic networks and the ormation o sharedideologies. Having spent much o her career working on correspondence net-

works, Browne emphasizes the manner in which epistolary exchange helped

shape the very oundation o modern science, with its emphasis on evaluation,adjudication, authentication, prioritization and distribution o the latest scien-tic research. Drawing on the recent advances in book history and the history o

visual culture, she outlines how a correspondence history could urther gener-ate insights into the social structure and development o science. As with otheressays in this volume, particularly those by Rankin and Barton and JonathanSmith, Brownes analysis o correspondence networks blurs the categories o

public and private science.While Browne offers a masterul overview o the work that correspondence

accomplished in shaping science in the modern period, Melinda Baldwin ol-lows with a ocused case study o a specic example: the epistolary exchangebetween yndall and George Gabriel Stokes. yndall and Stokes differed radi-cally in upbringing, temperament and religious orientation, yet both also madetheir careers through scientic communication. Baldwin demonstrates thecentral role o correspondence in the shaping o the physical sciences in the Vic-torian era through an analysis o the editorial work and review process involvedin thePhilosophical ransactions.Stokes, the Victorian version o Henry Olden-burg, was a staunch critic o the materialist vision ofen attributed to yndall,


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Introduction 11

yet their polemical ideological orientations and extreme religious differencesailed to limit Stokess inuence on yndall. Tus, through the yndallStokescorrespondence, Baldwin adds to our understanding o yndalls relationship tothe North British physicists, building on the research o Crosbie Smith and oth-ers.24Similar to the chapters by Michael aylor, Robert W. Smith and JonathanSmith, Baldwin questions the notion o an antagonism between science andreligion at the time, while offering resh insight into the role o editors and themechanism o the peer-review process in the most important and longest lastingscientic journal in the history o Western thought.

While Browne ocuses on correspondence and Baldwin on publishing, Ber-nard Lightman closes the volume with his essay on communications within asociety. He offers a resh look at the Metaphysical Society as a place where Victo-rian intellectuals grappled with the problem o dening science within the largerhierarchy o knowledge. Members o the society, where scientic naturalists madeup a vocal minority, viewed the debates as taking place between two differentand competing vision o science. Christian intellectuals, that is, were not arguingagainst science. Tey simply had their own denition o what it was, the role itshould play in society, and the broader ramications o its ndings. Lightmanreminds us that there were always different ways to dene what science was and

who could participate. His concluding chapter returns us to the cultural debatealive at the time, reminding us o the many different and competing notions oauthority at play. In essence, Lightmans analysis can serve to represent the main

theme o the volume as a whole. By viewing elite gures in a resh light, our overallunderstanding o the signicance o the scientic naturalists is transormed. Tepower o science, its limits, and who was allowed to decide such questions, wereall still up or grabs.

Conclusion

John yndall died twice. His rst death occurred in 1893 on a cold December dayin Hasslemere, south o London. Te 73-year-old physicist lay awake in his bed asthe dim light o dawn ltered into his bedroom. Bottles littered his bedside table sulphate o magnesia or his intestines and chloral hydrate or his insomnia. At8:30 in the morning, his wie Louisa, twenty-ve years his junior, came to his sideto comort him. He requested some magnesia, a mere spoonul, which she pouredrom one o the bottles and brought careully to his lips. It tasted curiously sweet,he thought. Louisa panicked. She had accidentally given him chloral, an extremely

powerul narcotic, killing one o the greatest scientists o the Victorian era.25

yndalls second death was even more bizarre. Louisa, devastated by hertragic error, concocted an unwittingly devious plan to bring her husband back tolie. She would take control o all his journals, collect all o his correspondence,


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read all o his unnished writings, and bring everything together in a monumen-talLife and Letters. Wracked by guilt, she devoted her lie to gathering all o hismaterials. wo years afer yndalls death, theAthenaeumreported that Louisa

was making good headway with her husbands biography. Tey acknowledgedthat she had an enormous correspondence to sif, but were equally hopeul thatshe had at last reduced it to some sort o order.26For orty-seven years she toiled.Yet, year afer year passed with noLife and Letters. When she died in 1940 at theage o 95, she had published little to resurrect the lie and work o her long-deadhusband. With Louisas grie and guilt, and with her continuing promise o pub-lication, yndall died a second, prolonged death.

