1Steven Shapin, “‘Nibbling at the Teats of Science’: Edinburgh and the Diffusion of Science in the
s,” in Ian Inkster and Jill Morrell (eds.), Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture,
– (London: Hutchinson, ), p. . See also Roger Cooter and S. Pumfrey, “Separate Spheres
and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Cul- ture,” History of Science, (), –.
For their valuable comments on an earlier version of this chapter, we are grateful to Rob Iliffe, Thomas Kaiserfeld, Bill Luckin, Jack Morrell, Simon Nightingale, and Simon Schaffer.
as though natural knowledge effortlessly flows from center to periphery, as if there were no energy costs, no resistances.
But for the eighteenth century, as for other periods, neither “science” nor this common-sense model of scientific diffusion is very helpful. Then, no one made a living doing scientific research. Indeed, the word “scientist” had not been coined. Few people made an absolute divide between religion, the stuff of belief, and what was called natural philosophy, the stuff of experiment and analysis. Nor was natural history fully divisible from religion. Natural theology, or the study of the relationships between God and the natural world, con- tinued to be pursued well into the nineteenth century.
It is no easy matter, therefore, to address “science” and the processes of its “popularization” for the eighteenth century. In almost every respect the terms are anachronistic and misleading. A part of the purpose of this chapter is to indicate how such analytical categories fail to provide sufficiently complex and inclusive historical accounts. Put otherwise, we seek to illustrate the faultiness of the fried-egg model. At the same time we submit alternative means of comprehending and analyzing popular natural knowledges in the eighteenth century. Thus, instead of retrospectively defining “science,” we borrow the seventeenth-century view of the subject held by the English natural philoso- pher Robert Hooke (–). In , Hooke declared the new Royal So- ciety’s mission to include “the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful: Arts, Manufactures, Mechanick practices, Engines and inventions by Experiment.” This broad remit enables us to avoid all-too-easy twentieth century assump- tions about the differences between “popular” and “professional,” “non-science” and “science.” It allows us to cast our net wide in search of how and where knowledges of the natural world were created, discussed, and deployed. For purposes of analysis, we can consider as comparable the historically nameless women who sold their herbs and expertise to apothecaries, and the clergyman Gilbert White (–) of Selborne patiently recording the changing de- tails of field and forest near his home.2We can explore a rowdy coffeehouse
gathering of London artisans watching an itinerant lecturer stage a miniature earthquake to demonstrate God’s providential design on the same terms as we can investigate a meeting of pious Swedish businessmen discussing a problem with a Newcomen engine in one of their mines or manufactories.3
Or we can pose questions about the nature of humanity by reading a cheap pamphlet trumpeting a monster birth, or Lord Monboddo’s (–) philosophical examination of the links between man and ape.4Although we
cannot suppose, for example, that savants in Saint Domingue experimenting with ballooning, electricity, and Mesmerism did so in the same ways and with
Mary Fissell and Roger Cooter
2David E. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain (Harmondsworth: Penguin, ); Allen, “Natural History
in Britain in the Eighteenth Century,” Archives of Natural History, (), –.
3Svante Lindqvist, Technology on Trial: The Introduction of Steam Power Technology into Sweden, –
the same understandings as their contemporary sansculottes in Paris, we need not claim the superiority of the one over the other.5
Of course, when Robert Hooke listed the topics of interest to the Royal Society, he was also staking a claim to the Society’s role as maker and validator of natural knowledge. He was, if you will, placing the Society in the middle of the egg yolk. However, while borrowing his description, we seek to avoid any easy assumptions about the relationships between center and periphery, yolk and white. Just as our current definition of science does not work well for the eighteenth century, neither do the social relationships implied in the fried-egg model of production and diffusion tell us much about the past. We therefore focus, instead, on the sites and forms of natural knowledge – that is, where the knowledge was produced and in what modes it was performed or enacted. Today, an inference is often made between form/site and social lo- cation. Laboratories are sites for scientists, whereas cat shows are sites for cat fanciers. The form of the scientific journal belongs to a research scientist, whereas a TV nature program belongs to the viewing public. Such assignments may not be very helpful in understanding science today; certainly, they are inappropriate to the past. As various cultural historians have shown, the iden- tification of particular sites and forms as “popular” misreads historical relations among forms, sites, and social locations. We cannot, for example, assume that a small, cheap pamphlet belonged only to the “lower” sort of the reading public; it might have been read by an apprentice or declaimed aloud in an alehouse, but it might as well have been perused by an aristocrat.
