Misperception, illusion and epistemological optimism: Vision studies in early nineteenth-century Britain and Germany

British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 383-405

  Schickore, Jutta ^a  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; GERMANY; HISTORY; HUMAN; OPTICS; PHYSIOLOGY; UNITED KINGDOM; VISION; VISUAL ILLUSION;

GERMANY; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HUMANS; OPTICAL ILLUSIONS; OPTICS; OPTICS AND PHOTONICS; PHYSIOLOGY; VISION; VISION, OCULAR; VISUAL PERCEPTION;

EID: 33747789106     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: 1474001X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087406008387     Document Type: Article

References (136)

1. For an overview of early nineteenth-century research on optical toys see N. Wade, 'Philosophical instruments and toys: optical devices extending the art of seeing', Journal of the History of the Neurosciences (2004), 13, 102-24.
2. On Brewster's investigations of the kaleidoscope and other optical devices see M. Kemp, ' " Philosophy in sport " and the " sacred precincts ": Sir David Brewster on the kaleidoscope and stereoscope', in Muse and Reason: The Relation of Arts and Sciences 1650-1850 (ed. B. Castel et al.), Kingston, 1994;
3. R. J. Silverman, 'The stereoscope and photographic depiction in the 19th century', Technology and Culture (1993), 34, 729-56;
4. A. Morrison-Low, 'Brewster and scientific instruments', in 'Martyr of Science': Sir David Brewster 1781-1868 (ed. A. Morrison-Low and J. R. Christie), Edinburgh, 1984, 59-65.
5. On visual imagination in Victorian culture see K. Flint, The Victorians and the Visual Imagination, Cambridge, 2000;
6. and M. Benjamin, 'Sliding scales: microphotography and the Victorian obsession with the minuscule', in Cultural Babbage: Technology, Time and Invention (ed. F. Spufford and J. Uglow), London, 1996, 99-122.
7. Optical toys are often considered as part of the prehistory of cinema, as in S. Neale, Cinema and Technology: Image, Sound, Colour, Bloomington, 1985;
8. M. Chanan, The Dream that Kicks: The Prehistory and Early Years of Cinema in Britain, London, 1980;
9. A. Knight, The Liveliest Art: A Panoramic History of the Movies, New York, 1959;
10. for a very early example see H. V. Hopwood, Living Pictures: Their History, Photo-Production and Practical Working, London, 1899.
11. The sudden interest in the German project of 'subjective sensory physiology' that developed in the mid-1990s can be explained with the upsurge of research on Hermann von Helmholtz on the occasion of the centennial of his death in 1994. Much of the work on early nineteenth-century sensory physiology arose from the interest in the 'prehistory' of Helmholtz's physiological optics. This 'prehistory' is treated in M. Heidelberger, 'Innen und Außen der Wahrnehmung. Zwei Auffassungen des 19. Jahrhunderts (und was daraus wurde)' in Video ergo sum. Repräsentationen nach innen und auβen zwischen Kunst- und Neurowissenschaften (ed. O. Breidbach and K. Clausberg), Hamburg, 1999, 147-57;
12. M. Heidelberger, 'Beziehungen zwischen Sinnesphysiologie und Philosophie im 19. Jahrhundert' in Philosophie und Wissenschaften. Formen und Prozesse ihrer Interaktion (ed. H. J. Sandkühler), Frankfurt am Main, 1997, 37-58;
13. R. S. Turner, In the Eye's Mind: Vision and the Helmholtz-Hering Controversy, Princeton, 1994;
14. T. Lenoir, 'The eye as a mathematician: clinical practice, instrumentation, and Helmholtz's construction of an empiricist theory of vision', in Hermann von Helmholtz and the Foundations of Nineteenth-Century Science (ed. D. Cahan), Berkeley, 1993, 109-53;
15. T. Lenoir, 'Helmholtz, Müller und die Erziehung der Sinne', in Johannes Müller und die Philosophie (ed. M. Hagner and B. Wahrig-Schmidt), Berlin, 1992, 207-22;
16. and G. Hatfield, The Natural and the Normative: Theories of Spatial Perception from Kant to Helmholtz, Cambridge, MA, 1990.
