Book Review

Peter Whitfield : Astrology: A History
Astrology: A History by Peter Whitfield

Review by: rev. by Owen Gingerich
Isis, Vol. 94, No. 2 (June 2003), pp. 347-348
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
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BOOK REVIEWS
䡲 General engineering, or natural history. Medical sciences
were excluded because other works have treated
Josep M. Camarasa; Antoni Roca Rosell (Ed- these practitioners; nevertheless, as already
itors). Ciencia i tecnica als paı̈sos catalans: Una noted, five biographies of people who worked in
aproximació biogràfica. 2 volumes. 1,550 pp., health studies are presented here.
illus., figs., bibls., indexes. Barcelona: Fundació Each biography describes the personal, fam-
Catalana de la Recerca, 1995. ily, and cultural environment of the scientist,
noting his scientific education and whether he
This book collects forty-five biographies of sci- belonged to a specific school or tradition. Some
entists written by thirty-eight authors from the examples are Antoni Cebrià Costa and Pius Font
universities of North Catalunya (France) and i Quer, who wrote the first studies on the flora
South Catalunya (Spain). An approximate clas- of Catalunya; Marià de la Pau Graells, who
sification, using the categories of today’s sci- worked in the Museum of Zoology; Odon de
ence, allows us to identify twelve people who Buen, known as the father of Spanish oceanog-
worked in biology, seven in engineering and raphy; Ramon de Manjarrés, who worked in ag-
technology, seven in geology, five in mathemat- ricultural chemistry; Ildefons Cerdà, the first au-
ics, five in health studies, five in physics, two in thor of a modern theory of urbanism; Miquel
architecture, and two in astronomy. Each biog- Crusafont, of the School of Paleontology of Sa-
raphy includes pictures of the scientist and notes badell; and Jaume Comas and Eduard Fontseré,
his workplace and the books or papers that he who established the first Catalunyan astronomi-
wrote. The particular contributions by each sci- cal societies. Some of the scientists worked with
entist to scientific developments in Catalunya are European colleagues, and some wrote many
described. The criteria used to decide who books and papers besides those listed in their
should be included are the following: they lived biographies.
between 1850 and the present and worked in the For most of the period covered in the book,
physical and mathematical sciences, chemistry, the history of science in Catalunya had no place
Albert Einstein in Poblet, Spain, in February 1923 before continuing on to Madrid (from Josep M.
Camarasa and Antoni Roca Rosell, eds., Ciencia i tecnica als paı̈sos catalans, p. 32).
334

BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 94 : 2 (2003) 335
in the universities. Only recently has the history

of scientific work outside of Spain been recog-
nized. Historically, Catalunya had not been a fo-
cus of scientific activity, but during those years
researchers were quietly productive. In the last
twenty-five years, however, there has been sig-
nificant work in science, and now scientific re-
search has been welcomed at the university level.
The book tries to be thematically coherent and
understands the term “science” in the broad
sense. It does not present science as a regular
progression of discoveries and theories; rather,
it considers scientific work in the context of its
own time and shows its influence on subsequent
ideas. The authors trace the development of sci-
entific activities through the thoughts and ideas
of the practitioners. Authors of earlier studies on
some of the scientists included in the book have
had difficulty in finding information about them The three-dimensional structure of cellular RNA
and their work. In such cases the authors mention polymerase, elaborated by Seth Darst (from
the incomplete nature of the secondary literature. Elizabeth Hanson, Achievements, p. 140).
The book as a whole is a significant contri-
bution to the history of science. It provides in-
dispensable information about the history of sci-
ence in Catalunya. The book is addressed to illustrations and makes good use of the holdings
specialist researchers and also to those interested of the Rockefeller Archive Center.
in the history of science or civilization. With its Achievements is divided into four parts, each
quotations of authorities, lists of names, and index describing a major period during the Rockefel-
of key words, it will be useful as a reference work ler’s history. Each chapter is then further divided
in libraries devoted to science in Catalunya. into two sections. The first is a historical essay
Though this is a major and laudable effort, it that provides a general background for the chap-
is a shame that no women are included among ter. The second section, a “closer look,” consists
the scientists treated. I know how hard it can be of pictorial essays on a wide variety of subjects,
to find information about their lives and their including the Rockefeller’s war work, contribu-
work. Still, I miss figures such as Montserrat tions to public health, noteworthy persons and
Garriga, who worked in botany; Rosa Sensat, in policies, and the relationship between the Rocke-
pedagogy; Maria Capmany, in astronomy; and feller family’s philanthropy and the institution
Ascensión Serret and Maria Capdevila, in math- that bears its name.
ematics. The first chapter contains a brief history of
NURIA SOLSONA PAIRÓ events leading up to the foundation of the Rocke-
feller Institute in 1901. On the advice of Fred-
Elizabeth Hanson. Achievements: A Century of erick T. Gates, John D. Rockefeller looked into
Science for the Benefit of Humankind. Introduc- the funding of medical research for the benefit
tion by Arnold J. Levine. Epilogue by David of mankind—particularly research into infec-
Rockefeller. 156 pp., frontis., illus., index. New tious disease. His decision became all the more
York: Rockefeller University Press, 2000. personal with the death of his grandson from
scarlet fever, a disease that was then untreatable.
