The Philosophical Breakfast Club, Laura Snyder

The Philosophical Breakfast Club:  Four remarkable friends who transformed science and changed the world by Laura J. Snyder is an intertwined biography of Charles Babbage, John Herschel, William Whewell, and Richard Jones.  I read about this book in the Washington Post when Michael Dirda wrote a review.

Started:  3/1/2014
Completed: 5/3/2014
Recommendation: Highly recommended, but slow reading
Recommended by:  Michael Dirda of the Washington Post

Words for which I needed a dictionary definition:

animadversion -- criticism or censure

desideratum -- something that is needed or wanted.

parvenu -- a person of obscure origin who has gained wealth, influence or celebrity.

puling -- cry querulously or weakly.

surplice -- a loose white linen vestment varying from hip-length to calf-length, worn over a cassock by clergy, acolytes, and choristers at Christian church services.

Review:

First and foremost, prior to reading this work I had no idea that these four men were in any particular way connected.  Additionally, I was blithely ignorant of the tremendous influence of Whewell in science and had not previously even heard his name.  I was familiar with Babbage (a person I thought of as more of an engineer than scientist) because of his association with modern computing (the one with machines, not the one with computational experts).  I was aware of Herschel only from his astronomical work (some of which was his father's but I had confused the two Hershels in my mind).  In short I did not really know these pillars of scientific thought.

I have read Bacon (Actually I listened and edited an automatically generated audio version of New Atlantis for Project Gutenberg.  Unfortunately, the automatic reading did not become sufficiently good at being understandable to end up on the site.).  I was familiar with the concept of the House of Solomon, but never knew what an influential role it played in non-fiction.   Laura Snyder does an excellent job of showing how Bacon was a strong influence on these four men and how his approach to what we call science today was inculcated into their efforts to change the world for the better.  This book is not, however, a mere recitation of the facts that led the group to their successful conclusions, nor a simple chronology of events.  Ms. Snyder makes an effort to offer insight into the nature of these men through personal letters and how they were effected by the events of their times.  In this sense, the book is more a biography of the four than a reflection of their scientific prowess.

As one might expect, there is plenty of dry reading.  I defy anyone to read this book and fail to understand the importance of silver nitrate in early photography.  That is, however, an indicator that this book does slip over into plenty of geeky, technical material though couched in layman's terms.  It would certainly be possible to write a biography without delving too far into the technical, but it is a necessary component of the history of the creation of the epoch (hopefully Whewell does not posthumously take offense at the use of the term) of scientific thought as we know it today.  This book is rich in detail and that detail helps characterize the nature of the men who would be categorized as Renaissance men today.  Their abilities to span so many different types of sciences was both a reflection of their towering intellects and the youth of the scientific movement in general.