When things don't talk: Knowledge and belief in the inter-war humanism of Charles Singer (1876-1960)

British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 325-347

  Mayer, Anna K ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HISTORY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE; HUMANISM; SCIENCE; UNITED KINGDOM;

GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORIOGRAPHY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANISM; SCIENCE;

EID: 19844365400     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: 1474001X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087405007004     Document Type: Article

References (208)

1. J. Needham, A History of Embryology, Cambridge, 1934.
2. H. Butterfield, 'The historian and the history of science', Bulletin of the British Society for the History of Science (1950), 1, 49-58;
3. H. Butterfield, idem, 'The history of science and the study of history', Harvard Library Bulletin (1959), 13, 329-47;
4. S. Toulmin, 'History and philosophy of science', Universities Quarterly (1955-6), 10, 346-58;
5. A. R. Hall, 'Can the history of science be history?', BJHS (1968-9), 4, 207-20;
6. A. G. Debus, 'The history of science today', Technologia (Belgium) (1986), 9, 133-46, 136;
7. A. Thackray and R. K. Merton, ' On discipline building: the paradoxes of George Sarton', Isis (1972), 63, 473-95;
8. H. Kragh, An Introduction to the Historiography of Science, Cambridge, 1987;
9. P. Redondi, 'Cultura e scienza dall'illuminismo al positivismo', in Storia d'Italia. Annali 3 (ed. G. Micheli), Turin, 1980, 679-811, 681;
10. J. Christie, 'The development of the historiography of science', in Companion to the History of Modern Science (ed. R. Olby, G. Cantor, J. Christie and M. Hodge), London and New York, 1990, 5-22;
11. G. Cantor, ' Charles Singer and the early years of the British Society for the History of Science', BJHS (1997), 30, 5-23;
12. C. Webster, 'Medicine and social history: changing ideas on doctors and patients in the age of Shakespeare', in A Celebration of Medical History: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine and the Welch Medical Library (ed. L. G. Stevenson), Baltimore and London, 1982, 103-26;
13. W. F. K-Sep-ummel, 'Vom Nutzen eines "nicht notwendigen Faches": Karl Sudhoff, Paul Diepgen und Henry Sigerist vor der Frage: "Wozu Medizingeschichte"?', in Geschichte und Ethik in der Medizin (ed. R. Toellner and U. Wiesing), Stuttgart, 1997, 5-16;
14. A. K. Mayer, 'Setting up a discipline: conflicting agendas of the Cambridge History of Science Committee, 1936-1950', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2000), 31, 665-89.
15. A. Heath, 'The teaching of the history of science', Archeion (1932), 14, 89;
16. A. Wolf, 'The teaching of the history of science in the university of London ', Science Progress (1931), 26, 275-9, 276,
17. and Archeion (1932), 14, 101-2;
18. G. Sarton, 'The teaching of the history of science', Scientific Monthly (1918), 7 (September), 193-211, 196;
19. Science Progress (1918-9), 13, 634.
20. G. Sarton, 'Le nouvel humanisme', Scientia (1918), 23, 161-75;
21. G. Sarton, idem, The History of Science and the New Humanism, Bloomington, 1931;
22. C. Singer, 'Scientific humanism", The Realist (1929), 1, 12-8;
23. C. Singer, idem, press statements in the Observer, 28 June 1931, 11; 5 July 1931, 13;
24. W. Osier, 'Introduction', in Studies in the History and Method of Science (ed. C. Singer), 2 vols., Oxford, 1917-21, i, pp. v-viii; ii, p. i.
25. See, for example, A. R. Hall, ' Merton revisited or science and society in the seventeenth century', History of Science (1963) 2, 1-16;
26. Kümmel, History of Science op. cit. (2);
27. A. K. Mayer, 'Fatal mutilations: educationism and the British background to the 1931 International Congress for the History of Science and Technology', History of Science (2002), 40, 445-72, 455-6.
