Academy,  1 (1869–70), 232–34.

[Review of Life and Letters of Faraday, by Henry B Jones]  [2/2]

John Tyndall

Genre:

Review, Serial

Publications reviewed:

Jones 1869

Subjects:

History of Science, Religion, Discovery, Experiment, Physics, Mathematics, Natural Law, Electromagnetism, Chemistry, Patronage, Politics, War, Government, Scientific Naturalism, Heroism, Genius

People mentioned:

Macedonio Melloni , William Lamb (2nd Viscount Melbourne)


    Continues with an account of Michael Faraday's later life and scientific work. Reflects on Faraday's Sandemanianism and his role as a philosophical experimenter opposed to the reduction of natural science to mathematical deduction. In considering Faraday's dealings with British and French politicians, Tyndall remarks 'Should the necessity arise, the French Emperor will not lack at the outset the best appliances of modern science; while we, I fear, shall have to learn the magnitude of the resources we are now neglecting amid the pangs of actual war'. He adds in a footnote, 'What we need in this country is a man in authority, competent to select from the vast, but in many particulars irrelevant mass of science, those portions which are of real and paramount importance, and determined to have them properly taught'. Concludes that even if he had not been a Sandemanian, 'Faraday would still have been a religious man'. (234)


Reprinted:

Tyndall 1871a


© Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project, Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, 2005 - 2020

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