Elizabeth Hanson, a historian and science writer Under the guidance of Simon Flexner, the insti-
at Rockefeller University, has written this short tute developed into a series of laboratories con-
but intriguing commemorative volume on the trolled by independent investigators able to con-
centennial of the Rockefeller Institute for Medi- duct research without the burdens of teaching or
cal Research, now Rockefeller University. This publication pressures. The Rockefeller Hospital
is not intended to be a detailed institutional his- opened in 1910. Devoted to clinical research, the
tory but, rather, provides a brief, informative hospital functioned as a separate department of
overview of the history of the Rockefeller—its the institute, and the physicians researching there
aims, its important discoveries, and the individ- shared the same status as the other department
uals within its walls. The book features lavish heads.

336 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 94 : 2 (2003)
The second chapter provides a more detailed physical body of the inmate. The scope of this
description of Flexner’s vision for the institute book is truly breathtaking in its ambition. It
and biographical essays on the men he hired to traces not only an immense expanse of time but
fulfill those goals. During his directorship from also the entire Western tradition of human wel-
1903 to 1935, Flexner saw that the physical sci- fare, healing, and care. Mending Bodies, Saving
ences were going to be increasingly important to Souls is an ambitious book that succeeds on
medical research. Rufus Cole, director at the many levels, although because of its very scope
hospital, hired physicians as capable in the lab- it also sometimes glosses over the issues it lays
oratory as at the bedside. The members of the bare. In some ways this book is a much-needed
institute pushed the boundaries between chem- addition to the specialized literature of recent
istry, physics, and biology and made fundamen- years that has focused either on specific regions
tal discoveries in science and medicine, includ- of the world or narrow periods of time. In some
ing the 1944 discovery by O. T. Avery and his ways it is reminiscent of an older tradition of
lab that DNA was the carrier of genetic infor- historical writing that saw continuity where it
mation. Indeed, Hanson argues that discoveries wasn’t and direction where it shouldn’t be.
made at the Rockefeller were responsible for Risse begins his book by tracing early Greek,
founding the field of cell biology. Roman, and medieval Christian origins of the
The last half of the book concentrates mainly institutions we now call hospitals. The alms-
on institutional history. Part 3 covers the growth house, the leper colony, pesthouses, lazarettos—
of the Rockefeller from institute to university. rooted as they were in religious and secular
This section concentrates on the presidency of needs and traditions—served as way stations for
Detlev Bronk (1953–1968), under whom this the dispossessed and displaced, homes for the
transition occurred. Much less time is spent deal- dependent and sick, and places of refuge for the
ing with his successors, particularly the last three ostracized.
presidents: David Baltimore, Torsten Wiesel, The book is perhaps the first to ground itself
and Arnold Levine. The final chapter is less his- in the experience of the individual patient with
torical and outlines the university’s views and the institution. Many of the chapters and subsec-
plans for the future. tions begin by recounting a brief, often telling,
The historical essays, although written in a experience of someone who is about to be pulled
clear and straightforward fashion, are by no into the nexus of health care and its institutions.
means detailed and serve only as brief introduc- We are provided with accounts of patients’ ex-
tions. Those seeking a more complete and nu- periences with the plague, leprosy, cholera, yel-
anced history of the institution and its discov- low fever, and a variety of other infectious dis-
eries will need to look elsewhere. However, eases that swept through Europe and, later, the
Achievements provides a good general overview Americas at various moments in history. Some-
and serves as an excellent introduction to the times using published accounts from medical
Rockefeller. The pictorial essays in the “closer journals, sometimes embellishing an extant pa-
look” sections are particularly interesting and tient hospital record, sometimes drawing on a
provide glimpses of less well known people, biography or autobiography or letter, Risse
events, and activities at the Rockefeller. For ex- breathes life into what could easily have been a
ample, the sections on support staff and instru- dry account of changing medical practice and
ment makers provide valuable insight into an of- treatment. Especially useful is the way he embel-
ten overlooked but vitally important facet of life lishes the bare bones of the patient narrative to
at a research institute. provide a social and historical context. His treat-
JUDITH FRIEDMAN ment of the case of Johann Duschau, a twenty-
seven-year-old tailor in end-of-the-eighteenth-
Guenter B. Risse. Mending Bodies, Saving century Vienna, for example, relates the course
Souls: A History of Hospitals. xx Ⳮ 716 pp., of his fever, dry cough, and removal to the Kran-
frontis., illus., index. New York/Oxford: Oxford kenhaus (pp. 257–260). It also provides the
University Press, 1999. mechanism through which we learn about the
imperial history of Vienna, the size, shape, and
In this extraordinary review of the long history conditions of housing for the poor, the attempt
of institutional care for the sick and dependent, to consolidate power in the growing empire of
Guenter Risse captures the dramatic social and Joseph II, and the charitable traditions that led
technical changes that have transformed the hos- to the hospital’s founding. Elsewhere we learn
pital from a place of refuge and care for the soul of the origins of the Johns Hopkins Hospital
into an institution focused primarily on the through brief vignettes of Johns Hopkins himself

and John Shaw Billings, the well-known physi- of the “St. John’s Hospital: A Model for the
cian and Public Health Service officer who was World” (p. 148) when discussing a medieval in-
the institution’s architect. By constant reference stitution? Are we in danger of reading into the
to the personal, often fascinating, stories of pa- historical narrative a continuity that isn’t there?
