Fatal Attraction

by Patricia Fara

Edmond Halley, Franz Mesmer ^ Gowin Knight, three of the most brilliant men in Enlightenment Europe, were each drawn to investigate the force of magnetism. In Fatal Attraction, popular science writer Patricia Fara tells their astonishing stories, revealing how magnetism went from a poorly understood phonomenon to the very center of a scientif study--only to be eclipsed by a new, more powerful interest in electricity.
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Halley's Holistic Hypotheses
Knight's Navigational Novelties
Mesmer's Magnetic Medicine
Faraday's Fields
Notes
Further Reading

Genres: Nonfiction, History Of Science, Science

216 pages, Hardcover

First published April 7, 2005

About the author

Patricia Fara is a historian of science at the University of Cambridge. She is a graduate of the University of Oxford and did her PhD at the University of London. She is a former Fellow of Darwin College and is currently a Fellow of Clare College where she is Senior Tutor and Tutor for graduate students. Fara is also a research associate and lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. Fara is author of numerous popular books on the history of science and has been a guest on BBC Radio 4's science and history discussion series, In Our Time. She began her academic career as a physicist but returned to graduate studies as a mature student to specialise in History and Philosophy of Science, completing her PhD thesis at Imperial College, London in 1993.

Her areas of particular academic interest include the role of portraiture and art in the history of science, science in the 18th century England during the Enlightenment and the role of women in science. She has written and co-authored a number of books for children on science. Fara is also a reviewer of books on history of science.

Reviews

[Bradley Roth · Rating 4 out of 5]

My main conclusion from this book: Science was a really immature discipline during the Enlightenment.

My secondary conclusion: People have been falling for crazy "animal magnetism" ideas for a long time. It continues today. Why is my field of bioelectricity and biomagnetism so full of quacks and Charlatans?

[Jayne Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining look at 3 historical aspects of magnetism.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1055454.html[return][return]I got my historical training in the same place that Fara teaches (she is now the senior tutor of the Cambridge college I attended, and lectures in the department where I got my M Phil). Fara explores the eighteenth century not as a time like ours but as an alien culture which needs to be explained and unpacked, and does this through three key characters in the history of the understanding of magnetism: Edmund Halley (who also plays an important role in the earlier chapters of Sobel's book), Gowin Knight (who ended up truculently running the British Museum) and Franz Mesmer (as in mesmerism).[return][return]I found this pretty satisfying, though would have welcomed even more speculation on what Mesmer was Really Up To. Her section on Knight and his ascent to success on the basis of beautifully designed but functionally useless nautical compasses contains far more about the politics of longitude - both the internal British tension between gentlemen and practitioners, and the colonial purpose of the endeavour - than does Sobel's Longitude. The book does feel somewhat incomplete, but it is apparently purposely designed as one of a set of four - matching a similar volume also by Fara on electricity in the eighteenth century, and also books by Stephen Pumfrey on the seventeenth century and Iwan Morus on the nineteenth. Must look out for those.

[Mike Prochot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mesmerizing (sorry) historic tale of man's fascination with magnetism - focusing on three individuals who led the field in bringing the facts to life.

While taken for granted today, as early as the 17th century, magnetism was "still considered nature's most mysterious force".

This is a relatively short read which does a wonderful job of illustrating our fascination with magnetism early on and the odd theories sent afloat by those who tried to explain it as well as those who profited by it's mysteries.

A fun and interesting book.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

My master's thesis dealt in part with depth psychological models of the psyche and ended with some discussion of field theory as in electro-magnetism. Consequently, this book, with its topic of seventeenth and eighteen century theories of magnetism, caught my eye.

What I was looking for was a history of the development of our understanding of magnetism. What I got were a some biographies of early theorists interspersed with amusing anecdotes.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh, it was ok. I'm not overly into this type of topic, but it was interesting. The writing style was a bit off, in one section, the author completely breaks the 4th wall and admits to speculation on something that follows, which was written as if it was fact. Not bad, but that kind of irked me.