What was the impact of Lavoisier's new elementary chemical analysis on the conception and practice of chemistry in the vegetable kingdom at the end of the eighteenth century? I examine how this elementary analysis relates both to more traditional plant analysis and to philosophical and mathematical concepts of analysis current in the Enlightenment. Thus I explore the relationship between algebra, Condillac's philosophy and Lavoisier's chemical system, as well as comparing Lavoisier's analytical approach to those of his predecessors, such as Baumé and Bucquet. With reference to the aims of vegetable analysis, I show how the dominance of elementary analysis devalued a tradition that sought to isolate immediate principles (plant extracts), marginalizing the chemical practices of many doctors and pharmacists in the context of the new chemistry in France.

Historians of archaeology have noted that prehistoric stone artefacts were first identified as such during the seventeenth century, and a great deal has been written about the formulation of the idea of a Stone Age in the nineteenth century. Much less attention has been devoted to the study of prehistoric artefacts during the eighteenth century. Yet it was during this time that researchers first began systematically to collect, classify and interpret the cultural and historical meaning of these objects as archaeological specimens rather than geological specimens. These investigations were conducted within the broader context of eighteenth-century antiquarianism and natural history. As a result, they offer an opportunity to trace the interrelationships that existed between the natural sciences and the science of prehistoric archaeology, which demonstrates that geological theories of the history of the earth, ethnographic observations of ‘savage peoples’ and natural history museums all played important roles in the interpretation of prehistoric stone implements during the eighteenth century.

The Accademia del Cimento in seventeenth-century Florence has traditionally been seen as the first European organization to employ an experimental programme, thus becoming a major participant in the so-called ‘birth of modern experimental science’. Such traditional accounts have also detailed the cultural, political and religious environment of the period that contributed to the Accademia's use of a supposedly atheoretical experimental method. However, despite the merits of such cultural histories, these stories do not portray the full details behind the Accademia's intellectual workings – how knowledge claims were constructed, interpreted and presented by the academicians according to their natural philosophical concerns. It is argued here that such an analysis will provide a more accurate account of the Accademia's activities than existing stories about the birth of an experimental programme or method. By looking past the experimental rhetoric produced by the academicians in their only publication, Saggi di naturali esperienze, we begin to see at play one of the major issues which made up the Accademia's knowledge-making process: the natural philosophical interests of this institution's participants, particularly Borelli, Viviani, Rinaldini and Marsili. Those interests are represented in the Accademia's experiments, including their work concerned with air pressure and the void.

This paper considers inventors' rights as revealing shifts in the elaboration of public trust in inventions. The two main issues, the method of invention and the credit invested, are analysed both in terms of Diderot's writings and in the economic, social and political context of invention during the eighteenth century. In a pamphlet written in 1755, Histoire et secret de la peinture en cire, Diderot criticized the Count of Caylus's attempt to keep the invention of wax painting secret and to enhance his fame thanks to this technical achievement. Diderot developed a conception of invention as an activity based upon methodical rediscoveries, imitations and translations. Although this could also concern artistic practice, imitation in art had a quite different meaning for Diderot. The main issue was the status of artists and inventors in society. Personal glory and private appropriation were denied to inventors, in contrast to artists. Secrecy, pride and exclusivity in invention were mean and ridiculous strategies. This was precisely what had been happening since the beginning of the eighteenth century, with the development of a market for inventions and exclusive titles, which also affected art. Diderot's narrative of invention as a daily, collective and historical process echoed the necessity of reassessing the value of invention by the criteria of public utility and shared evaluation.

