Jan Golinski | University of New Hampshire (original) (raw)
Papers by Jan Golinski
Scientists have recently identified the eighteenth century as the dawn of the " Anthropocene " pe... more Scientists have recently identified the eighteenth century as the dawn of the " Anthropocene " period, the geological era in which humans have begun to reshape the planetary environment. The suggestion is that human activities first impacted global climate with the first stirrings of industrialization and the consequent increase in the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 1 The concept has considerable resonance today, but it lay well beyond the intellectual horizon of those living in the eighteenth century. For the most part, they understood climate on a local rather than a global scale, tied to a particularized sense of geographical place that was bounded by the familiar limits of landscapes and settlements. Intellectuals of the period were groping toward universal knowledge of the natural world, but they still thought about the air and its impact on human life in terms of the spaces within which everyday activities occurred. Eighteenth-century people did display a kind of environmental reflexivity—an understanding of the interdependence of human life and its natural circumstances—but no one was telling the " Big Story " of epochal transformation of the world's climate with which we are familiar today. 2 There was, nonetheless, some discussion of anthropogenic climate change. Writers in many locations in Europe, and in European overseas colonies, recorded their belief that climates were being altered, especially by deforestation, drainage, and cultivation of the land. 3 European colonies in the Americas were prime sites for the emergence of this sense that human activities were transforming the atmospheric environment. The project of settlement demanded close attention to weather events and the pattern of the seasons, with their decisive role in the growth of crops, the rearing of livestock, and the health of human inhabitants. 4 Settlers quickly found Jan Golinski is Professor of History and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007).
The Irish chemist Richard Kirwan (1733–1812) is remembered among historians for his resourceful d... more The Irish chemist Richard Kirwan (1733–1812) is remembered among historians for his resourceful defense of the phlogiston theory of combustion, but his pursuit of the sciences of the environment has been little studied. This paper considers his work in Ireland in the 1790s, especially on mineralogy and meteorology, and situates it against the backdrop of elite projects for national improvement and armed insurrection against British rule. Kirwan is viewed as having the outlook of a metropolitan intellectual, which he struggled to reconcile with the circumstances of Irish provinciality and an emergent – sometimes militant – nationalism.
Thomas Kuhn's work continues to reverberate through the fields of science studies more than a dec... more Thomas Kuhn's work continues to reverberate through the fields of science studies more than a decade after his death. Nearly half a century since the appearance of his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1962), his name still features in the titles and abstracts of papers by philosophers, sociologists, and historians. We don't have a comprehensive history of Kuhn's influence in the many academic disciplines that were touched by his work, though writings by Steve Fuller, John Zammito, and others have painted parts of the picture. I am going to draw on this work to explore an aspect of Kuhn's legacy, namely his contribution to the process whereby the history and the philosophy of science have largely gone their separate ways in recent decades. As has been noted, historians and philosophers of science began to speak of their fields as "married" to one another in the 1960s, at just about the point when it began to appear that they were heading for a divorce. The divorce has in fact been announced many times since, though the couple continues to cohabit in certain institutional locations.
Thomas S. Kuhn seems to have been the first historian of science to label the period from about 1... more Thomas S. Kuhn seems to have been the first historian of science to label the period from about 1780 to 1830 the "second scientific revolution." 1 This was the era when such new scientific disciplines as geology, biology, and physiology, were founded and existing ones, especially physics and chemistry, dramatically reconfigured. In general, disciplines became more central to the production of knowledge, embodied in the constitution of university departments and institutes, in specialized scientific societies, and in new journals. This was not simply a matter of specialization or the progressively finer division of a stable domain of knowledge. Rather, entirely new fields were marked out and came to shape how scientific knowledge was made.
In the 1930s, when scholars first formulated the idea that Europe in the sixteenth and seventeent... more In the 1930s, when scholars first formulated the idea that Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had experienced a "Scientific Revolution", no-one thought to ask the question, why were all the recognized leaders of the revolution men? Since women were still very thin on the ground in mid-twentieth century science, the topic just did not seem to arise. C. P. Snow, in a footnote to his famous lecture, The two cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), remarked that, "whatever we say, we don't in reality regard women as suitable for scientific careers". 1 Though Snow thought this was regrettable, he continued, as a matter of habit, to use terms like "men of science" whenever he referred to members of scientific communities. The reflex was shared by Thomas Kuhn in his The structure of scientific revolutions (1962), who invariably referred to "men" when talking of scientists, even when discussing psychological issues such as intergenerational conflicts -as if, at least within scientific institutions, men could reproduce themselves. 2 If the question of gender had been raised at this time, it would probably have received two kinds of answers. Liberals and feminists would presumably have pointed to the lack of opportunities in early-modern Europe for women to acquire a scientific education, a situation that admittedly continued to apply in the middle of the twentieth century. More conservative thinkers might have asserted that the absence of women scientists reflected differences in men's and women's roles that were simply "natural". On this way of thinking, the exclusively male population of scientific institutions just revealed that women were unsuited by their natures to be scientists.
