While explaining "how the Romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science," Richard Holmes focuses on what "became the first great age of the public scientific lecture, the laboratory demonstration and the introductory textbook, often written by women. It was the age when science began to be taught to children, and the xperimental method' became the basis of a new, secular philosophy of life, in which the infinite wonders of Creation whether divine or not were increasingly valued for their own sake...Finally, it was the age which challenged the elite monopoly of the Royal Society, and saw the foundation of scores of new scientific institutions, mechanics institutes and philosophical' societies."