28. For contemporary criticism see A. F. Pollard, Factors in Modern History, 3rd edn, London, 1932, 230-1.
29. C. Singer, A Short History of Medicine: Introducing Medical Principles to Students and Non-medical Readers, Oxford, 1928;
30. C. Singer, idem, A Short History of Biology: A General Introduction to the Study of Living Things, Oxford, 1931;
31. D. Hollinger, 'The unity of knowledge and the diversity of knowers: science as an agent of cultural integration in the United States from the 1920s to the 1960s', in Pursuing the Unity of Science: Ideology and Scientific Practice Between the Great War and the Cold War (ed. G. Sommsen and H. Kamminga), Aldershot, in press.
32. J. Hughes, 'Craftsmanship and social service: W. H. Bragg and the modern Royal Institution', in The Common Purpose of Life: Science and Society at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (ed. F. James), London, 2002, 225-47;
33. D. Hollinger, 'Justification by verification: the scientific challenge to the moral authority of Christianity in modern America', in Religion and Twentieth-Century American Intellectual Life (ed. M. J. Lacey), Cambridge, 1989, 116-35;
34. D. Hollinger, idem, 'The defense of democracy and Robert K. Merton's formulation of the scientific ethos', Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present (1983), 4, 1-15;
35. R. Smith, 'Biology and values in interwar Britain: C. S. Sherrington, Julian Huxley and the vision of progress", Past and Present (2003), 178, 210-42;
36. R. Smith, idem, 'The embodiment of value: C. S. Sherrington and the cultivation of science', BJHS (2000), 33, 283-311.
37. W. H. Brock, 'Past, present, and future', in Teaching the History of Science (ed. M. Shortland and A. Warwick), Oxford, 1989, 30-41;
38. W. H. Brock, idem, 'Science for all', in idem, Science for All: Studies in the History of Victorian Science and Education, Aldershot and Brookfield, VT, 1996, Chapter 19;
39. A. K. Mayer, 'Reluctant technocrats: science promotion in the neglect-of-science debate of 1916-8', History of Science (2005), 43, 139-59.
40. 'Science in Secondary Schools', Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1917), 123-207, 157;
41. F. W. Sanderson, 'Science and educational reconstruction', in Natural Science and the Classical System in Education: Essays Old and New (ed. E. R. Lankester), London, 1918, 207-49, 213-4;
42. note also W. Bragg, 'The presidential address: craftsmanship and science', Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1928), 1-20, 17.
43. J. Huxley, 'On the history of science', in idem, Essays in Popular Science, London, 1926, 163-9, 165
44. (originally published as 'The soul of science", Observer, 27 November 1921, 4). At the time, Huxley was a demonstrator in the zoology department in Oxford, where Singer had until recently held a temporary lectureship in the history of biology. Huxley also performed in a summer school on science and civilization which Singer co-organized in 1922.
45. See J. Morrell, Science at Oxford, 1914-1939: Transforming an Arts University, Oxford, 1997, 220, 261-3;
46. E. A. Underwood, 'Charles Singer: a biographical note', in Science, Medicine and History: Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice, Written in Honour of Charles Singer (ed. E. A. Underwood), 2 vols., London, New York, Toronto, 1953, i, pp. v-ix;
47. J. Huxley, 'Science and religion', in Science and Civilization (ed. F. S. Marvin), Oxford, 1923, 279-329. For the group of scholars Singer brought together in his Oxford days,
48. note also the contributors to C. Singer (ed.), Studies in the History and Method of Science, 2 vols., Oxford, 1917-21.
49. Osier, Studies in the History and Method of Science, op. cit. (4);
50. Webster, Studies in the History and Method of Science, op. cit. (2), 103;
51. Underwood, Studies in the History and Method of Science, op. cit. (10), p. vi. On UCL,
52. see Wolf, Studies in the History and Method of Science, op. cit. (3);
53. A. Armitage, 'The teaching of the history of science in the university of London', Lychnos (1936), 1, 302-7;
54. W. A. Smeaton, 'History of science at University College, London: 1919-1947', BJHS (1997), 30, 25-46. On Whitehead, see note 21 below.
55. For this London network, see e.g. Archeion (1931), 13, 396-7;
56. Archeion (1932), 14, 94-5;
57. also Isis (1931), 15, 126-7.
