"In Imagination and Science in Romanticism, Richard Sha challenges the idea that the imagination could only be applied to the literary and that its primary role was to transcend scientific concerns. Sha shows how the imagination functioned within physics and chemistry in Prometheus Unbound, neurology in Blake's Four Zoas, physiology in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, and obstetrics and embryology in Frankenstein. Sha also shows how the imagination was used in the scientific community, highlighting as primary examples the work of Davy, Faraday, Priestley, Kant, Mary Somerville, Oersted, Marcet, Swedenborg, Blumenbach, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Von Baer, among others. |