PART 1: DIVINING REASON : Faith in Reason -- Breaking Away -- Education of an Anglican -- The Road to Unitarianism -- Exercising Reason -- Trials in Cambridge -- PART 2: DEFINING REASON : Trials in London -- Reasoning in Uneasy Times -- Heiress -- Son of India -- Reading Man -- Laying the Groundwork -- Unitarian Women -- Gentleman of Reason -- Reasoning among the Stars -- Expanding Consciousness -- PART 2: DIVIDING REASON : Home on Gower Street -- Rearing Young Seedlings -- Expanding Reason -- Beyond Matter -- Beyond Reason.

"This book recounts the story of three Cambridge-educated Englishmen and the women with whom they chose to share their commitment to reason in all parts of their lives. The reason this family embraced was an essentially human power with the potential to generate true insight into all aspects of the world. In exploring the ways reason permeated three generations of English experience, this book casts new light on key developments in English cultural and political history, from the religious conformism of the eighteenth century through the Napoleonic era into the Industrial Revolution and prosperity of the Victorian age. At the same time, it restores the rich world of the essentially meditative, rational sciences of theology, astronomy, mathematics, and logic to their proper place in the English intellectual landscape. Following the development of their views over the course of an eventful one hundred years of English history illuminates the fine structure of ways reason still operates in our world."--Publisher description.