Science in the Enlightenment,Revisited

Golinski J. V. , “Science in the Enlightenment”, History of science, xxiv (1986), 411–24. For responses, see: Thomas Broman, ” The Habermasian public sphere and ‘Science in the Enlightenment’”, History of science, xxxvi (1998), 1998–49 (esp. pp. 123–4); Jones Peter M. , Industrial Enlightenment: Science, technology and culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands 1760–1820 (Manchester, 2008), 7.

Cantor G. N. , “The historiography of ‘Georgian’ optics”, History of science, xvi (1978), 1–21.

Cassirer Ernst , The philosophy of the Enlightenment, transl. by Koelln Fritz C. Pettegrove James P. (Princeton, 1951); Gay Peter , The Enlightenment: An interpretation (2 vols, London, 1970); Darnton Robert , “In search of the Enlightenment: Recent attempts to create a social history of ideas”, Journal of modern history, xliii (1971), 1971–32; idem, The business of Enlightenment: The publishing history of the Encyclopédie 1775–1800 (Cambridge, MA, 1979).

Golinski , “Science in the Enlightenment” (ref. 1), 419.

Clark William Golinski Jan Schaffer Simon (eds), The sciences in enlightened Europe (Chicago, 1999), 3–31.

Foucault Michel , “The discourse on language”, in Foucault , The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language (New York, 1976), 215–37; idem, Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, transl. by Sheridan Alan (New York, 1979); idem, Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, ed. by Gordon Colin (New York, 1980).

Examples include: Alder Ken , The measure of all things: The seven-year odyssey that transformed the world (New York, 2002); Terrall Mary , The man who flattened the earth: Maupertuis and the sciences in the Enlightenment (Chicago, 2002); Roberts Lissa , “Mapping steam engines and skill in eighteenth-century Holland”, and Klein Ursula , “Apothecary shops, laboratories and chemical manufacture in eighteenth-century Germany”, in Roberts Lissa Schaffer Simon Dear Peter (eds), The mindful hand: Inquiry and invention from the late Renaissance to early industrialisation (Amsterdam, 2007), 197–218 and 247–76; Klein Ursula Lefèvre Wolfgan , Materials in eighteenth-century science: A historical ontology (Cambridge, MA, 2007).

Habermas Jürgen , The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, transl. by Burger Thomas Lawrence Frederick (Cambridge, MA, 1989).

Broman , “Habermasian public sphere” (ref. 1), 124.

On these subjects, see: Stewart Larry , “Other centres of calculation, or, where the Royal Society didn't count: Commerce, coffee-houses and natural philosophy in early modern London”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxii (1999), 133–53; Ellis Markman , The coffee house: A cultural history (London, 2004); Clark Peter , British clubs and societies 1580–1800: The origins of an associational world (Oxford, 2000); Brewer John , The pleasures of the imagination: English culture in the eighteenth century (New York, 1997); Munck Thomas , The Enlightenment: A comparative social history 1721–1794 (London, 2000). Specific discussions of Habermas include: Broman, “Habermasian public sphere” (ref. 1); Goodman Dena , “Public sphere and private life: Toward a synthesis of current historiographical approaches to the Old Regime”, History and theory, xxxi (1992), 1992–20; Wood Paul , “Science, the universities, and the public sphere in eighteenth-century Scotland”, History of universities, xiv (1994), 1994–135.

Costa Shelley , “The Ladies' diary: Gender, mathematics, and civil society in early-eighteenth-century England”, Osiris, 2nd ser., xvii (2002), 49–73; Walters Alice , “Conversation pieces: Science and politeness in eighteenth-century England”, History of science, xxxv (1997), 1997–54; Golinski Jan , “Barometers of change: Meteorological instruments as machines of enlightenment”, in Clark Golinski Schaffer (eds), The sciences in enlightened Europe (ref. 5), 69–93.

