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II. Carlyle and Science:
Science and the Man of Science in the Early Nineteenth Century More than being just a literary man, Goethe—Carlyle’s model—was also a scientist. Though renowned for his Werter and Faust, Goethe wrote also
Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) and Theory of Colours (1810). To break the common impression, J. P. S. Ubeori’s study shows that Goethe “had probably devoted more time to his scientific studies than to all his prose and poetry” (17). Confident of his study of natural philosophy and his achievement in writing Theory of Colours (1810),28 Goethe proudly stated, “I, amongst millions, am the only one who knows the truth on this important subject [of light]” (Eckermann “Dec. 30, 1823” par. 8). He believed his theory of colour to be more successful than Newton’s and greatly
resented being judged as a failure in science. Different from the modern concept of a scientific treatise of light, Goethe’s Theory of Colours was filled with philosophical contemplation of the art of science and the theory of light and dark. More than a scientific thesis, Goethe’s theory of light was, at the same time, a religious, philosophical, and literary meditation.
Similar to his model, Goethe, Carlyle was not only a literary man but also a scientific scholar. More than just a literary man, Carlyle was once a devotee of science—in mathematics, geology, geometry, magnetism, etc. Besides absorbing himself in German philosophy and literature during the 1820s and ’30s, Carlyle was simultaneously engrossed in German science. During these decades, Carlyle largely involved himself in the profession of science, as a young mathematics scholar and
28 Goethe’s Theory of Colours is a philosophical-scientific treatise to analyze light and darkness.
Goethe’s theory of light is fundamentally different from that of Newton’s Optics (1704). Goethe’s quality of light is homogenous, but Newton’s is heterogeneous.
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tutor,29 a critic and reviewer of science, and an applicant for Chairs at universities.30 He tutored in mathematics, wrote scientific treatises, and translated scientific theses to earn his living during the 1820s.31 He was proud of his mathematical abilities during 1834, the period after finishing Sartor, and applied for the chair of astronomy at Edinburgh University (Meadows 133; Tennyson 23).32 Accordingly, neither was science seen as being a despicable field, nor was being scientific considered to be immoral or irreligious from Carlyle’s point of view. Teaching science, studying science, working for science, and even being scientific were ordinary habits and customary manners in Carlyle’s life. Composed in such a milieu, Sartor supposedly should similarly have exuded a positive and prospective attitude to the treatment of science, of the man of science, and of being scientific.
In the early nineteenth century, in reality, there was no distinct division between writers and scientists. Some writers were themselves scientist as well, but felt no contradiction in possessing dual status and felt no split between the two vocations.
Many contemporary intellectuals were gifted in the fields of both letters and science, and hence were themselves comfortable at being experts in both areas. Since there
29 In 1817, Carlyle’s name firstly appeared in print as an “ingenious young mathematician,” because he provided Professor John Leslie (the author of Elements of Geometry, and the Plane Trigonometry [1817]) with the solution to the problem of how “to divide a straight line, whether internally or externally, so that the rectangle under its segment shall be equivalent to a given rectangle” (Tennyson 19). In 1819, Carlyle first gained an income from science, by undertaking a translation of an article on mineralogy (19). Carlyle tutored the Buller brothers in 1822. Between 1820 and 1823, Carlyle contributed articles to the Edinburgh Encyclopedia.
30 In 1827, Carlyle applied for the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the new London University. Even if considered, Carlyle did not win the position. In 1828, similarly, he applied for the Chair of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews. This time, even although he obtained a testimonial from Goethe, he failed again. The position went to a safer person, Rev. Dr. Cook. In 1834, Carlyle applied for the Chair of Astronomy at Edinburgh University (Tennyson 23-24; Meadows 133). Failing again, Carlyle did not manage to find employment in any official institution of science, even if he strongly expected to.
31 Carlyle’s theses and reviews of science include: Problem in Leslie’s Elements of Geometry (1817), Review of Pictet’s Gravitation (1819-20), “Remarks on Prof. Hansteen’s ‘Inquiries Concerning the Magnetism of the Earth’” (1820-21), “Outline of Prof. Mohs’s New System of Crystallography and Mineralogy” (1820-21), and “Baillie’s Metrical Legends” (1821). Carlyle’s translation of scientific treatises includes: Portion of Malte Brun’s Geography (1821) and Legendre’s Geometry (1824).
