Article ID: CBB000932260

Radicals, Romantics and Electrical Showmen: Placing Galvanism at the End of the English Enlightenment (2009)

unapi

Morus, Iwan Rhys (Author)


Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Volume: 63
Pages: 263--275


Publication Date: 2009
Edition Details: Part of a special issue.
Language: English

This paper examines the shifting cultural place of galvanic experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It surveys the ways in which political readings of galvanism by radicals and Tories during this period had an important role in determining the ways in which these kinds of experiment, and galvanism in general, were understood later in the century. The paper examines the attitudes of Humphry Davy, Thomas Beddoes and Giovanni Aldini to galvanism and suggests that there was a good deal of contemporary interpretative flexibility about the ways in which galvanic experimentation might be understood. It argues in particular that Humphry Davy's rejection of his earlier views on galvanism after his arrival at the Royal Institution can be regarded as emblematic of a broader shift in the culture of experimental natural philosophy at the end of the English Enlightenment.

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Article Fox, Robert (2009) The Many Worlds of Thomas Beddoes. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (p. 211). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000932260/

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Authors & Contributors
Unwin, Robert W.
Unwin, Patrick R.
Hayes, Emily
Lacey, Andrew
Edmondson, Hattie Lloyd
Wright, A. J.
Concepts
Chemistry
Physics
Science and culture
Electricity; magnetism
Technology
Science and society
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
Enlightenment
20th century, early
Places
Great Britain
England
United States
France
Italy
Germany
Institutions
Royal Institution of Great Britain
Royal Society of London
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