Scientists have recently identified the eighteenth century as the dawn of the "Anthropocene" peri... more Scientists have recently identified the eighteenth century as the dawn of the "Anthropocene" period, the geological era in which humans have begun to reshape the planetary environment. The suggestion is that human activities first impacted global climate with the first stirrings of industrialization and the consequent increase in the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 1 The concept has considerable resonance today, but it lay well beyond the intellectual horizon of those living in the eighteenth century. For the most part, they understood climate on a local rather than a global scale, tied to a particularized sense of geographical place that was bounded by the familiar limits of landscapes and settlements. Intellectuals of the period were groping toward universal knowledge of the natural world, but they still thought about the air and its impact on human life in terms of the spaces within which everyday activities occurred. Eighteenth-century people did display a kind of environmental reflexivity-an understanding of the interdependence of human life and its natural circumstances-but no one was telling the "Big Story" of epochal transformation of the world's climate with which we are familiar today. 2 There was, nonetheless, some discussion of anthropogenic climate change. Writers in many locations in Europe, and in European overseas colonies, recorded their belief that climates were being altered, especially by deforestation, drainage, and cultivation of the land. 3 European colonies in the Americas were prime sites for the emergence of this sense that human activities were transforming the atmospheric environment. The project of settlement demanded close attention to weather events and the pattern of the seasons, with their decisive role in the growth of crops, the rearing of livestock, and the health of human inhabitants. 4 Settlers quickly found Jan Golinski is Professor of History and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007).
Keynote lecture for the BSHS, CSHPS, HSS Joint Meeting, St. Louis, 3 August 2000.
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, a brash young author published in these pages a rather tendent... more Nearly a quarter of a century ago, a brash young author published in these pages a rather tendentious review of a book by a respected senior scholar. Greeting the publication of Thomas L. Hankins's Science and the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1985), the reviewer ignored most of the content of the book, focusing instead on the relationship signalled in the title, that between the sciences in the eighteenth century and the contemporaneous movement of the Enlightenment. The reviewer insisted that the relationship was in urgent need of clarification. He liberally recommended more theoretical consideration of this, but had little to show to represent the kind of historical scholarship he favoured. Several readers found the ending of the review anticlimactic. It gestured toward the possibility of reconstructing an integrated vision of the Enlightenment, but made only vague recommendations as to how this might be achieved. The invocation of Michel Foucault in this connection did not seem particularly promising. Fortunately, Professor Hankins accepted the ambivalent tribute with remarkable forbearance and good grace, and the reviewer was forgiven the youthful impetuosity of his venture. 1
The name history of science refl ects a set of assumptions about what science is. Among them is t... more The name history of science refl ects a set of assumptions about what science is. Among them is the claim that science is a singular thing, a potentially unifi ed group of disciplines that share a common identity. Long promoted by scientists and philosophers on the basis of a supposedly universal scientifi c method, this claim now looks very embattled. I trace its development from the early nineteenth century and the growth of the positivist movement to its various manifestations in the twentieth century. Recently, some historians have called for the term science to be relinquished, and for adoption of a more relaxed pluralism. Yet the complex legacy of the notion of singular science cannot be so easily abandoned.
Isis, 1989
... Papers and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry," Ambix, 1968, 15:54-69; 1970, 17:85-11... more ... Papers and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry," Ambix, 1968, 15:54-69; 1970, 17:85-110; and Charles Web-ster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626-1660 (London:Duckworth, 1975), esp ... 94-95, 306-307; and JR Partington, A History of Chem-istry, 4 vols ...