In discussing the sites and forms of natural knowledge, we also seek to avoid privileging the cognitive content of knowledge over its social and cul- tural locations. The setting within which a piece of natural knowledge was produced or discussed is as important as its content – indeed, form and con- tent are not easily divisible. An idea published in a cheap pamphlet is not the same as an idea propounded in a gentleman’s drawing room, no matter how similar their cognitive content might seem. Thus, just as we cannot simply ascribe readership from social location, so we cannot assume that the cheap pamphlet was merely a popularized or watered-down version of the drawing- room discussion.
It is therefore to the relationships among the forms, sites, and social mean- ings of natural knowledge in the eighteenth century that we seek to draw at- tention. But it is necessary to be selective. The sites of natural knowledge in the eighteenth century were as diverse as the forms were varied. In addition to gentlemen’s drawing rooms, the sites included coffeehouses, farms, taverns, churches, reading rooms, and cottages, among others. The forms include printed works, such as encyclopedias, magazines, children’s books, and letters,
Exploring Natural Knowledge
5James E. McClellan III, Colonialism and Science: Saint Domingue in the Old Regime (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, ). On the Parisian sansculottes, see Robert Darnton, Mesmerism
as well as oral forms, such as sermons, lectures, and dialogs. They also include material forms, such as cows, flowers, and mechanical hoes.
In this chapter we concentrate on four of the territories of eighteenth- century natural knowledge. In each we take up a different analytical theme. Newtonianism, our first topic, serves primarily to illustrate some of the pitfalls of a hierarchical model of natural knowledge, even one broadened by consideration of popularization. A discussion of agricultural technologies then enables us to consider some of the ways in which economic tensions shaped natural knowledge. An analysis of medical books written for lay people, coupled with a spectacular medical incident, permits us to examine the ways in which natural knowledges circulated within the eighteenth century. Here, in particular, we focus on the concept of appropriation as a way to interpret such circulation. Finally, botany, or the natural knowledge of plants, provides us with the basis for discussing two current historical models of cultural change: commodification and the reform of popular culture.
Many of our examples are drawn from Britain. In part, this emphasis re- flects historiographic trends. The extensive range of natural knowledges and practices is simply better documented for Britain than for anywhere else. We know about women and natural philosophy in Italy, France, and England,6but
there is little available historical scholarship on, say, seedsmen or on profes- sional gardeners for Italy or German-speaking countries. Histories of science that are focused on Italy, France, Germany, Spain, or any other Continental country, are often written by historians living in those countries who, until recently, have concentrated on the kinds of scientific activities that are still validated today. In part this may be because in France and elsewhere on the Continent the Annales historiography was far less successful than in Britain or America in institutionalizing a cultural history of natural philosophy. Thus, we know a great deal about certain significant male thinkers, from Goethe to Linnaeus, and about their various influences, both national and supranational. We know far less, however, about more humble practitioners of natural knowl- edge, who are rarely cast as the symbolic forebears of today’s scientists.
