The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America by John E. Crowley (review)

214 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 In the fifth study, Wilson takes up the problem of how we are to judge or discern causes. This brings up issues of scientific methodology, particularly of eliminative induction. Wilson argues that this is to be found in Bacon, but given concise formulation by David Hume. The sixth study turns to the whole question of God and the possibility of the existence of a necessary being. This takes Wilson into discussions not only of Aristotle=s position on such a being, but of the devastating criticisms which are made by David Hume in the eighteenth century. Finally, in the seventh study Wilson looks at the so-called ontological argument for the existence of God. Wilson deals sympathetically with the treatment of the ontological argument by Descartes and follows on then to the criticisms which are made of Descartes=s thinking, showing how in some way the criticisms are well taken, and that these lead us into the modern world as we see that the old medieval certainties about deity and the like are no longer well taken. This is a thorough work, and undoubtedly will be controversial. What one cannot say is that Wilson fails to give adequate detailed readings of the text. It is particularly impressive how he is able to work back and forth over the relevant material bringing to it his usual keen insight. Truly he says at the end what he is trying to do is not so much criticize the ancients, although he certainly does not accept their way of thinking, but respect them by showing how they represented a world which we no longer have. Today we are in a completely new domain of existence thanks to the scientists and philosophers of the scientific revolution, and only by understanding the nature and significance of the change from the past can we hope to understand the truly radical way of thought that we have had for the past four centuries. It is perhaps a trite thing to say in conclusion but true nevertheless, that Fred Wilson=s work The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought will be the standard account on which we will all draw, and against which we will all be reacting, for many years to come. (MICHAEL RUSE) John E. Crowley. The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America Johns Hopkins University Press. xiv, 362. US $42.00 Consumerism in the early modern period has received a great deal of attention from scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. Studies of changing modes of production and the proliferation of consumer goods in British and American households have pushed the idea of an eighteenth-century >consumer revolution= ever farther back in time. In the process, we are beginning to understand how fashion and the pursuit of gentility created demand for goods that in turn fuelled the technological changes of the industrial revolution. The desire for comfort, we assumed (if we thought HUMANITIES 215 about it all), was surely a part of an improving standard of living. John E. Crowley both challenges and focuses our attention on that assumption, demonstrating that the >notion of comfort as physical comfort ... was an innovation of Anglo-American culture.= In a sweeping chronology beginning in the Middle Ages and ending in the mid-nineteenth century, Crowley examines heating, lighting, and architecture as some of the factors most likely to influence people=s levels of comfort. The result is a fascinating book that will appeal to a variety of audiences through its examination of a wide range of material and literary evidence. The book is divided into three thematic parts, each of which moves the reader forward in time. In part 1, >Traditional Architectural Amenity,= Crowley argues that medieval living space was public, masculine, and hierarchical, conditions reinforced by the great hall with its open hearth. Monasteries and nunneries, where fireplaces heated private space for study, domestic activities had specialized space, and windows had glass, were the exception, reflecting not comfort but the different needs and scale of socializing and hospitality. During the Tudor period, great houses lost their military and masculine orientation, women took...