Te current volume is one o several signs o yndalls resurrection. For thepast eight years, historians o Victorian science have been collaborating to tran-scribe and publish all o yndalls personal correspondence.27By its very nature,the process o collecting, digitizing, transcribing and editing these letters hascreated a vibrant community o scholars and a robust corpus o scholarshipocused on yndall and his inuence on nineteenth-century science. Many othese scholars have come together or two conerences specically organized toshare their latest research.28Drawn rom the papers delivered at these coner-ences, Te Age of Scientic Naturalismpresents this cutting-edge scholarship onyndall and his contemporaries.

Frank urner seemed to suggest that the lessons gleaned rom the scienticnaturalists were no longer prescient. Teir naturalism was too closely related

to the science o the time, according to urner, rendering the movement notonly datable but also distinctly dated.29Tus, the concepts yndall and his alliesdeended became largely outmoded and no longer proved a source o present orenduring wisdom. In some respects, urner is correct. Afer all, placing gures

within their specic historical contexts is one o the purposes o doing history.Viewing yndall as a central Victorian personality sheds light specically onthe age o scientic naturalism, on that unique period in the second hal o thenineteenth century, along with all those who lived, worked and communicated

within it. It would be unhelpul, thereore, to view yndall, Huxley, Hooker andSpencer the quadrumvirate o the Victorian scientic naturalists as some-how the direct predecessor o Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennettand Christopher Hitchens, ofen reerred to as the modern our horsemen, an

allusion to the impending apocalypse which their blasphemous views wouldsupposedly help usher in.

And yet, in other respects, urner is wrong. Te connections between theVictorian era and our own retain their relevance. Dawkins and his contempo-raries have been orced to deend their stance (atheistic rather than agnostic)based on the attacks o their critics and the ongoing debates concerning the roleo science in modern culture. Tat is, a culture war is still at play, with prescient


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Introduction 13

parallels to the Victorian era. Afer all, historians reconstruct history both tounderstand the pastandto make sense o the present; we ponder the past so that

we can prepare or the uture. yndall is especially interesting in this regard. Tesignicance o his varied research is gaining traction today primarily because oits increasing relevance. I the planet were not warming, or instance, turningthe natural greenhouse effect into global warming, the new climatology centrein Britain, the yndall Centre or Climate Change Research, would not bearhis name. And perhaps because yndall and his contemporaries redened theboundaries o the debate between science and religion, orcing uture commen-tators into increasingly distinct camps, discussions surrounding evolution are asheated as ever. Tis is one reason why yndalls staunch deence o naturalismstill sounds so prescient.

Tus, it may be helpul to conclude by returning to the two debates yndallso actively encouraged in the early 1870s, but with a modern twist. ake anotheramous physicist, a bearer o the culture o science in his own day, who alsodied an untimely death: Richard Feynman. His reductionist musings on atomsalmost exactly mimicked yndalls discussion in the Belast Address. One othe most promising hypotheses in all o biology, Feynman reected,

is that everything the animals do or that living creatures do can be understood interms o what atoms can do, that is, in terms o physical laws, ultimately, and the per-

petual attention to this possibility so ar no exception has been demonstrated hasagain and again made suggestions as to how the mechanisms actually occur.30

Linking the power o science to the progress o knowledge would have madeyndall and his scientic naturalist colleagues proud.

Feynman similarly revitalized the essence o the Prayer-Gauge Debate. Itmight be true that you can be cured by the miracle o Lourdes, he preached. Buti it is true it ought to be investigated We could make the system more power-ul by investigating statistically, scientically judging the evidence objectively,more careully.31Te idea that science should be used to judge the effi cacy o thesupernatural echoes yndalls own proclamation at Belast that as regards thesequestions science claims unrestricted right o search.32Tat Feynmans words arenot as jarring to our modern ears as yndalls were to his audience at Belastsignals the powerul inuence yndall and his contemporaries have had on our

own views. And that the debates are still being ought is urther suggestive o theenduring relevance o the age o scientic naturalism.

introduction from the age of scientific naturalism

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