Skip to main content

The Spirit of Inquiry - Susannah Gibson ****

I have to say straight away that my four star rating comes with a proviso. I loved this book. And if you, too, are fascinated by the history of British science and are interested in Cambridge University, you will too. What we have here is a history of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (remarkably generously published by Oxford University Press, given it chronicles Cambridge's rise to be a superior science university) - a society that proved surprisingly influential in the rise in the study of science, and physics in particular, at the University of Cambridge.

Don't be surprised if you have never heard of the Cambridge Philosophical Society - I hadn't, and I studied natural sciences at Cambridge. (That's 'philosophical' in the sense of natural philosophy - i.e. science - not the wooly stuff, by the way.) The reason it is relatively unknown, I suspect, is that unlike the other philosophical societies and 'lit and phils' that sprang up around the UK at approximately the same time, the Cambridge society was unique in being closely associated with a university and for much of its life was only open to Cambridge graduates and an invited extra few. The role of these societies, along with the British Association for the Advancement of Science (still flourishing as the British Science Association), was not dissimilar to the current trend for science festivals and fairs, Pint of Science and suchlike delights - making science more accessible to the public. But the Cambridge version was always rather more highfalutin', and became known, for instance, for a pair of high impact journals.

For much of the book we see the rise, fall, resurrection and transformation of this society-within-a-university - never fully connected to the university, yet always intertwined. This symbiosis became more marked after the society could no longer afford to pay for its rather splendid-sounding house, making use of university accommodation in exchange for giving access for the university to its then unparalleled library of International journals.

Susannah Gibson wisely doesn't limit her description to the comings and goings of the society itself (though sometimes they were fascinating enough, as when their curator, one Mr Crouch, was found to be stealing from them), but hangs most chapters on one or more specific scientists and how their work played out through interactions with the society. So, for example, we hear of the excited reading of Darwin's letters from his voyage on the Beagle, or Lawrence Bragg's remarkable breakthrough paper on X-ray diffraction, read to the society by J. J. Thomson as Bragg, at 22, was considered too young to do so.

The only time I found myself losing impetus was during the chapter A Workbench of One's Own, which chronicles the rise of female scientists in Cambridge. This is an interesting topic, but felt shoehorned in, as, sadly, at the time the society did not allow female members. As a result, swathes of this chapter really had nothing to do with the Philosophical Society and felt as if they should have been in another book. My only other small criticism were that there were a couple of small issues with the physics described (concerning gravity as you head into the Earth and the differences between Newtonian gravity and the general theory of relativity), but these were only really side remarks with relatively little connection to the thrust of the book.

Overall, Gibson has produced an impressive addition to the history of the development of the science, particularly physics, in the UK, and the role that this remarkable society has played - 200 years old this year and still going strong.
Hardback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...
Post a Comment
Read more