Skepticism and Surmise in Humphry Davy

This article focuses on Humphry Davy's poetry and his fascination with fragmentary, mediated, and fleeting perception. Davy (1778-1829) became the best known natural philosopher in Regency England in part by applying voltaic electricity to isolate new substances-including the new metals he named "sodium" and "potassium." The experiments impressed other philosophers because they supported his suspicion that "electric affinity" might be the force binding elements together in compounds. Davy was also a writer. Chemical hypotheses mingle with political philosophy and lyric poetry in his notebooks.