Utility and Audience in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry: Case Studies of William Cullen and Joseph Priestley

The British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 1988, Pages 1-31

  Golinski, J V ^a  

^a CHURCHILL COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOCHEMISTRY; CHEMISTRY; HISTORY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE; UNITED KINGDOM;

BIOCHEMISTRY; CHEMISTRY; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY OF MEDICINE, MODERN;

EID: 0023982719     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: 1474001X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087400024365     Document Type: Article

References (130)

1. Roland Barthes, ‘The Eiffel Tower’, in Barthes: Selected Writings (ed. Susan Sontag), London, 1982, p. 240.
2. Helene Metzger, Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave et la Doctrine Chimique, Paris, 1930; reprinted, Paris, 1974.
3. On the Newtonian tradition, see Arnold Thackray, Atoms and Powers: An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry, Cambridge, MA, 1970.
4. On the Stahlian tradition: Jon Eklund, ‘Chemical analysis and the phlogiston theory 1738–1772’ (Yale University Ph.D. thesis, 1971, Dissertation Abstracts no. 485126, order no. 74-02113)
5. Rhoda Rappaport, ‘Rouelle and Stahl: the phlogistic revolution in France’, Chymia, (1961), 7, pp. 73–102
6. Evan H. Melhado, Jacob Berzelius: The Emergence of his Chemical System, Stockholm, 1981, ch. I–III.
7. Owen Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry, Baltimore, 1975
8. J.R.R. Christie and J.V. Golinski, ‘The Spreading of the word: new directions in historiography of chemistry 1600–1800’, History of Science, (1982), 20, pp. 235–264.
9. Arthur L. Donovan, Philosophical Chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment, Edinburgh, 1975
10. Martin Fichman, ‘French Stahlism and chemical studies of air, 1750–1770’, Ambix, (1971), 18, pp. 94–122
11. Karl Hufbauer, The Formation of the German Chemical Community (1720–1795), Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982.
12. Christoph Meinel, ‘Theory or practice? The eighteenth-century debate on the scientific status of chemistry’, Ambix, (1983), 30, pp. 121–132
13. ‘“… To make chemistry more applicable and generally beneficial”—the transition in scientific perspective in eighteenth-century chemistry’, Angewandte Chemie: International Edition in English, (1984), 23, pp. 339–347
14. ‘Reine und angewandte Chemie: die Entstehung einer neuen Wissenschafteskonzeption in der Chemie der Aufklärung’, Berichte zur Wissenschaftesgeschichte, (1984), 8, pp. 25–45.
15. For details of technical advances in these and other areas, Archibald Clow and Nan L. Clow, The Chemical Revolution: A Contribution to Social Technology, London, 1952, is still unsurpassed.
16. Arnold Thackray, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the image of science’, in Science and Values, A. Thackray and E. Mendelsohn, New York, 1974, pp. 3–18.
17. Robert Bud and Gerrylynn K. Roberts, Science versus Practice: Chemistry in Victorian Britain, Manchester, 1984, especially introduction and chapter I.
18. For patronage in general, see Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780–1880, London, 1969, chapter II.
19. The attempt to analyse the social relations of science in terms of patronage is a strong theme in Steven Shapin, ‘The audience for science in eighteenth-century Edinburgh’, History of Science, (1974), 12, pp. 95–121
20. Robert Fox, ‘Scientific enterprise and the patronage of research in France 1800–70’, The Patronage of Science in the Nineteenth Century (ed. G.L'E. Turner), Leyden, 1976, pp. 9–51
21. and Dorinda Outram, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France, Manchester, 1984, especially introduction and chapter IX.