tients, physicians, nurses, and politicians, Risse This is an extraordinarily ambitious book that
weaves a powerful narrative that captures the so- seeks to integrate an enormous literature. It suc-
cial relationships that were at the heart of the ceeds on many levels, and even its limitations
complex institutions he treats. are a sign of its ambition and its scope.
The narrative brings to light the extraordinary DAVID ROSNER
range of documentation that Risse commands.
While many of the early portions of the book are Marco Beretta. Storia materiale della scienza:
built around secondary works detailing Greek, Dal libro ai laboratori. (Biblioteca delle
Roman, and medieval medicine, the later por- Scienze.) 329 pp., illus., index. Milan: Bruno
tions are suffused with original sources that have Mondadori, 2002. €20.50 (paper).
remained largely untouched to date. Stories from
Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, for example, provide A familiar figure on the campus after he stepped
insights into the vast differences among the va- down as head of Caltech in 1945, the physicist
riety of voluntary institutions—sectarian and Robert A. Millikan often joined the undergrad-
public, teaching and community, large and uates for dinner in the various houses. On one
small—that today make up the hospital systems occasion, according to a student who accompa-
of Western nations. nied Millikan on these rounds, the aging scientist
A very real advantage of this book is its close was asked what advice he had for the graduating
attention to sources, specifically the way Risse class. “Set lofty sights,” he replied. “You may
pulls together a wide variety of material from fall short, but you will never exceed your goals.”
Europe as well as the Western Hemisphere. Like Millikan, Marco Beretta, who teaches the
There are few other serious works that try to span history of science at the University of Bologna,
the continents and such a vast period of time, thinks big. Many historians of science aim for a
even in the weighty space of seven hundred chronological reconstruction of the rise and fall
pages. Yet the book’s very ambition creates pit- of scientific theories, while others emphasize the
falls that the reader must be aware of. Most im- biographical approach. Another way to study the
portant, it demands a story line and a narrative practice of science is to examine the culture of
structure that sometimes feel forced: to link the the laboratory, including its scientific instru-
history of the medieval pesthouse or leper colony ments. Building on these different schools of
with a twenty-first-century hospital, even cur- thought, Beretta lays out in Storia materiale
sorily, is problematic in light of the vast differ- della scienza: Dal libro ai laboratori what he
ences in circumstances, values, and historical calls a “material history” of scientific knowl-
settings. To see glimmers of “Frameworks for edge—of its actors, its applications, its influ-
Early Medicalization” (p. 214) in Florence ence, and its relationship to culture and society
around 1500 forces a sense of progress and di- at large. He describes all these aspects of the
rection not really necessary for an informed scientific enterprise “in relation to the evolution
reader. A basic problem that an ambitious book of the material and ideological factors that were
such as this has to face—spanning as it does the fundamental for scientific progress” (p. 3). Is it
dramatically different experiences of European an ambitious book? Very.
and American medicine, and political and pop- Each factor in Beretta’s story has its own
ular culture—is how to develop a story line chapter that examines its history from its begin-
without imposing a structure and a direction that nings—which (depending on the factor) could
simply may not exist. How can one avoid tele- mean the Greek period, the Middle Ages, the
ological messages about “progress” and the in- Renaissance, or just a decade or so ago—by con-
evitable improvement and evolution of early in- sidering the salient events and people involved.
stitutions into the modern medical center without The factors are chosen not because of their in-
losing an audience that demands signposts about trinsic importance but because they help the au-
where the story is going? How can we avoid lan- thor to make his case and further his narrative.
guage with too distinct a modern sound? Can we So we have chapters that recount the relationship
talk about “Church and Laity: Partnership in of science to its communication, to art (think, for
Hospital Care” with regard to Constantinople in instance, of the importance of illustrations for
1140 (p. 117) or “Frameworks for Early Medi- early botanists), to religion, technology, indus-
calization” in 1500 in Florence? Can we speak try, and war. Other chapters deal with the oper-

View of the Protosynchrotron in the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland (from Marco Beretta,
Storia materiale della scienza, p. 309).