Historical as well as historiographical grounds justify our British weighting, for there were important differences between Britain and many Continental countries (including their colonies) in the eighteenth century. Protestantism, or rather a set of assumptions about the extent of God’s role in day-to-day human lives, was one such difference. Queen Anne (–) was the last British monarch to touch for the “King’s Evil” (scrofula), or to invoke heal- ing powers derived from the sacred nature of the throne. But on the Conti- nent, healing shrines were still sanctioned by the state. In France, until the Revolution, the Royal touch was practiced. Britain’s lack of a fully dominant
Mary Fissell and Roger Cooter
6See Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge
court culture is a related difference. To be sure, English monarchs surrounded themselves with followers and elaborate court procedures and rituals, as on the Continent. But many other sites vied for cultural authority. In France some natural knowledges could be wholly embedded in court culture; as we discuss later, a published dialog about cosmology was entirely cast within the highly articulated and polished tropes of courtly speech. In contrast, the English text that most resembles its French counterpart in topic and intended audience was full of examples drawn from everyday experience. In the English case, nat- ural knowledge did not function only or predominantly as cultural ornament; it could also provide a basis for transforming the material world.
In Paris, court culture produced a steady market for luxury goods, and many Parisian craftsmen directed their efforts toward ever-finer brocades or highly elaborate umbrellas or other high-end consumer goods. In contrast, England in the eighteenth century was becoming a culture of consumption on a wide scale. Historians have analyzed the ways in which ever-more-differentiated consumer goods, from tea to the china from which it was drunk, became stan- dard in middle-class homes and fostered certain kinds of economic develop- ment. If, for a moment, we consider natural knowledge to be a commodity, the differences between England and France are striking. In Paris, natural knowledge was performed and consumed in salons – decorative polite meet- ings hosted by women but frequented by men. By and large, such salons were the purview of the upper classes.7In England, however, natural knowledge
was a commodity consumed in a wide variety of polite locations, from cof- feehouses and provincial societies to children’s nurseries. This difference also shaped the ways in which science was gendered. In Paris, women functioned as the arbiters of taste and refinement in their salons; the natural knowledge performed in these social settings was thus somewhat feminized. In England, coffeehouses were often masculine places, as were some provincial societies, whereas other sites, such as gardens, were not necessarily gender-specific. Women who translated scientific works into English, such as the bluestock- ing Elizabeth Carter (–), did not feminize natural knowledge, nor were they arbitrating the polite social relations that characterized the culture of the salon.
In what follows, then, British exemplification of natural knowledge should not be read as merely reflecting personal bias. Rather, it should serve as a re- minder of crucial historical and historiographical differences between con- texts – then as now. Contexts clearly matter for any historical discussion, and
Exploring Natural Knowledge
7Geoffrey V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, ). This portrayal of France versus England should not be thought complete. For instance, an understanding of military technology as a commodity, and its relationships to the state, might provide a rather different comparison of the two countries’ forms and sites of nat- ural knowledge. See, for example, Charles C. Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the
Old Regime (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ), and Ken Alder, Engineering the Revo- lution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, – (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ).
it would be hard to deny that our own Anglo-American historiographical context has not conditioned the analytical frames that we seek to elaborate in this chapter. That said, we trust that the primary analytical purpose of the chapter can be nurtured through the examples and that examples (and counter- examples) from other places may be fostered through the analysis.
NEWTONIANISM
Over the past few decades, the history of science has moved from the study of great men to the analyses of the social contexts and constructions of sci- ence. Emblematic of this shift is the growth of interest in Newtonianism.8
Whereas thirty years ago much attention was paid to the intricacies of Isaac Newton’s thought, now historians explore the social uses of such thought. Here, we examine the career of Newtonianism – or the careers of Newtoni- anisms – and suggest that the fried-egg model of knowledge production and diffusion may serve to foreshorten our understandings of the social meanings attached to the name of Newton.