22. By demonstrating this, the analysis which follows aims to overcome the dichotomy between ‘economic’ and ‘cultural’ modes of interpretation, which it has been suggested dominates recent studies of the social history of British science in this period. The dichotomy assumes that science is pursued either for reasons of hoped-for economic gain, or for social and cultural reasons, such as status enhancement. ‘Utilitarian’ science is frequently assumed to be followed for purely economic reasons, in direct response to material needs, while the influence of cultural factors is restricted to the form of presentation of such ‘useful’ scientific work. My analysis, on the other hand, by connecting the language of utilitarian science with particular structures of social relations, aims to show that even ‘utilitarian’ science is culturally and socially constructed. The distinction between ‘economic’ and ‘cultural’ modes of interpretation is developed by Ian Inkster in his ‘Introduction: aspects of the history of science and science culture in Britain, 1780–1850 and beyond’, in Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture, 1780–1850, (ed. I. Inkster and J.B. Morrell), London, 1983, pp. 11–54.
23. Paradigm example of (respectively) the ‘economic’ and ‘socio—cultural’ interpretations would be: A.E. Musson and E. Robinson, ‘Science and industry in the late-eighteenth century’, Economic History Review, (1960–1961), 2, 13, pp. 222–224
24. and Arnold Thackray, ‘Natural knowledge in cultural context: the Manchester model’, American Historical Review, (1974), 79, pp. 672–709.
25. Clifford Geertz, ‘Ideology as a cultural system’, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, London, 1975, pp. 193–233.
26. On the way in which uses and meanings of language coincide in the communication between scientist and audience, see Steven Shapin, ‘The history of science and its sociological reconstructions’, History of Science, (1982), 20, pp. 157–211, especially pp. 180–197.
27. compare J.D. MacKie, ‘Glasgow University in the eighteenth century’, in An Eighteenth-Century Lectureship in Chemistry, (ed. Alexander Kent), Glasgow, 1950, pp. 28–40.
28. See R.G.W. Anderson, The Playfair Collection and the Teaching of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh 1713–1858, Edinburgh, 1978
29. on the chemistry chair in general; and, on Crawford in particular: W.P. Doyle, James Crawford M.D. (1682–1731) (Scottish Men of Science series), Edinburgh, 1982
30. and Edgar Ashworth Underwood, Boerhaave's Men at Leyden and After, Edinburgh, 1977, p. 41.
31. J.B. Morrell, ‘The University of Edinburgh in the late eighteenth century: its scientific eminence and academic structure’, Isis, (1970), 62, pp. 158–171.
32. On Cullen's later success in medical practice, see Guenther B. Risse, ‘“Doctor William Cullen, Physician, Edinburgh”: a consultation practice in the eighteenth century’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, (1974), 48, pp. 338–351.
33. Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections, Cullen MSS, box 1, item 8 (hereinafter cited in the form: GUL, 1:8).
34. J.B. Morrell, ‘The Edinburgh Town Council and its university, 1717–1766’, in The Early Years of the Edinburgh Medical School, (ed. R.G.W. Anderson and A.D.C. Simpson) Edinburgh, 1976, pp. 46–65, especially pp. 49–50.
35. Leonard Dobbin, ‘A Cullen chemical manuscript of 1753’, Annals of Science, (1936), 1, pp. 138–156.
36. For an analysis of the membership of the Society, see Roger L. Emerson, ‘The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh 1737–1747’, British Journal for the History of Science, (1979), 12, pp. 154–171
37. GUL, 3: 9.
38. Peter Jones, ‘The Scottish professoriate and the polite academy’, in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, (ed. 1. Hont and M. Ignatieff), Cambridge, 1983, pp. 89–117.
39. For general discussions of the Scottish Enlightenment, patronage and the ideology of ‘improvement’ in relation to science, see: J.R.R. Christie, ‘The origins and development of the Scottish scientific community, 1680–1760’, History of Science, (1974), 12, pp. 122–141
40. See Nicholas Phillipson, ‘Towards a definition of the Scottish Enlightenment’, in City and Society in the Eighteenth Century, (ed. P. Fritz and D. Williams), Toronto, 1973, pp. 125–147
41. In addition to the works cited in the two previous notes, see Emerson, (24); and Anand Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment: A Social History, London, 1976, ch. II, VII.
