The Invention of Clouds
How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A tantalising mixture of biography, history and science.
The Invention of Clouds takes as its focus a specific scientific advance of the early nineteenth century, but it also addresses other issues of the day, such as culture, religion, aesthetics, literature etc. At the time such things weren't divided into separate disciplines, a mentality that is reflected by the book itself.
It tells the story of a shy young Quaker, Luke Howard, and his pioneering work to define what had hitherto been random and unknowable structures - clouds. Catapulted to fame in December 1802 when he named the clouds, his work is still the basis of modern meteorology, but he himself has been overlooked. In this book Hamblyn means to restore him, his cultural context and the science he loved, to life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though clouds, in their many shifting forms, have long intrigued humanity, it has taken millennia of observation, and the rise of the scientific method in the West, for these heavenly phenomena to be explained. Hamblyn, a professional geologist from England, deftly introduces readers to this fascinating development in the history of natural science and to an unusual, diffident, amateur scientist. As a young student in 1783, Luke Howard, a young Quaker Englishman, had watched ominous clouds from his classroom window that were the result of recent volcanic eruptions that not only altered the appearance of the skies, but temporarily changed the climate around the world. Toward the end of 1802, as the Romantic era loomed, he read his seminal treatise on meteorology, "On the Modifications of Clouds," to an audience of friends and interested associates in a small, dank basement in the Plough Court Laboratory. The presentation was the first time the scientific names of clouds were coined, explained and pronounced to the public. The work presented that night influenced contemporary poets and artists as much as scientists. Now, nearly two centuries later, cirrus, cumulus, stratus, nimbus, etc. are commonplace terms. Peppered with literary allusions and anecdotes, and packaged in a unique trim size, this quirky (in the best British sense of that word) book is a delight for those interested in natural science and the lives of scientists. Illus.
