Roy Porter, ed. The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 4, Eighteenth-Century Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2003). 912 pp. $155.00 ISBN 0-521-57243-6
Reviewed by Bradford McCall, Regent University
Roy Porter, Professor Emeritus of the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, has edited a volume that offers to general and specialist readers alike the fullest and most complete survey of the development of science in the eighteenth century. This volume explores the implications of the ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century and the major new growth-points of the eighteenth century, particularly in the experimental sciences.
This is the first comprehensive history of eighteenth century science in more than thirty years. It is, bar none, the fullest and most complete work of its kind. Whereas this volume is broken into five distinct parts (Part I. Science in Society, Part II. Disciplines, Part III. Special Themes, Part IV. None Western Traditions, and Part V. Ramifications and Impacts), primary attention is paid to western science. However, space is also given to science in traditional cultures and colonial science. The coverage within this volume strikes a balance between analysis of the cognitive dimension of science itself and interpretation of its wider social, economic and cultural orientation. The contributors, world leaders in their respective specialties, engage with current historiographical and methodological controversies and strike out on positions of their own.
In the remainder of this review, I shall highlight some of the more notable contributions (note, however, that this is not intended to denigrate the chapters not mentioned). In the Introduction to the volume, Roy Porter notes that whereas Enlightenment thinkers of the seventeenth century have received much (inordinate?) attention from the academy, eighteenth century science, in contrast, has typically been portrayed in a subdued manner, and the period has generally been perceived to lack the “heroic quality” of the century that preceded it (1). Porter notes, however, that even in well-plowed fields of inquiry, such as natural history, remarkable changes in thinking can be seen. So then, there was no stalling of scientific inquiry in the eighteenth century. For example, the enduring taxonomic system of plants was developed by Linnaeus, and the first evolutionary theories were advanced. Indeed, the forerunners of Darwin found the static and hierarchical chain of being to no longer possess maximum explanatory power, and that living biota needed be re-conceptualized into a more dynamic framework and an extended timescale. Porter consistently reminds readers that in order to properly understand eighteenth century science, sensitivity must be taken to place its science in the proper context. Porter asserts that the central problem of attempting to comprehend eighteenth century science is the question as to the species of knowledge that it was supposed to constitute (14).
In chapter two, “The Legacy of the ‘Scientific Revolution’: Science and the Enlightenment,” by Peter Hans Reill, one finds a characterization of the Enlightenement as a movement that “adopted, extended, and completed the intellectual and social project usually characterized” as the ‘Scientific Revolution’ (23). Reill notes that mechanical, natural philosophy was dominant in the period of, roughly, the late 1680s to the early 1740s. In this period, matter’s essence was extremely simplified and defined as merely a homogeneous collection of an extended, hard, impenetrable, and inert ‘heap of things’ (25). However, in the late eighteenth century, a revolution of Enlightenment vitalists appeared upon the scene, which viewed living matter as containing an immanent principle of self-movement whose source lies within an active power inherent within it. Teleology was, thereby, effectively reborn.
In the fourth chapter of this volume, “Scientific Institutions and the Organization of Science,” by James McClellan III, it is asserted and defended that out of the intellectual revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, grew an organizational revolution in the eighteenth century in the scientific enterprise. McClellan notes that science drastically reorganized in the eighteenth century after the government moved to support science, which involved the development of new academies, various new observatories, botanical gardens, and new forms of publications. In chapter ten by Richard Yeo, “Classifying the Sciences,” it is asserted that in the eighteenth century, there were significant changes in the social and cultural conditions related to the classifications of knowledge. Yeo concludes that with the collapse of the categories of natural philosophy and natural theology, classification schemes no longer sought to show how the various scientific subjects related to one another.
In one of the most important chapters within the volume, in my opinion, entitled “Ideas of Nature: Natural Philosophy,” John Gascoigne shows that the eighteenth century inherited a long tradition derived from Greek antiquity which maintained that nature could be understood by the employment of reason. He contends, moreover, that although at the beginning of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy remained a branch of philosophy along with metaphysics, logic, and moral philosophy, by the end of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy saw increasing independence from its philosophical origins. Moreover, he contends that by the end of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy grew in scale and complexity insomuch as it began to give birth to separate disciplines.
Shirley A. Roe, in a chapter entitled “The Life Sciences,” notes that for much of the eighteenth century, (what today is known as) the biological world was seen as a highly ordered and somewhat static place. This notion, however, was forcefully challenged by the middle of the century. Moreover, Roe highlights the relationship between matter and activity was one of the burning issues of the eighteenth century advancement of the life sciences. She focuses upon two principal areas in which questions of mechanism, vitalism, and materialism arose: physiology and the theory of generation.
All in all, this volume is designed to be read as both a narrative and an interpretation, and also used as a work of reference. It will be an excellent reference for historians and professionals in the history of science. According to Porter, his aim in producing this volume was to provide critical syntheses of the best modern thinking regarding eighteenth century scientific developments. In my humble opinion, he has more than exceeded his expressed intentions.