Thomas Browne and the Writing of Early Modern Science (review)

Thomas Browne (1605–82), physician and author, was a man with intellectual interests that were so wide-ranging it is almost impossible to describe them, let alone draw them into a coherent portrait. A true seventeenth-century virtuoso, Browne was interested in everything from anatomy and antiquarianism to zoology. Claire Preston's ambitious new book surveys this daunting terrain and convincingly argues that Browne's major works were devoted to restoring a "ruined or lost order" (p. 2) to the fragmentary knowledge that surrounded him. Delving into an array of early modern approaches to knowing—including cataloging, collecting, experimentation, observation, and antiquarianism—Preston forges important connections between such diverse works as Browne's Religio medici (1642), his Pseudodoxia epidemica (1646), and his Urne-Buriall (1658).

In seven chapters Preston discusses all of Browne's major published works as well as his unpublished manuscript or fugitive texts. Her tale begins with Browne's unhappy discovery in 1642 that his Religio medici had been pirated and was in the bookshops. This experience helped to establish intellectual civility and cooperation as the cornerstones of his intellectual activities and linked him to Baconian ideas about how the gentlemanly work of science should be done. Preston then turns to the multivalent voices of the Religio medici to underscore the immaturity of the work and also Browne's experimentation with the new genre of the essay. Her contention that the essay, in his hands, was a step along the way to the scientific reporting of the Royal Society is fascinating and should spark further study and debate. These first two chapters are highly original and provocative interventions in the historiography of early modern science and medicine as well as the literature on Browne. The next four chapters move sequentially through the remainder of Browne's oeuvre, returning to the themes of civility and cooperation that Preston first lays out in chapter 1. The chapter on the Pseudodoxia epidemica is especially effective, and evolves around Preston's insight into the similarities between the work's literary structure and the structure of curiosity cabinets.

The final chapter on Browne's fugitive writings is a slim but intriguing account of his voluminous manuscript remains. Preston seems not to know what to do with his "jottings," "notes," and anecdotes (p. 215), and the "randomness of enquiry" that she finds in his fugitive writings (p. 212). In the manuscripts she sees an intellect developing, but here Browne seems to elude her—though her brilliant opening contention that his seemingly fragmented interests masked a coherent mind at work could have been employed to try to discover whether the manuscripts were as cohesive as the published works. Preston contrasts the order of Browne's published work with the randomness of his manuscripts and finds the two at odds, but it may be that the manuscripts demand more detailed study to bring their orderliness to light.

Preston's book should appeal to literary scholars as well as historians of science and medicine. As she points out, Browne has been overlooked by historians of science (p. 220), and her analysis of his published and fugitive writings should be enough to convince most that Browne is a figure of interest, with the potential to shed light on the preoccupations of his contemporaries, including Bacon and Samuel Hartlib. Preston's analytical style is framed by her literary background, and includes a close reading and artful interpretation of dense texts, but she is also widely read in the secondary literature of early modern science and medicine. The result is a satisfying and intriguing look into an author and a set of texts that deserve wider attention from scholars in the history of science and medicine.