58. C. Singer, 'The place of history of science in education', Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1926), 420-1, 421;
59. C. Singer, idem, Short History of Biology, op. cit. (6), 122-3;
60. C. Singer, idem, 'Foreword', in D. M. Turner, The Book of Scientific Discovery: How Science Has Aided Human Welfare, London, 1933, 3-4, 4.
61. Sarton, The Book of Scientific Discovery: How Science Has Aided Human Welfare, op. cit. (3), 201, 196.
62. G. Sarton, 'An institute for the history of science", Science (1917), 45, 284-6;
63. G. Sarton, idem, 'An institute for the history of science and civilization', Science (1917), 46, 399-402.
64. Thackray and Merton, Science op. cit. (2);
65. Mayer, Science op. cit. (2);
66. J. McEvoy, 'Positivism, whiggism, and the chemical revolution: a study in the historiography of chemistry', History of Science (1997), 35, 1-33;
67. P. Galison, 'History, philosophy and the central metaphor', Science in Context (1988), 2, 197-212.
68. T. Scheinfeldt, 'Why don't historians of science care about science museums?', paper presented at the conference on ' Science, Communication, Education and the History of Science ' at the Royal Society, London, 12-13 July 2000.
69. G. Sarton, 'An institute for the history of science and civilization', Isis (1938), 28, 7-17.
70. Anon., Sanderson of Oundle, London, 1923, 114;
71. G. Sarton, 'How to celebrate the memory of great men', Isis (1931), 15, 339-40, 339;
72. C. Singer, 'The teaching of medical history', British Medical Journal, 2 August 1919, 141-2, 142.
73. F. M. Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, New Haven, CT, 1981, 17.
74. Huxley, ' On the history of science', The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, op. cit. (10), 164 (original emphasis). Huxley here echoed concerns that educationists like Dewey in America and Whitehead or Percy Nunn in Britain expressed when they criticized what they perceived to be extant pedagogical practices for congesting the mind with expendable facts and abstractions, with what they wrote off as 'inert' knowledge;
75. as discussed in Mayer, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, op. cit. (5), 459ff.
76. C. Singer, 'Autobiographical preface to Dover edition', in idem, From Magic to Science: Essays on the Scientific Twilight, New York, 1958, pp. vii-xvii, xiii. For a modern study of the significance of material models in knowledge-making,
77. see S. de Chadarevian and N. Hopwood (eds.), Models: The Third Dimension of Science, Stanford, 2004.
78. Wolf, Models: The Third Dimension of Science, op. cit. (3);
79. Archeion (1931), 13, 396-7;
80. Armitage, Archeion op. cit. (11).
81. New York Times, 30 June 1931, 8;
82. Times Educational Supplement, 4 July 1931, 266.
83. R. Bud, 'History of science and the Science Museum', BJHS (1997), 30, 47-50.
84. Scheinfeldt, BJHS op. cit. (17).
85. W. Osier, 'The old humanities and the new science', British Medical Journal, 5 July 1919, 1-7;
86. R. T. Gunther, Early Science in Oxford, Vol. 1: Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Surveying, Oxford, 1923, p. vi;
87. J. A. Bennett, ' Museums and the establishment of the history of science at Oxford and Cambridge ', BJHS (1997), 30, 29-46;
88. A. Van Helden and T. L. Hankins, 'Introduction: instruments in the history of science', Osiris (1994), 9, 1-6;
89. Galison, Osiris op. cit. (16);
90. Mayer, Osiris op. cit. (5).
91. Webster, Osiris op. cit. (2), 104, 107. On this shift in early twentieth-century medical historiography and the increased distinctions between the scientific and the non-scientific that characterized it,
92. note also F. Huisman, 'Shaping the medical market: on the construction of quackery and folk medicine in Dutch historiography', Medical History (1999), 43, 359-75.
