Romantic Circles

Significance

Theologian, natural philosopher, dissenter, and polymath, Joseph Priestley situated this work within a centuries-long lineage of observation and experimentation in the natural sciences. He considered this text the first volume of his intended, extensive work to be entitled The History of all the Branches of Experimental Philosophy; the work was ultimately not completed due to his increasing preoccupation with the Unitarian ministry and the tumult created by his theological and political beliefs, including the Birmingham Riots of 1791 and his eventual emigration to the United States (R. Schofield, “Priestley, Joseph”).For the first volume of this comprehensive history, Priestley “chose the history of optics, on which there was abundant information” published on the topic from which he could draw; however, unlike Smith’s A Compleat System of Opticks, published thirty-four years earlier, Priestley was unable to elucidate the subtler mathematical supports for optical physics (R. Schofield, “Priestley, Joseph”). In its discussion of the accomplishments of ancient Greek and Roman mathematicians and natural philosophers, the findings of Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) and other “Arabian Philosophers,” as well as those advances made by Kircher, Roger Bacon, Giovanni Battista della Porta, Newton, and others, Priestley’s The History and Present State concretely connects optics to an emerging, Romantic sensibility concerned with history. The Romantic consciousness conceived of history as an organic, continuously unfolding process and “believed in the reality and diversity of human experience rather than the uniformity of universal abstractions” (A. Kennedy, “Historical Perspectives in the Mind of Joseph Priestly,” 173). As with many of the images in this gallery, “Plate II” from The History and Present State juxtaposes precise diagrams explicating optical physics with illustrations of instruments used for optical amusements and illusions (like the camera obscura), suggesting Romanticism’s wide-ranging preoccupation with vision. Priestley acknowledges the historical presence of the camera obscura, crediting Della Porta with “the invention of the Camera Obscura, which furnishes one of the most amusing and pleasing experiments in the whole compass of opticks” (J. Priestley, History and Present State, 34); he also notes, however, that Della Porta overlooked the possibility of using the device to draw “with great exactness” (37). This observation of Priestley demonstrates his own awareness of the instrument’s numerous, potential uses for both optical experimentation and recreation.The camera obscura illustrated on “Plate II” (Figure 14) is an entire room, in which an observer could obscure him or herself in order to view the inverted, projected image created within. This is an early version of the camera obscura that effectively illustrates the way in which the apparatus disembodies and interiorizes vision (J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 39). However, the variety of other optical devices that are juxtaposed with the camera obscura on “Plate II,” including explorations of light and illusions, denies the camera obscura’s singular status. This straight-forward arrangement of optical interests challenges Crary’s assumption that the camera obscura was the sole model of vision in the Romantic period, later replaced by models which privileged “the process of perception itself” over the camera obscura’s inflexible and static mode of vision (J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 137-138).