Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Author's Preface
- Key to Parenthetical References to the Works of Mary Somerville
- Prologue: Perceiving What Others Do Not Perceive: The “Peculiar Illumination” of the Female Mind
- 1 Head among the Stars, Feet Firm upon the Earth: The Problem of Categorizing Mary Somerville
- 2 Creating a Room of Her Own in the World of Science: How Mary Fairfax Became the Famous Mrs. Somerville
- 3 Science as Exact Calculation and Elevated Meditation: Mechanism of the Heavens (1831), “Preliminary Dissertation” (1832), and On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834)
- 4 The Earth, the Sea, the Air, and Their Inhabitants: Physical Geography (1848) and On Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869)
- 5 Mary Somerville on Mary Somerville: Personal Recollections (1873)
- 6 Memory and Mary Somerville: In the Public Eye and Historical Memory
- Epilogue: Science, Voice, and Vision
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Earth, the Sea, the Air, and Their Inhabitants: Physical Geography (1848) and On Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Author's Preface
- Key to Parenthetical References to the Works of Mary Somerville
- Prologue: Perceiving What Others Do Not Perceive: The “Peculiar Illumination” of the Female Mind
- 1 Head among the Stars, Feet Firm upon the Earth: The Problem of Categorizing Mary Somerville
- 2 Creating a Room of Her Own in the World of Science: How Mary Fairfax Became the Famous Mrs. Somerville
- 3 Science as Exact Calculation and Elevated Meditation: Mechanism of the Heavens (1831), “Preliminary Dissertation” (1832), and On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834)
- 4 The Earth, the Sea, the Air, and Their Inhabitants: Physical Geography (1848) and On Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869)
- 5 Mary Somerville on Mary Somerville: Personal Recollections (1873)
- 6 Memory and Mary Somerville: In the Public Eye and Historical Memory
- Epilogue: Science, Voice, and Vision
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The deeper the research, the more does the inexpressible perfection of God's works appear, whether in the majesty of the heavens, or in the infinitesimal beings of the earth.
–Mary Somerville, On Molecular and Microscopic ScienceAs in a theater,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
–T. S. Eliot, “East Coker”As previous chapters have demonstrated, one of the hallmarks of Somerville's rhetoric of science was a theme she borrowed from the eighteenth-century scientific poets – the idea that science was a pathway to God, a form of elevated meditation, and that detailed examination of nature revealed the intricacy, drama, harmony, and beauty that God had incorporated into the design of universe. In this view, the capacity for exact calculation and for in-depth and precise understanding of phenomena was an aid rather than a hindrance to appreciating the wonders of the creation. She pursued the creative possibilities of this idea in new settings in Physical Geography and On Molecular and Microscopic Science. In Mechanism and Connexion, Somerville had provided her readers with an expanded conception of the universe and surveyed the celestial and some aspects of the terrestrial spheres. In Physical Geography and On Molecular and Microscopic Science, she turned her attention to the remainder of God's handiwork – the earth, the sea, the air, and their many animal and vegetable inhabitants. As she explored and presented detailed scientific accounts of these subjects, Somerville took up another theme borrowed from the scientific poets: the analogy between the worlds revealed by the telescope and microscope.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mary SomervilleScience, Illumination, and the Female Mind, pp. 130 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001