Compound Histories: Materials, Governance and Production, 1760-1840 offers a new view of the period during which Europe took on its modern character and globally dominant position. By exploring the intertwined realms of production, governance and materials, it places chemists and chemistry at the center of processes most closely identified with the construction of the modern world. This includes the interactive intensification of material and knowledge production; the growth and management of consumption; environmental changes, regulation of materials, markets, landscapes and societies; and practices embodied in political economy. Rather than emphasize revolutionary breaks and the primacy of innovation-driven change, the volume highlights the continuities and accumulation of incremental changes that framed historical development. Contributors are: Robert G.W. Anderson, Bernadette Bensaude Vincent, José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez, John R.R. Christie, Joppe van Driel, Frank A.J.L. James, Christine Lehman, Lissa L. Roberts, Thomas le Roux, Elena Serrano, Anna Simmons, Marie Thébaud-Sorger, Sacha Tomic, Andreas Weber, Simon Werrett.

Classification is an important part of science, yet the specific methods used to construct Enlightenment systems of natural history have proven to be the bête noir of studies of eighteenth-century culture. One reason that systematic classification has received so little attention is that natural history was an extremely diverse subject which appealed to a wide range of practitioners, including wealthy patrons, professionals, and educators. In order to show how the classification practices of a defined institutional setting enabled naturalists to create systems of natural history, this book focuses on developments at Edinburgh's medical school, one of Europe's leading medical programs. In particular, it concentrates on one of Scotland's most influential Enlightenment naturalists, Rev Dr John Walker, the professor of natural history at the school from 1779 to 1803. Walker was a traveller, cleric, author and advisor to extremely powerful aristocratic and government patrons, as well as teacher to hundreds of students, some of whom would go on to become influential industrialists, scientists, physicians and politicians. This book explains how Walker used his networks of patrons and early training in chemistry to become an eighteenth-century naturalist. Walker's mineralogy was based firmly in chemistry, an approach common in Edinburgh's medical school, but a connection that has been generally overlooked in the history of British geology. By explicitly connecting eighteenth-century geology to the chemistry being taught in medical settings, this book offers a dynamic new interpretation of the nascent earth sciences as they were practiced in Enlightenment Britain. Because of Walker's influence on his many students, the book also provides a unique insight into how many of Britain's leading Regency and Victorian intellectuals were taught to think about the composition and structure of the material world.

Reconstructs Reid's career as a mathematician and natural philosopher for the first time

A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century covers the period from 1700 to 1815. Setting the progress of science and technology in its cultural context, the volume re-examines the changes that many have considered to constitute a "chemical revolution". Already boasting a laboratory culture open to both manufacturing and commerce, the discipline of chemistry now extended into academies and universities. Chemists studied myriad materials - derived from minerals, plants, and animals - and produced an increasing number of chemical substances such as acids, alkalis, and gases. New textbooks offered opportunities for classifying substances, rethinking old theories and elaborating new ones. By the end of the period – in Europe and across the globe - chemistry now embodied the promise of unifying practice and theory. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Chemistry presents the first comprehensive history from the Bronze Age to today, covering all forms and aspects of chemistry and its ever-changing social context. The themes covered in each volume are theory and concepts; practice and experiment; laboratories and technology; culture and science; society and environment; trade and industry; learning and institutions; art and representation. Matthew Daniel Eddy is Professor and Chair in the History and Philosophy of Science at Durham University, UK. Ursula Klein is Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany. Volume 4 in the Cultural History of Chemistry set. General Editors: Peter J. T. Morris, University College London, UK, and Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University, USA.

"Studies the path of natural philosophy (i.e., physics) from Isaac Newton through Scotland into the nineteenth-century background to the modern revolution in physics. Examines how the history of science has been influenced by John Robison and other notable intellectuals of the Scottish Enlightenment"--Provided by publisher.

Miller examines Watt's illustrious engineering career in light of his parallel interest in chemistry, arguing that Watt's conception of steam engineering relied upon chemical understandings.

The 'scientific revolution' of the sixteenth and seventeenth century continues to command attention in historical debate. Controversy still rages about the extent to which it was essentially a 'revolution of the mind', or how far it must also be explained by wider considerations. In this volume, leading scholars of early modern science argue the importance of specifically national contexts for understanding the transformation in natural philosophy between Copernicus and Newton. Distinct political, religious, cultural and linguistic formations shaped scientific interests and concerns differently in each European state and explain different levels of scientific intensity. Questions of institutional development and of the transmission of scientific ideas are also addressed. The emphasis upon national determinants makes this volume an interesting contribution to the study of the Scientific Revolution.

Laboratories are fundamental to the practice of science, yet there is a paucity of serious historical analysis of the subject. This book sets out to reflect the diversity in the variety of laboratories in existence and the multiplicity of their development.