NYSL: Laura J. Snyder on "The Philosophical Breakfast Club"

http://www.nysoclib.org/notes/2011/philosophical_breakfast.html

The Philosophical Breakfast Club is a rich work of biography and history in the tradition of Richard Holmes's bestselling The Age of Wonder. Laura Snyder, an expert on Victorian science and culture, shows how a small group of men working in the early nineteenth century made a number of significant discoveries and, together, brought about a scientific revolution.

Charles Babbage, John Herschel, William Whewell and Richard Jones met as Cambridge undergraduates in 1812, and quickly became lifetime friends. Babbage was a mathematical genius who invented the modern computer; John Herschel mapped the skies of the Southern Hemisphere and contributed to the invention of photography; William Whewell not only invented the word "scientist" but also founded the fields of crystallography, mathematical economics and the science of the tides; Richard Jones shaped the science of economics. Snyder exposes the political passions, religious impulses, friendships, rivalries, and love of knowledge - and power - that drove these men, enabling them to transform science and help create the modern world.

Fulbright scholar Laura J. Snyder is the president of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science. She is an associate professor of philosophy at St. John's University and the author of Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• New York Society Library
• Laura J. Snyder
• Philosophical Breakfast Club
• book
• 2011
• April