I loved this. Exciting, informative, thought-provoking.
Called the ‘the indispensable intellectual’ by his biographer, prof. Michael Scammell, and frequently described as a polymath, I have to confess that, for myself, I only know Koestler so far via this book. There’s controversy around the suicide pact he and his wife partook of, brought on by his terminal illness, and I’ve also heard that he’s been criticised by some in the sciences, though exactly what for I can’t recall.
Well, I can only say that I thoroughly enjoyed this, his book on the history of astronomy, enormously. Like Carl Sagan he has a gift for sharing his enthusiasm that is contagious, and these are colourful people and fascinating tales that he’s covering. Watching Sagan’s Cosmos, I grew hungry for more info on such figures as Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Gallileo, and Kepler. And Koestler’s book has proven to be perfect for me, as that’s exactly the kind of thing it delivers.
Koestler (source: wiki).
His thoughts on the schism between the two poles of what one might simply call ‘the spirit’ and ‘the material’ (the kinds of ideas that produce such polarities as arts vs. science, and/or religion vs. science) are interesting, but are also areas I’m less clear on.
But when he’s simply telling the stories, such as that of Kepler and his family, and the times they lived through (Kepler’s father is thought to have been a mercenary soldier, they lived during the tumultuous Thirty Years War, and as well as working and moving around because of the war, Kepler had to defend his mother against charges of witchcraft!), it’s absolutely gripping stuff. Like a novel, only better, inasmuch as this is about real people, and the gradual unfolding of real knowledge.
I’d definitely recommend this to those wanting to learn more about our continuing fascination with our place in the cosmos. And I’ll definitely be reading more Koestler on the strength of this.
Mr Arthrobalanus: “a minute marine monument to mutability.” R. Stott.
Another archival review, once again from the period around or shortly after Darwin’s bicentennial (2009), brought over to my blog on account of recently reading and really enjoying Peter Burke’s The Polymath.
In this wonderful book Rebecca Stott relates the tale of Darwin’s foray into marine biology; how it came about and where it lead, setting it all in a beautifully rendered portrait of Darwin’s personal, family, and socio-cultural context.
Connecting the various epochs of Darwin’s life, Stott skilfully tells a fantastic story, of how the disaffected ex-medical student, embarked on studies for a career as a clergyman, instead pursued his natural-historical instincts, ‘transmutating’ himself (and indeed all of us) in the process.
Little did Darwin’s father realise, when he finally acquiesced to uncle Josiah Wedgewood’s support for Charles’ wish to join the Beagle expedition – “Natural History … is very suitable to a Clergyman” – where it would all lead.
As another reviewer (on Amazon UK’s website) notes, the barnacles themselves aren’t quite as prominent in this book as the title might lead one to expect, but they do nonetheless provide a fantastic central theme from which to tell a really very engaging story about what amounts to almost the whole of Darwin’s life and work, but from a new and refreshing perspective.
I loved reading this, and found it exciting, engaging, informative, entertaining, well-written, and just plain good old-fashioned fun!
Subtitled ‘Secrets of Leadership’, this book grew, I believe, out of a radio programme of the same title Roberts produced for the BBC.
It’s an excellent book: an easy yet compelling read, in just over 200 pages Roberts uses that old ‘compare and contrast’ m.o. to examine these two Titans of 20th C. history.
This is also the first of Roberts’ books I’ve read in which his Tory politics are quite so plainly aired; he refers very disparagingly to liberals and the left, and their ideas, in a manner bordering, at times, on glib.
Interestingly, whilst he’s still an ardent Tory, Roberts’ views in some areas appear to have evolved somewhat, since this was written in 2003; if you’d only read this book, you might find his later book ‘Napoleon The Great’ somewhat surprising.
However, if the above sound like the potential criticisms they indeed are, nevertheless, this book remains an excellent and by and large very judiciously balanced examination of its difficult subjects. And what fascinating subjects they are!
Having said this, there is a slight (some might say extreme) imbalance, and in more than one way, in that the book not only gives Churchill more column inches, ending with a study on how he has been perceived since his passing, but also falls in step with the vast majority of post-WWII literature on the two men in its fulsome praise of Churchill and crowing dismissals of Hitler.
But when the case is argued as eloquently and convincingly as Roberts does here, it’s hard to disagree. And, in broad brushstroke terms, I don’t! Nor is this simply Churchill hagiography vs Hitler as fall-guy punchbag. The failings of the former, and the strengths of the latter are also examined.