ational aspects of science, such as laboratories, proval of the scientific enterprise come more
museums, and conferences; others again with the funding, employment for scientists, and a means
organizational forms of the scientific commu- to increase the importance and influence of sci-
nity, such as academies, universities, disciplines, ence within society.
and science as a profession. Beretta is unsympathetic to unitary interpre-
The common theme running through the book tations of science. For instance, while conceding
is the rise of science from a subordinate role, that Galileo’s trial and subsequent retraction had
dependent on theology, philosophy, or technol- far-reaching consequences for the development
ogy, to its current autonomous and even hege- of science and its relations with religion, he
monic status. Because of this progression, the views it as an isolated episode in the history of
relationship between science and various other religion’s relative lack of interest in science. It
institutions, initially almost nonexistent, has might be an exaggeration, he says, to paint Ga-
evolved into symbiotic alliances. Beretta talks lileo’s tribulations as a piece in the pattern of the
about politics and government: only during the inevitable strife between science and religion, as
Renaissance does nobility start to look to science some scholars (positivists, for example) have
for guidance and to enhance its prestige. During done.
the French Revolution and under Napoleon sci- Beretta writes in a clear and concise style; his
entists become technocrats, charged with apply- examples and case studies are engaging and well
ing the scientific method to the administration of chosen. There are interesting illustrations and re-
the state (e.g., public hygiene programs). Indus- productions in black and white, showing us how
trial societies need scientists to seed technolog- the modes and customs of science have evolved
ical achievements and regulate the availability of over the centuries. Although the book is typo-
technical know-how through the system of pat- graphically elegant, it is marred by many typos
ents. Finally, with World War II science and that, I hope, will be corrected in a second edition.
technology become indispensable to govern- Storia materiale della scienza is aimed at the
ments as a means of achieving military suprem- general public and at scientists who are curious
acy. Moreover, with this increasing political ap- about how the practice of science today came

into being. What the reader will not find here is istic situated in the universities in which they
a discussion of scientific issues that dominate the work. Ambition is, then, subject to fluctuation
news today—the debate in the United States be- by time and place.
tween Christian fundamentalists and evolution- Compared to other occupations and profes-
ists, the rise of alternative medicine, animal sions, science and physics, particularly, are said
rights, and fraud. Does this book fall short of its to be driven by “imagined possibility.” Careers
lofty goals? Yes; but it uses many rapid brush are characterized as “open ended,” with scien-
strokes to paint a large-scale canvas of the tists not knowing what results their efforts will
changing scientific landscape. bring or when outcomes (findings, discoveries)
JUDITH R. GOODSTEIN will occur. In The Stars Are Not Enough, sci-
entific careers are marked by a search for coher-
Joseph C. Hermanowicz. The Stars Are Not ent meanings and a quest for recognition, with
Enough: Scientists—Their Passions and Profes- conceptions of success varying with the type of
sions. xvi Ⳮ 268 pp., figs., tables, apps., bibl., institutional setting (elite, pluralist, communitar-
index. Chicago/London: University of Chicago ian). Many—even most—of these scientists ini-
Press, 1998. $45 (cloth); $15 (paper). tially seek “greatness”; few achieve it; and, thus,
scientists “chase dreams,” both small and great.
Careers in science begin at a young age, with an The Stars Are Not Enough contributes to what
educational course that starts early and forms a we know about scientific careers through its life-
progression of learning. Those who persist course perspective—emphasis on the ways that
through graduate school and attain doctoral de- professional identities of scientists emerge in
grees often set their sights on work in scientific different types of settings and unfold over time.
research—aspirations frequently envisioned This is enhanced through the analyses of narra-
since adolescence (see Mary Frank Fox and tives of cohorts (young, middle-aged, and older
Paula Stephan, “Careers of Young Scientists: scientists) and the ways identities relate to age
Preferences, Prospects, and Reality by Gender and maturation. It is important that the work ad-
and Field,” Social Studies of Science, 2001 dresses identities within institutional worlds,
31:109–122). The Stars Are Not Enough, by Jo- rather than as personalities of individuals outside
seph Hermanowicz, is about the eventual careers
of institutional contexts. This approach, in turn,
of such persons, “chasing dreams” over their life
enables consideration of ways that lives in sci-
courses and within institutional settings.
ence are profoundly shaped by the stratification
With narratives from interviews conducted
of academic institutions.
with sixty academic physicists, employed at six
At the same time, this work tends to generalize
universities, who received their doctoral degrees
at three different points in time (before 1970, from physics to “science” and from the men it
1970–1980, and after 1980), Hermanowicz ex- considers to “scientists.” The initial quest for
plores the perspectives these scientists use to un- greatness in the narratives may be more charac-
derstand their careers and university settings. teristic of physics than of other scientific fields.