17. Other historians and, occasionally, philosophers have considered physiological investigations in the context of recent revisions of Romantic science and philosophy. For the relation between sensory physiology and Romanticism see J. Müller-Tamm, 'Die "Empirie des Subjektiven" bei Jan Evangelista Purkinje: Zum Verhältnis von Sinnesphysiologie und Ästhetik im frühen 19. Jahrhundert', in Wahrnehmung der Natur-Natur der Wahrnehmung. Studien zur Geschichte visueller Kultur um 1800 (ed. G. Dürbeck et al.), Dresden, 2001, 153-64;
18. and D. L. Sepper, 'Goethe, colour, and the science of seeing', in Romanticism and the Sciences (ed. A. Cunningham and N. Jardine), Cambridge, 1990, 189-98.
19. For the philosophical context of Purkinje's and Müller's works see M. Hagner, 'Psychophysiologie und Sinneserfahrung. Metamorphosen des Schwindels und der Aufmerksamkeit im 19. Jahrhundert', in Aufmerksamkeiten (ed. A. Assmann and J. Assmann), München, 2001, 241-63;
20. M. Hagner, 'Sinnlichkeit und Sittlichkeit. Spinozas "Grenzenlose Uneigennützigkeit" und Johannes Müllers Entwurf einer Sinnesphysiologie', in Johannes Müller und die Philosophie (ed. M. Hagner and B. Wahrig-Schmidt), Berlin, 1992, 29-44;
21. and, again, Hatfield, Johannes Müller und die Philosophie, op. cit.
22. On the compensatory role of sensory physiology for early nine-teenth-century brain research see M. Hagner, Homo cerebralis. Der Wandel vom Seelenorgan zum Gehirn. Berlin, 1997, 238-46.
23. J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge and London, 1990;
24. D. Pick, 'Stories of the eye', in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (ed. R. Porter), London, 1997, 186-99.
25. J. W. von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, Weimar, 1987 (1810);
26. G. Steinbuch, Beytrag zur Physiologie der Sinne, Nürnberg, 1811;
27. C. T. Tourtual, Die Sinne des Menschen in den Wechselbeziehungen ihres psychischen und organischen Lebens, Münster, 1827.
28. J. E. Purkinje, Beobachtungen und Versuche zur Physiologie der Sinne, Erstes Bändchen, Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Sehens in subjektiver Hinsicht, 2nd edn., Prague, 1823;
29. J. E. Purkinje, idem, Abhandlung über die physiologische Untersuchung des Sehorgans und des Hautsystems, Halle, 1823;
30. J. E. Purkinje, idem, Beobachtungen und Versuche zur Physiologie der Sinne. Neue Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Sehens in subjektiver Hinsicht, Berlin, 1825.
31. J. Müller, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie des Gesichtssinnes des Menschen und der Thiere nebst einem Versuch über die Bewegung der Augen und über den menschlichen Blick, Leipzig, 1826;
32. J. Müller, idem, Ueber die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen. Eine physiologische Untersuchung mit einer physiologischen Urkunde des Aristoteles über den Traum, den Philosophen und Aerzten gewidmet, München, 1967 (1826)
33. (on which see Hagner, 'Sinnlichkeit und Sittlichkeit', Ueber die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen. Eine physiologische Untersuchung mit einer physiologischen Urkunde des Aristoteles über den Traum, den Philosophen und Aerzten gewidmet, op. cit. (2)).
34. J. Müller, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie, op. cit. (6), p. xiv.
35. A. Cunningham and N. Jardine, 'The age of reflexion', in Romanticism and the Sciences (ed. A. Cunningham and N. Jardine), Cambridge, 1990, 1-9.
36. F. W. J. Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, Cambridge, 1988 (1803).
37. S. Strickland, 'The ideology of self-knowledge and the practice of self-experimentation', Eighteenth-Century Studies (1998), 31, 453-71, 454-6.
38. J. E. Purkinje, 'Beiträge zur Physiologie der menschlichen Sprache", in idem, Opera Omnia, 12 vols., Prague, 1973, xii, 47-88, 48.
