The Rise of Public Science

Reviewed by: The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1600–1750, and Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 Lissa Roberts (bio) Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1600–1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 453 pp. illus. $69.95 Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. xi + 342 pp. illus. $54.95 The two books under review here should be of interest to the readers of this journal, not least because they both offer an important reminder that science is not to be found only in texts. Both books are based on the premise that science is a form of practice in which words, things, actions, and ideas are inseparably mixed. They argue, further, that science is a cultural achievement, enmeshed in the broader culture of its production. Thus can science be spoken of as “public,” as the titles of both books indicate. But Stewart and Golinski do more than just speak of science as public: they explore what that meant in eighteenth-century Britain—how science was constituted as an open and socially sanctioned activity that, in turn, served to sanction other social activities, and even helped define the relationship between social authority and the public in general. Stewart examines “the rise of public science” in Great Britain in the years 1660–1750 with an eye toward understanding how the broadening of scientific talk and demonstration—beyond the confines of the Royal Society—linked science and its growing reputation to various technological and entrepreneurial schemes during the period just preceding the “Industrial Revolution.” He states that a review limited to the natural philosophical texts of the period (so many of which were actually natural theological tracts that focused on the issue of providence) can provide only a narrow understanding of events during the period in question. While providence was an important theme that linked the otherwise cryptic contents of Newton’s mathematical physics to the more utilitarian concerns of most experimentalists, Stewart argues that the outcome of this connection cannot be appreciated without going beyond the texts of Newton, his followers, and his detractors. And go beyond them he does, by wading through an impressive range of archival materials that allow him to paint an impression of how “Newtonians” such as John Theophilus Desaguliers bridged the purported gaps between the high world of science, the messy world of technical invention, and the still messier world of investment and industry. The picture that emerges of Britain during the first half of the eighteenth century is one filled with characters ranging from public science lecturers to inventors, [End Page 95] as well as those who used the expertise of both to invest, manipulate, and exploit wherever and whenever it looked as though a profit might be made. As an antidote to more traditionally internalist and idealist histories of science, this is strong tonic indeed. And yet, precisely because these traditions exist to haunt works such as Stewart’s, we might expect just a bit more dialogue with the historiographical past than he provides. If one must point to a weakness in the book, I suppose this would be it. I would have liked a more explicit discussion of why the label “Newtonian” is appropriate for the group of natural philosophers and their fellow travelers treated by Stewart, and just what that label means. Certainly they were not the only ones to lay claim to the mantle of Newton’s natural philosophy, and, as is the case with any such tale of influence, they remolded his work in the process of appropriating it. I would also have liked a more explicit discussion of how the relation between science and technology ought to be defined. People of a certain philosophical stripe might argue that Stewart’s book falters by not linking the content of “Newtonian science” to technological developments, especially in a causal way. Clearly, this is just what Stewart does not want to do, but he must be ready to answer his critics who continue to view science and its relation

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