Key to his analyses are concepts of “time” and Physics has an exceptionally high level of con-
“place”: the meanings and identities of selves sensus about what constitute significant research
and careers as they form and unfold over time questions, methods, and contributions. This may
and the universities that encourage or constrain make physicists more prone than scientists in
“expectations” for success. other fields to shared understandings of scientific
The university settings are characterized as impact. As Hermanowicz recognizes, consensus
three distinct social worlds: “elite” settings that about physicists extends even to the wider pub-
place the highest premium on scientific research; lic: Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein are per-
“pluralist” settings with more balanced demands haps the most widely known scientists.
of research, teaching, and service, into which Of substantial concern is that the work in-
some eminent scientists are recruited; and “com- cludes only four women among the sixty persons
munitarian” settings with demands for “good cit- interviewed. Analyses of the narratives of
izenship” but without special arrangements to at- women are set apart rather than integrated into
tract eminent scientists. These settings send the chapters. For women, the central narrative is
different signals and cues for scientists’ present the higher organizational standards to which
and future senses of “self.” they are held. Oversampling women for the in-
Core to the sense of self is ambition. Herman- terviews undertaken would have resulted in a
owicz treats ambition not simply as an attribute larger number of women and provided a broader
of individual scientists but also as a character- base for assessment of gender and careers and

the ways in which opportunities and constraints that lies outside the system” (p. 56). Later in the
are shaped by institutional settings. chapter we find a summary of the significance of
MARY FRANK FOX special relativity, which “introduced the concept
of relative inertial systems into physical theory,
Sanford Kwinter. Architectures of Time: To- and in doing so replaced the absolute time and
wards a Theory of the Event in Modernist Cul- space of classical mechanics with the concept of
ture. xiii Ⳮ 237 pp., illus., index. Cambridge, the field. Though the laws of classical mechanics
Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. $29.95 (cloth). are valid within an inertial system, they do not
apply to events occurring outside it. Thus local
This book discusses changes in our understand- events seem to obey Newtonian principles, but
ing of time, although Sanford Kwinter prefers they are always embedded in a larger fluid
talk of changes in the epistemology, metaphys- framework of space-time where events can only
ics, and ontology of time. It is often difficult to be related through the Lorentz transformation
be sure what Kwinter is claiming because he fre- and not through a fixed or universal coordinate”
quently puts familiar terms in inverted commas. (p. 67). As this and other passages indicate,
Occasionally he explains the special meaning he Kwinter believes that physics was dominated by
intends. For example: “By ‘history’ I understand Newtonian absolute space and time—which he
the magical substratum through which events al- attributes to Descartes (p. 58), and which reigned
legedly communicate with one another and in re- unchallenged until the development of thermo-
lation to which they are said to occur” (p. 36 n 3); dynamics and electromagnetic theory in the
this is not encouraging. The book ranges over nineteenth century (p. 58). He also identifies re-
many topics: aesthetics, architecture, literature, jection of the absolute status of space and time
philosophy, physics, and more. Many works are with rejection of anything absolute (p. 36). But,
cited and much terminology from various fields in relativity, “what time lost in universality when
appears: phase space, fractals, nonlinear equa- it ceased to be absolute it gained in concreteness
tions (which he thinks first appeared in physics through its new association with space” (p. 67).
in the nineteenth century), genetic algorithms In the preface Kwinter tells us that, after some
(p. 13), illocutionary events (p. 14), transvalua- delays, he had decided not to publish the book
tion of all values (p. 35), and more. Kwinter of- because “I was no longer committed to its spe-
fers such insights as that nothing new would oc- cific thesis” (p. viii) but that he changed his mind
cur without time (p. 8), that time permits distant because of “a clear and emerging interest among
objects to interact, and that modernity is char- designers and architects in the problem of time
acterized by the spatialization of time (p. 22). and its relation to form” (p. ix). Those who have
Bergson is a major supporting actor, but the star a taste for literature in which every topic is
is Kafka, who is the subject of about half the vaguely related to every other topic via discus-
text. I will focus on Kwinter’s view of changing sions in which key terms have idiosyncratic
conceptions of time in physics. meanings may find value in this book. In my
Much of this discussion is in Chapter 3: view, Kwinter should have followed his first im-
“Physical Theory and Modernity: Einstein, Boc- pulse, leaving space a bit less cluttered and sav-
cioni, Sant’Elia.” Here physics flows into aes- ing some of us some time.
thetics as we move between Einstein’s papers HAROLD I. BROWN
and Futurist manifestos. Einstein appears early,
followed by discussion of the sculptor Boccioni, Eric Jager. The Book of the Heart. xxii Ⳮ 248
then back to Einstein, then to Sant’Elia. Much pp., illus., bibl., index. Chicago/London: Uni-
of the chapter concerns Sant’Elia’s architectural versity of Chicago Press, 2000. $32, £20.50.
drawings for projects that were never imple-
mented. Kwinter attributes three hypotheses to Names of books, like the names of other com-
Boccioni. One of these—universal motion—de- modities, are adjuncts of marketing and serve
scribes a cosmos “whose substance, conceived consumers as a guide to assessing products’ rele-
within time, is speed itself, ontologically pure and vance to their needs. The title The Book of the
without substrate (the pure ‘d’ in dx/dt)” (p. 66); Heart, in my view, falls short of that require-
dx/dt is later described as a “differential equa- ment. The title may be more evocative in some
tion” (p. 97). According to Kwinter, one main academic and scholarly communities than to an
feature of special relativity is that it preserves uninformed reader, but it would have served Eric
the “Galilean principle of relativity,” which Jager better if it had a subtitle such as “A History
holds that uniform motion of an inertial system of the Heart as a Metaphor in Western Thought
“can be discerned only by referring to a point and Literature.”