39. On Müller's philosophical background and university education see D. von Engelhardt, 'Müller und Hegel. Zum Verhältnis von Naturwissenschaft und Naturphilosophie im deutschen Idealismus', in Johannes Müller und die Philosophie (ed. M. Hagner and B. Wahrig-Schmidt), Berlin, 1992, 85-104;
40. N. Tsouyopoulos, 'Schellings Naturphilosophie: Sünde oder Inspiration für den Reformer der Physiologie Johannes Müller?', in Johannes Müller und die Philosophie (ed. M. Hagner and B. WahrigSchmidt), Berlin, 1992, 65-83;
41. and M. Müller, 'Über die philosophischen Anschauungen des Naturforschers Johannes Müller ', Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin (1926), 18, 130-50, 209-34, 328-50.
42. On the search for a scientific physiology and the physiological exploration of 'subject-object' see B. Lohff, Die Suche nach der Wissenschaftlichkeit der Physiologie in der Zeit der Romantik, Stuttgart and New York, 1990.
43. For the relation between physiology and Romantic philosophy see also T. Broman, The Transformation of German Academic Medicine, 1750-1820, Cambridge and New York, 1996.
44. Gerlof Verwey explicitly suggests that Müller's philosophy can be understood as a 'scientific complement' to the philosophy of German idealism but reads early nineteenth-century sensory physiology as an attempt to overcome the Cartesian dualism between mind and body, not the Kantian dualism between things in themselves and things for us; G. Verwey, 'Johannes Müller und das Leib-Seele-Verhältnis. Zur systematisch-philosophischen und philosophie- und wissenschaftshistorischen Ortung', in Johannes Müller und die Philosophie (ed. M. Hagner and B. Wahrig-Schmidt), Berlin, 1992, 173-90, 177.
45. In contrast, Michael Hagner has shown that Purkinje's experimental investigations of vertigo were to reconcile the categorical distinction between the brain and the mind, thus challenging the dualistic positions of both Kant and the late eighteenth-century Erfahrungsseelenkunde or empirical psychology of Marcus Herz and Karl Philipp Moritz (see Hagner, 'Psychophysiologie und Sinneserfahrung', Johannes Müller und die Philosophie, op. cit. (2), Section II, especially 256-7).
46. On this transformation see S. Moravia, 'From homme machine to homme sensible: Changing eighteenth-century models of man's image', Journal of the History of Ideas (1978), 39, 45-60.
47. The roots of the notion of energy reach back to the works of Aristotle, which Müller knew well. See R. G. Mazzolini, 'Müller und Aristoteles', in Johannes Müller und die Philosophie (ed. M. Hagner and B. Wahrig-Schmidt), Berlin, 1992, 11-27.
48. The doctrine states that each of the senses possesses energy specific to it. The specificity of the sense energy explains that a manipulation of the sense of hearing, for example, always produces the sensation of a sound, never the sensation of light. See W. Riese and C. E. Arrington, 'The history of Johannes Müller's doctrine of the specific energies in the senses: original and later versions', Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1963), 39, 179-83.
49. Purkinje, Beobachtungen, 1823, op. cit. (5), 8.
50. Purkinje, Beobachtungen, 1823, op. cit. (5), 5.
51. It was in fact Purkinje's work, which Müller cited as a reference for his own methodical beginning with visual truths (Müller, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie, op. cit. (6), 46).
52. Purkinje, Beobachtungen, 1823, op. cit. (5), 4.
53. Müller, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie, op. cit. (6), p. vi, emphasis added.
54. Müller's book on 'fantastic visual appearances' shows how the imagination could also produce sensations (Müller, Ueber die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen, op. cit. (6)), but these appearances could be understood as 'fantastic' only in contrast to other sensations that were brought about by external stimuli of various kinds.
55. For the history of mouches volantes see H. Flange, 'Muscae volitantes - Von frühen Beobachtungen zu Purkinjes Erklärung', Gesnerus (1990), 47, 31-43.
