As one of the editors of the book, I am pleased to inform people that 
Cambridge University Press have reprinted 'Romanticism and the 
Sciences' in paperback. It sold out when first published in 1990 and 
people have kept asking Nick Jardine (the other editor) and me when 
it would be republished. In their infinite wisdom CUP waited 19 years 
- but then have at last republished it, and to a high standard.
One of the romantic characters in the book is Carl Gustav Carus. I 
have just been in Dresden where there is a superb exhibition about 
him called 'Natur und Idee'. It closes this weekend but opens again 
soon in Berlin (9 oct- 10 Jan, Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche 
Museen zu Berlin). Carus was a resident of Dresden for over 50 years, 
where he ran the obstetric clinic and was then physician to the 
powerful. I cannot recommend the exhibition too highly to historians 
of the sciences. It shows Carus the polymath: scientific, in that he 
privileges the senses and measurement, but also persistently 
philosophical, believing to the end that we can only understand 
Nature if we recognise that all natural phenomena are guided by an 
Idea (whose other name is sometimes God). Carus was an extremely good 
artist, which is evident not only in his drawings of animals and 
their skeletons, but also in his 'romantic' paintings, of which there 
are many on show. He can stand comparison with Caspar David Friedrich 
- in fact, it turns out, they sometimes literally did stand together, 
shoulder to shoulder, as they each portrayed the same scene! So it is 
sometimes difficult to tell the work of the one from that of the 
other. At any rate, even if you are not interested in Carus, the 
exhibition gives us a small Friedrich exhibition, which is always 
welcome. There is a German language catalogue of the exhibition on 
sale, together with a sumptuous German language book of essays about 
him, both produced in full colour, about 60 euros the set. But if 
your German is not that good, or non-existent, the advantage of going 
to the exhibition itself is that every single thing is labelled in 
English as well, and the large section labels together give an 
excellent and well-balanced account of Carus and romanticism even for 
a complete beginner. If only they had published these labels together 
in English, then we'd have a most valuable guide to a lifelong 
romantic in the sciences, which would be accessible to Anglophone students.

Andrew Cunningham
Senior Research Fellow in History of Medicine
Department of the History and Philosophy of Science
Free School Lane
Cambridge CB2 3RM