Overview

Enlightenment inquiries into the weather sought to impose order on a force that had the power to alter human life and social conditions. British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment reveals how a new sense of the national climate emerged in the eighteenth century from the systematic recording of the weather, and how it was deployed in discussions of the health and welfare of the population. Enlightened intellectuals hailed climate’s role in the development of civilization but acknowledged that human existence depended on natural forces that would never submit to rational control. Reading the Enlightenment through the ideas, beliefs, and practices concerning the weather, Jan Golinski aims to reshape our understanding of the movement and its legacy for modern environmental thinking. With its combination of cultural history and the history of science, British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment counters the claim that Enlightenment progress set humans against nature, instead revealing that intellectuals of the age drew characteristically modern conclusions about the inextricability of nature and culture.

Full Product Details

9780226302034

Table of Contents

Reviews

[An] absorbing new study of attitudes to the weather in the age of Enlightenment.... Gives us such a lucid picture of its subject, backed by abundant documentation and argued in a manner both stylish and vigorous. (Times Literary Supplement)

This deft and entertaining book frequently surprises the reader with its balance of contextual history, methodological insight, and flowing expression. --Greg Good "Isis "

Author Information

Jan Golinski is professor of history and humanities at the University of New Hampshire and the author of Making Natural Knowledge, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available