56. J. Ware, 'Muscae volitantes of nervous persons', Medico-Chirurgical Transactions (1814), 5, 255-77.
57. Ware, Medico-chirurgical Transactions, op. cit. (23), 255.
58. Purkinje, Beobachtungen, 1823, op. cit. (5), 129.
59. Purkinje, Beobachtungen, 1823, op. cit. (5) 130-1.
60. According to Crary, the relocation of vision in the so-called 'physiological thickness' of the body encountered in Purkinje's and Müller's work had grave and far-reaching epistemological consequences. It 'presents the outlines of a visual modernity in which the "referential illusion" is unsparingly laid bare. The very absence of referentiality is the ground on which new instrumental techniques will construct for an observer a new "real" world. It is a question, in the early 1830s, of a perceiver whose very empirical nature renders identities unstable and mobile, and for whom sensations are interchangeable. In effect, vision is redefined as a capacity for being affected by sensations that have no necessary link to a referent, thus imperiling any coherent system of meaning' (Crary op. cit. (3), 91). Crary suggests that early nineteenth-century vision research created an 'autonomous observer' who moved in a world of experiences that was severed from the external world. My interpretation of Purkinje's and Müller's works points to a different conclusion. The referential link between sensations and external objects was not severed, and no autonomous observer emerged. Rather, the experiments showed how exactly sensations and perceptions were linked to the external world. The sense organ's activity might affect and occasionally impede veridical perception but it was assumed that the eye's impact on perception could be determined in self-experiments.
61. Müller, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie, op. cit. (6), 39, see also footnote 66.
62. Purkinje, Beobachtungen, 1823, op. cit. (5), 7, emphasis added. About fifteen years later Purkinje spoke (op. cit. (11), 48) of a 'boundary region between the external world and the inner intellectual'.
63. This is the title of a collected volume on diverse aspects of Brewster's life and career: A. Morrison-Low and J. R. Christie (eds.), 'Martyr of Science': Sir David Brewster 1781-1868, Edinburgh, 1984.
64. G. N. Cantor, 'The historiography of "georgian" optics', History of Science (1978), 16, 1-21, Section iii;
65. see also G. N. Cantor, idem, Optics After Newton; Theories of Light in Britain and Ireland 1704-1840, Manchester, 1983,19-21.
66. It was only in the nineteenth century that vision studies (physiological optics) and the study of light (physical optics) became separated. Historians who have reconstructed these developments from the perspective of the discipline of physiological optics have therefore described the decade before 1840 as a 'pre-paradigmatic' period; see Turner Optics after Newton; Theories of Light in Britain and Ireland 1704-1840, op. cit. (2), 11.
67. Morison-Low, Optics after Newton; Theories of Light in Britain and Ireland 1704-1840, op. cit. (1).
68. D. Brewster, ' On the optical illusion of the conversion of cameos into intaglios, and of intaglios into cameos, with an account of other analogous phenomena' (1826), in Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision (ed. N. Wade), London and New York, 1983, 56-65.
69. T. Birch, History of the Royal Society, London, 1967 (1744), 348-9;
70. P. F. Gmelin, 'Epistola de Radice Ipecacuanhae Observationes Quasdam Medico-Physicas, & de Fallaci Visione per Microscopia Composita Notata Nonnulla Continens", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1744-5), 43, 382-91.
71. B. Hindle and H. M. Hindle, 'David Rittenhouse and the illusion of reversible relief, Isis (1959), 50, 135-40.
72. See especially his critical response to the anatomist and physiologist Charles Bell about the role of the eyeball's muscular activity in vision. Bell had published his discoveries concerning the muscles of the eyeball in 1823 (C. Bell, 'On the motions of the eye, in illustration of the muscles and of the orbit', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1823), 113, 166-86).
73. Brewster's refutation followed two years later (D. Brewster, 'Observations on the vision of impressions on the retina, in reference to certain supposed discoveries respecting vision announced by Mr. Charles Bell' (1825), in Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision (ed. N. Wade), London and New York, 1983, 49-56). Brewster utilized the last paragraph of this paper to air his views about the power of mental activity in perception (55-6).