Despite changes in ideas about the physiolog- non-Euclidean geometries by J. Bolyai and N. I.
ical functions of the heart as a seat of intelligence Lobachevsky (Ch. 16) are treated too slightly to
or emotion in early history, it has always been be understood. The contributions of “Georg Rie-
regarded as a vital part of existence. Sherwin Nu- mann” are covered (Ch. 19)—except for his cru-
land, in The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Re- cial notion of intrinsicality; and his association
flects on Medical Myths (Simon & Schuster, of metric properties with the distribution of mat-
2000), expresses his awe at first seeing a beating ter is attributed to W. K. Clifford (p. 154). Ex-
and pulsating heart when he says: “In the ancient clusions from the twentieth-century story in-
formulation of macrocosm and microcosm, the clude Hermann Weyl, a rather important figure
heart is the sun” (p. 163). This formulation ex- in the exegesis of general relativity; and A. N.
presses the power of the heart as a metaphor for Whitehead, though mention is made of his
a wide array of human emotions and conditions. logicist program for mathematics prosecuted
The author traces the use of the heart as a with his “Oxford” collaborator Bertrand Russell
metaphor from its origins in classical Greek lit- (pp. 148–149). (However, Whitehead is also
erature through the writings of St. Augustine, the omitted from specialist studies, most recently
work of the medieval scribes, the troubadours, J. J. Gray’s edited volume The Symbolic Uni-
and the Christian saints. One chapter is devoted verse [Oxford, 1999].) Conflations include maps
to graphic representations of the “book of the with charts in navigation (Ch. 8) and analytic
heart.” These sections take up more than three- with coordinate geometry concerning René Des-
fourths of the book, before Jager arrives at a con- cartes (Ch. 11).
sideration of the effect of Gutenberg and the in- The level rises on later topics such as Henri
troduction of a new technology on the metaphor. Poincaré’s hyperbolic geometry (Ch. 17) and the
The book ends with a brief discussion of the (super-) string theories of E. Witten and others,
changes in technologies of writing, from the with efforts under way to unite relativity theory
classical scroll and the codex book to the use of with quantum mechanics (Pt. 5). However, the
the computer for the creation and storage of reader may not grasp the reasons for the various
print. Like the other technological changes, dig- dimensions in those theories.
itization may have provided us with new meta- The endnotes suggest a modest range for the
phors, but it has not challenged the heart’s su- author’s reading of historical sources. Chestnuts
premacy as a metaphor for dealing with our in the text include Georg Cantor going mad be-
emotional, spiritual, and moral sentiments or its cause of Leopold Kronecker’s attacks (p. 27), a
role in expressions of faith, conviction, and com- fable that in any case is irrelevant to the history
passion. of geometry!
This book, I believe, will not engage the at- We are enjoying a wave of trivial pseudo-
tention of many readers of Isis. I must, never- histories of mathematical topics, prompted by
theless, express my admiration for the author’s Ernest Zebrowski’s A History of the Circle (Rut-
erudition and scholarship, for which the bibli- gers, 1999) and Robert Kaplan’s The Nothing
ography provides ample evidence. That Is: A Natural History of Zero (Allen Lane,
DAVID A. KRONICK 1999). May we look forward, say, to Fermat’s
last throw on probability theory or Newton’s big
Leonard Mlodinow. Euclid’s Window: The apple on mechanics?
Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hy- I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS
perspace. xii Ⳮ 306 pp., illus., figs., index. New
York/London: Free Press, 2001. $26, Can Albert Presas i Puig. Praktische Geometrie und
$38.50. Kosmologie am Beispiel der Architektur. (Al-
gorismos: Studien zur Geschichte der Mathe-
The difficulties with this book start with its sub- matik und Naturwissenschaften, 27.) 339 pp., il-
title. It is not at all a history of geometry; for ex- lus., bibl. Munich: Institut für Geschichte der
ample, nothing is said about the development of Naturwissenschaften, 1998. DM 29.80 (paper).
perspective theory and connections with the arts.
