ABSTRACT
Humphry Davy and Thomas Paine expressed an increasingly common sentiment when they asserted that the sublime was neither a realistic nor a desirable vehicle with which to represent scientific discovery. Their proposed movement away from the caffeinated monodrama of the sublime towards the visual economy and emotional poise of the beautiful proved paradigmatic. With its focus on natural order instead of psychological disorder, the register of the beautiful was more in keeping with science's mandate to describe things as they intrinsically are rather than as how they appear to the alienated consciousness of the singular subject. As a social discourse, it was also consistent with the increasingly widespread view that science ought to be a public enterprise, both in its methodological reliance on peer review and in its moral commitment to improve the quality of life of the entire human community. 1
