A tantalizing 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. Howard was catapulted to fame in December 1802 when he named the clouds, a defining point in natural history and meteorology. His poetic names and groundbreaking work made him internationally famous. He became a cult figure for Romantics like Shelley and Goethe. His work is still the basis of modern meteorology, but he himself has been overlooked. In this book Hamblyn means to restore both him, his cultural context and the science he loved, to life.
The Invention of Clouds
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In The Invention of Clouds, Richard Hamblyn skilfully blends biography with scientific and cultural history to capture for modern readers the remarkable achievement of Luke Howard (1772-1864), the quiet Quaker whose classification of cloud types we still employ today. "Cirrus", "cumulus", and "stratus" now seem almost self-evident descriptions, but when Howard gave his epochal lecture at London's Askesian Society in 1802, the bewildering variety of clouds was more obvious than anything else. Howard's great achievement, writes Hamblyn with characteristic elegance, was "the penetrating insight that clouds have many individual shapes but few basic forms". His graceful résumé of meteorology from the time of the ancient Chinese shows just how difficult generations of scientists found it to make sense of clouds, which frequently served as a metaphor for the awesome complexity of the natural world. Hamblyn's marvellous portrait of English cultural life at the turn of the 19th century reminds us how enthralled the general public was by scientific lectures and demonstrations, which served as a form of popular entertainment as well as a valuable tool in the dissemination of knowledge. "People cheered at lectures," he notes, and young men like Howard, a pharmacist by trade, "refused to allow the circumstances in which they found themselves to deflect them from (a) heroic sense of destiny." This was the great age of amateur scientists, many of them Dissenters like Howard whose religious unorthodoxy barred them from government service and aristocratic clubs. They forged their own place in England's burgeoning industries and in the scientific revolution unleashed by Isaac Newton. Howard, a devoted husband and father active in educational work and the anti-slavery movement, was representative of the remarkable autodidacts who reshaped European culture. Their work "served the equal demands of pleasure, instruction, and imagination", states Hamblyn, whose delightful book fulfils the same admirable purpose. --Wendy Smith
Review
'A marvellous book... one that accomplishes that rare feat of changing the reader's perception of the world.' -- Economist
'Delightful... manages to convey the deep sense of wonder and dreaminess that clouds have always inpsired.' -- Glasgow Herald
'Stimulating and informative.' -- Sunday Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
'Delightful... manages to convey the deep sense of wonder and dreaminess that clouds have always inpsired.' -- Glasgow Herald
'Stimulating and informative.' -- Sunday Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
I thought this was a really interesting book, well written and with lots to ponder. The author goes back to luminaries like Aristotle and Pliny, as well as focusing on scientists from the early 19th century, and offers a fascinating trawl through the history of science. I don't usually read science books, but this didn't feel like a science book to me, more like a biography with some science thrown in. Brilliant.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
When Luke Howard named the clouds in 1802 the event caused a sensation, firstly in London, where the lecture was held, then throughout Europe, through publication of the lecture in essay form, and finally throughout the world. This shy young Quaker meterorologist became a scientific celebrity, courted by luminaries such as Shelley, Constable and Goethe, who wrote poems in his honour, and referred to himself as 'a disciple of Howard'.
This is such an unusual story, and it's well told, with lots of details about the lives and times of Howard's contemporaries, and many fascinating asides about ballooning (invented in 1783 by two French brothers), arctic exploration and the development of the Beaufort wind scale.
This is a must for anyone interested in the history of meterorology, or just in the story of how one ordinary man sought to understand the world around him. Highly recommended.
This is such an unusual story, and it's well told, with lots of details about the lives and times of Howard's contemporaries, and many fascinating asides about ballooning (invented in 1783 by two French brothers), arctic exploration and the development of the Beaufort wind scale.
This is a must for anyone interested in the history of meterorology, or just in the story of how one ordinary man sought to understand the world around him. Highly recommended.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
This book is more than a biography of one man: it also a fascinating compendium of little-known facts about clouds and much else besides. I didn't know, for example, that clouds last on average only ten minutes, or that the biggest clouds of all - the cumulonimbus, or rain cloud - can hold up to half a million tons of water. Neither did I know that the expression 'cloud nine' came from the international cloud classification number for cumulonimbus (although sadly, cumulonimbus is these days classified as cloud ten).
The story of Luke Howard is woven brilliantly through all this material, and it keeps you reading to find out more about him, as well as about weather and clouds. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I look up at the sky now with new interest.
The story of Luke Howard is woven brilliantly through all this material, and it keeps you reading to find out more about him, as well as about weather and clouds. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I look up at the sky now with new interest.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not a biography
This is supposedly a biography of Luke Howard the man who gave clouds their names. However it barely covers his life at all. Read more
Published on 24 Nov 2009 by R. P. Sedgwick
1.0 out of 5 stars
Pages missing
The paperback Picador 2002 edition I got from Amazon is faulty, missing pages 197-244 all together! Otherwise this is a good read, although information wise not very deep. Read more
Published on 25 Mar 2007 by Reijo Rasinkangas
4.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting story but a bit disorganized
This book is well written, and Richard Hamblyn has obviously put much effort into his research. The story of how Luke Howard managed to find some order in the chaotic world of the... Read more
Published on 29 Oct 2001 by Tormod Guldvog
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