The theme appears to be the role of geometry in Rather than endorsing any specific number the-
the development of mechanics and physics. ory of proportions, Albert Presas i Puig traces
Even then, the lacunae are impressive. On the the use of measurement and proportions from
provability of the parallel postulate in Euclidean ancient Egyptian through Greek architecture and
geometry, for example, nothing is said about the on through the constructions of Europe’s Middle
contributions of any Arabs, G. Saccheri, or J. H. Ages. Although the importance of proportion un-
Lambert, among others. The constructions of derwent significant changes during this time pe-

riod, proportions and numbers remained the truvius’s thinking: among other things, it was an
principles through which the harmony of crea- attempt to set the microcosm in relation to the
tion could be recognized. These relationships of macrocosm. Vitruvius’s proportioning and fig-
numbers were the basis of concepts such as har- ures would later make possible an architecture
mony, cosmos, and order that were to dominate that invites aesthetic and metaphysical regard.
scientific thought in Europe for nearly two thou- Keeping Anaximander’s strongly ordered and
sand years. geometric worldview in mind, the Pythagoreans
Crucial to ancient Egyptian architecture was were the first to develop a global conception of
the application of a set of rules that was used as the universe, assuming a relation between the
a measure of artistic creation as well as a method cosmos and a fixed harmony of all things. In-
of proportion. Although proportion was ex- deed, to these thinkers, the world was to be un-
tremely important to the Egyptians’ cosmology, derstood only when the number relationships on
the method was seen as a more practical one, as which it was based were made clear. So the Py-
serving the larger purpose of building structures thagoreans concerned themselves with the qual-
in relation to one another as well as pertaining ities of natural numbers. They ordered the most
to the gods’ entire plan. The building process important elements of the universe and even as-
was not guided principally by aesthetic concerns. signed moral and aesthetic values to the mathe-
These proportions were obtained through the matical relationships they constructed.
standardization of human body parts and also the Reflecting on Plato’s Timaeus leads Puig to
grid, which allowed for the transference and re- the historical consideration of the relationship
production of an image, no matter how complex between building and cosmology. According to
or on how great a scale. Plato, if the universe was created by a power
Puig emphasizes the example of Polykleitos, resembling a master builder, then the visible
since this picture-carver of antiquity was among world must be ordered in an intentional and
the earliest writers to concern himself with planned way. Although the Timaeus does not ex-
rhythm and symmetry. Polykleitos’s applied plicitly address the idea of proportions, its dis-
procedures, Puig suggests, are fundamentally the cussion of geometric forms is most informative.
same as those of the ancient Egyptians, but he All geometric figures, in the older tradition as
based his measurement system on the smallest well as in the newer Platonic one, are equal to
body part; other body parts were then reproduced
one another, both physically and spatially. Plato
in relation to the whole. Geometric methodology
also outlines how one constructs a geometric fig-
and progression remained important to Polyklei-
ure. Noteworthy here is that Plato understands
tos, but his procedure, departing from the Egyp-
that this figure is guided by an ideal definition.
tian grid, allowed him greater freedom in deter-
With Roriczer and Pacioli, Puig provides two
mining his initial size of unit.
In devoting a chapter to Anaximander, Puig very different examples of the continued exis-
wishes to explore more fully Anaximander’s tence of proportions in Europe’s Middle Ages.
considerations of technology. However, he does Roriczer, a master builder of the fifteenth cen-
not progress much further than the often- tury, focused on practical applications of ge-
described rings of the sun, moon, and stars. Puig ometry, not abstract geometrical theories. By
does make clear that it was Anaximander who this time geometry was seen as more of an “art”
introduced a principle of symmetry when he and was not only defined outside traditional cate-
stated that the earth rested in the center of the gories but had become more visible. Roriczer’s
cosmos. He also constructed his picture of the works are filled with drawings and are intended
universe through fixed, determined proportions, to be absorbed by a variety of learners, not just
as in architectural techniques—a major depar- scholars. Pacioli’s writings may not be as peda-
ture from the absolute sizes of Hesiod. gogically oriented as those of Roriczer, but his
The theory of proportions expressed by the treatise on architecture is still rooted in architec-
writer Vitruvius is the last in which the propor- ture. Pacioli was most interested in compiling
tions of the human body appear. He set the pro- mathematical and arithmetical knowledge, as
portions of the elements in relation to one an- well as finding new ways of explaining and util-
other and established a basic unit, the diameter izing that knowledge. His statements on propor-
of a temple’s column drum. Interestingly tions reflect those of Plato that proportions exist
enough, this diameter was obtained with refer- in every facet of life, not just numbers and sizes.
ence to the size of the human body, and these His work also imparts a considerable religious
parts are still reflected in temple measurement. interpretation.
