Cosmology and the scientific self in the nineteenth century: astronomic emotions / Howard Carlton.
Carlton, Howard.
2022
Q158
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Title Cosmology and the scientific self in the nineteenth century: astronomic emotions / Howard Carlton.
Author Carlton, Howard.
ISBN 9783031052804 (electronic bk.)
3031052803 (electronic bk.)
303105279X
9783031052798
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05280-4
Publication Details Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Language English
Description 1 online resource
Item Number 10.1007/978-3-031-05280-4 doi
Call Number Q158
Dewey Decimal Classification 509.034
Summary This book argues that while the historiography of the development of scientific ideas has for some time acknowledged the important influences of socio-cultural and material contexts, the significant impact of traumatic events, life threatening illnesses and other psychotropic stimuli on the development of scientific thought may not have been fully recognised. Howard Carlton examines the available primary sources which provide insight into the lives of a number of nineteenth-century astronomers, theologians and physicists to study the complex interactions within their biocultural brain-body systems which drove parallel changes of perspective in theology, metaphysics, and cosmology. In doing so, he also explores three topics of great scientific interest during this period: the question of the possible existence of life on other planets; the deployment of the nebular hypothesis as a theory of cosmogony; and the religiously charged debates about the ages of the earth and sun. From this body of evidence we gain a greater understanding of the underlying phenomena which actuated intellectual developments in the past and which are still relevant to todays knowledge-making processes. Howard Carlton received his PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. His research explores a number of nineteenth-century astronomical controversies in order to demonstrate that the ideas of participants in these debates were materially altered by traumatic life-events, as evidenced by their subsequent productions and their performances of altered selves.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description Description based on print version record.
Available in Other Form Print version: 9783031052798
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Intro
Acknowledgements
About the Book
Contents
Part I: Introduction
Chapter 1: Crisis and Cosmology: The Subtle Interactions of Mind, Body and Belief
Experience, Emotions and Weltmodelle
Victorian Experiences of Illness and Death
Psychotropic Drugs in the Nineteenth Century
Victorian Religion
Subjects and Sources
Structure of This Book
Astronomic Emotions
Part II: The Extraterrestrial Life Debate
Chapter 2: Planets and Pluralism: How Many Revelations Are Required to Redeem the Entire Universe?
The Origins of Pluralism

Thomas Paine and the Age of Reason
Supporters and Opponents of Paine's Thesis
William Paley's Natural Theology
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Interstellar Imperialism
Chapter 3: "In Yonder Hundred Million Spheres": Thomas Chalmers and His Conversion to Pluralism
Chalmers' Conversion Experience
The Influence of Blaise Pascal
Chalmers and the Age of the Earth
Chalmers Addresses the 'Astronomical Objection'
Chalmers' Theology and Political Economics
Extraterrestrial Evangelism
Chapter 4: "What Is Man if Thou Art Mindful of Him?": William Whewell and the Unique Revelation

William Whewell's Declining Support for Pluralism
Whewell's Response to Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Of the Plurality of Worlds: An Essay
Cordelia Whewell's Terminal Illness
The Essay: Whewell's Response to His Wife's Illness and a Rebuttal of Chalmers
Whewell and Politics
Cosmology as Consolation
Chapter 5: Richard Proctor and Private Judgement
Proctor's Conversion to Catholicism
Proctor and Pluralism
John Tyndall and the Belfast Address
Proctor's Response to Catholic Critics
Heterodox Theological Views of Proctor and His Colleagues

Universal Evolution
Untitled
Part III: The Nebular Hypothesis
Chapter 6: John Pringle Nichol, the Nebular Hypothesis and Progressive Cosmogony
Origins of the Nebular Hypothesis
John Pringle Nichol's Early Career in Polemics
Nichol's Breakdown
Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow
Nichol's Exposition of the Nebular Hypothesis
Nichol's Political Views Post 1836
Nichol and Continuous Creation
Progressive Evolution
Chapter 7: "And Eddied into Suns, that Wheeling Cast/The Planets": Rosse, Robinson and the Leviathan of Parsonstown

The Leviathan of Parsonstown
Laurence Parsons and the Death of John Clere Parsons
Political Upheavals and the Irish Famine
Rosse, Robinson and Early Observations of the Nebulae
Mechanical Objectivity and the Art of Drawing
Artistic Responses to the Leviathan and the Orion Nebula
Nichol's Initial Response to the 'Resolvability' of the Orion Nebula
Chapter 8: "In Tracts of Fluent Heat Began": Nichol Defends and Develops Nebular Cosmogony
Nichol Reframes the Birr Castle Observations
Nichol's Lecture Tours
Reception of Nichol's Presentations

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