Roberts says very early in his book that one of the key ways in which he separates Hitler and Churchill, and their methods or styles of leadership, is by describing the former as a charismatic leader, and the latter as inspirational. To understand exactly what he means by this might require you to read this book. I’d highly recommend that you do.
A fascinating polemic which, despite not sharing the authors’ politics, I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
Alice Coltrane’s solo music emerged phoenix-like after the death of her husband, initially in trio format, and gradually growing in scope, until it morphed into predominantly string and vocal devotional music. But that came later.
Ptah the El Daoud came after the trio recordings [[ASIN:B001KNQNG6 A Monastic Trio]] and [[ASIN:B005J6Q9WI Huntington Ashram Monastery]], and found her expanding the instrumentation and enlarging the group. barring a little clarinet on one track on A Monastic Trio it was the first time she returned to using horns, which she would soon move away from again later. But here Pharaoh Sander and Joe Henderson make a great ‘front line’, their flute-duo head on the ‘Blue Nile’, for example, being luminously beautiful. The album also has a lot of down-home blues in it, especially in the florid piano lines of the exquisite ‘Turiya and Ramakrishna’ and built into the very form of ‘Blue Nile’, wherein her beautiful shimmering harp takes over the more conventional role of the piano.
Some critics rather shortsightedly write Alice off as having merely carried on in the same vein as Coltrane had left off when he died. I can only think those critics aren’t really listening! The title track, rather than carrying on what ‘Trane had been doing at the end, revisits the rhythm section feel of his mid-sixties [[ASIN:B00006K06N A Love Supreme]] ‘classic’ sound, but with some of the ‘new thing’ vibe spread on top; but it’s on ‘Turiya and Ramakrishna’ and ‘Blue Nile’ that the real magic begins. If anything here could be said to be continuation of late ‘Trane, it would be the final number, ‘Mantra’. This latter is ok, but not as good as the two highlights.
So, not an entirely consistent album, but where it scores highest, it’s pretty much off the scale. It’s also an album of hers where the best tracks happen also to be pretty accesible, making it a good place to start your appreciation of the singular talent of Alice Coltrane.
I decided to treat myself to this very handsome edition of The Hobbit when I realised that, somewhere along the way, I’d lost my original much-loved paperback (so well-thumbed it was disintegrating).
One of the immediate reasons it recommends itself, apart of course from the de-luxe hardback format, is the beautiful use of Tolkien’s dust jacket design and illustrations. Tolkien’s visual additions to his story are just wonderful (and there are whole books dedicated to his art, even specifically his Hobbit art works), and his maps and the dust jacket design are, to me, fundamentally essential parts of the proper ‘full Hobbit’ experience. This really is a sumptuously beautiful edition, one that can be enjoyed and admired as much for its visual aesthetics as for its literary content, or the sheer unalloyed fun of reading it and inhabiting Tolkien’s imaginary world.
It’s interesting when children’s stories evolve naturally from a family context, as The Hobbit did, and as many children’s stories do (e.g. Jim Smith’s recently republished Frog Band stories). My original paperback LOTR carried a review on the back that very succinctly captured what Tolkien achieves in both the LOTR and The Hobbit, which is a fusion of the ‘epic and homely’, and it all really took off from here, The Hobbit.
Most fundamentally, especially with a modern film of The Hobbit looming, it bears repeating that the unique experience of reading Tolkien and imagining his world, it’s characters, landscapes and events, for yourself, that is the best and most magical and enchanting experience Tolkien’s ‘legendarium’ can offer. Far better, I feel, to read the book first and have that exquisite experience than to have someone else’s interpretation imprinted on one’s reading of the book.
In my review I’ve really only addressed this editions particular merits, writing as someone who knows and loves Tolkien’s works. If you’re someone who doesn’t know the story I won’t spoil it for you: whether young or old, or somewhere in between, the best thing you could do is simply buy and read this classic book, and approach it with the simplicity and innocence of childhood (and we all continue to carry something of that within us, no matter how else we might age). Tolkien wrote a miniature masterpiece in The Hobbit, and thereby embarked upon the creation of a whole imaginary world. Open the door, and follow Bilbo’s adventures, as ‘the road goes ever on and on’, you’ll be glad you did.
Excellent. As ever Zamoyski is, by and large, pretty pithily concise, nearly always managing to keep even the most serpentine and potentially dull intricacies of politics and administration sufficiently exciting to maintain interest. His narrative is partially pepped up by the colourful characters themselves, as well as by the rumblings of conflict and the creaking of bed springs.
