Free-wheeling liberal to big-bearded conservative: Charles Darwin this is your life…
On the face of it, the Romantics’ attempt to deny science its claim to imagination would seem to be a non-starter. In the twentieth century we have come to see and science a supreme exercise of the imagination; we see its history studded with dazzlingly imaginative feats. Was not Copernicus able to imagine the massy earth into motion; Galileo to a matching await the very atmosphere that inhibits uniform acceleration due to gravity; Newton to a match in the first universal laws of nature; Darwin to imagine the grand scheme of natural selection out of the most scattered hints and scraps of evidence… ? Clearly the scientist, in his cogitational realm of ideal gases and perfectly classic bodies, of infinitesimal genes, quarks, and quanta, of curved space and the expanding universe, must think constantly against the grain of common sense and obvious appearance. (Roszak, 1973, pp. 262-3)
He wasn’t much of a Romantic – unless living into your sixties with a huge family you mostly neglected while writing long-winded tales about boring protagonist in icky relationships with teenaged girls – but as a social critic, Charles Dickens had a lot to say about England’s industrialization. Here is a brief video of his rise to fame on the dramatic reading circuit:
On an interesting side-note, Dickens’ last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend is believed to be an aquatic mystery novel based upon the groundbreaking theories of Charles Darwin. You’re up next, Darwinnie!