93. A. Mieli, review of C. Singer, Short History of Medicine, op. cit. (6),
94. C. Singer, Religion and Science Considered in Their Historical Relations, London, 1928
95. and C. Singer, From Magic to Science, London, 1928
96. in Archeion (1928), 9, 394-9, 396. On the foundation of the Académie internationale
97. see P. Costabel and M. D. Grmek, L'Académie internationale d'histoire des sciences. Cinquante ans: 1927-1977, Paris, 1977;
98. C. J. Scriba, 'The beginnings of the international congresses of the history of science', in XVIIIth International Congress of the History of Science, Hamburg-Munich, 1st-9th August, 1989. Final Report (ed. F. Krafft and C. J. Scriba), Stuttgart, 1993, 3-10.
99. Singer, Short History of Medicine, op. cit. (6), p. viii;
100. Singer, idem, The Evolution of Anatomy, London, 1925, p. viii.
101. For Singer's press statements see op. cit. (4). For the programme see Archeion (1931), 13, 74-6; W. Welch, diary of the 1931 congress (transcript), Needham Papers, Cambridge University Library, H141;
102. M. Greenwood, 'The international congress of the history of science and technology', Nature, 11 July 1931, 77-9;
103. J. D. Bernai, 'Science and society', The Spectator, 11 July 1931, 43-4;
104. W. Adams, 'The international congress for the history of science and technology', History (1931-2), 16, 202-13.
105. C. Singer, The First Century of Science in England: Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton, 1584-1687. Notes Descriptive of an Exhibit at the British Museum, London, 1931, 3 (my emphasis). For a rather different conception of the relations between technology and science and the status of things,
106. see e.g. Bragg, The First Century of Science in England: Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton, 1584-1687. Notes Descriptive of an Exhibit at the British Museum, op. cit. (9);
107. Hughes, The First Century of Science in England: Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton, 1584-1687. Notes Descriptive of an Exhibit at the British Museum, op. cit. (7), 245.
108. Morrell, The First Century of Science in England: Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton, 1584-1687. Notes Descriptive of an Exhibit at the British Museum, op. cit. (10), 261ff;
109. Mieli, The First Century of Science in England: Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton, 1584-1687. Notes Descriptive of an Exhibit at the British Museum, op. cit. (29), 394-5;
110. E. A. Underwood, 'Dorothea Waley Singer', BJHS (1964-5), 2, 260-2;
111. Singer, BJHS op. cit. (10);
112. Underwood, BJHS op. cit. (10), p. ix.
113. For both the genderedness of the scholarly persona and the role of the home in the creation of the male scholarly persona in the nineteenth century note L. Daston, 'Die wissenschaftliche Persona. Arbeit und Berufung', in Zwischen Vorderbühne und Hinterbühne: Beiträge zum Wandel der Geschlechterbeziehungen in der Wissenschaft vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (ed. T. Wobbe), Bielefeld, 2003, 109-36.
114. Observer, 28 June 1931, 11;
115. Adams, Observer op. cit. (31), 202, 204.
116. Graphic, 11 July 1931, 41;
117. Needham, Graphic op. cit. (1), pp. xv-xvi;
118. Needham, 'Foreword', in Science at the Cross Roads: Papers Presented to the International Congress of the History of Science and Technology, London, 1971, pp. vii-x;
119. C. Chilvers, ' The 1931 Second International Congress on the History of Science and Technology as a public platform for science', paper presented at the conference on 'Circulating Knowledge', Halifax, Nova Scotia, 5-7 August 2004;
120. also G. Werskey, The Visible College: A Collective Biography of British Scientists and Socialists of the 1930s, London, 1978, 140ff;
121. A. K. Mayer, 'Setting up a discipline II: British history of science and "the end of ideology" 1931/1948 ', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2004), 35, 41-72.
122. For a recent discussion of how the relations between technology and science were variouslyconceived then and later note P. McLaughlin, 'Rethinking internalism in the Scientific Revolution', paper presented at the annual meeting of the HSS in Austin, Texas, 18-21 November 2004.
123. P. Findlen, 'Masculine prerogatives: gender, space, and knowledge in the early modern museum', in The Architecture of Science (ed. P. Galison and E. Thompson), Cambridge, MA, and Cambridge, England, 1999, 29-57.
