The Poetics of Mid-Victorian Scientific Materialism in the Writings of John Tyndall, W

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE FACULTY OF ENGLISH THE POETICS OF MID-VICTORIAN SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM IN THE WRITINGS OF JOHN TYNDALL, W. K. CLIFFORD AND OTHERS Jeffrey Robert Mackowiak Trinity College A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, 10 JUNE 2006 I, Jeffrey Robert Mackowiak, certify that this dissertation has been written by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me, and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for any degree. Furthermore, this dissertation does not exceed the regulation length, including footnotes, references and appendices but excluding the bibliography. In submitting this dissertation to the University of Cambridge I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker. Jeffrey Robert Mackowiak Trinity College, Cambridge 10 June 2006 DEDICATED to my mother, Dr Elaine Mackowiak, my sister, Dr Lisa Filippone, and to the memories of my father, Dr Robert Mackowiak, and grandfather, Stanley DeCusatis. ––––––––––––––––––––– TABLE OF CONTENTS ––––––––––––––––––––– Acknowledgements iv Abbreviations and Textual Conventions vii Abstract viii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 - The Presentations (and Representations) of Scientific Naturalism in Mid-Victorian Literary Culture 18 CHAPTER 2 - Tyndall’s Crepuscular Materialism: Orations at Belfast, 19 August, and Manchester, 2 October 1874 50 CHAPTER 3 - Materialism’s Afterlife in the Poetry and Thought of W. K. Clifford and James Clerk Maxwell 73 CHAPTER 4 - Heated Exchanges: John Tyndall, Thomas Carlyle, and the Rhetorics of Thermodynamic Conservation 118 CHAPTER 5 - Tyndall Among the Glaciers: The Mid-Victorian Scientific Materialist as Romantic Survivor 156 CONCLUSION 199 Works Cited 206 ––––––––––––––––––––– ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ––––––––––––––––––––– I would, as ever, like to thank the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Trinity College, Cam- bridge, especially Rev. Dr Martin, Rev. Adams and my tutors Dr Morley and Prof. Worster, for their support of my research over the (many!) years; the Principal and members of Wesley House, Cambridge, especially Iain Merton and Jim Stirmey, for excellent accommodation and highly welcome hospitality; and my friends among the Fellowship (notably, Dr Robert Macfarlane and Dr Corrina Russell) and the English undergraduates of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, for advice, encouragement, and, above all else, collegiality in its most authentic sense. In Prof. Dame Gillian Beer, Dr J. C. A. Rathmell and Dr David Clifford I have not only had the benefit of three of the most knowledgeable supervisors anyone could ever have wished for, but also – and as critically – three of the most patient. Dr Clifford, in particular, warrants my eternal gratitude for helping me extrude from two hundred thousand or so interesting words the right batch required for a Cambridge degree. Financial backing for this dissertation has been provided by an Internal Graduate Studentship from Trinity College, an Overseas Research Students (ORS) Awards Scheme bursary from the UK Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, and supplemental grants from the Trinity College Ashton Fund, the Cambridge Overseas Trust (COT), and the University of Cambridge Board of Graduate Studies. I would in particular like to acknowledge my debt to the COT for the awarding of an Honorary Scholarship and my subsequent election as a Fellow of the Cam- bridge Overseas Society. I would also like to thank the Master and Fellows of Hughes Hall, Cambridge, for their generous offer of a Junior Research Fellowship. A preliminary year of postgraduate coursework in literature and analytic philosophy at the University of Virginia was funded by that university’s President’s Fellowship in English Language and Literature. Dr Laura Otis, of Hofstra University on Long Island, NY, and, previously, the Max- Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, who first contacted me while researching her anthology Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century, has become a good friend and advocate, her expertise especially appreciated arising as it does from the biological, rather than physical, sciences side of things. Thanks as well to Dr Bernard Lightman, of Canada’s - iv - - v - York University, for sending me some years ago an essay – since published in Science Serialized: Representations of the Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals – on the popular reception of Tyndall’s Belfast Address. The staffs of the various libraries that have supported me during the course of this research have, without fail, been both endlessly