Essay Review: The Enlightenment of the Dons,Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment: Science,Religion and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution

An illuminating comparison here is with the outlook of the high churchman John Fell, who served as Dean of Christ Church, Oxford from 1660 until his death in 1686; see Hunter Michael , “The origins of the Oxford University Press”, The book collector, xxiv (1975), 511–34, pp. 521–7.

Gascoigne's assessment of Isaac Barrow's theology and ecclesiastical politics is also significantly different from Jacob's. Whereas she classifies Barrow as a latitudinarian, Gascoigne argues that he was a complex thinker who defies such a straightforward categorization; compare Jacob M. C. , The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689–1720 (Hassocks, England, 1976), ch. i, and Gascoigne, Cambridge in the age of the Englightenment, 46–47. See also the relevant chapters in Before Newton: The life and times of Isaac Barrow, ed. by Feingold Mordechai (Cambridge, 1990).

Guerrini Anita , “The Tory Newtonians; Gregory, Pitcairne, and their circle”, Journal of British studies, xxv (1986), 288–311.

On this point see Emerson Roger L. , “Science and moral philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment”, in Studies in the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. by Stewart M. A. (Oxford, 1990), 11–36, pp. 11–17.

For an earlier study of Cambridge under Newcastle see Winstanley D. A. , The University of Cambridge in the Eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1922).

For asimilar approach to the politics of knowledge in the Scottish universities see Emerson Roger L. , Professors, patronage and politics: The Aberdeen Universities in the eighteenth century (Aberdeen, 1991).

Gascoigne John , “A reappraisal of the universities in the Scientific Revolution”, in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. by Lindberg David C. Westman Robert S. (Cambridge, 1990), 207–60.

On science in the Scottish universities see inter alia Donovan A. L. , Philosophical chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment: The doctrines and discoveries of William Cullen and Joseph Black (Edinburgh, 1975); Emerson Roger L. , “Natural philosophy and the problem of the Scottish Enlightenment”, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, ccxlii (1986), 243–91; Wood P.B. , “Science and the Aberdeen Enlightenment”, in Philosophy and science in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. by Jones Peter (Edinburgh, 1988), 39–66.

For an excellent introduction to this literature see Porter R. S. , “Science, provincial culture and public opinion in Enlightenment England”, British journal for eighteenth-century studies, iii (1980), 20–46. Regrettably little has been done in recent years on science in the Dissenting academies.

Apart from Charles Webster's characteristically trenchant essay, the natural sciences and medicine do not fare terribly well in other contributions to The History of the University of Oxford, v: The eighteenth century, ed. by Sutherland L. S. Mitchell L. G. (Oxford, 1986). The treatment of the sciences in Bill's E. G. W. Education at Christ Church Oxford 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1988) is likewise disappointing.

The social composition of the Cambridge student body is analysed in Jenkins Hester Jones D. Caradog , “Social class of Cambridge University alumni of the 18th and 19th centuries”, British journal of sociology, 1 (1950), 93–116, and in Cannon John , Aristocratic century: The peerage of eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1984), 44–59. According to Cannon, the student body at both Oxford and Cambridge became more exclusive socially as the century progressed. Gascoigne says regrettably little about students or about the evolution of educational ideals in eighteenth century Cambridge. For a somewhat different approach to university history, in which higher education is treated as an agent of cultural change, see Brockliss L. W. B. , French higher education in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: A cultural history (Oxford, 1987).

For the Gentleman's society at Spalding see Nichols John , Literary anecdotes of the eighteenth century… (9 vols, London, 1812–15; New York, 1966), vi, 1–162. Of the fourteen members of the Lunar Society, seven were university-educated: Erasmus Darwin (Cambridge and Edinburgh), Thomas Day (Oxford), Richard Lovell Edgeworth (Trinity College, Dublin and Oxford), James Keir (Edinburgh), William Small (Marischal College, Aberdeen), Jonathan Stokes (Edinburgh), and William Withering (Edinburgh). Samuel Galton Jr attended the Warrington Academy; see Schofield Robert E. , The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A social history of provincial science and industry in eighteenth-century England (Oxford, 1963). On the Manchester Lit. and Phil. see Thackray Arnold , “Natural knowledge in cultural context: The Manchester model”, American historical review, lxxix (1974), 672–709; the Scottish university connection was also important in Manchester.

On the role of the landed élite in English provincial culture see Borsay Peter , The English urban renaissance: Culture and society in the Provincial town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989). For an exploration of the effect of aristocratic dominance of English science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries see Berman Morris , ” ‘Hegemony’ and the amateur tradition in British science”, Journal of social history, viii (1974–75), 30–50.

On this point see Porter , op. cit. (ref. 9), 28–29.

Ibid., 21.

Compare here Porter, op. cit (ref. 9), 23.