In Defence of Biography: The Use of Biography in the History of Science

Bentley E. Clerihew , Clerihews complete, illustrated by Chesterton G. K. (London, 1951), unpaginated. Also in Bentley's Biography for beginners (London, 1925).

Nicolson Harold , The development of English biography (London, 1928), 7.

Condorcet Marie Jean Caritat Antoine Nicolas , marquis de. Eloges des académiciens de l'académie royale des sciences morts depuis 1666, jusqu'en 1699 (Paris, 1773), 8–9.

Nicolson , op. cit. (ref. 2), 17.

In his later biographies, such as his biography of George v (1952), Nicolson got away from the Strachey style and wrote much more soberly.

Often the titles, of these works reveal their historiographical approach: Murray Robert H. , Science and scientists in the nineteenth century (London, 1925); Mayer Joseph , The seven seals of science (New York, 1927); Lenard Philipp , Great men of science: A history of scientific progress (New York, 1933); Gumpert Martin , Trail-blazers of science (New York, 1935); etc.

This is not the traditional dichotomy of ‘internalist’ versus ‘externalist’ in the history of science. Alexandre Koyré, who emphasized the philosophical background of science, used to be regarded as the chief of the ‘internalists’. The Marxists, who sought the origin of science in social and economic forces, led the ‘externalists’. The dichotomy has shifted so that philosophy, once regarded as an ‘internalist’ influence on science, has now become an ‘external’ influence. Only the technical scientific content of a discipline is grist for the modern internalist's mill.

Guerlac Henry , “The landmarks of science”, Times literary supplement, 26 April, 1974, pp. 449–50.

Gillispie Charles C. , “Fontenelle and Newton”, introduction to Fontenelle's eulogy of Newton in Isaac Newton's papers and letters on natural philosophy, ed. Cohen I Bernard (Cambridge, 1958), 433. Also Marsak Leonard M. , “Bernard de Fontenelle: The idea of science in the French Enlightenment”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, xlix (1959), pt 7, pp. 5–10, 41.

There are many histories of literary biography, but few discussions of biography as history. They all date the modern, literary tradition of biography from the eighteenth century. See for example Woolf Virginia , “The art of biography”, in Collected essays, iv (London, 1967), 221.

For a good summary of the debate see Greaves Richard L. , “Puritanism and science: The anatomy of a controversy”. Journal of the history of ideas, xxx (1969), 345–68.

Foucault Michel , The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences (1st American ed., New York, 1971).

Hall A. Rupert , “Can the history of science be history?”, The British journal for the history of science, iv (1969), 216–17.

Bloch Marc recognizes this problem in The historian's craft, trans. Putnam Peter (Manchester, 1954), 151–2.

Hankins Thomas L. , Jean d'Alembert: Science and the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1970), 3–4 and 151–69.

Hamilton was only an occasional diarist at best. The manuscript referred to is Trinity College, Dublin, MS 1492, notebook 17 (unpaginated).

The strongest defence of Newton as the totally objective scientist is Toulmin Stephen , “Criticism in the history of science: Newton on Absolute Space, Time, and Motion”, Philosophical review, lxviii (1959), pt I, 1–29; pt II, 203–27.

Gombrich E. H. , In search of cultural history (The Philip Maurice Dencke Lecture 1967; Oxford, 1969).

Ibid., 36.

Ibid., 39–40.

Graves's Robert P. Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton (3 vols, Dublin, 1882–89).

Williams Leslie Pearce , Michael Faraday, a biography (New York, 1965).

Carr Herbert Wildon , Leibniz (New York, 1960; first ed., 1929). 203.

See Hall A. Rupert , “Microscopic analyses and the general picture”, Times literary supplement, 26 April, 1974, pp. 437–8.

Elkana Yehuda applies this view of the growth of scientific concepts to the concept of energy (The discovery of the conservation of energy (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), vi, 137). Kuhn Thomas adds his “suspicion” that “after a science has become thoroughly technical, particularly mathematically technical, its role as a force in intellectual history becomes relatively insignificant” ( Kuhn Thomas S. , “The relations between history and history of science”, Daedalus, c (1971), 271–304, p. 277).

Carlyle Thomas , “Biography”, in Critical and miscellaneous essays, iii (New York, 1904), 47.

Baker Keith Michael , Condorcet, from natural philosophy to social mathematics (Chicago, 1975).

Herivel John , Joseph Fourier: The man and the physicist (Oxford, 1975), and Grattan-Guinness I. , Joseph Fourier 1768–1830. in collaboration with Ravetz J. R. (Cambridge, Mass., 1972).

Herivel , Joseph Fourier, 2.

Ibid., 3.

Garraty John A. , The nature of biography (New York, 1957), 169–70.

Williams L. Pearce , “The historiography of Victorian science”, Victorian studies, ix (1965–66), 197–203, p. 202.

Sarton George , The study of the history of mathematics (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 4.

Ibid., 22.

As for example E. T. Bell's statement that Hamilton's algebra as pure time is a “metaphysical speculation without foundation in history or in mathematical experience” ( Bell Eric Temple , Men of mathematics (New York, 1937), 358).

Reid Constance , Hilbert, with an appreciation of Hilbert's mathematical work by Hermann Weyl (Berlin, New York, 1970).

Klein Martin J. , Paul Ehrenfest (Amsterdam and New York, 1970).

The proceedings were published as The annus mirabilis of Sir Isaac Newton, 1666–1966, ed. Palter Robert Monroe (Cambridge, Mass., 1970). Unfortunately the informal debates which were often vigorous could not be included in the volume.

Williams has reiterated this argument several times, as, for instance, in op. cit. (ref. 32), 203–4.

Kuhn Thomas S. , “The relations between history and history of science”, Daedalus, c (1971), 271–304, p. 278.

Dictionary of scientific biography, Gillispie Charles C. , editor-in-chief (New York, 1970–78), vol. i, p. x.