74. See John Yolton's survey of accounts of sense perception in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: J. Yolton, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, Minneapolis, 1984.
75. Hatfield, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, op. cit. (2), 39.
76. Brewster, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, op. cit. (33), 60, emphasis added. Notably, Brewster maintained that the greater our knowledge is about the distribution of light and shadow, the more susceptible are we to the deception.
77. Brewster, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, op. cit. (33), 63-4.
78. Brewster, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, op. cit. (33), 65.
79. Brewster, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, op. cit. (33), 56, 57.
80. D. Brewster, 'On the optical phenomena, nature, and locality of Muscae Volitantes; with observations on the structure of the vitreous humour, and on the vision of objects placed within the eye' (1844), in Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision (ed. N. Wade), London and New York, 1983, 279-87, 279.
81. Purkinje, Beobachtungen, 1823, op. cit. (5), 121.
82. It is likely that Brewster was acquainted with Purkinje's work. Although the 1844 article does not cite Purkinje's writings, Brewster most probably knew Wheatstone's English rendering of Purkinje's Contributions to and Experiments on a Physiology of the Senses in the Journal of the Royal Institution of 1830 (C. Wheatstone, 'Contributions to the physiology of vision - No. I' (1830), in Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision (ed. N. Wade), London and New York, 1983, 248-62).
83. Brewster, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (43), 283.
84. Brewster, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (43), 283.
85. Brewster, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (43), 287.
86. D. Brewster, Letters on Natural Magic, London, 1832, 6.
87. N. Phillipson, 'Sir David Brewster: some concluding remarks', in Morrison-Low and Christie, Letters on Natural Magic, op. cit. (30), 79-81.
88. Brewster, Letters on Natural Magic, op. cit. (48), 57.
89. Brewster, Letters on Natural Magic, op. cit. (48), 66.
90. Kemp, Letters on Natural Magic, op. cit. (1), 206.
91. Kemp, Letters on Natural Magic, op. cit. (1), 209.
92. For a similar project of Enlightenment optics see J. A. Paris's three volumes on Philosophy in Sport Made Science in Earnest; Being an Attempt to illustrate the First Principles of Natural Philosophy by the Aid of Popular Toys and Sports, written for adolescents. The book relates the story of a certain Tom Seymour, a boy who spends his school vacations with his family and learns from his father the scientific principles behind his various leisurely occupations. The third volume of the book ends with a narration of the festivities at the end of his vacations. The highlight of the party is the performance of a conjuror who entertains the audience with all sorts of optical illusions, as, for example, 'phantasmagoria' exhibiting 'a variety of ghastly objects, which alternately receding from, and approaching the audience, called forth shrieks of terror and amazement'. As one of the 'most appalling of these figures' appeared the 'headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow' (J. A. Paris, Philosophy in Sport Made Science in Earnest; Being an Attempt to illustrate the First Principles of Natural Philosophy by the Aid of Popular Toys and Sports, 3 vols., London, 1827, iii, 77-80). Although the book does not in fact provide explanations for these scary events - the boy, 'quite impatient' to know them, is promised further instructions during Christmas vacations - it is stressed that all these apparitions could be explained by scientific principles.
93. Brewster's early research on light culminated in the article 'Light' for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia in 1822. In this article Brewster advocated a projectile theory of light that he compared favourably to the competing wave theory. Only a few years after the publication of the article the wave theory of light became prominent; see J. Z. Buchwald, The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light: Optical Theory and Experiment in the Early Nineteenth Century, Chicago, 1989;
94. Cantor, Optics After Newton, op. cit. (31).
95. Brewster, who did acknowledge the success of the wave theory, continued to claim that its explanatory power was limited, as it could not deal with such phenomena as selective absorption and refractive dispersion. See G. N. Cantor, 'Brewster on the nature of light', in Morrison-Low and Christie, Optics after Newton, op. cit. (30), 67-76, 72.
96. M. Faraday, 'On a peculiar class of optical deceptions ', in idem, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Brussels, 1969, 291-311.
