Galvanic Disciplines: The Boundaries,Objects,and Identities of Experimental Science in the Era of Romanticism

For a convenient introduction to this literature, see the essays edited by Kathryn M. Olesko in Osiris, 2nd ser., v (1989) as well as those in Cunningham Andrew Jardine Nicholas (eds), Romanticism and the sciences (Cambridge, 1990). That this shift in emphasis is more than simply an artefact of revisionist historiography of German science is evident from the recent efforts of Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams. See Cunningham Williams , “De-centering the ‘big picture’: The origins of modern science and the modern origins of science”, The British journal for the history of science, xxvi (1993), 407–32, where they sketch the implications of locating the “invention” of science in the period 1760–1848.

Hufbauer Karl , The formation of the German chemical community (1720–1795) (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1982), 40. “Polymathy was degenerating into dilettantism.”.

Exemplary attempts include Caneva Kenneth L. , “From Galvanism to electrodynamics: The transformation of German physics and its social context”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, ix (1978), 63–159; Hufbauer , op. cit. (ref. 2); Lenoir Timothy , The strategy of life: Teleology and mechanics in nineteenth-century German biology (Dordrecht, 1982; reprint, Chicago, 1989); Lohff Brigitte , Die Suche nach der Wissenschaftlichkeit der Physiologie in der Zeit der Romantik (Stuttgart and New York, 1990).

This is an approach outlined by Gieryn Thomas F. , “Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists”, American sociological review, xlviii (1983), 781–95. See Shapin Steven , “Discipline and bounding: The history and sociology of science as seen through the externalism–internalism debate”, History of science, xxx (1992), 333–69. On the importance of attending to historicized criteria for identifying disciplinary boundaries, see Westman Robert S. , “The astronomer's role in the sixteenth century: A preliminary study”, History of science, xviii (1980), 105–47. For further discussion and critique of the uses of disciplinary histories to assert and sustain disciplinary authority and identity, see Laudan Rachel , “Histories of the sciences and their uses: A review to 1913”, History of science, xxxi (1993), 1–34.

See, for example, Shaffer Elinor S. , “Romantic philosophy and the organization of the disciplines: The founding of the Humboldt University of Berlin”, in Cunningham Jardine (eds), op. cit. (ref. 1), 38–54; and Gregory Frederick , “Kant, Schelling, and the administration of science in the romantic era”, Osiris, 2nd ser., v (1980), 17–35.

Turner R. Steven , “University reformers and professional scholarship in Germany 1760–1806”, in Stone Lawrence (ed.), The university in society, ii (Princeton, 1974), 495–531.

Galvani Luigi , Commentary on the effect of electricity on muscular motion , transl. by Greca Robert Montraville (Cambridge, Mass., 1953). I am indebted to Maria Trumpler's study of the reception of Galvani's research among the Germans: “Questioning nature: Experimental investigations of animal electricity in Germany, 1791–1810”, Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 1992.

Steffens Henrich , Was ich erlebte: Aus der Erinnerung niedergeschrieben (Breslau, 1843), viii, 367–8.

Schelling F. W. J. , “Vorrede”, Jahrbücher der Medicin als Wissenschaft, i (1806), pp. ix–x.

Gilbert Ludwig , “Erklärung über die Münchner Versuch mit Schwefelkies-Pendeln und Wünschelruthen”, Annalen der Physik, xxvi (1807), 390. As I plan to argue elsewhere, it was necessary for galvanism and the ambiguitities that had accompanied it to recede in order for Gilbert's image of Physik to come into its own.

Stichweh Rudolf , Zur Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen: Physik in Deutschland 1740–1890 (Frankfurt a. M., 1984), 94.

Ibid., 96.

Heilbron J. L. , Electricity in the 17th and 18th centuries: A study of early modern physics (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1979), 16. See Schimank Hans , “Der Weg des Physikers durch die Zeiten”, in Schimank Hans Scriba Christoph J. , Exakte Wissenschaften im Wandel (Weisbaden, 1980), 20. Like Heilbron, Schimank points to Lichtenberg as “der erste, der Experimentalphysik wirklich nur als Lehre von der anorganischen Natur betrieb, also ungefähr in dem Sinn, in dem von uns Physik im 19. Jahrhundert verstanden wird…”.

Heilbron , op. cit. (ref. 12), 16.

Ibid., 17.

Ibid., 16. “This liberation, or rather the demonstration experiment that effected it, had its dark side for serious savants. Demonstrations became too popular; people, even students, came to physics lectures expecting to be entertained.”.

Jungnickel Christa McCormmach Russell , The intellectual mastery of nature: Theoretical physics from Ohm to Einstein, i: The torch of mathematics 1800–1870 (Chicago and London, 1986), 34–38.

I have in mind the journals edited by Crell, Gren, Schaub, or, even into the beginning of the nineteenth century, by Gehlen and Gilbert.

Joseph Priestley's and later Humphry Davy's dramatic public experimentation in chemistry are two examples that come to mind. See Golinski Jan , Science as public culture: Chemistry and enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992).

Stichweh , op. cit. (ref. 10), 101. “Die Chemie spielt in der Lehrbüchern der Naturlehre zunächst noch keine Rolle.”.

Ibid., 103. This sentiment would soon be echoed among physiologists who situated their discipline at the top of a hierarchy by insisting that it was the most general of all approaches to nature, that its methods were applicable beyond the confines of the objects to which it had thus far been devoted, and, somewhat oddly, that the generalizability of the discipline would be confirmed by the recognition that the objects claimed by other disciplines had been properly physiological all along.

Ibid., 107–8.

Ibid., 102.