Tomaselli Sylvana , “The Enlightenment debate on women”, History workshop journal, xx (1985), 101–24; Schiebinger Londa , The mind has no sex? Women in the origins of modern science (Cambridge, MA, 1989); Goodman Dena , “Difference: An Enlightenment concept”, in Baker Keith Michael Reill Peter Hanns (eds), What's left of Enlightenment: A postmodern question (Stanford, 2001), 129–47; Scott Joan Wallach , Gender and the politics of history (New York, 1988); Smith Roger , “The language of human nature”, and Ludmilla Jordanova, “Sex and gender”, in Fox Christopher Porter Roy Wokler Robert (eds), Inventing human science: Eighteenth-century domains (Berkeley, 1995), 88–111 and 142–83.

Terrall Mary , “Émilie du Châtelet and the gendering of science”, History of science, xxxiii (1995), 283–310; Ehrman Esther , Mme du Châtelet: Scientist, philosopher and feminist of the Enlightenment (Leamington Spa, 1986); Zinsser Judith P. , “The many representations of the Marquise du Châtelet”, in Zinsser (ed.), Men, women, and the birthing of modern science (DeKalb, IL, 2005), 48–67; Schiebinger , The mind has no sex? (ref. 12); Findlen Paula , “Science as a career in Enlightenment Italy: The strategies of Laura Bassi”, Isis, lxxxiii (1993), 1993–69; Gronim Sara Stidstone , “What Jane knew: A woman botanist in the eighteenth century”, Journal of women's history, xix (2007), 2007–59.

Mazzotti Massimo , “Newton for ladies: Gentility, gender and radical culture”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxvii (2004), 119–46; Terrall Mary , “Gendered spaces, gendered audiences: Inside and outside the Paris Academy of Sciences”, Configurations, ii (1995), 1995–32; idem, “Salon, academy, and boudoir: Generation and desire in Maupertuis's science of life”, Isis, lxxxvii (1996), 1996–29.

Barker-Benfield G. J. , The culture of sensibility: Sex and society in eighteenth-century Britain (Chicago, 1992); Riskin Jessica , Science in the age of sensibility: The sentimental empiricists of the French Enlightenment (Chicago, 2002); Bertucci Paola , “The electrical body of knowledge: Medical electricity and experimental philosophy in the mid-eighteenth century”, in Bertucci Pancaldi Giuliano (eds), Electric bodies: Episodes in the history of medical electricity (Bologna, 2001), 45–68.

The debate is documented with commentary in: Kelly Michael (ed.), Critique and power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas debate (Cambridge, MA, 1994). See also: Schmidt James (ed.), What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-century answers and twentieth-century questions (Berkeley, 1996); and Baker Reill (eds), What's left of Enlightenment (ref. 12).

Foucault Michel , The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, ed. by Senellart Michel , transl. by Burchell Graham (New York, 2008); idem, The hermeneutics of the subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982, ed. by Gros Frédéric , transl. by Burchell Graham (New York, 2005). For a selection of work inspired by Foucault, see: Goldstein Jan (ed.), Foucault and the writing of history (Oxford, 1994).

Compare , in this respect, an earlier collective volume on eighteenth-century science: Rousseau George S. Porter Roy (eds), The ferment of knowledge: Studies in the historiography of eighteenth-century science (Cambridge, 1980). In that volume, there was relatively little attention to the Enlightenment as such, and very few contributions made any use of sociological or anthropological perspectives.

Latour Bruno , Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society (Cambridge, MA, 1987). For commentary, see: Golinski Jan , Making natural knowledge: Constructivism and the history of science, 2nd edn (Chicago, 2005), 27–46, 168–85; Harman Graham , Prince of networks: Bruno Latour and metaphysics (Melbourne, 2009).

On the earlier period, see: Cook Harold J. , Matters of exchange: Commerce, medicine, and science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, 2007); Smith Pamela H. Findlen Paula (eds), Merchants and marvels: Commerce, science, and art in early modern Europe (New York, 2002); Harris Steven J. , “Long-distance corporations, big sciences, and the geography of knowledge”, Configurations, vi (1998), 1998–304.

