British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment
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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.
List of Illustrations ixPreface xiIntroduction: Weather and Enlightenment 1Experiencing the Weather in 1703: Observation and Feelings 13The "Exquisite Atmography" and Its AuthorThe Atmosphere and the EarthClouds in the HeadPublic Weather and the Culture of Enlightenment 41The Great Storm in Public DebateProvidence and the British ClimateConversation and Weather LoreRecording and Forecasting 77The Discipline of the DiaryThe Calendar and the SeasonsForecasting by the HeavensBarometers of Enlightenment 108The Genealogy of Weather InstrumentsThe Instrument Trade and ConsumersInterpreting the "Oraculous Glasses "Sensibility and Climatic Pathology 137The Hippocratic RevivalAerial Sensitivity and Social ChangeThe Politics of Atmospheric ReformClimate and Civilization 170The Enlightenment Debate on ClimateMedicine and the Colonial SituationAmerica: Climate and DestinyConclusion: The Science of Weather 203Notes 217Bibliography 241Index 269