42. J.R.R. Christie, ‘Ether and the science of chemistry’, in Conceptions of Ether, (ed. G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge, Cambridge, 1981, pp. 85–110, especially pp. 91–95
43. Compare the uses made of a language of provincial identity and needs by J.A.C. Chaptal, arguing for potential applications of chemistry in Montpellier in the 1780s. See H.E. LeGrand, ‘Theory and application: the early chemical work of J.A.C. Chaptal’, British Journal for the History of Science, (1984), 17, pp. 31–46, especially pp. 32–33.
44. On patron—client relations in general, see S.N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends, Cambridge, 1984, especially pp. 48–49.
45. This observation may be thought relevant to the debate on the legitimacy of explaining beliefs on the basis of supposedly identifiable personal or group ‘interests’. Given the difficulties of identifying Cullen's interests, in a rhetorical context in which the term ‘interest’ was itself highly charged with implications for all those using it, it appears to me at the very least doubtful that his behaviour can meaningfully be explained in this kind of way. See Steve Woolgar, ‘Interests and explanation in the social study of science’, Social Studies of Science, (1981), 11, pp. 365–394.
46. On the general question of patronage and technical innovation in eighteenth-century Britain, see M.W. McCahill, ‘Peers, patronage and the Industrial Revolution, 1760–1800’, Journal of British Studies, (1976), 16, pp. 84–107
47. and John Barrell, English Literature in History 1730–80: An Equal, Wide Survey, London, 1983, ‘Introduction: artificers and gentlemen’.
48. GUL, 2:45.
49. GUL, 1: 16.
50. GUL, 1:8.
51. Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, MS no. C.11, p. [3], ‘Introduction’ (hereinafter cited in the form: RCPE, C.11:[3]).
52. GUL, 1:7.
53. For Bacon's influence on the reformist ambitions of mid-seventeenth-cenrury Puritans, see Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform 1626–1660, London, 1975.
54. F.W. Gibbs, ‘Peter Shaw and the revival of chemistry’, Annals of Science, (1951), 7, pp. 211–237
55. J.V. Golinski, ‘Peter Shaw: chemistry and communication in Augustan England’, Ambix, (1983), 30, pp. 19–29.
56. Peter Shaw, Chemical Lectures, Publickly Read at London…, London, 1734, contains what Shaw called ‘canons’, inductive conclusions and rules for practice, at the end of each chapter.
57. RCPE, C. 11:3.
58. GUL, 1: 13
59. Gul, 1:8.
60. RCPE, C.10: 21.
61. RCPE, C. 10: 21–22
62. GUL, 1: 4, 2: 45 (p. 25).
63. GUL, 1:7.
64. William P.D. Wightman, ‘William Cullen and the reaching of chemistry, II’, Annals of Science, (1965), 12, pp. 192–205, especially pp. 195–196
65. GUL, 1: 7.
66. Adam Smith to William Cullen, 20 September 1774, in The Correspondence of Adam Smith, (ed. E.C. Mossner and I.S. Ross), Oxford, 1977, pp. 173–179.
67. GUL, 2: 41
68. RCPE, C.12: 18.
69. Robert E. Schofield, ‘Boscovich and Priestley's theory of matter’, in Roger Joseph Boscovich, (ed. Lancelot L. Whyte), London, 1961, pp. 168–172
70. John G. McEvoy and J.E. McGuire, ‘God and nature: Priestley's way of rational dissent’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, (1975), 6, pp. 325–404
71. John G. McEvoy, ‘Joseph Priestley, “Aerial Philosopher”: metaphysics and methodology in Priestley's thought 1772–1781’, Ambix, (1978), 25, pp. 1–55, 93–116, 153–175
72. Ambix, (1979), 26, pp. 16–38
73. Simon Schaffer, ‘Priestley's questions: an historiographical survey’, History of Science, (1984), 22, pp. 151–183.
74. Joseph Priestley, Heads of Lectures on a Course of Experimental Philosophy, Particularly Including Chemistry, Delivered at the New College in Hackney, London, 1794.