One of the first studies of Newtonianism in its social context was that by Margaret Jacob, which focused on a group of Anglican clergymen who preached a series of sermons endowed through the will of Robert Boyle (–).9
The Boyle lecturers, Jacob showed, did not see their purpose as popularizing Newton nor as creating a distinct Newtonianism. Rather, in the course of their battles within the Anglican church, as well as those waged against athe- ists and deists, they found in Newton’s view of the universe the ingredients for a powerful natural theology. They argued that the universe was governed by divine providence – a providence that coexisted with natural laws such as gravity and motion – and that this governance made for an orderly and pre- dictable world. As one Boyle lecturer noted, “What a noble Contrivance this [gravity] is of keeping the several Globes of the Universe from shattering to Pieces.”10These sermons showed how Newton’s account of the mechanics of
a universe governed by laws that did not vary could be made into the natural correlate of a stable, prosperous, well-governed, and hierarchical social struc- ture that the Boyle lecturers sought to reproduce.
In moving from Newton’s study to the Newtonian pulpit, Jacob and other historians have worked mainly from printed sermons, largely overlooking the fact that sermons are usually presented first as oral performances. The Boyle
Mary Fissell and Roger Cooter
8On the various versions of Newtonianism and their history, see Simon Schaffer, “Newtonianism,”
in R. C. Olby et al. (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London: Routledge, ), pp.–.
9Margaret C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, – (Hassocks, Sussex: Har-
vester Press, ).
lectures were deliberately rotated among different London churches in order to reach wide audiences. Indeed, the first lecturer, Richard Bentley (–), sought to change the date of a sermon to “December when ye Town would be very full, [instead of ] in September when it is always thinner.”11Although
we cannot recover these oral performances, doubtless they were differently nuanced from the printed works available to us today. Even a simple tone of voice could carry much meaning. When Voltaire met Boyle lecturer Samuel Clarke (–) in , he was struck by Clarke’s reverent mode of ut- tering the name of God, a habit that Clarke professed to have learned from Newton himself.
Sermons were not the only public oral presentations of Newtonian natural philosophy. Increasingly, the inhabitants of London and of provincial towns were able to attend science lectures, open to anyone who could pay the ad- mission fee. Coffeehouses, schools of writing, and provincial societies all hosted such lectures. In , for example, the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, located in the small market town of Spalding, Lincolnshire, enjoyed a series of natural- philosophical lectures by Jean Theophilus Desaguliers (–). Desag- uliers, a Huguenot refugee and Freemason, had been employed by the Royal Society to do the skilled manual work of experiments and demonstrations. He molded these skills into a very successful career as a lecturer, marrying the elegance of Newtonian principles with the mechanical practicalities of steam engines and water pumps. Although his lectures suggested an easy progression from abstract principles to practical machines, the relationship between the two may have been more complex. As Larry Stewart has argued, the success of such lectures depended more on their practical mechanical content than on any Newtonianism; indeed, such lectures may have helped to create a broad acceptance of Newtonianism and natural philosophy by means of the prac- tical projects with which they were associated in lectures.12 Combining a
range of opportunities and interests, Desaguliers helped to forge the new oc- cupation of natural philosophy lecturer. In , he could not “help boasting of the or Persons who performed Experimental courses at this time in England and other parts of the world [because] I have had the honour of hav- ing eight of them as my scholars.”13By , science lecturing had become a
recognized occupation, and the public had a wide range of lecturers and lec- tures from which to choose.
Initially, science lecturers often used explicitly Newtonian principles to struc- ture their presentations. Crucial to their lectures was the performance of ex- periments and dramatic demonstrations of scientific principles that governed
Exploring Natural Knowledge
11Quoted in Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp.–.
12Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian
Britain, – (Cambridge University Press, ).
13Jean Theophilus Desaguliers, A Course of Experimental Philosophy, vol. (London, ), fol. C verso,
quoted in Stephen Pumfrey, “Who Did the Work? Experimental Philosophers and Public Demon- strators in Augustan England,” British Journal for the History of Science, (), p. .
the natural world. However, as more and more lecturers competed for custom, their lectures offered an increasingly broad array of interpretations of the nat- ural world as well as dramatic entertainment. Desaguliers and his contem- poraries created a Newtonianism that was fully consonant with the social elite’s ideas about natural theology’s relationship to political stability – in the