Bodies, Plants, Volcanoes, Stars: Early Modern British Scientific Writing, Collected

Pickering and Chatto's Literature and Science, 1660–1834 is an impressive, varied collection of facsimile excerpts and explanatory materials, organized into two parts of four volumes each. The set of eight volumes presents a view of early modern science's complexities and growth that will be of considerable interest to students and scholars. At the least, it should refine how we understand the history of scientific inquiry and the prehistory of some observational practices we now identify as modern. In addition, because frequently cited texts are juxtaposed with lesser-known works, provocative contexts are created. Literature is not considered as effectively as science, however, and some regrettable textual features reduce the set's utility.

Because the volumes of Literature and Science are organized by themes, most but not all of which culminated in distinct modern counterparts, the set vividly demonstrates how various inquiries into the natural world gradually evolved into specific disciplines now designated as "scientific." For example, in "Sciences of Body and Mind" (volume 2), we find precursors to both physiology and psychology, often combined in a single text, such as William Stukeley's Of the Spleen (1723). Due to the set's thematic concentration primarily on objects, e.g., bodies, plants, volcanoes, stars, gases, etc., methodological developments have to be detected across these themes. Striking variations and contradictions within "the" scientific method are evident, as are controversies about the composition of matter, with striking implications for physics, theology, and what will become psychology, to name just a few subjects. Many of the included authors may be considered "natural philosophers" because they sought to contribute to a supposedly integrated body of knowledge that would attest to God's wondrous, unified creations. By no means was natural philosophy entirely superseded by the end of the early modern period, as volume 7, named accordingly, attests by its selections that extend well into the nineteenth century. Although this movement has no exact modern parallel, what was once called natural philosophy endures; we can detect it in the current "intelligent design" debate. Some sought the presence of God in the Book of Nature as the sole source of revelation, which was, of course, a primary goal of one branch of natural philosophy and of Deism, but we can detect distinct assumptions, methods, and goals among the natural philosophers who were more or less reliant on types of rationalism. Others wished to reconcile Biblical accounts of creation with new information about the earth's features, such as volcanoes. The authority of Scripture was vigorously evaluated by means of new information; science was used to defend as well as to attack Christianity. Thus, by providing an exceedingly clear view of religion's varied role in early modern scientific inquiry, the selections demonstrate complex interactions between what we sometimes clumsily divide as sacred or secular. This view, in fact, is one of the most useful and exciting benefits of Literature and Science. Ironically, the general introductions to each of the two parts and the publisher's Web page are nearly silent on this point; they thereby perpetuate a truism about a triumphant secularism.

As the general introductions to Parts I and II acknowledge, no sharp thematic or chronological division separates the two parts. All excerpts are in English and are organized chronologically in each volume, generally by date of publication. Although early modern science was an international phenomenon, any systematic exploration of work in countries other than Britain would have exceeded the set's necessary limits. Centers of intellectual activity within Britain are not treated separately, nor are they systematically listed in either of the indexes at the end of each four-volume part. Instead, writers representative of a particular milieu will be found according to theme only; for instance, Joseph Priestley and John Whitehurst, two...