Weighing Fire

This work is Volume 1 of an extensive two-volume monograph on the interplay of science and literature in Europe from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. It comprises a series of some twenty biographies raisonnees of literary figures known to have had fascination for, at times an obsession with, science. The linguistic base is broad, primarily French, German and English, but with excursions into Italian, Spanish and Russian. Alongside outstanding individuals, the work chronicles the intellectual movements Naturphilosophie, Naturalism, Positivism, etc., which literature gave rise to through its interaction with science.