References about Carlyle’s scientific writings are cited from G. B. Tennyson’s Appendix in Sartor Called Resartus.
32 Finally, this position went to Thomas Henderson (Tennyson 19).
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were no contradictions between science and letters, to be a man of science thus was never inconsistent with being a man of letters. In his study of the scientist as a profession in the nineteenth century in The Victorian Scientist: The Growth of a Profession (2004), Meadows observes that “[w]riters frequently mentioned scientific ideas, and even sometimes the scientists themselves” (Meadows 133). Between
scientists and writers, there was never hostility; instead they frequently “overlapped in their views” (133, italic mine). Writers were themselves not only sometimes scientists, but were usually also on friendly terms with scientists.
For instance, more than being a philosophical and literary man, Carlyle was an expert in geology and was acquainted with Charles Babbage (1792-1871) and Charles Lyell (1797-1875). Carlyle’s best friend was “…rather surprisingly, the highly
materialistic Tyndall. The two became so close that, when Carlyle’s wife died, Tyndall took him for a holiday in the South of France to help him get over it” (133-34).33 According to Meadows’s study, the scientific communication turned out to be steady organizations from the 1850s to the late 1870s (1). Before the 1850s or, more correctly, before Darwin’s publication of Origin of Species, scientific concepts still maintained an amicable relationship with the thoughts of the humanities, and the men working in science were still on good terms with the men engaged in philosophy, theology, and the classics. In both vocation and conception, men of letters and of science overlapped.
They shared a both-and relationship, instead of an either-or division, in Carlyle’s youth. More precisely, the early nineteenth century literary man was simultaneously a scientific man sometimes. There might be simply the literary man or the scientific
33 Charles Babbage studied mathematics at Cambridge University and became a professor at
Cambridge. Charles Lyell was educated at Oxford University. He was an expert in geology, supporting the gradual theory — that the earth changed gradually rather than catastrophically. His Principles of Geology was once the most influential book in the nineteenth century and was important for helping Darwin to develop the idea of evolution. John Tyndall (1820-93) studied physics in Germany and was a professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution. He was well-known for his study of heat radiation and as a popularizer of science (Meadows 4-7).
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man, but there were also those men who were professionals in both fields. Carlyle was one of these examples, not only a literary man but also a scientific expert.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the situation of intellectuals being expert in both science and the humanities was very common because the concept of
“science” involved a wider scope than is the case now. “Science” indicated not only the empirical research of the natural world, but also the inner perception of the philosophical, idealistic, and religious meanings of the universe. During this period, science was not yet an independent discipline, but was appended to those of
philosophy and religion. In the early nineteenth century, classics and religion were popular studies in universities, while “science” was more of a hobby for the ambitious amateur who majored in classical, philosophical, as well as religious learning. Not yet a legitimated discipline, “science” was therefore of multiple significances but denoted simply the empirical study of the natural world.
More clearly, “natural philosophy” was a more prevalent term to our modern concept of “science,” that is, the study of natural matter and phenomena. However, different from modern science in the twentieth century, natural philosophy in the early nineteenth century contained religious significances as well. To investigate “nature”
meant to study divine creation. Within “divine creation,” there was not merely the laws of nature, but also the “philosophy” of God. The early scientific study of nature accordingly involved not only the subject of the visible world but also that of the invisible, namely, the spiritual, the philosophical, the religious, and the moral. The twentieth century notion of science—indicating the specific study of visible
substances and excluding any idealistic considerations—in reality had not yet been conceptualized during Carlyle’s composition of Sartor because the “divorce between science and consideration of values” started “since the late nineteenth century” (Yeo
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1993:4).34 Before this conceptual divorce, science dealt with moral duty and philosophical purposes, and a man of science was, at the same time, spiritual and religious. Due to this ideological circumstance, the notion of “science” in Carlyle’s recognition was far different from ours at the present time, but with a wider scope.
His intimation with scientific study, also, was by no means exceptional and accidental.
Moreover, Carlyle might even be a representative figure of a religious and literary man of science.
