SOURCE: “Modern Science in its Relationship to Literature,” in Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 15, June, 1879, pp. 166-78.

In the following essay, Brackett discusses the relationship between science and literature in the nineteenth century, claiming that new avenues in literature were limited and science offered the opportunity to achieve notoriety while exploring a new and vital topic.

The innovations made by science upon other modes of thought and study within the last half century are without a parallel in the history of human progress. It has swept away many of our most cherished convictions, hoary with the dust of ages, and left others in their places entirely irreconcilable with them. Marching on with the might and majesty of a conqueror, it has spread dismay in the ranks of opposing forces, and caused a complete abdication in its favor of many of those who were most hostile to it. Nor has...