Delbourgo James Dew Nicholas , “Introduction: The far side of the ocean”, in Delbourgo Dew (eds), Science and empire in the Atlantic world (New York, 2008), 1–28 (quotation on p. 7). see also: Secord James A. , “Halifax keynote address: Knowledge in transit”, Isis, xcv (2004), 2004–72.

Iliffe Rob , “Science and voyages of discovery”, and Larry Stewart, “Global pillage: Science, commerce, and empire”, in Porter Roy (ed.), The Cambridge history of science, iv: Eighteenth-century science (Cambridge, 2003), 618–45 and 825–44; Smith Bernard , European vision and the South Pacific (New Haven, 1985).

Koerner Lisbet , Linnaeus: Nature and nation (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 95–139; Spary E. C. , Utopia's garden: French natural history from Old Regime to revolution (Chicago, 2000), 49–98, 117–32.

Miller David Philip Reill Peter Hanns (eds), Visions of empire: Voyages, botany, and representations of nature (Cambridge, 1996); Gascoigne John , Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1994); idem, Science in the service of empire: Joseph Banks, the British state and the uses of science in the age of revolution (Cambridge, 1998); Drayton Richard , Nature's government: Science, imperial Britain, and the ‘improvement’ of the world (New Haven, 2000).

Bleichmar Daniela , “Atlantic competitions: Botany in the eighteenth-century Spanish empire”, in Delbourgo Dew (eds), Science and empire (ref. 21), 225–52.

Slaughter Thomas P. , The natures of John and William Bartram (New York, 1996).

Schiebinger Londa , Plants and empire: Colonial bioprospecting in the Atlantic world (Cambridge, MA, 2004); Parrish Susan Scott , American curiosity: Cultures of natural history in the colonial British Atlantic world (Chapel Hill, 2006); Gronim , “What Jane knew” (ref. 13).

Schaffer Simon , “Newton on the beach: The information order of Principia mathematica”, History of science, xlvii (2009), 243–76; Dew Nicholas , “Vers la ligne: Circulating measurements around the French Atlantic”, in Delbourgo Dew (eds), Science and empire (ref. 21), 53–72.

Delbourgo James , A most amazing scene of wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in early America (Cambridge, MA, 2006); Chaplin Joyce E. , The first scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the pursuit of genius (New York, 2006).

Withers Charles W. J. , Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking geographically about the Age of Reason (Chicago, 2007), 25–61; Withers Charles W. J. Livingstone David N. , “Introduction: On geography and Enlightenment”, in Withers Livingstone (eds), Geography and Enlightenment (Chicago, 1999), 1–31. Compare the perspective of the now-classic collection: Porter Roy Teich Mikuláš (eds), The Enlightenment in national contexts (Cambridge, 1981).

Gavroglu Kostas (ed.), The sciences in the European periphery during the Enlightenment (Dordrecht, 1999).

Koerner Lisbet , “Carl Linnaeus in his time and place”, in Jardine N. Secord J. A. Spary E. C. (eds), Cultures of natural history (Cambridge, 1996), 145–62.

Pancaldi Giuliano , Volta: Science and culture in the age of Enlightenment (Princeton, 2003).

For challenges to traditional models of centre and periphery, see: Delbourgo and Dew, “Introduction” (ref. 21); Cañizares-Esguerra Jorg , How to write the history of the New World: Histories, epistemologies, and identities in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world (Stanford, 2001); Grove Richard H. , Green imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge, 1995).

Safier Neil , Measuring the New World: Enlightenment science in South America (Chicago, 2008); Edney Matthew H. , Mapping an empire: The geographical construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago, 1997); Schaffer Simon , “Golden means: Assay instruments and the geography of precision in the Guinea trade”, and Raj Kapil , “When human travellers become instruments: The Indo-British exploration of Central Asia in the nineteenth century”, in Bourguet Marie-Noëll Licoppe Christian Sibum H. Otto (eds), Instruments, travel and science: Itineraries of precision from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries (London, 2002), 20–50 and 156–88; Schaffer Simon , “Instruments as cargo in the China trade”, History of science, xliv (2006), 2006–46; Terrall , The man who flattened the earth (ref. 7); Alder , The measure of all things (ref. 7).