75. Compare Schaffer, (78), pp. 157, 165, 170–171.
76. Benjamin Martin's biography presents many examples of entrepreneurial behaviour in relation to a commercial market for scientific goods and services, see John R. Millburn, Benjamin Martin: Author, Instrument-Maker and ‘Country Showman’, Leyden, 1976. The ‘commercialization’ perspective is applied to Shaw in Golinski, (60)
77. and to Newbery in James A. Secord, ‘Newton in the nursery: Tom Telescope and the philosophy of tops and balls, 1761–1838’, History of Science, (1985), 23, pp. 127–151.
78. The term ‘commercialization’ derives from J.H. Plumb, The Commercialisation of Leisure in Eighteenth-Century England (The Stenton Lecture, 1972), Reading, 1973.
79. It has been taken up, and its range of application extended, in Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialisation of Eighteenth-Century England, London, 1982.
80. Attempts have been made to apply this perspective to aspects of Enlightenment culture in Britain, in: Peter Borsay, ‘The English urban renaissance: the development of provincial urban culture c. 1680–1760’, Social History, (1977), 5, pp. 581–603
81. Roy Porter, ‘Science, provincial culture and public opinion in Enlightenment England’, The British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, (1980), 3, pp. 20–46
82. Maurice Crosland, ‘Priestley Memorial Lecture: A practical perspective on Joseph Priestley as a natural philosopher’, British Journal for the History of Science, (1983), 16, pp. 223–238.
83. Joseph Priestley, A Familiar Introduction to the Study of Electricity, 2nd edn., London, 1769, p. 85.
84. According to Ronald E. Crook, A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley 1733–1804, London, 1966, the descriptive booklet for the Chart of Biography (originally published in London in 1765) had at least fourteen editions until 1820, that for the New Chart of History (originally published in London in 1769) had at least fifteen editions until 1816.
85. For information on relations between publishers and authors in the eighteenth century, see Terry Belanger, ‘Publishers and writers in eighteenth-century England’, in Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England, (ed. Isabel Rivers), Leicester, 1982, pp. 5–25.
86. Joseph Priestley, Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air, London, 1772, following p. 22
87. see W.P. Griffith, ‘Priestley in London’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, (1983), 38, pp. 1–16, especially p. 5 and fn. 26.
88. Robert E. Schofield, A Scientific Biography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), Cambridge, MA, 1966, pp. 16–17
89. These dedications appear (respectively) in: Joseph Priestley, Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, 3 vols, London 1790
90. Joseph Priestley, Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, to the Year 1795, Written by Himself…, London, 1806, p. 64
91. For an example of these political negotiations, see F.W. Gibbs, Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth, London, 1965, pp. 92–93.
92. Robert E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in 18th-century England, Oxford, 1963
93. P. Ritchie-Calder, ‘The Lunar Society of Birmingham’, Scientific American, (1982), 246, (6), pp. 108–117.
94. Henry Carrington Bolton (ed.), Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Priestley, New York, 1892; reprinted New York, 1969, p. 25 fn.
95. Priestley to Wedgwood, 30 November 1780, in Bolton, (97), p. 21.
96. Schaffer, (78), pp. 157–162.
97. V.W. Crane, ‘The Club of Honest Whigs: friends of science and liberty’, William and Mary Quarterly, (1966), 23, pp. 210–233.
98. Priestley to John Canton, 14 February 1766, in Schofield (ed.), (90), p. 15.
99. Bolton, (97), pp. 100–101.
100. and compare the bibliography of Priestley's published papers in Schofield (ed.), (90), pp. 378–393.
101. The description is that of Samuel Galton's daughter, Mary Anne, reproduced in Bolton, (97), p. 203.
102. Robert E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in 18th-century England, Oxford, 1963, pp. 35, 124, 128, 152–159.