This essay is the first account in English to examine Franz Joseph Gall and the origins of phrenology. In doing so a host of legends about Gall and the beginnings of phrenology, which exist only in the English-language historiography, are dispelled. An understanding of the context of phrenology's origins is essential to the historicization of the movement as a whole. The first of two sections in the essay, therefore, introduces Gall's biography and the context in which his provocative science emerged. It is shown to what extent Gall borrowed from other thinkers of his time. I show that Gall's system was meant to be a certain science of human nature. In the second section I analyse the reactions of contemporaries to Gall's important two-year lecture tour of Europe. I conclude that although many critics dismissed Gall as a charlatan, there was no consensus about the proper way to disseminate scientific knowledge or the attributes necessary for the gentleman of science. For example, it was not clear whether science could be profitable, whether it should be shared with lay audiences or whether it could in fact be science at all if it was also entertaining. I argue that in any case Gall's aim was never really to impart science or to disseminate his system. His science and early means of disseminating it were meant to generate elite intellectual status. In this Gall was quite successful.

Silvanus Phillips Thompson, FRS (1851–1916) began his career in the 1870s when there were still few academic posts for scientists, and when it was still uncertain whether the newer professional ideals would overtake the older, more gentlemanly, ones – in terms of both career advancement and of what being a ‘good’ scientist entailed. Thompson's many scientific, technical and literary activities are discussed in this paper, as is his Quakerism, perhaps the chief motivating force in his life. The paper raises the question of how success in science is measured, and shows how Thompson's sabbatarian impulse influenced both his scientific practice and his pedagogical approach. In detailing the ways in which Thompson made a successful career, despite his lack of professional research focus, the paper relates to larger contexts of science, class, religion and education in late nineteenth-century Britain.

Huxley's invention of the term ‘agnostic’ in 1869 is often seen as a brilliant rhetorical strategy. Portrayed as an effective weapon in Huxley's public debates with defenders of the Anglican establishment, the creation of scientific agnosticism has been interpreted as a turning point in the relationship between science and religion. In this paper I will challenge this interpretation of the rise of scientific agnosticism. Huxley was reluctant to identify himself unambiguously as an agnostic in public until 1883 and his restricted use of agnostic concepts during the 1870s and 1880s was compromised when other unbelievers, with different agendas, sought to capitalize on the polemical advantages of referring to themselves as agnostics. As a result, he was not always associated with agnosticism in the public mind and his original conception of it was modified by others to the point where he felt compelled to intervene in 1889 to set the record straight. But Huxley could not control the public meaning of ‘agnosticism’ and its value to him as a rhetorical strategy was severely limited.

The Rev. Dr John Walker was the Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh from 1779 to 1803. Although his time in this position has been addressed by several studies, the previous thirty years that he spent ‘mineralizing’ have been virtually ignored. The situation is similar for many of the well-known mineralogists of the eighteenth century and there is a lack of studies that address how a mineralogist actually became a mineralogist. Using Walker's early career as a guide, this essay seeks to detail the making of an eighteenth-century Scottish mineralogist. The time frame under examination begins with Walker's matriculation at the University of Edinburgh in 1746 and it ends with his being appointed professor in 1779. The first section demonstrates that Walker's early mineralogical education at the Medical School and under William Cullen was closely linked to chemistry. The second section shows how he used chemical characters to classify minerals and to criticize the systems of Linnaeus, Da Costa, Wallerius and Cronstedt. Because Walker needed many ‘fossil’ samples to test the viability of his chemical mineralogy, the final section details how he used tours, patrons and correspondents to build his mineral collection.

The cultural history of museums is crucial to the understanding of nineteenth-century natural history and its place in wider society, and yet although many of the larger metropolitan institutions are well charted, there remains very little accessible work on the hundreds of English collections outside London and the ancient universities. Natural history museums have been studied as part of the imperial project and as instruments of national governments; this paper presents an intermediary level of control, examining the various individuals and institutions who owned and managed museums at a local level in provincial England, and their intended audience constituencies. The shifting forms and functions of collections in Newcastle, Sheffield and Manchester are studied in the hands of private collectors, learned societies, municipal authorities and civic colleges. I argue that the civic elite retained control of museums throughout the nineteenth century, and although the admission criteria of these various groups became ostensibly more inclusive, privileged access continued to be granted to expert and esteemed visitors.

