Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsRichard Yeo. Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Pp. xviii+398. $48.00 (cloth).Rose-Mary SargentRose-Mary SargentMerrimack College Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe Baconian project of the early members of the Hartlib Circle and the Royal Society of London required accurate methods for compiling vast amounts of information. As Richard Yeo notes, part of this compilation included information taken from books, letters, and diaries, which had a direct relation to the Renaissance humanist tradition of note taking. In addition, however, methods were also required for the recording of direct observations and experimental trials. On this last point, Yeo claims that in addition to disciplines such as law and medicine, “note taking” should be considered as another tradition that had influence on modern science (3–5). The nature of this influence, however, is not clear. That there were traditions of note taking on which natural philosophers could draw does not in itself mark a contribution to the scientific or methodological content of their work.It is useful for those studying the rise of early modern experimental philosophy to remember the central importance of note taking. Yeo provides great detail on the various kinds of notebooks that had been developed during the Renaissance. For early modern science the kinds most used were the commonplace book that placed material under heads and the journal or diary that kept a chronological record. Yeo describes this as the “notebook culture,” yet the constancy that one would expect of a culture does not seem to be present. Indeed, as he also notes, the methods of note taking underwent appreciable changes to accommodate the type of information and the uses to which the notes would be put: “the accumulation and analysis of empirical information required significant adjustments. There is a profound difference between using notes to select examples for an agreed corpus of quotations and tropes, and using notes to generalize by working inductively from disconnected, miscellaneous particulars” (35).Chapter 2 begins with general discussions about memory and how note taking served as an aid to memory, which leads into Bacon’s call for the use of heads for inquiries concerning natural processes so as to categorize observations and experiments. This is followed by a look at the note-taking practices of John Aubrey, Abraham Hill, and Thomas Hobbes (47–55). Chapter 3 has more focus on experimental philosophers, such as Robert Boyle, and how they had to compile their own observations of the natural world, sometimes with the use of a traveling tablet book modeled on the waste books of merchants, in addition to having to process these data with material gathered from the diaries, journals, and the letters of others. Bacon’s call for “particulars” to be gathered from nature and made “literate” is discussed as part of the “empirical sensibility,” by which Yeo means the “gathering of information from a wide range of sources, and the comparison and corroboration of this with extant knowledge” (84–87). The Royal Society, through the auspices of Henry Oldenburg and Boyle, encouraged communication about observations and experiments together with details about the way in which these were made so as to make the records useful for others and for future generations. Yeo claims that the “directness of the hints indicates a lack of consensus about these points” (89).Chapter 4 includes a discussion of how the public-spiritedness and religious beliefs of the members of Hartlib’s circle influenced their compilations designed to further the common good. Samuel Hartlib himself used a number of methods for note taking and examined many others, including Harrisonian indexes, which was not a particularly helpful method for his purposes but did introduce the idea of recording observations on loose slips of paper. In chapter 5, the note-taking practices of Robert Boyle and John Beale are compared. Beale emphasized the need for ordering data systematically, which reinforced Boyle’s cautious attitude toward premature systems. In his History of Air, for example, Boyle noted that doctrines or theories could aid the memory when collecting information, but “this was not a voucher for truth” (134–35).Boyle’s practice of keeping records of his observations and experiments on loose sheets is covered in chapter 6. As Yeo notes, Boyle “did not maintain large commonplace books of the kind recommended by Renaissance humanists” (152). Boyle was mostly concerned with making immediate notes of experiments performed to record the facts surrounding them, believing that loose notes without method were most useful for himself and others, although he did record experiments in small notebooks as well. In contrast, John Locke’s efforts to produce a more systematic approach are discussed in chapter 7. Locke’s “New Method” compiled observations chronologically with marginal heads that served as keywords for an index. The method had problems with retrieval, however, and was not practical when making many observations. While traveling, for example, Locke himself chose to keep journals instead.Robert Hooke, on the other hand, agreed with Boyle about the usefulness of loose notes. In chapter 8, Yeo explores Hooke’s dynamic archive, which included the collection, organization, and storage of notes and published compilations of these by the Royal Society. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, edited by Oldenburg, published guides for note taking, such as Boyle’s General Heads for a Natural History. Hooke’s “General Scheme” was designed to create a repository of like observations and experiments. Drawing on the practices of Bacon’s Solomon’s House, Hooke described the process of arranging, collating, comparing, and drawing inferences from the data compiled in this repository. Hooke as well stressed the need for many people over many ages to compile adequate information.In chapter 9, Yeo summarizes the general evolution of note taking from Hartlib to the Royal Society that resulted in a commitment to compiling observations and experiments for a collaborative effort. Despite an emphasis on the humanist tradition of note taking, Yeo concludes that members of the Royal Society “accepted Bacon’s call for the accumulation of ‘particulars’: that is, elementary data on topics such as those named in his list of 130 natural histories. This was a different task from” that of the humanist tradition, which involved “the reduction and abbreviation of knowledge already collated to some extent under topics, maxims, sententiae, or doctrines” (259). Yeo’s is an interesting account about the challenges facing the virtuoso in compiling information for a collaborative project. They clearly built on the Renaissance humanist tradition, but it is not clear how that tradition made any significant contribution to the methodology and philosophy of science of those involved in this project. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by HOPOS Volume 7, Number 1Spring 2017 Sponsored by The International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/691123HistoryPublished online February 21, 2017 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.