accommodating and distressingly knowledgeable, though I perhaps owe a particular debt of gratitude, for help with manuscript sources and permission to quote material from the Institution’s archives, to Yvonne Martins, Lenore Symons and Dr Frank James of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. I also wish to thank the staffs of the Manuscripts and Munby Rare Books Reading Rooms in the University Library, Cambridge; the Whipple Library of the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge; the Library of Westminster College, Cambridge; the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cam- bridge; and that as well of the Special Collections Department of the St Andrews University Library, Scotland, for likewise granting me permission to quote from one-of-a-kind manuscripts and rare publications in their keeping. Such collections – and such libraries, generally – truly represent an extraordinary resource for the scholar (and for me, too, I might add), featuring many unexpected delights, not the least of which was my stunned realisation late one evening, having finally deciphered a bookplate inscription, that most of the volumes authored by James Clerk Maxwell on open shelving at Trinity were actually donated by the great man himself. And finally, there are, as inevitable with projects of this sort, any number of profound personal debts which it would be remiss if I did not at the least attempt, if inadequately, to acknowledge. Dr Matt McCullagh, Dr Emma Woolerton, Lauren Sallinger, Oliver Darwin (yep, great-great-grandson), Chris Cox, Pete O’Connell, Geoff Chepiga, Ken Hannah, Capt. Matt Baker, Lt. John Jackson, the Hon. Adela Bottomley, Sarah Cochrane, Charles Crowson, Dr Christine Luscombe, Roger Hensman, Prof. James Secord of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, selected Friends of Bentley (James, Lauren, Edmund and Julian), and (fellow St Andrean and finest ball date imaginable) Dr Bella D’Abrera, to name only a few, are remarkable – and remarkably friendly – individuals all of whom served to make this place as socially and personally rewarding as it is, in my estimation, aesthetically unparalleled. Harriet Slogoff, among others, in the David Rittenhouse Laboratories of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Pennsylvania endeavoured to keep me in balance by reminding me, over holidays, of what an equation looked like, if not how it could be solved. I would also like to recognise in passing the more ‘institutional’ or ‘collective’ kinds of support - vi - provided by the members of the 1st and 3rd Trinity Boat Club, by my Cambridge University Golf Club team-mates (in particular, those gorse-scarred veterans of the mighty Stymies and Blues sides of 1999 - 2002), by the gentlemen of the Hawks’ Club of the University of Cam- bridge (GDBO!), and those as well of the Kate Kennedy Club of St Andrews University (Floreat Kathrena). And, of course, I would like to close with brief mention of my greatest indebtedness of all, for without the love, encouragement and good humour of my mother, Dr Elaine Mack- owiak, and my sister, Dr Lisa Filippone, I would never be where I am today, and it is difficult to overstate what their unwavering support has meant to me throughout the course of my education – and, indeed, my life as a whole. Thanks so very, very much, both of you. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ABBREVIATIONS AND TEXTUAL CONVENTIONS –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The following abbreviations and short forms are used in footnotes and parenthetical docu- mentation; for full bibliographic details of these and other works see the listing of works cited. ‘BA’ ‘British Association’, The Times, 20 August 1874. BA Tyndall, Address, 1874. BA [2] Tyndall, Address, ‘7th thousand’ ed., 1874. ‘DP’ Tyndall, ‘Descriptive Poem’, 18 July 1856 [final fair copy]. ‘DP’ [1] Tyndall, ‘Descriptive Poem’, [1] July 1856 [complete first draft]. FoS Tyndall, Fragments of Science, 3rd [British] ed., 1871. FoS [5] Tyndall, Fragments of Science, 5th [British] ed., 1876. FoS [6] Tyndall, Fragments of Science, 6th [British] ed., 2 vols., 1879. LJCM Campbell and Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, 1882. LWJT Eve and Creasey, The Life and Works of John Tyndall, 1945. NF Tyndall, New Fragments, 1st [American] ed., 1897. OF G. Beer, Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter, 1996. SSC Chisholm, Such Silver Currents: The Story of William and Lucy Clifford, 2002. In the dissertation that follows, substantive insertions and deletions from manuscript sources are indicated, respectively, by angle-brackets and strike-outs; ‘BAAS’ stands for the British Association for the Advancement of Science; ‘RI’, for the Royal Institution of Great

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