1. Although this narrative focuses on events and changes in Britain and the German States, other sites in Europe continued their own traditions in the study of nature and interacted with those states. Among the more important in this period are those of Sweden and Denmark. Physics in the United States does not enter this account until physics became a profession and only in the person of Josiah Willard Gibbs. American physics had its own distinct social history. However, the pervasive “baconianism” that Robert Bruce, The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1987) Prologue, found so dismal was not so different from the standards of Europe of similar eras.
2. The fragmented intellectual and social character of this era has been detailed by David Knight, “German Science in the Romantic Period, 1781–1831,” in The Emergence, Crosland, ed. 161–178, Barry S. Gower, “Speculation in Physics: The History and Practice of Naturphilosophie,” Studies Hist. Phil. Sci. 3(1973): 301–356.
3. For recent studies on Romanticism and science, see Romanticism and the Sciences, Cunningham and Jardine, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
4. Romanticism and Science in Europe (1790–1840), Stefano Possi and Mauritz Bossi, eds. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994).
5. For a useful survey of the literature, see Trevor Levere, “Romanticism, Natural Philosophy, and the Sciences: A Review and Bibliographical Essay,” Persp. Sci. 4 (1996): 463–488.