124. M. W. Young, 'The careless collector: Malinowski and the antiquarians', in Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s-1930s (ed. M. O'Hanlon and R. L. Welsch), New York and Oxford, 2000, 181-202, 183.
125. Note also Singer's strained relations with Henry Wellcome and his conception of historical collecting: G. M. Skinner, 'Sir Henry Wellcome's museum for the science of history', Medical History (1986), 30, 384-418.
126. H. Mehrtens, 'Mathematical models', in de Chadarevian and Hopwood, Medical History op. cit. (22), 276-306, 300, 279;
127. H. Mehrtens, idem, Moderne - Sprache - Mathematik. Eine Geschichte des Streits um die Grundlagen der Disziplin und des Subjektes formaler Systeme, Frankfurt, 1990;
128. H. Mehrtens, idem, 'Modernism vs. counter-modernism, nationalism vs. internationalism: style and politics in mathematics 1900-1950', in L'Europe mathématique: Histoire, mythes, identités (ed. C. Goldstein, J. Gray and J. Ritter), Paris, 1996, 517-29.
129. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger introduced the concept of 'epistemic things' specifically to capture researchers' irreducibly vague objects of desire around which experimental systems are arranged. Here I use his more general definition of the term as 'things embodying concepts'. H.-J. Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube, Stanford, 1997, 8.
130. M. Shallcross, The Private World of Daphne du Maurier, London, 1991, 162;
131. D. du Maurier, Enchanted Cornwall: Her Pictorial Memoir (ed. P. Dudgeon), London, 1989, 171.
132. D. du Maurier, The House on the Strand (London, 1969);
133. idem, The House on the Strand op. cit. (40), 171.
134. A. L. Rowse, Friends and Contemporaries, London, 1989, 280;
135. W. R. Hall, 'Other literary contacts at Fowey and neighbourhood', homepage.ntlworld.com/dani.hall/other.html (14 July 2004).
136. Mieli, Other Literary Contacts at Fowey and Neighbourhood op. cit. (29), 395.
137. Mieli, Other Literary Contacts at Fowey and Neighbourhood op. cit. (29), 395. Had there been more to see, Mieli would have mentioned it;
138. see his other visits, recounted in 'Un viaggio in Germania. Impressioni ed appunti di uno storico della scienza', Archeion (1926), 7, 342-81.
139. Singer himself similarly spoke of his 'tolerably good' library at Kilmarth, but not of the basement, when he invited the medical historian Henry Sigerist for a visit; as cited in G. Miller, ' Charles and Dorothea Singer's aid to Nazi victims', Koroth (1985), 8.11-2, 207-7, 210.
140. Armitage, Koroth op. cit. (11), 306-7.
141. Singer, Short History of Medicine, op. cit. (6), p. vii;
142. Singer, Short History of Biology, op. cit. (6), p. vii;
143. A. Wolf, A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries, London, 1935, pp. xxv-xxvi.
144. S. Schaffer and S. Shapin, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, Princeton, 1985, 59.
145. S. Shapin, 'Pump and circumstance: Robert Boyle's literary technology', Social Studies of Science (1984), 14, 481-520, 491.
146. On literary vividness see H. Strasburger, Die "Wesensbestimmung der Geschichte durch die antike Geschichtsschreibung, Wiesbaden, 1966;
147. C. Ginzburg, 'Montrer et citer: La Verité de l'histoire', Le Débat (1989), 56, 43-45;
148. M. Wintroub, 'The looking glass of facts: collecting, rhetoric and citing the self in the experimental natural philosophy of Robert Boyle', History of Science (1997), 35, 189-217.
149. Schaffer and Shapin, History of Science op. cit. (47), 62.
150. A. Mieli, review of Wolf, op. cit. (46), Archeion (1935), 17, 275-82, 275.
151. Wolf, Archeion op. cit. (46), pp. xxv-xxvi.
152. Wolf, Archeion op. cit. (3), 279.
153. Mieli, Archeion op. cit. (50), 277-8, 281.
154. G. Sarton, review of Wolf, op. cit. (46), Isis (1935-6), 24, 164-7, 167, 164.
155. G. Sarton, review of C. Singer, The Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood (London, 1922), Isis (1923), 5, 194-6;
156. J. A. Thomson, 'The drama of life', review of Singer, Short History of Biology, op. cit. (6),
157. Listener, 29 April 1931, 719;
158. Mieli, Listener op. cit. (29);
159. Mieli, review of C. Singer, The Evolution of Anatomy: A Short History of Anatomical and Physiological Discovery to Harvey (London, 1925), Archeion (1926), 7, 402-3.