Book Reviews by Jan Golinski
Metascience
Over the past fifty years, the chemical revolution has been one of the most attractive episodes f... more Over the past fifty years, the chemical revolution has been one of the most attractive episodes for historians and philosophers of science to forge their own vision of scientific change or to test philosophical hypotheses. The Lavoisier industry reached a peak between 1989 and 1994 in the context of the celebration of the bicentennial of Lavoisier's execution during the French Revolution. A review of the abundant literature about the chemical revolution by a respected and well-known scholar of eighteenth-century chemistry is therefore most welcome. Although it is not the first historiographical review of this event, John McEvoy's essay distinguishes itself by its level of generality. Rather than just surveying the different attempts at determining the meaning and significance of the chemical revolution, McEvoy adopts a meta-historical perspective that allows him to subsume the various interpretations of the chemical revolution under the broader general trends in the
Scientists have recently identified the eighteenth century as the dawn of the " Anthropocene " pe... more Scientists have recently identified the eighteenth century as the dawn of the " Anthropocene " period, the geological era in which humans have begun to reshape the planetary environment. The suggestion is that human activities first impacted global climate with the first stirrings of industrialization and the consequent increase in the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 1 The concept has considerable resonance today, but it lay well beyond the intellectual horizon of those living in the eighteenth century. For the most part, they understood climate on a local rather than a global scale, tied to a particularized sense of geographical place that was bounded by the familiar limits of landscapes and settlements. Intellectuals of the period were groping toward universal knowledge of the natural world, but they still thought about the air and its impact on human life in terms of the spaces within which everyday activities occurred. Eighteenth-century people did display a kind of environmental reflexivity—an understanding of the interdependence of human life and its natural circumstances—but no one was telling the " Big Story " of epochal transformation of the world's climate with which we are familiar today. 2 There was, nonetheless, some discussion of anthropogenic climate change. Writers in many locations in Europe, and in European overseas colonies, recorded their belief that climates were being altered, especially by deforestation, drainage, and cultivation of the land. 3 European colonies in the Americas were prime sites for the emergence of this sense that human activities were transforming the atmospheric environment. The project of settlement demanded close attention to weather events and the pattern of the seasons, with their decisive role in the growth of crops, the rearing of livestock, and the health of human inhabitants. 4 Settlers quickly found Jan Golinski is Professor of History and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007).
The Irish chemist Richard Kirwan (1733–1812) is remembered among historians for his resourceful d... more The Irish chemist Richard Kirwan (1733–1812) is remembered among historians for his resourceful defense of the phlogiston theory of combustion, but his pursuit of the sciences of the environment has been little studied. This paper considers his work in Ireland in the 1790s, especially on mineralogy and meteorology, and situates it against the backdrop of elite projects for national improvement and armed insurrection against British rule. Kirwan is viewed as having the outlook of a metropolitan intellectual, which he struggled to reconcile with the circumstances of Irish provinciality and an emergent – sometimes militant – nationalism.
Thomas Kuhn's work continues to reverberate through the fields of science studies more than a dec... more Thomas Kuhn's work continues to reverberate through the fields of science studies more than a decade after his death. Nearly half a century since the appearance of his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1962), his name still features in the titles and abstracts of papers by philosophers, sociologists, and historians. We don't have a comprehensive history of Kuhn's influence in the many academic disciplines that were touched by his work, though writings by Steve Fuller, John Zammito, and others have painted parts of the picture. I am going to draw on this work to explore an aspect of Kuhn's legacy, namely his contribution to the process whereby the history and the philosophy of science have largely gone their separate ways in recent decades. As has been noted, historians and philosophers of science began to speak of their fields as "married" to one another in the 1960s, at just about the point when it began to appear that they were heading for a divorce. The divorce has in fact been announced many times since, though the couple continues to cohabit in certain institutional locations.
Thomas S. Kuhn seems to have been the first historian of science to label the period from about 1... more Thomas S. Kuhn seems to have been the first historian of science to label the period from about 1780 to 1830 the "second scientific revolution." 1 This was the era when such new scientific disciplines as geology, biology, and physiology, were founded and existing ones, especially physics and chemistry, dramatically reconfigured. In general, disciplines became more central to the production of knowledge, embodied in the constitution of university departments and institutes, in specialized scientific societies, and in new journals. This was not simply a matter of specialization or the progressively finer division of a stable domain of knowledge. Rather, entirely new fields were marked out and came to shape how scientific knowledge was made.
In the 1930s, when scholars first formulated the idea that Europe in the sixteenth and seventeent... more In the 1930s, when scholars first formulated the idea that Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had experienced a "Scientific Revolution", no-one thought to ask the question, why were all the recognized leaders of the revolution men? Since women were still very thin on the ground in mid-twentieth century science, the topic just did not seem to arise. C. P. Snow, in a footnote to his famous lecture, The two cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), remarked that, "whatever we say, we don't in reality regard women as suitable for scientific careers". 1 Though Snow thought this was regrettable, he continued, as a matter of habit, to use terms like "men of science" whenever he referred to members of scientific communities. The reflex was shared by Thomas Kuhn in his The structure of scientific revolutions (1962), who invariably referred to "men" when talking of scientists, even when discussing psychological issues such as intergenerational conflicts -as if, at least within scientific institutions, men could reproduce themselves. 2 If the question of gender had been raised at this time, it would probably have received two kinds of answers. Liberals and feminists would presumably have pointed to the lack of opportunities in early-modern Europe for women to acquire a scientific education, a situation that admittedly continued to apply in the middle of the twentieth century. More conservative thinkers might have asserted that the absence of women scientists reflected differences in men's and women's roles that were simply "natural". On this way of thinking, the exclusively male population of scientific institutions just revealed that women were unsuited by their natures to be scientists.