John Playfair (1748–1819), professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, is a relatively obscure figure today, best known as the popularizer of James Hutton's theory of geology. However, Playfair was also involved in mathematics for most of his active career, with his most widely distributed publication, Elements of Geometry (1795), shaping the mathematics education for at least thirteen thousand British students during the nineteenth century. This study focuses on the mathematical context surrounding Elements of Geometry. Specifically, after recounting the background of the text, the paper explores the ways in which Playfair's presentation of elementary geometry reflected three understandings of the terms ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis’, which were intrinsic components of mathematical culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. In one sense, the words denoted differing styles of mathematical practice in Great Britain and in France. In a second sense, the terms evoked contemporary appeals to ancient methods of proof. Finally, ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis’ were understood in reference to separate approaches to mathematics education. Playfair's appeals to these understandings help reveal how he viewed himself as a mathematician. Overall, then, this study enriches the standard portrait of a professor who straddled the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

A patriot fiddler-composer of Luton

Wrote a funeral march which he played with the mute on,

To record, as he said, that a Jewish-Swiss-Teuton

Had partially scrapped the Principia of Newton.

Punch, 19 November 1919, p. 422

When the results of experiments performed during the British solar eclipse expeditions of 1919 were announced at a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, they were celebrated in the next day's Times of London with the famous headline ‘Revolution in science’. This exemplified the general approbation with which A. S. Eddington and F. W. Dyson's results were received, the upshot of which was widespread approval for general relativity and worldwide fame for Albert Einstein. Perhaps because of Einstein's present reputation, there has been little historical analysis of why his theory should have been so celebrated on the basis of a single announcement of the results of one group's experiments. In this paper I argue that the remarkable public and professional success of the eclipse experiments was the direct result of a systematic and extended campaign by Eddington and Dyson and their associates to create interest in relativity theory, build an audience for the experiments, promote a favourable reception for the results and establish their work as a crucial experiment that would distinguish between the gravitation theories of Newton and Einstein. The campaign was motivated by Eddington's affection for Einstein's theory, and was successful largely because of Eddington's substantial credibility.

In this paper we will discuss some of the issues related to the attempts of Ralph Howard Fowler and Nevil Vincent Sidgwick to create a legitimizing space for quantum and theoretical chemistry in Britain. Although neither Fowler nor Sidgwick made original contributions to quantum chemistry, they followed closely the developments in the discipline, participated in meetings and discussions and delivered lectures, talks and addresses, where methodological topics, ontological questions and implicitly the problem of autonomy of the new discipline vis-à-vis both physics and chemistry were taken to be pressing issues. In particular, they encouraged young people to work within the nascent discipline. Viewing quantum chemistry as a branch of applied mathematics became an emblematic characteristic of the practice of the new discipline in Great Britain.

Whereas there has been considerable debate about the social context of Darwin's theory of natural selection, much less focus has been placed upon Alfred Russel Wallace. This article looks at Wallace's socialism and, in particular, the influence upon his thought of the early nineteenth-century socialist Robert Owen. It argues that a case can be made for seeing Wallace's thought about nature and natural selection in the years up to 1858 in the context of Owenism. Three aspects of his thought are singled out for examination. These are, first, Wallace's views on the role of instinct in animal and human behaviour; second, the idea of colonization in human society and in nature; and third, a re-examination of the role of Malthus in Wallace's thought, emphasizing the influence upon him of the early nineteenth-century socialist critique of Malthusianism.

This article presents the case of remarkable transformation of the Icelandic landscape in 1783 and 1784 – when a series of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and natural disasters radically altered the country – as a way of elucidating how the cultural meaning of place and different versions of ‘nature’ develop. It explores some of the contested interpretations of Icelandic nature that followed this crisis, focusing on the narratives of British geologists, Danish officials and Icelandic nationalists. The different, although sometimes overlapping and complementary, meanings of Icelandic nature developed by these different groups show how science, art and politics are closely intertwined, and how artists’ interpretations and the activities of scientists can perform the same work on landscape, transforming it in different, yet functionally equivalent, ways.