160. In a related context Raphael Samuel has pointed to the introduction of social history into elementary teaching in the 1920s as an example of novel uses of the romance of the visual and material culture in schools. Historical illustration, he argues, was the cutting edge of this phenomenon, which he placed within a long and rich tradition of memory-making through iconography. R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory, Vol 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture, London and New York, 1994, 38;
161. Mayer, Theatres of Memory, Vol1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture op. cit. (5), 456ff.
162. C. Singer, The Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood, London, 1922.
163. Singer, 'Foreword', The Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood, op. cit. (13), 4.
164. Singer, The Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood, op. cit. (57), 66-7;
165. Singer idem, Short History of Biology, op. cit. (6), 122-3.
166. Singer, Short History of Biology op. cit. (57), Plate vi.
167. The page in question was p. 80 of Harvey's Prelectiones Anatomiae Universalis, discovered in the British Museum in 1886
168. (Excitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus, by William Harvey, M.D. An English Translation with Annotations (ed. C. D. Leake), Springfield, IL, 1970, facing p. 1). Singer reproduced illustrations from Harvey's De Motu Cordis, yet without attributing them great iconic significance. They are crammed together on a plate they share with a large figure of a dissection from Fabricius; this plate is situated nowhere near a culmination point of Singer's account
169. (Excitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus, by William Harvey, M.D. An English Translation with Annotations op. cit. (57), Plate vii).
170. Sarton was particularly attached to marshalling title pages (and bland ones at that): see e.g. Isis (1936), 16.ii, 472-5,
171. or 'Johannes Antonides Vander Linden (1609-1664): Medical writer and bibliographer', in Underwood, Isis op. cit. (10), ii, 3-20.
172. In contrast to Needham, who in his History of Embryology (op. cit. (1), facing p. 133)
173. displayed the full title page of Harvey's De Generatione Animalium (1651),
174. Singer chose only a detail - the image of Zeus liberating living beings from an egg. Missing were the monumental trappings and the image was embedded in the text (Short History of Biology, op. cit. (6), 461). Both Singer's Short History of Medicine and his The Evolution of Anatomy made use of the title page of Vesalius's De Fabrica (1543), yet the dramatic dissection scene at Padua depicted there could not easily have been reproduced as a detail from the original.
175. Singer, Short History of Biology op. cit. (10), 142.
176. C. Singer, Greek Science and Modern Science: A Comparison and a Contrast, London, 1920;
177. C. Singer, idem, Greek Science and Modern Science: A Comparison and a Contrast op. cit. (10), 142;
178. C. Singer, Greek Science and Modern Science: A Comparison and a Contrast op. cit. (57), 48-50;
179. C. Singer, idem, Short History of Biology, op. cit. (6), 122-3;
180. C. Singer, idem, ' The beginnings of science', Nature, 4 July 1931, 7-10, 7;
181. G. Heard, This Surprising World: A Journalist Looks at Science, London, 1932, 32.
182. S. Schaffer, 'Scientific discoveries and the end of natural philosophy', Social Studies of Science (1986), 16, 387-420, 406-9;
183. R. Yeo, 'Genius, method, and morality: images of Newton in Britain, 1760-1860', Science in Context (1988), 2, 257-84. For Singer's views on discovery, see note 58 above.
184. Singer, Short History of Medicine, op. cit. (6), 74, 86.
185. He had explored the pictorial presentation of dissection in great detail in 'A study in early Renaissance anatomy', in Short History of Medicine, idem, op. cit. (10), i, 79-164.
