British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment

by Jan Golinski

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.

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2007

Reviews

[Floris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is essentially a book-length study of pathetic fallacies related to the weather in eighteenth-century Britain. I like the fact that Golinski is writing the history of an activity commonly associated with meteorological science but without framing it as such. Instead, he treats weather literature in eighteenth-century Britain as a kind of literary genre, acting as a mirror for wider discussions about culture, civility, emotion, climate, colonialism, knowledge, and other major Enlightenment topics. To him, weather needs to be seen as a more-than-scientific phenomenon. The diarists he encounters often recorded the weather without scientific instruments (thermometer, barometer, etc.) - instead, they wrote about their states of mind, and bodily reactions to the weather. Weather could also be used as a kind of social lubricant in discussions (still today a British habit that other countries love making fun of, and weather is often invoked in discussions about health and adaptation (to different climates). According to Golinski, in eighteenth-century Britain, the way weather bears upon human life reflects ways in which nature impinges on human culture. Taking a theme like “weather” as an indicator of attitudes towards modernisation and Enlightenment can be a challenge, but his command of primary sources is impressive, both in breadth and application (they never feel out of place). I wouldn’t say it’s a book for a wide audience though.