Beauty and terror of science

Homes, Robert. (2009). The age of wonder : how the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science. New York: Pantheon Books.

"The Age of Wonder" explores the earliest ideas of deep time and space, and the explorers of "dynamic science": an infinite, mysterious Nature waiting to be discovered. Three lives dominate the book: William Herschel, his sister Caroline, and Humphry Davy.