186. The insight that the past (and history) did not provide straightforward models for emulation or rules to be reapplied, but instead offered material that the agent had to 'purify' in the melting pot of his own judgement, is part of a reconfiguring of the historical enterprise in the late nineteenth century associated with such figures as J. G. Droysen. See Droysen, Historik: Vorlesungen über Enzyklopedie und Methodologie der Geschichte (ed. R. Hübner), 3rd edn, Munich, 1958, 300;
187. R. Koselleck, 'Historia Magistra Vitae. Über die Auflösung des Topos im Horizont neuzeitlich bewegter Geschichte', in Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (ed. R. Koselleck), Frankfurt am Main, 1979, 38-66;
188. A. Megill, '"Grand narrative" and the discipline of history', in A New Philosophy of History (ed. F. Ankersmit and H. Keller), Chicago, 1995, 151-73.
189. Singer, A New Philosophy of History op. cit. (10), 142.
190. See note 13 above.
191. Ginzburg, A New Philosophy of History op. cit. (48);
192. A. Momigliano, 'Ancient history and the antiquarian', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (1950), 13, 285-315.
193. Ginzburg, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes op. cit. (48), 49;
194. Strasburger, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes op. cit. (48), 77-9.
195. Singer, 'Foreword', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes op. cit. (13), 4.
196. Indeed while for Singer and others texts became their preferred medium, some of their contemporaries were more pessimistic. The Oxford chemist and science popularizer A. S. Russell dismissed science history as a science didactics for the science-illiterates; similarly the neo-Hippocratic movement seemed to unite specifically around concerns that language, through the temptations it offered to reify abstractions, operated as an obstacle to sound diagnostics (and as an active source of, rather than an antidote to, social disorder). More broadly, in the fashionable cultural pessimism of the educated class at the time, language (particularly everyday language) came to be viewed with suspicion and hostility. See A. S. Russell, ' Is the history of science worthwhile?', Listener, 9 July 1930, 60;
197. D. Cantor, 'The name and the word: neo-Hippocratism and language in interwar Britain', in Reinventing Hippocrates (ed. D. Cantor), Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2002, 280-301;
198. Cantor, 'Between Galen, Geddes and the Gael: Arthur Brock, modernity, and medical humanism in early twentieth-century Scotland', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (2005), 60, 1-41;
199. S. Collini, ' " On highest authority": The literary critic and other aviators in early twentieth-century Britain', in Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences 1870-1930 (ed. Dorothy Ross), Baltimore and London, 1994, 152-70.
200. Megill, Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences 1870-1930 op. cit. (66).
201. Singer, The Beginnings of Science, op. cit. (63), 8.
202. J. Needham, The Great Amphibium: Four Lectures on Religion in a World Dominated by Science, London, 1931.
203. R. Hayward, 'Gerald Heard (1889-1971) and the religious psychology of popular science', paper presented at the conference on 'Circulating Knowledge', Halifax, Nova Scotia, 5-7 August 2004. Contemporaries of Needham in his desires to integrate intellectual, technological and spiritual progress include Frank Hayward and Archie Heath (both of whom were invited speakers at the 1931 congress) and Singer's doctoral student Frank Sherwood Taylor, whose career as a chemist, teacher and historian eventually included a dramatic conversion to Rome.
204. See A. V. Simcock, 'Alchemy and the world of science: an intellectual biography of Frank Sherwood Taylor', Ambix (1987), 34, 121-39;
205. Mayer, Ambix op. cit. (5), 449ff;
206. Mayer, idem, 'Geschichte als Vervollkommnung: Die Bekehrungen von Frank Sherwood Taylor und Joseph Needham', in Jenseits der entzauberten Welt. Naturwissenschaft und Mystik in der Moderne (ed. L. Pfeiffer and K. Vondung), Paderborn, in press.
207. C. Ginzburg, 'Représentation: Le Mot, l'idée, la chose", Annales, économies, societés, civilisations (1991), 46.6, 1219-34, 1229-30.
208. P. Galison, 'Judgement against objectivity', in Picturing Science, Producing Art (ed. P. Galison and C. Jones, with A. Slayton), New York and London, 1998, 327-59.