Carlyle’s composition of Sartor (1830-31) was published in the early span of the transition from natural philosophy to modern science, in the period which still treated science from an idealistic perspective. During this period, there was a “close integration of science within a Christian culture,” and the men of science were in reality “clerical scientists” (Yeo 1993: 30-31).35 For the clerical scientists during this period, investigating nature did not simply mean studying the superficial phenomena of the visible world. On the contrary, to study the appearance of nature was a
preparatory stage for a more significant purpose of the inner truth, that is, to perceive truth by discovering the laws that God left in the universe. “Nature” as a study was empirical and material as well as religious and philosophical. In Sartor, too, nature
34 It was in the 1930s that Edmund Husserl commented on the development of his present science and indicated that modern science was falling into a crisis. For him, European science on certain levels was successful, but in reality had nothing “to say about human ideals and aspirations” (Yeo 1993: 4). In other words, it was not until the early twentieth century that science gradually became independent of philosophical and religious thoughts.
35 In the early nineteenth century there was generally a belief in a unity of truth to combine every field of learning—science, religion and the arts. This was the assumption that “all truths — theological, poetic, and scientific — were in harmony” (Yeo 1993: 30). That is to say, it was generally believed that there was only one truth in the universe. During the 1850s, this assumption however was smashed by Darwin’s publication of Origin of Species (1859) because “scientific criticism of the theory of evolution by natural selection released a number of conflicts within science itself” (30). Darwin’s Origin thus brought “truth complex,”35 making the unity assumption controversial. Gradually, with the pivotal appearance of Darwin’s Origin, the material and the visible world started to be separated from the spiritual and the invisible. Consequently, Victorian man’s belief in natural theology also began to shatter (Yeo 1993:31). Composed around the period when the unity of truth started to shatter, Sartor showed, on one hand, the contemporary belief in the spirit-science, moral-science, and religion-science unities and, on the other, Carlyle’s anxiety with regard to the breaking of spirit from science and his urgency with regard to the reform of science by spirit and moral means.
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indicated not merely the “external Nature” (SR 117) of the wilds but also the “Living Garment of God” (142). From Carlyle’s observation of the “Mountains” and “rocks”
(142) came his “natural philosophy” of nature-as-God’s-garment and God’s-spirit-hidden-in-nature.
Though probably familiar with science, during the first half of the nineteenth century, for any young man to make science his career was difficult and risky before the appearance of Origin. Being a man of science required special ardour and great financial support, since “science” was more of an amusement than a certain career.
During this period, most undergraduates entered higher education to look for opportunities for working in the Church or being the Fellow of a university college.
To take Cambridge and Oxford for example, the aim of the education was to train people for traditional professions such as medicine, the law, and the Church
(Meadows 35), since these vocations guaranteed a stable income and social status. As for the men who took science seriously, they were mostly amateurs who were not only rich, but also ambitious to research the natural world. They were mostly clerics or professors curious about investigating nature as a pastime, or responsible for specific scientific business associated with a certain stable position. Without any institutional, familial, or even marital support, it was almost impossible to achieve one’s aspiration for being a man of science by depending merely on one’s own enthusiasm. In 1830, Babbage once made the well-known cry by complaining “that there was no such career in science” (Yeo 1993: 34) since to get fully involved in the study of science required wealth and time, unlikely except for men like Darwin who inherited money from his family. As long as science was not yet a broad avenue to success in the early nineteenth century, the literary and philosophical Carlyle, who showed his zeal for reforming science in terms of spirituality and morality by the Torch in Sartor, might be greatly interested in science.
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Though unpopular and difficult in terms of making a living, a few scientific jobs were available in the early nineteenth century; these jobs, however, attracted only very low salaries. The men who were interested in scientific study thus needed to look for other means of support, officially or privately (Meadows 117). Mostly, the
academic world was the first choice for its stability of position and comparatively generous salaries.36 Carlyle, too, once expected to obtain a stable position in a university (1827, 1828, and 1834)37 but all attempts failed. If unable to find a secure position at any university, the man of science then looked for other sources of money:
publication, editing, marrying a wealthy wife, or inheriting a large sum of money (Meadows 121-22).38 Without any familial backing, financial problems were serious for zealous scientists. Fortunately, to marry a wealthy wife (as Carlyle did), or to inherit property (as Darwin did) could help the scientist break free from worry and poverty (121). If not fortunate enough to have the chance of marrying into wealth or inheriting riches, the man of science had to depend on himself by publication and by editing popular journals in order to earn extra money (121). In general, during the first half of the nineteenth century, the study of science was a luxury that demanded money and time, and thus only wealthy and well-educated men, and certainly not lower-class men or women, were allowed to amuse themselves with scientific research (Yeo 1993:
36 To give a general idea about the value of the pound in the Victorian age, the present-day £100 is equivalent to about £5,400 pounds in the 1830s (Meadows 2-3). For instance, Edward Frankland (1825-1899), an expert on sanitation problems, was once a professor at Owens College in Manchester in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. His annual salary was £300 pounds in total, a
middle-class salary as a college professor (Meadows 117-18).
