Abstract
This short chapter analyses the work of Michael Faraday in electrochemistry and electromagnetism and argues that in explaining the operation of electricity as a force rather than an imponderable fluid, Faraday brings to an end the long eighteenth-century era in which electricity’s metaphorical status enabled its appropriation in such a wide range of writings. And yet Faraday has much in common with his eighteenth-century forebears, and clearly signals his debt to them.
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas, Michael Faraday, 1; Thomas, ‘Faraday and Franklin’, 525.
- 2.
See Cantor, Michael Faraday, on Faraday’s Sandemanian faith.
- 3.
Electrical metaphors of vitality and communication have of course survived to the present day. See Ashcroft, Spark of Life.
- 4.
Faraday, ‘Historical Sketch’, 195.
- 5.
Ibid., 197.
- 6.
Ibid., 195.
- 7.
Christensen, Hans Christian Ørsted, 4.
- 8.
- 9.
Faraday, ‘Historical Sketch’, 114, 274.
- 10.
Ibid., 117.
- 11.
Ibid., 196–197.
- 12.
James, Michael Faraday, 38.
- 13.
Thomas, Michael Faraday, 29–30.
- 14.
Faraday, ‘Historical Sketch’, 281.
- 15.
James, Michael Faraday, 57–58; Thomas, ‘Faraday and Franklin’, 533.
- 16.
Faraday, Experimental Researches, 26.
- 17.
Ibid., 68.
- 18.
Morus, Michael Faraday, 190.
- 19.
Levere, Affinity and Matter, 44; Williams, Michael Faraday, 68–69.
- 20.
Davy, ‘Account of Some Experiments on the Torpedo’, 16.
- 21.
Faraday, Experimental Researches, 163.
- 22.
Ibid., 235–236, 259, 270, 314.
- 23.
James, Michael Faraday, 63.
- 24.
Faraday, Experimental Researches, 213.
- 25.
Faraday, ‘Experimental Researches. Eleventh Series’, 1.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Faraday was fascinated by the function of nervous electricity. Otis, Networking, 23.
- 28.
Ibid., 3–4.
- 29.
Thomas, ‘Faraday and Franklin’, 535.
- 30.
Ibid., 5. See also Williams, Michael Faraday, 290; James, Michael Faraday, 66.
- 31.
Faraday, Experimental Researches, 3. See also ibid., 6.
- 32.
Faraday, ‘Experimental Researches. Eleventh Series’, 1–2. See also Williams, Michael Faraday, 291, 313.
- 33.
Faraday, Experimental Researches, 37.
- 34.
James, ‘Introduction’, xxvii; Williams, Michael Faraday, 288.
- 35.
Ibid., 269.
- 36.
Thomas, Michael Faraday, 40, 43.
- 37.
Gooding, ‘Metaphysics versus Measurement’, 11. See also Williams, Michael Faraday, 306.
- 38.
James, Michael Faraday, 90.
- 39.
Morus, Michael Faraday, 164.
- 40.
Williams, Michael Faraday, 63.
- 41.
Faraday, ‘Lecture’, 529.
- 42.
Cantor, Michael Faraday, 185.
- 43.
Gooding, ‘Metaphysics versus Measurement’, 3.
- 44.
See also Fara, Entertainment for Angels, 122; Cantor, Michael Faraday, 178.
- 45.
Faraday, ‘Observations on Mental Education’, 204.
- 46.
Ibid., 207
- 47.
Ibid., 207–208.
- 48.
Ibid., 210.
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Fairclough, M. (2017). Epilogue: Michael Faraday and a New Electrical Era. In: Literature, Electricity and Politics 1740–1840. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59315-3_6
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