Sorrenson Richard , “The ship as a scientific instrument in the eighteenth century”, Osiris, 2nd ser., xi (1996), 221–36.

Johns Adrian , The nature of the book: Print and knowledge in the making (Chicago, 1998); idem, Piracy: The intellectual property wars from Gutenberg to Gates (Chicago, 2009); Sher Richard B. , The Enlightenment and the book (Chicago, 2006); Darnton Robert , The forbidden best-sellers of pre-revolutionary France (New York, 1996).

Yeo Richard , “Genius, method, and morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760–1860”, Science in context, ii (1988), 257–84; Fara Patricia , Newton: The making of genius (London, 2002); Jacob Margaret C. Stewart Larry , Practical matter: Newton's science in the service of industry and empire 1687–1851 (Cambridge, MA, 2004); Schaffer Simon , “The Asiatic Enlightenments of British astronomy”, in Schaffer Simon Roberts Lissa Raj Kapil Delbourgo James (eds), The brokered world: Go-betweens and global intelligence 1770–1820 (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2009), 49–104.

Withers , Placing the Enlightenment (ref. 30), esp. pp. 2–6.

Safier , Measuring the New World (ref. 35), 123–65; Gronim Sara Stidstone , “Geography and persuasion: Maps in British colonial New York”, William and Mary quarterly, 3rd ser., lviii (2001), 373–402.

Livingstone David N. , Putting science in its place: Geographies of scientific knowledge (Chicago, 2003), 158.

Marshall P. J. Williams Glyndwr , The great map of mankind: British perceptions of the world in the age of Enlightenment (London, 1982); Wokler Robert , “Anthropology and conjectural history in the Enlightenment”, and Sloan Phillip , “The gaze of natural history”, in Fox Porter Wokler (eds), Inventing human science (ref. 12), 31–52 and 112–51.

Schiebinger , Plants and empire (ref. 27); Parrish , American curiosity (ref. 27), 215–306.

“Introduction”, and Delbourgo James , “Fugitive colours: Shamans' knowledge, chemical empire and Atlantic revolutions”, in Schaffer Roberts Raj Delbourgo (eds), The brokered world (ref. 38), pp. ix–xxxviii and 271–320; Schaffer , “Instruments as cargo” (ref. 35); Schiebinger , Plants and empire (ref. 27), 211–17; Parrish , American curiosity (ref. 27), 1–7.

Robertson John , The case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680–1760 (Cambridge, 2005), 1–51.

Delbourgo , A most amazing scene (ref. 29); Chaplin , First scientific American (ref. 29); Gronim Sara S. , Everyday nature: Knowledge of the natural world in colonial New York (New Brunswick, NJ, 2007); McClellan James E. III , Colonialism and science: Saint Domingue in the Old Regime (Baltimore, 1992); Raj Kapil , “Colonial encounters and the forging of new knowledge and national identities: Great Britain and India, 1760–1850”, Osiris, 2nd ser., xv (2000), 2000–34.

On the situation in colonial North America, see: Garrett Clarke , Spirit possession and popular religion: From the Camisards to the Shakers (Baltimore, 1987); Leventhal Herbert , In the shadow of the Enlightenment: Occultism and Renaissance science in eighteenth-century America (New York, 1976).

Regourd François , “Mesmerism in Saint Domingue: Occult knowledge and Vodou on the eve of the Haitian revolution”, in Delbourgo Dew (eds), Science and empire (ref. 21), 311–32; Darnton Robert , Mesmerism and the end of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA, 1968); Riskin , Science in the age of sensibility (ref. 15), 189–225.

Raj , “When human travellers become instruments” (ref. 35); Edney , Mapping an empire (ref. 35), 304–18; Safier , Measuring the New World (ref. 35), 166–99.

Outram Dorinda , “The Enlightenment our contemporary”, in Clark Golinski Schaffer (eds), The sciences in enlightened Europe (ref. 5), 32–40.