Science and Industry in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

ADVENTITIOUS insertion of obituary anecdotes in lectures and text-books has done much to create a pardonable prejudice against the historical approach to science. This is regrettable for two reasons. The first is that some of the most fruitful hypotheses have been built with a scaffolding of analogy and metaphor the significance of which lies buried in a forgotten social context. The other is that the history of science, which is also a record of the positive constructive achievements of the human reason, is largely neglected by official historians. Hence the social culture of the twentieth century does little to reinforce confidence in man's power of rational co-operation. Of late, there has been a new orientation, signalized in Great Britain by the publication of Hessen's much-debated essay, Prof. Woolf's book on seventeenth century science and technology, a new appreciation of Hooke's work, Growther's “British Scientists of the Nineteenth Century”, and a series of memoirs in the Economic History Journal. The most notable of the last-named are: one by Lennard, who has edited the “Heads and Enquiries” into the prosperity of British agriculture issued in the first decade of its existence by the Royal Society, and an article on the relations of science to early English capitalism by Prof. G. N. Clark.

Matthew Boulton

By H. W. Dickinson. Pp. xiv + 218 + 15 plates. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1937.) 10s. 6d. net.