97. On Faraday's 'perceptual rehearsal ' of the optical deception see M. F. Ippolito and R. D. Tweney, 'The inception of insight", in The Nature of Insight (ed. J. E. Davidson and R. J. Sternberg), Cambridge, MA, 1995, 435-9.
98. F. A. J. L. James, ' "The optical mode of investigation": light and matter in Faraday's natural philosophy', in Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867 (ed. D. Gooding and F. A. J. L. James), New York, 1985, 137-61.
99. These investigations, which occupied Faraday for several years, were made on request of the Joint Commission of the Board of Longitude and the Royal Society and were intended to improve the quality of British glass-making. The improvement of optical glass was thought to be necessary because the British hegemony in the production of optical instruments had become increasingly threatened by the Bavarian optical industry (see M. W. Jackson, Spectrum of Belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision Optics, Cambridge, MA, 2000, 136-41).
100. P. M. Roget, 'Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel seen through vertical apertures', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1825), 115, 131-40, 135.
101. P. M. Roget, Animal and Vegetable Physiology Considered with Reference to Natural Theology. Bridgewater Treatise V, London, 1834, 524, footnote.
102. L. P. Williams, Michael Faraday: A Biography, London, 1965, 17.
103. C. Wheatstone, 'Description of the kaleidophone, or phonic kaleidoscope; a new philosophical toy, for the illustration of several interesting and amusing acoustical and optical phenomena ' (1827), in Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision (ed. N. Wade), London, 1983, 205-12.
104. Wheatstone, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (63), 211.
105. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 310.
106. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 295, 303.
107. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 295.
108. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 303, 311.
109. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 309.
110. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 291.
111. Roget, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (61), 524, footnote.
112. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 293, 303.
113. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 296-7.
114. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 296; emphasis added.
115. Faraday, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, op. cit. (56), 296, 297; emphasis added.
116. Chevalier d'Arcy's experiments are mentioned above. Closer to home, Robert Waring Darwin and Erasmus Darwin published on ocular spectra in the Philosophical Transactions of 1786 (R. W. and E. Darwin, 'New experiments on the ocular spectra of light and colours', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1786), 76, 313-48). The Darwins accounted for a number of remarkable visual phenomena related to the persistence of vision.
117. M. Faraday, 'Observations on mental education', in idem, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Brussels, 1969, 463-91, 466. The text was originally published in 1855.
118. Faraday, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, op. cit. (77), 468; emphasis in original.
119. Wheatstone, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, op. cit. (44), 248-9, emphasis added.
120. Roget, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, op. cit. (61), 509, 510.
121. Roget, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, op. cit. (61), 474.
122. Roget, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, op. cit. (61), 515-16.
123. Roget, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, op. cit. (61), 533.
124. Roget, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, op. cit. (61), 525.
125. Their authors were clergymen, physicians and eminent men of science such as Charles Bell (on the Hand, Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments, as Evincing Design, London, 1833)
126. and William Whewell (on Astronomy and General Physics, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, London 1833).
127. See Jon Topham, 'Science and popular education in the 1830s: the role of the Bridgewater Treatises', BJHS (1992), 25, 397-430.
128. For details of how the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises were chosen, see William Brock, 'The selection of the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises', Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (1966), 21, 162-79;
129. and more generally Jon Topham, 'Beyond the common context: the production and reading of the Bridgewater Treatises', Isis (1998), 89, 233-62.
130. Roget, Isis, op. cit. (61), 445-6.
131. Roget, Isis, op. cit. (61), 459.
132. This is also true of William Paley's Natural Theology. On Paley's functional interpretation of organic mechanisms see N. C. Gillespie, 'Divine design and the industrial revolution: William Paley's abortive reform of natural theology', Isis (1990), 81, 214-29.
133. Roget, Isis, op. cit. (61), 474-5. A footnote to this sentence refers to Thomas Young, who had rectified Euler's error.
134. Roget, Isis, op. cit. (61), 534.
135. P. M. Roget, 'Abstract of the Gulsronian Lectures, read to the Royal College of Physicians on the 2nd, 4th, and 9th of May, 1832', London Medical Gazette (1832), 10, 273-82, 273.
136. Roget, London Medical Gazette, op. cit. (61), 532.