37 Carlyle’s experiences of pursuing a position in the academic world are illustrated in note 30 of this chapter.
38 In order to fulfil his passion for the study of geometry, Carlyle indeed sacrificed his study for the ministry at Edinburgh University and turned to undertaking scientific translation, publication, and editing. Eventually, Carlyle married Jane Baillie Welsh, an only child of Dr. John Welsh and Grace Baillie Welsh. John Welsh was a wealthy businessman who ran a medical practice at a staging post and personally owned a station in the local community. At the age of eighteen, Mr. Welsh died of typhus and Jane inherited a large fortune. Due to her intellectual horizons, Jane surpassed and looked down on most of her suitors. After rejecting several advantageous marriages, Jane then met Carlyle and was fascinated with his dream of being a writer. Finally, at the age of 25, the wealthy girl married Carlyle for his genius. Carlyle, thus, was fortunate enough to marry a woman with both innate and familial dowries (Uglow “Jane Welsh Carlyle”).
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35).
Besides, among many intellectual activities in universities, scientific research was never a favorite subject, and did not possess a secure position because, compared with other disciplines such as classics and theology, science had a much lower status, and was not even a rival (Yeo 1993: 32-33). In such a situation, only for those who possessed considerable wealth and extreme interest, was science a possible profession.
That is to say, “scientific activities” in the early nineteenth century were, in fact, both marginal and laborious. With few participants and few supporters, science as a career was neither favorable nor valuable. Though inaccessible to most people, science however was not strange to the educated, since both classics and mathematics were emphasized equally in any field of higher education. As a result, intellectuals were trained both literarily and scientifically to be able to handle the humanities and science simultaneously.
Due to the overlap of humanistic and scientific studies, and due to the difficulty of survival for a scientific man in the early nineteenth century, Carlyle supposedly should have had a great interest in science and ample connections with science. As discovered by Tennyson, “Carlyle’s studies in natural philosophy co-exist with his studies in literature and history” (Tennyson 22). In his youth, “[r]eligion, natural philosophy, history, literature—these were Carlyle’s early interests; and he held them with no concern that they were necessarily incompatible” (22). After giving up his studies for the ministry at Edinburgh University for reasons of religious conviction around 1814 and 1815, he then turned to the study of geology. The rise of interest in German literature, intriguingly, derived from his early devotion “to uncover the secrets of geology (or geognosy) and mineralogy” (21), which he believed hid the true knowledge of God. Due to his belief in God, Carlyle turned to geology; due to his interest in geology, he read the abundant publications in German. Then, intriguingly, it
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was Carlyle’s devotion to German geology that led to his in-depth study of German literature and the birth of Sartor.
Not merely interested in science, Carlyle even sacrificed his stable career for the risk of working for science.39 Due to his disappointment with his contemporary education, Carlyle quit his studies for the ministry at Edinburgh University. After leaving university, in order to earn his own living, Carlyle tutored the Buller brothers in mathematics, Carlyle’s specialty. Later, he started to write scientific reviews,
scientific treatises, did translations and edited scientific essays.40 For Carlyle, to leave the study for the ministry in reality was an incredibly risky decision because this rejection meant him having to renounce his vocation to the Church, a job guaranteeing a stable income and social status. Carlyle had to be greatly ambitious with regard to
scientific treatises, did translations and edited scientific essays.40 For Carlyle, to leave the study for the ministry in reality was an incredibly risky decision because this rejection meant him having to renounce his vocation to the Church, a job guaranteeing a stable income and social status. Carlyle had to be greatly ambitious with regard to