Practical Matter: Newton's Science in the Service of Industry and Empire 1687-1851 (review)

This volume is aimed at a popular audience and succeeds well in illustrating the rise and spread of a Newtonian science that not only altered worldviews (chapters 1 and 2) but also actively generated an extensive audience for natural and experimental philosophy (chapter 3), large numbers of whom sought applications of the new mechanics in industry and manufacturing (chapters 4 and 5). Covering the years from the Principia in 1687 to the Great Exhibition in 1851, most of the historical material relates to developments in England, France, and the Low Countries.

Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart are clear and convincing on the character of the culture of science, on its sites, and the mechanisms of its diffusion and discussion. Given the title and the following titular phrase "Science in the Service," however, any estimation of the manner in which the scope and intent of the book are in fact fulfilled must focus on the argument and material demonstrating significant linkages between Newtonian mechanics and technological advancement. Here matters are by no means so clear. It may well be that "a broad public audience interested in mechanical laws had significant consequences for the process of industrialization in the last half of the eighteenth century" (p. 93). But such a repetition of a position held by as many historians as would repudiate it may not convince a general readership or much advance the argument for either students or scholars. There is also some real obscurity. Long ago, A. E. Musson and Eric Robinson performed a determined and scholarly job of persuading historians of the existence of a particular knowledge environment in Britain, using a massive weight of examples in order to convince. This is best summarized in their Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (1969), which receives only four passing and misleading references by Jacob and Stewart. Here, we have only a slender version of the same applied over a wider front, more linked to metropolis than to province, sliding slimly through the years circa 1800–1850, rendering doubt with phrases such as "the first apparent knowledge economy" (p. 94). Do these two perfectly experienced authors mean this or do they not? If they mean "apparently the first" then they are very tentatively addressing the important and much-asked question of Why Britain First? If they really intend to suggest a system of only "apparent knowledge" then they are casting severe doubts on that whole notion of useful and reliable knowledge that is presently being built up by a goodly number of historians of science, technology, and culture.

The stories of Desaguliers, of the Spitalfields Mathematical Society, and of James Watt are told once more, and neatly enough, but despite an intention to explore the relations and tensions within the world encompassing both philosophers and engineers ("the critical space" [p. 97]), the authors are seemingly unaware of a common usage of the term "philosophical engineer" in Britain as early as the 1770s. Again, the almost entire omission of the Scottish culture of philosophy and engineering, with its fundamental impact on English metropolitan and provincial culture, is disturbing and severely qualifies any generalizations designed to inform us about relations between science and industry or between province and metropolis. Finally, the failure to even consider the diffusion and popularizations of Newtonianism in the urban area and environs of Cambridge itself seems strange given the stress on elite–craft relations, on London and its connections, on the diffusion of knowledge, and the Newtonian inspiration of it all.

In summary, the scope of this book is not quite as wide-ranging as it at first seems, and because of this the academic audience is difficult to identify, while lay folk might be mystified by so many passing references to themes not fully explained. Despite its title, most of the material relates to England, empire is dealt with rather shortly, and the early nineteenth...