Of the three Zamoyski titles I’ve read so dar (the others being 1812 and Warsaw 1920) this was the toughest: let’s face it, the Byzantine contortions and horse-trading of international diplomacy don’t make for light, easy, or even very stimulating reading. But the shambolic so-called Congress of Vienna was both interesting – or perhaps intriguing would be a more apt word? – and of course very important, so hats off to Zamoyski for rendering a readable English language account.
I disagree with the criticisms that the seamier aspects of this narrative, in particular the sexual stuff (there’s not as much of this as some reviewers imply), cheapen the account – they certainly make it more readable – or that Zamoyski, being of Polish extraction himself, gives either the Polish aspect of the story too much weight, or is otherwise off-balance in some partisan way. In fact he stays remarkably on-topic throughout, even sticking resolutely with the diplomatic threads through the 100 Days segment.
I believe I agree with his underlying idea that post-Vienna Europe was a doomed King Canute-like attempt to hold back (or ‘arrest’, in Zamoyski’s terms) the general direction of socio-political movement that had preceded the Napoleonic-era. And within this that Napoleonic Europe was, despite all the conflicts, a less retrograde entity.
Nearly all the central protagonists who comprise the ‘architects’ of the Congress, from Tsar Alexander via Wellington to Metternich, are reactionary ‘ancien regime’ types, and, as many contemporary observers noted, including some of the participants, appeared to be carving up the new Europe according to old interests, and just as self-interestedly (even more so, perhaps?) as Boney had, and yet with less consideration of the ordinary ‘souls’ over whom they ruled, and who they would reads like cattle during the Congress.
The only thing that ultimately united the major powers was fear of change driven from ‘below’. This stance underpinned not only their roles in the Napoleonic wars but also their pursuit of the peace: whether it was the mob-rule of ‘Jacobin’ France or the despotism of the Corsican ‘upstart’ Buonaparte, any and all perceived threats to their own supposed ‘legitimacy’ were to be crushed. Certainly they held up the enlightenment tide, but ultimately they failed to stem it.
From that vantage point, I feel inclined to join Hazlitt in reaching for the post-Waterloo wine to drown sorrows rather than celebrate.
Fascinating book about ‘a constellation of extraordinary individuals’.
Another archival review, from about a decade ago. Again, stimulated to post this now having just read Polymath, by Peter Burke.
The Lunar Men certainly were ‘a constellation of extraordinary individuals’, as Uglow herself concludes in her epilogue to this weighty tome.
It was reading widely about Charles ‘Origin’ Darwin, around the time of his bicentennial (2009), that lead, almost inexorably, to an interest in the Lunar group, with Stott’s book Darwin’s Barnacle sealing the deal, via the chapter on Charles’ grandfather Erasmus. Erasmus figures large in Uglow’s book too – something of a Titan, both literally and figuratively; a man whose interests (and physical girth) seemed to know no bounds! – and learning more about him is fascinating.
But then there are also the many other ‘Lunatics’: Boulton, Wedgewood, Watt, Priestley, Edgeworth, Whitehurst, Keir, Day and several others. Some of these others are very much Lunar Men, whilst others are just passing through their orbit, like American polymath Benjamin Franklin, or Joseph Wright (‘of Derby’) the painter. Whilst not strictly a Lunar Man, as such, Wright, like Franklin, nonetheless figures prominently in the book.
Some of these names will doubtless be familiar to those with a little general knowledge, Wedgewood for his pottery, Watt for his work with steam engines, Priestley for his politics as much his science, and so on. But the lesser known figures are often equally fascinating, from the fussy-in-love Rousseauian romantic and reactionary Day, to the perhaps a little hapless Withering, who gets into a scientific spat with Erasmus Darwin that reminds me a little of that between Dawkins and Gould in our own times.
Jenny Uglow
One of the many fascinating things about the many subjects covered in this book is how they all mesh together at a particular point in time: coming out of Enlightenment thinking, and based (for the most part) far north of London, they represent a growing blurring of old feudal social distinctions and an increased independence (of both mind and pocket), whilst their voracious quest for knowledge connects them to both emerging ideals of political and personal liberty, and the birth of industrialisation and commercialisation, which would simultaneously lift levels of material wealth, and increase ‘alienation’ and the dependence and insecurity of the working population.
Largely pro-liberty, despite the ties of the patronage system many of them cooperated in and profited by, they initially embraced the French Revolution, but as The Enclosures bit deep into the land, and Britain reacted against the threat of revolutionary and then Napoleonic Europe, various aspects of the Lunar Men’s interests fared unevenly: Wedgewood thrived, advancing industry through increased chemical and practical knowledge, and (like Boulton) bringing higher levels of finish to ever wider markets, whilst Boulton and Watt’s steam power quite literally boomed, in every possible respect. And of course Erasmus’ interests in evolution would be picked up and developed by his son, Charles, with epoch-shattering revolutionary effect.