103. Priestley to Wedgwood, 18 August 1788, in Bolton, (97), p. 92.
104. Priestley to William Wilkinson, 16 June 1784, in Bolton, (97), p. 71.
105. The translation was of the second edition of Pierre-Joseph Macquer's Dictionary of Chemistry, 3 vols, London, 1777.
106. Compare the treatment of the discovery in Priestley, (1772) (89)
107. with the single brief reference, made ‘by the way’ in Priestley's letter to John Canton, 27 September 1767, in Schofield (ed.), (90), p. 54.
108. Priestley, (1767) (91), pp. ii–v. Priestley used the term ‘sublime’ to mean conveying a feeling of pleasure or awe; the connotations which Edmund Burke was to add of the terrible or the bizarre, were not intended here.
109. McEvoy, (1979) (75), pp. 5–6.
110. See, in particular, Priestley, (1779–1786) (89), 1, pp. 461–466, 472–473.
111. Priestley, pp. cit. (1779–1786) (89), pp. xxiii, xxvi.
112. On the ‘Country’ tradition of opposition politics in eighteenth-century England, see Margaret Jacob and James Jacob (eds), The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism, London, 1984, especially ch. II, VI, VIII, IX
113. H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain, London, 1977, ch. V, VI
114. John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III, Cambridge, 1976
115. J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, Princeton, 1975, ch. XIII, XIV
116. Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty, London, 1979, ch. II.
117. For examples of the investment of opposition hopes in the Prince of Wales in the eighteenth century, see W. A. Speck, Stability and Strife: England 1714–1760, London, 1977, pp. 236–237
118. Dorothy Marshall, Eighteenth-Century England, London, 1962, p. 522.
119. Priestley to Richard Price, 27 September 1772, in Schofield (ed.), (90), pp. 108–109.
120. A more complete collection of the correspondence surrounding Priestley's employment by Shelburne is given in W. Bernard Peach and D.O. Thomas (eds), The Correspondence of Richard Price: Vol. I, July 1748–March 1778, Durham, NC and Cardiff, 1983, pp. 124–128, 132–138, 145–148.
121. The Works of Henry Lord Brougham: Vol. I, Lives of Philosophers of the Time of George III, 2nd edn., Edinburgh, 1872, p. 82.
122. John M. Simpson, ‘Who steered the gravy train, 1700–1766?’ in Scotland in the Age of Improvement, (ed. N.T. Phillipson and Rosalind Mitchison), Edinburgh, 1970, pp. 47–72.
123. John Brewer, ‘Commercialisation of politics’, in McKendrick, Brewer, Plumb, (83), pp. 197–262.
124. I have in mind particularly the masonic societies in provincial France, studied by Daniel Roche, in Le Siècle des Lumières en Province: Academies et Académiciens Provinciaux, 1680–1789, 2 vols, Paris and The Hague, 1978, 1, pp. 257–280.
125. see K.M. Baker, ‘Enlightenment and the Revolution in France: old problems, renewed approaches’, Journal of Modern History, (1981), 53, pp. 281–303
126. and compare Roger L. Emerson, ‘The Enlightenment and social structures’, in City and Society in the Eighteenth Century, (ed. P. Fritz and D.P. Williams), Toronto, 1973, pp. 99–124.
127. Robert E. Schofield, ‘The Society of Arts and the Lunar Society of Birmingham’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, (1959), 107, pp. 512–514, 668–671
128. D.G.C. Allan, ‘The Society of Arts and government, 1754–1800: public encouragement of arts, manufactures, and commerce in eighteenth-century England’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, (1973–1974), 7, pp. 434–452.
129. For example, the professional associations described in Colin Russell, Science and Social Change 1700–1900, London, 1983, pp. 220–234
130. or the university-based research training described in J.B. Morrell, ‘The chemist breeders: the research schools of Liebig and Thomas Thomson’, Ambix, (1972), 19, pp. 1–46.