Abstract
With an important exception, writers have treated the Cavendish who carried out researches separately from the Cavendish who behaved in strange ways. Wilson, the exception, attributed to Cavendish a strongly developed will. By act of will, Cavendish insisted that the trivial routines of his life follow “a law as inflexible and imperative as that which rules the motions of the stars,” ordering his daily rounds to reflect the unvarying cycles of the universe such as the yearly rotation of the Earth about the Sun. Cavendish saw the universe as consisting solely of objects which can be weighed, numbered, and measured, the execution of which he willed himself to carry out. His brain was but a “calculating engine,” Wilson said. Ever since, this has been the standard interpretation of Cavendish. It captures many of Cavendish’s ways, but it also leaves out much. Persons have come away from Cavendish with varied feelings, which have entered into their interpretations.
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Notes
- 1.
Bickley, Cavendish Family, 201.
- 2.
Pearson, Serpent and Stag, 121.
- 3.
Brougham, Lives 1: 259. Wilson, Cavendish, 178, 186.
- 4.
14 July 1795, Charles Blagden Diary, Royal Society 3: 65 (back).
- 5.
Thomson, History of Chemistry 1: 336.
- 6.
According to Thomson, Cavendish received an annuity of £500, which Thomson called “rather narrow circumstances.” Ibid. It should be pointed out that when his father Charles Cavendish was a young man, he received an annuity of £300, which was standard for younger sons of the aristocracy. Charles’s father, the second duke of Devonshire, intended to increase the annuity to £500 at his death but moved it ahead when Charles married. Wilson heard from a second source, a “gentleman” who knew Cavendish from the British Museum, who put his annuity at £120 until he was 40, which would have been narrow, though Cavendish was living at home. Cavendish, 160.
- 7.
In a study of children from age 2 to 7, those who were shy, timid, and unsociable at age 2 were the same at 7, indicating that shyness is long-lasting. Shyness at age 2 arises either from temperament or from some stress in the child’s environment, such as the death of a parent; Cavendish lost his mother at age 2. Jerome Kagan, J. Steven Reznick, and Nancy Snidman, “Biological Bases of Childhood Shyness,” Science 240 (1988): 167–71, on 167, 171.
- 8.
Pearson, Serpent and Stag, 117.
- 9.
Wilson, Cavendish, 171–72.
- 10.
Ibid., 171–72.
- 11.
Brougham, Lives, London edition, 1: ix, xi, 444.
- 12.
John Aiken and William Johnston, General Biography; or, Lives, Critical and Historical, vol. 9 (London, 1814), 284.
- 13.
Sacks, “Henry Cavendish.”
- 14.
Cuvier, “Cavendish,” 236, 238.
- 15.
Joseph Larmor in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 399.
- 16.
Larmor, “Preface to Volume 1,” ix.
- 17.
Wilson, Cavendish, 165.
- 18.
Ibid., 186–87.
- 19.
Ibid., 187–88.
- 20.
Feist, Psychology of Science, 123.
- 21.
Wilson, Cavendish, 186. Quantity being the distinguishing mark of Cavendish’s work, Wilson may have looked to the bible for a passage to give it proper emphasis: “Thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight,” though he could have found it elsewhere too. (Wisdom 11.21).
- 22.
Wilson, Cavendish, 185.
- 23.
Henry Cavendish, “On the Height of the Luminous Arch Which Was Seen on Feb. 23, 1784,” PT 80 (1790): 101; in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 233–35.
- 24.
Michael Fitzgerald, Autism and Creativity: Is There a Link between Autism in Men and Exceptional Ability? (Hove and New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2004), 122–24.
- 25.
P. J. Hartog, rev. R. G. Anderson, “Wilson, George (1818–1859),” DNB 59: 536–39, on 539.
- 26.
George Wilson quoted in Natural History Society of Montreal, Reviews and Notices of Books, The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist 6 (1861): 393.
- 27.
Wilson, Cavendish, 186.
- 28.
Ibid., 185.
- 29.
Edward Thorpe to Joseph Larmor, 7 February 1920, Larmor Papers, Royal Society, 1972.
- 30.
Wilson, Cavendish, 185.
- 31.
24 February 1810, Charles Blagden Diary, Royal Society 5: 426.
- 32.
8 March 1810, ibid. 5: 431 (back), 432.
- 33.
Young, “Cavendish,” 445.
- 34.
This description is taken from a poem Wilson wrote about him, “The Late Dr John Reid,” included in his sister Jessie Aitkin Wilson’s Memoir of George Wilson, 343.
- 35.
Quotation from a letter Wilson wrote at the time, ibid., 340–41. Wilson who suffered from bad health died at age 41. His limited scientific research did not show “marked originality.” His biography of Cavendish and his book on color blindness were his most important publications. His most important public work was his directorship for 4 years of the Industrial Museum of Scotland, later renamed the Royal Museum of Scotland. Hartog, rev. Anderson, “Wilson,” 538.
- 36.
Lewis H. Steiner, Henry Cavendish and the Discovery of the Chemical Composition of Water (New York, 1855), 6.
- 37.
Bickley, Cavendish Family, 207–8.
- 38.
Pearson, Serpent and Stag, 121.
- 39.
Sacks, Uncle Tungsten, 120.
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McCormmach, R. (2014). Views of Cavendish. In: The Personality of Henry Cavendish - A Great Scientist with Extraordinary Peculiarities. Archimedes, vol 36. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02438-7_6
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