But Day’s reactionary politics and Priestley’s libertarianism (his fate in relation to riots and ‘anti Jacobin’ unrest is rather sad) would both succumb to the strange mix of the pragmatic advances of capitalist industrialism (what Day, along with the likes of William Blake – Uglow uses the lunar theme to connect the Lunar Men’s reaching ‘so eagerly for the moon’ with Blake’s engraving mocking scientific hubris [the famous ‘I want, I want’ with a ladder reaching to the moon] – feared was the pollution of an English Eden by the ‘dark satanic mills’) with the great reversals to emancipatory progress which had looked imminent (Keir’s progressive optimism re the ‘diffusion of a general knowledge … [a] characteristic feature of the present age’ contrasting with the anti-intellectualism of Burke, who saw science as ‘smeared with blood … arrogant and uncaring’) resulting, at more prosaic levels, in setbacks to British liberal reform.
And all of this occurs at a specific moment, at a time when the gentleman amateur was perhaps more common as a leader in science than the professional or academic, and when events in Europe would have immense impact here in the British Isles, both strengthening our own imperial position – although it looked terribly insecure at the time, as America fought for and won its independence, causing the axis of our power base to shift from west (America and the west-indies) to East (India and the East-Indies) – and setting back the course of reforming liberal politics at home by many decades. All of which developments continue to inform our culture life even now. From our pride in Darwin to our troubled and alienated relationship with Europe. Re-posting this post-Brexit this aspect seems even more poignant. .
Many of those in this story were also proto-capitalists, as well as industrialists, making and sometimes losing fortunes, speculating with their investments. Erasmus Darwin had to earn his own living, as a doctor. His desire to publish much of his scientific work anonymously, and disguised as poetry, was influenced by a need to secure his reputation and private practice. His involvement as an investor in canal building, speeding the pulse of British industrialisation in a manner akin to the effect steam engines would shortly redouble, was what ultimately meant that Charles Darwin could work on evolution as a gentleman of leisure. Fascinating!
Vast in size and coverage – so big – like Erasmus at his dinner table (which had to be modified with a semi-circular cutaway), I couldn’t always fit it into my reading rest – this is a very interesting, informative and enjoyable book. Whilst I kind of wish it had been a bit leaner, given how much Uglow covers it’s understandable that it should be a bit of a mammoth.
This is yet another archival post (and there are many, many more to come!). Slightly updated on being transferred here. Probably first wrote this over a decade ago!? I was prompted to get it posted here having just read Burke’s Polymath. There seemed to me some overlap/relation.
The Darwin bicentennial (2009) got me reading much more about science, scientists, and all sorts of similar related stuff, for which I’m extremely grateful.
After an orgy of Darwin related reading and viewing, I felt I needed to broaden my horizons, so I bought this. It’s a real tour de force, and makes for very compulsive reading. I was barely able to put it down to perform basic functions like eating and sleeping.
My favourite chapters were those that featured the Herschels, William and his sister Caroline. I love the idea of the ‘Renaissance Man’ (or woman, for that matter), or polymath. In my own humble way I work in several fields, as writer, musician and artist. I make no claims to excellence in any of these fields, nor pretend to compare myself with people like William Herschel, who was an accomplished musician, composer and teacher, as well as becoming one of the world’s leading astronomers and cosmologists.
But I do find the energy and industrious enthusiasm of people like him, his sister, and many others detailed in this superb book, enormously inspiring. Reading about Herschel’s obsessive casting, grinding and polishing of his mirrors, the construction of his ever larger telescopes, not to mention the drama of Caroline’s own discoveries, or her terrible injury sustained whilst working in the dark (you’ll have to read the book to find out what happened, but it makes me wince just to recall it), was truly exciting.
When I was at school the sciences seemed extremely drab. The more I educate myself about science, the more I realise what an amazing branch of human inquiry it is. This book helps capture the vibrant energy, the multifarious voraciousness for knowledge and understanding – not to mention the wonderful state of awe-inspired humility, almost a sublime trembling, if you will, in the face of nature and our experience of it (this latter part is what the books subtitle conveys; a little melodramatic perhaps, but it does convey how exciting it all is) – that lie at the roots of scientific inquiry.
Well done Mr Holmes: I’ll certainly be seeking out more of your work!
As someone with many and varied interests myself, the idea of the polymath has always exerted a powerful fascination.
