Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 by Jan Golinski

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 679 chine to be comprehensible, they look, as scientists have looked, at the mechanisms of thought, of ratiocination, of the gathering and assess­ ment of evidence, and of course at the social relations reflected in the process of conceptualization of discovery. As yet these mechanisms are only dimly perceived. Historical theories can never have the objectivity or the security of those of physics. Inevitably, the image of the Scientific Revolution, with which two generations have grown up, needs these reappraisals. This book would not be the first to recom­ mend a student to read—for after all so many of the contributors address an audience familiar already with the “big picture.” But it does contain a great deal of solid nourishment for seasoned palates who would know more. Alex Keller Dr. Keller teaches the history of science and technology at the University of Leicester. Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760— 1820. By Jan Golinski. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 342; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $54.95. This book makes an important contribution to the enterprise of challenging the traditional delineation of scientific activity as open, critical, objective, and autonomous (socially and politically). Jan Golinski examines the social and professional development of chem­ istry, mainly in Great Britain (with a brief excursus to France), in the years around the time of the Chemical and Industrial Revolutions and the Age of Enlightenment. His thesis is that the scientific activity pursued by his chemical protagonists was never separate from the social and political context, for it was always done with an “audience” in mind (the patrons, usually). His subthesis is built around the contrast between two particular chemists, Joseph Priestley and Humphry Davy. The former he sees as the quintessential Enlightenment preprofessional; the latter, of the following generation, as the more “establishment,” conservative, pro­ toprofessional. Golinski’s own sympathy seems clearly to lie with Priestley. Playing somewhat subordinate roles are William Cullen, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, and Thomas Beddoes. The book begins with Cullen’s institutionalization of chemistry in Scotland in midcentury. He (and Joseph Black) did so most obviously in the university medical teaching context, but Cullen also made wider appeals to the gentlemanly classes for both the cultural legitimacy and the industrial and economic utility of chemistry. Here, it was necessary to exercise prudence so as not to seem to be a mercenary “projector.” Neither Cullen nor Black published very much; Golinski argues that this was mainly due to the nature of their central “audience”: their 680 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE medical students, with many of whom they remained on close terms for years after. It was mainly through this informal but very effective network that the appeal for legitimacy and use of chemistry were communicated. The heart of the book is devoted to Priestley, a very different man operating in a very different social milieu. Lacking the university institutional base of the Scottish chemists and possessing a much more radical view of the social utility of science than they had, Priestley was concerned to make his science directly available to as general a public as possible. This was manifested rhetorically in his detailed, discursive narratives (a latter-day example of Boylian “virtual witnessing”) and in his employment of relatively simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-operate apparatus. Although he did reach a large public, particularly in the industrializing midlands, Priestley fell victim, in the 1790s, to the sharply conservative reaction in England to the French Revolution. He and even his chemical “airs” were all castigated as dangerously radical. This reaction carried over to the provincial medical pneumatic chemical enterprise of Thomas Beddoes, his “Pneumatic Institution.” According to Golinski, Priestley and Beddoes represent the climax and denouement of an Enlightenment vision of science as a socially ameliorative force. In contrast were the styles of Lavoisier and then Davy. Lavoisier’s “geometric” style of chemical discourse (in contrast to Priestley’s narra­ tive style), his pretensions toward precision, and his use of complicated and expensive apparatus were seen by Priestley (and, implicitly, Golinski) not as moves toward better science but as means to assert authority and control. In Golinski’s view...