Record Number: 30396

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'I am reading Tait and Stewart’s new book. As far as I have gone, a little disappointed. Is my father reading it?'

Century:

1850-1899

Date:

Until: 6 Dec 1878

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

city: London

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Robert Louis Stevenson

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

13 Nov 1850

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Writer

Religion:

Uncommitted

Country of Origin:

Scotland

Country of Experience:

England

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Balfour/Peter Guthrie [joint authors] Stewart/Tait

Title:

Paradoxical Philosophy, a Sequel to the Unseen Universe; or physical speculations on a future state

Genre:

Other religious, Philosophy, Cosmology

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

London 1878? See BL Catalogue and below, Additional Comments

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

30396

Source:

Print

Author:

Robert Louis Stevenson

Editor:

Bradford A. Booth

Title:

Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, April 1874-July 1879

Place of Publication:

New Haven and London

Date of Publication:

1994

Vol:

2

Page:

293

Additional Comments:

Letter 589, To his Motherl, [6 December 1878], Savile Club. Co-editor Ernest Mehew. The foregoing material in square brackets has been added by the editors..

Citation:

Robert Louis Stevenson, Bradford A. Booth (ed.), Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, April 1874-July 1879, (New Haven and London, 1994), 2, p. 293, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=30396, accessed: 04 May 2024

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Additional Comments:

Editors’ Note 5 on p.293 reads: “Paradoxical Philosophy, a Sequel to the Unseen Universe (1878); Cf Letter 394, n. 2.” That Note, Letters 2, p.141, refers to the passage written by RLS on Monday [7 June 1875] alluding to a review of the first book, of which this “new” one is the sequel; and it reads: “In the June [according to the Editors’ this was the June of 1875] Fortnightly W.K. Clifford reviewed The Unseen Universe or Physical Speculations on a Future State , an attempted reconciliation of science and religion, first published anonymously but later acknowledged to be by P.G. Tait and B.Stewart.”
There is a reference to the two Tait and Stewart works in Gordon Booth of Edinburgh's contribution (p.17) to the Notes and Queries section of the G2 supplement of The Guardian, 7 July 2010: “[…] The most notable Victorian expression of the multiple universe notion was written by the physicists Peter Guthrie Tait of Edinburgh and Balfour Stewart of Manchester in their 1875 book, The Unseen Universe, which rapidly went through 17editions and postulated a succession of ever more ‘ethereal’ universes.
“Without the slightest tangible evidence, the authors implied that the human soul followed this post-mortem pilgrimage and thereby attained a wholly non-material immortality. The Unseen Universe and its 1878 sequel, Paradoxical Philosophy, were brilliantly rubbished y the mathematician William Kingdom Clifford in the Fortnightly Review, while James Clerk Maxwell more gently chided the authors privately for ‘attempting to go beyond the range of science’”.