Having read books like The Age of Wonder (Richard Holmes) and The Lunar Men (Jenny Uglow), and stuff by or on polymath folk like Darwin, Newton, Kepler, William Herschel and others, my appetite for more knowledge of knowledgeable bods of this ilk is always strong.
So, on a recent visit to a favourite bookshop (that I’d not been to in about three years, thanks to Covid and other things), this caught my eye. I’m very glad I followed my instincts and bought it. I’ve been glued to it ever since.
What a cover! Further reading…
500 polymaths are covered from ancient Greeks like Eratosthenes, to Jakob ‘Ascent of Man’ Bronowski’s daughter, Lisa Jardine, who actually very briefly taught me, and a bunch of pupils from my VI form, many moons ago.
The biggest chapters are given over to different ‘Ages’, or eras, of polymathery (bagsy coinage of that word!). But the subjects are also considered by type – ‘fox vs hedgehog’ (read the book to find out what this means!), serial, cluster, etc – and character/habitat.
Such an ambitious and broad survey is necessarily brief in how it addresses its many individual subjects. But the daunting maelstrom of names, places, dates and so on, is leavened by the connecting or contextual materials.
Further further reading!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. And have learned of many more polymaths than I knew before. I’m also inspired to do lots of follow up reading. Always a good sign, in my books (so to speak!).
Perhaps inevitably some of the polymaths I expected to read about didn’t make Burke’s list. Here are a few I was surprised not to find: Napoleon (his name appears at least twice, but neither as a polymath, nor even in the index!), William Herschel (his son and grandson, however, are included!), Isaac Asimov, Arthur Koestler and … Stephen Fry!?
But the cast is huge, and dazzling. From those I knew, Hooke, Kepler, Wren, Leibniz, to those I didn’t, Pico, Comenius, Kircher the two Rudbecks, etc. And the book fizzes with the omnivorous hunger and boundless energy of its subjects. Educational, inspiring, hugely enjoyable.
Teresa suggested we watch this. I don’t know how long we lasted, maybe 15-20 minutes? Maybe a little longer?
What awful dreck! When I announced the fact that my bile was rising, Teresa concurred, and we bailed. I googled the film, and discovered it’s a Baz Luhrmann thing. That figures.
Luhrmann has the budget to employ decent actors and technicians, so there are aspects of the overall production that have skill invested in them. But the whole thing is so ludicrously fake, and piles on the ‘effects’ as if they alone will carry the film. They don’t.
We didn’t even get to meet Fatsby (we did see his brooding back!). And I can’t even be arsed to change that mildly amusing predictive typo. This bilge doesn’t merit the effort. Like so much modern culture, the actual Gatsby story has been gutted, and what we’re presented is naught more than shiny reflective surfaces.
In some ways this suits or somehow echoes the slightness of F Scott Fitzgerald’s story. But as the Robert Redford version showed, even a will o’ the wisp type parable of an age of illusion, can at least have feeling, even if not great depth. There is at least a dreamy whimsical quality in the ‘74 film, akin to the actual text. Baz just gives us loud garish tinsel.
And the music? The appalling anachronistic sounds are, to my mind, illustrative of a retrogressive and solipsistic slide, backwards into ignorance. Possibly a sign of our times?
Traditions in art have typically recast other times dressed up in styles of their own era when they are in their intellectual infancy. At some point we realise the past is a foreign land, and make the effort to faithfully evoke that – or to at least try and do so – in our arts.
But here everything is subjected to a kind of kaleidoscopic free for all, in which only the slickest design aspects, mostly the costumes, pass through the digital machine, buffed and polished, brilliantine and dazzling, in their glassy mirrored lack of substance.
Has Baz actually triumphed as a latter day alchemist? Inventing a material that is all surface, that has absolutely no depth or substance whatsoever?
Both his alchemical invention of a new material, and his taking the visual and sonic anachronisms to such gaudy heights, bespeak a pre-renaissance world of illusion. Perhaps this makes his films suitable for our era’s wilfully gleeful dumbing down?
As art historian Kenneth Clark said, in his terrific Civilisation series, when criticising the ‘heroic’ aspect of renaissance classicism, when all actors are reduced to the ‘beautiful people’, something is lost. This movie is populated by mannequin like ciphers – himbos and bimbos, I call ‘em – not characters, and feels more like an endless pop video than a story.
Communism has long been lambasted in the so called democratic west, in no small part for the overt and bloody ways that the social engineers of the state-fascist versions of that creed often brutally liquidated their intelligentsia. How ironic is it if Capitalism achieves the same ends via self-inflicted lobotomies?