Erxleben J. C. P. , Anfangsgründe der Chemie (Göttingen, 1775), [pp. i–ii], cited in Hufbauer , op. cit. (ref. 2), 28.

Hufbauer , op. cit. (ref. 2), 29, n. 39. By the late eighteenth century most of the subscribers to Crell's Chemische Annalen and thus, by Hufbauer's count, most members of the German chemical community “were still in medical occupations”.

Ibid., 60–61.

Schaub J. , “Rede bey der ersten Versammlung der Mitglieder der correspondierenden Gesellschaft der Pharmacie und ärztlichen Naturkunde des Bezirks Hessen-Cassel”, Archiv für die Pharmacie, i (1803), 14.

Hecker A. F. , Die Heilkunst auf ihren Wegen zur Gewissheit, oder die Theorien, Systeme und Heilmethoden der Aerzte seit Hippokrates bis auf unsere Zeitalter, zweite verbesserte Auflage (Erfurt, 1805; first publ. 1802), 3.

Schelling , op. cit. (ref. 8), pp. xix–xx.

Ibid., pp. v–vi.

Hecker , op. cit. (ref. 27), 245 and passim. “… die giftige Schlange der Philosophie.”.

Ibid., 200–1 and 270–1.

Ibid., 198–9.

Ibid., 8; original emphasis.

Döllinger Ignaz , “Ueber den jetzigen Zustand der Physiologie”, Jahrbücher der Medicin als Wissenschaft, i (1806), 119–42.

Ibid., 119.

Ibid., 128.

Ibid., 128. See also Döllinger Ignaz , Grundriß der Naturlehre des menschlichen Organismus (Bamberg and Wirzburg, 1805), 10.

Döllinger , op. cit. (ref. 34), 126–7.

Hufbauer , op. cit. (ref. 2), 96ff.

Ibid., 96.

Ibid., 96.

Ibid., 141–2.

Gren , quoted in Schimank Hans , “Der Werdegang der Chemie im 18. Jahrhundert von der Ars zur Scientia”, in Schimank Scriba , op. cit. (ref. 12), 13.

Hufbauer , op. cit. (ref. 2), 141.

Jungnickel McCormmach , op. cit. (ref. 16), 35, n. 4.

Schaub , op. cit. (ref. 26), 2–3; original emphasis.

Nicholson W. , “An account of the new electrical or galvanic apparatus of Sig. Alex. Volta, and experiments performed with the same. — W. N.”, Journal of natural philosophy, chemistry and the arts , iv (1800), 181, quoted in Sudduth William , “The Voltaic pile and electro-chemical theory in 1800”, Ambix, xxvii (1980), 26–35, p. 26.

Sudduth , op. cit. (ref. 47), 29.

Pfaff C. H. , “Auszuge aus Briefen an den Herausgeber”, Annalen der Physik, vii (1801), 251–2. Cited in Sudduth , op. cit. (ref. 47), 31.

Pfaff C. H. , Revision der Lehre vom Galvano-Voltaismus mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Faraday's, de la Rive's, Becquerels, Karstens u. s. neueste Arbeiten über diesen Gegenstand (Altona, 1837), pp. ix–x. Quoted in Jungnickel McCormmach , op. cit. (ref. 16), 29. Jungnickel and McCormmach take Pfaff to refer here to Volta's invention of the battery, though that seems like an overly narrow reading given the fact that Pfaff had begun publishing his galvanic experiments soon after Galvani's initial claims reached Germany.

Trommsdorff J. B. , Systematisches Handbuch der gesammten Chemie zur Erleichterung des Selbstudiums dieser Wissenschaft, v: Geschichte des Galvanismus oder der galvanischen Electricität, besonders in chemischer Hinsicht (Erfurt, 1803). From the unpaginated “Vorrede”.

Ibid., 16.

Ibid., 17.

Heilbron , op. cit. (ref. 12), 491, Table 20.1. Heilbron has constructed this chart of “percentages of papers concerned with various aspects of electricity reviewed or abstracted in the Commentarii de rebus in scientia naturali et medicina gestis from 1752 to 1797. ‘Traditional electricity’ signifies theories of electrical attraction, descriptions of apparatus, demonstrations of ‘artificial’ or laboratory electricity; ‘medical electricity’ includes accounts of therapy and experiments of electricity on animals; and ‘natural electricity’ means primarily the electricity of the atmosphere.” Ibid., 490. The data from 1769 are taken from Johann Georg Krünitz, Verzeichniss der vornehmsten Schriften von der Elektricität und der elektrischen Curen (Leipzig, 1769).

Heilbron , op. cit. (ref. 12), 490.

Pera Marcello , The ambiguous frog: The Galvani–Volta controversy on animal electricity, transl. by Mandelbaum Jonathan (Princeton, 1992), p. xxiii.

Augustin Friedrich Ludwig , Versuch einer vollständigen systematischen Geschichte der galvanischen Electricität und ihrer medicinischen Anwendung (Berlin, 1803), p. x.

Ibid., 53–54.

Schmidt Apotheker , “Fragmente über den Galvanismus: Vorschlag zu einer liegenden Voltaischen Säule”, Archiv für die Pharmacie und ärztliche Naturkunde, i/2 (1802), 176–83, 176.

Hecker , op. cit. (ref. 27), 203.

Augustin , op. cit. (ref. 57), 54.

Subsequent histories of chemistry would pass in silence over this brief engagement with physiology, recasting galvanism as the founding moment of the subdiscipline of electrochemistry. See Kopp Hermann , Geschichte der Chemie (Braunschweig, 1844), ii, 329–30.