New PDF release: The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered

By Richard Holmes

ISBN-10: 0007349882

ISBN-13: 9780007349883

Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-FictionShortlisted for the Royal Society Prize for technological know-how BookRichard Holmes, prize-winning biographer of Coleridge and Shelley, explores the clinical ferment that swept throughout Britain on the finish of the 18th century in his ground-breaking new biography 'The Age of Wonder'.

'The Age of Wonder' is Richard Holmes's first significant paintings of biography in over a decade. it's been encouraged by means of the clinical ferment that swept via Britain on the finish of the eighteenth century, 'The Age of Wonder' and which Holmes now considerably redefines as 'the revolution of Romantic Science'.The ebook opens with Joseph Banks, botanist on Captain Cook's first Endeavour voyage, stepping onto a Tahitian seashore in 1769, hoping to find Paradise. Many different voyages of discovery quickly stick with, whereas Banks, now President of the Royal Society in London, turns into our narrative consultant to what really emerges as an Age of Wonder.Banks introduces us to the 2 medical figures that dominate the booklet: astronomer William Herschel and chemist Humphry Davy. Herschel's tireless commitment to the celebs, assisted (and probably rivalled) through his comet-finding sister Caroline, replaced ceaselessly the general public belief of the sunlight process, the Milky approach galaxy and the that means of the universe itself. Davy first stunned the medical group along with his near-suicidal gasoline experiments in Bristol, then went directly to shop millions of lives along with his safeguard Lamp and tested British chemistry because the best specialist technology in Europe. yet on the expense, maybe, of his personal heart.Holmes proposes a thorough imaginative and prescient of technological know-how prior to Darwin, exploring the earliest rules of deep time and deep house, the inventive competition with the French medical institution, and the startling effect of discovery on nice writers and poets similar to Mary Shelley, Coleridge, Byron and Keats. along with his trademark feel of the human drama, he indicates how nice rules and experiments are born out of lonely ardour, how medical discoveries (and error) are made, how extreme relationships are cast and damaged via examine, and the way spiritual religion and clinical fact collide. the result's breathtaking in its originality, its story-telling strength, and never least, in its highbrow value.

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Extra info for The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (UK Edition)

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2001. Phonology and language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , and Paul Hopper, eds. 2001a. Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , and Paul Hopper. 2001b. Introduction. In Joan L. , Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure 1–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Croft, William. 2000. Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. London: Longman. Croft, William.

The encyclopedic nature of linguistic meaning follows from the categorial function of language: if language is a system for the categorization of the world, there is no need to postulate a systemic or structural level of linguistic meaning that is different from the level where world knowledge is associated with linguistic forms. The perspectival nature of linguistic meaning implies that the world is not objectively reflected in the language: the categorization function of the language imposes a structure on the world rather than just mirroring objective reality.

The following three sections of the Handbook apply these basics to various more specific domains. The section ‘‘Linguistic Structure and Language Use’’ illustrates how Cognitive Linguistics deals with the traditional subdomains of grammar, ranging from phonetics and morphology over lexicon and syntax to text and discourse. Separate chapters are devoted to topics that have received special attention in Cognitive Linguistics. The chapters in the section ‘‘Linguistic Variation and Change’’ focus on different types of variation within and between languages.

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The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (UK Edition) by Richard Holmes


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