Scientists have recently identified the eighteenth century as the dawn of the "Anthropocene" peri... more Scientists have recently identified the eighteenth century as the dawn of the "Anthropocene" period, the geological era in which humans have begun to reshape the planetary environment. The suggestion is that human activities first impacted global climate with the first stirrings of industrialization and the consequent increase in the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 1 The concept has considerable resonance today, but it lay well beyond the intellectual horizon of those living in the eighteenth century. For the most part, they understood climate on a local rather than a global scale, tied to a particularized sense of geographical place that was bounded by the familiar limits of landscapes and settlements. Intellectuals of the period were groping toward universal knowledge of the natural world, but they still thought about the air and its impact on human life in terms of the spaces within which everyday activities occurred. Eighteenth-century people did display a kind of environmental reflexivity-an understanding of the interdependence of human life and its natural circumstances-but no one was telling the "Big Story" of epochal transformation of the world's climate with which we are familiar today. 2 There was, nonetheless, some discussion of anthropogenic climate change. Writers in many locations in Europe, and in European overseas colonies, recorded their belief that climates were being altered, especially by deforestation, drainage, and cultivation of the land. 3 European colonies in the Americas were prime sites for the emergence of this sense that human activities were transforming the atmospheric environment. The project of settlement demanded close attention to weather events and the pattern of the seasons, with their decisive role in the growth of crops, the rearing of livestock, and the health of human inhabitants. 4 Settlers quickly found Jan Golinski is Professor of History and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007).
Keynote lecture for the BSHS, CSHPS, HSS Joint Meeting, St. Louis, 3 August 2000.
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, a brash young author published in these pages a rather tendent... more Nearly a quarter of a century ago, a brash young author published in these pages a rather tendentious review of a book by a respected senior scholar. Greeting the publication of Thomas L. Hankins's Science and the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1985), the reviewer ignored most of the content of the book, focusing instead on the relationship signalled in the title, that between the sciences in the eighteenth century and the contemporaneous movement of the Enlightenment. The reviewer insisted that the relationship was in urgent need of clarification. He liberally recommended more theoretical consideration of this, but had little to show to represent the kind of historical scholarship he favoured. Several readers found the ending of the review anticlimactic. It gestured toward the possibility of reconstructing an integrated vision of the Enlightenment, but made only vague recommendations as to how this might be achieved. The invocation of Michel Foucault in this connection did not seem particularly promising. Fortunately, Professor Hankins accepted the ambivalent tribute with remarkable forbearance and good grace, and the reviewer was forgiven the youthful impetuosity of his venture. 1
The name history of science refl ects a set of assumptions about what science is. Among them is t... more The name history of science refl ects a set of assumptions about what science is. Among them is the claim that science is a singular thing, a potentially unifi ed group of disciplines that share a common identity. Long promoted by scientists and philosophers on the basis of a supposedly universal scientifi c method, this claim now looks very embattled. I trace its development from the early nineteenth century and the growth of the positivist movement to its various manifestations in the twentieth century. Recently, some historians have called for the term science to be relinquished, and for adoption of a more relaxed pluralism. Yet the complex legacy of the notion of singular science cannot be so easily abandoned.
Isis, 1989
... Papers and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry," Ambix, 1968, 15:54-69; 1970, 17:85-11... more ... Papers and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry," Ambix, 1968, 15:54-69; 1970, 17:85-110; and Charles Web-ster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626-1660 (London:Duckworth, 1975), esp ... 94-95, 306-307; and JR Partington, A History of Chem-istry, 4 vols ...
Metascience
Over the past fifty years, the chemical revolution has been one of the most attractive episodes f... more Over the past fifty years, the chemical revolution has been one of the most attractive episodes for historians and philosophers of science to forge their own vision of scientific change or to test philosophical hypotheses. The Lavoisier industry reached a peak between 1989 and 1994 in the context of the celebration of the bicentennial of Lavoisier's execution during the French Revolution. A review of the abundant literature about the chemical revolution by a respected and well-known scholar of eighteenth-century chemistry is therefore most welcome. Although it is not the first historiographical review of this event, John McEvoy's essay distinguishes itself by its level of generality. Rather than just surveying the different attempts at determining the meaning and significance of the chemical revolution, McEvoy adopts a meta-historical perspective that allows him to subsume the various interpretations of the chemical revolution under the broader general trends in the