Symmetry also played an important role in Vi- ROBERT HAHN

Anouk Barberousse. La physique face à la the well-known irreversibility paradoxes. With

probabilité. (Mathesis.) 210 pp., bibl., indexes. regard to the first problem, Barberousse men-
Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2000. tions with approval the ideas of J. Lebowitz, ac-
cording to which statistical mechanics is pri-
What is probability? The question is not easy to marily concerned with those ensemble properties
answer, and it may even be doubted whether it that hold with probability 1; in this way the gap
makes sense at all. It is true that there is a well- between the study of the individual system and
defined mathematical theory of probability, char- the ensemble is bridged. With regard to the irre-
acterized by the Kolmogorov axioms. But there versibility problems, she endorses Boltzmann’s
exist many different interpretations of this prob- solution: irreversible behavior can be understood
ability theory: in terms of personal degrees of on the basis of specific initial conditions and the
belief, (objective) support of a hypothesis by evi- distinction between macroscopic and microscopic
dence, relative frequencies in an infinite series of physical quantities. The dissenting views of Ilya
repetitions of an experiment, propensities in a Prigogine are briefly discussed and dismissed.
single run of an experiment, and so on. It is not The style of the book is nontechnical: there
so clear why one of these divergent meanings of are hardly any formulas. Of course, this makes
the concept of probability should be given pre- it difficult to be precise in treating such a so-
cedence over the others. phisticated and technical subject as the founda-
In the first part of La physique face à la prob- tions of statistical mechanics. I fear that re-
abilité Anouk Barberousse introduces some of searchers who are well versed in the history and
the possible interpretations of probability and re- foundations of statistical physics will find noth-
views, on an elementary level, the discussions ing new in the book and will sometimes be dis-
surrounding them; she concludes by expressing satisfied with the cursory nature of the discus-
a preference for the so-called modal frequency sion. On the other hand, the lack of jargon and
interpretation proposed by Bas van Fraassen. As technicalities should make the book accessible
she explains, the purpose of this part of the book to the nonspecialist. However, I have my doubts
is to prepare us for a study of the use that is made concerning this latter audience: I think that
of probabilistic reasoning in statistical physics. someone who has no prior knowledge of statis-
Accordingly, Part 2 is devoted to an exposition tical mechanics will find it hard to get an ade-
of the basic principles of statistical mechanics; quate picture of the theory via this introduction.
however, the conceptual machinery developed in I think the book is best suited for those who al-
Part 1 is not really put to use here or in the rest ready more or less know the physics and want
of the book. The approach in Part 2 is semihis- to get an impression of the philosophical and
torical: Barberousse discusses papers by James foundational controversies surrounding the sub-
Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann from the ject.
1860s and 1870s, with particular attention to the DENNIS DIEKS
status of the statistical concepts employed. Orig-
inally, probabilistic reasoning entered through Thomas Christensen (Editor). The Cambridge
consideration of the relative numbers of mole- History of Western Music Theory. (Cambridge
cules with particular properties in a macroscopic History of Music.) xxiv Ⳮ 998 pp., illus., fig.,
physical system consisting of an enormous num- tables, indexes. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
ber of such molecules. Later, the idea was intro- sity Press, 2002. $150 (cloth).
duced of considering an “ensemble” of physical
systems—that is, an imaginary collection of The Cambridge History of Western Music The-
copies of the one real system studied, all in the ory, while not in fact a history, is nevertheless a
same macroscopic state but with differing mi- substantial achievement. The book is a collection
crostates. In this case probability enters as a rela- of thirty-one essays by highly regarded academic
tive frequency in the ensemble; this way of music theorists who range from assistant-
applying probabilistic concepts found its cul- professor juveniles to well-established tenured
mination in the work of Josiah Willard Gibbs silverbacks. Perched somewhat unstably in the
(1902). space between encyclopedia and hypertrophic
The third and final part goes into contempo- journal issue, the book contains an abundance of
rary issues in the foundations of statistical me- fascinating material. Yet it is somewhat frustrat-
chanics. The focus here is on two questions: how ing when considered in toto.
to justify the use of ensembles, given that we This frustration can be attributed to three
want to make predictions about the behavior of sources. The first is organization. Many of the
a single, really existing, system; and how to solve individual essays are broadly topical, tracing a

Relationships of notes for chromatic just-intonation printed in Franscisco Salinas, De musica libri
septem [1577] (from Thomas Christensen, ed., The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory,
p. 200).
single theme (“Tuning and Temperament,” “Mu- volume’s near-total neglect of jazz. Jazz is un-
sic Theory and Mathematics,” “Music and doubtedly one of the twentieth century’s greatest
Rhetoric”) through several centuries. Others contributions to the history of music, and it has
treat the work of a specific eminent theorist (Ra- opened numerous avenues of fruitful theoretical
meau, Schenker) or a specific period (“Counter- exploration. These include performance practice,
point Pedagogy in the Renaissance”). Still others particularly as regards the elusive rhythmic phe-
(“Epistemologies of Music Theory”) provide nomenon of “swing”; improvisation, with its
relatively nonhistorical treatment of a single delicate balance between spontaneity and the use
metadisciplinary issue. The crisscrossing subject of conventional, overlearned patterns; and har-
matter means that some important topics never mony, which in jazz derives equally from non-
get a full or thorough treatment, being consigned Western folk music and Western art composi-
instead to scattered references throughout the tion. It is true that many of the important
book. Were a reader to be interested in Milton contributors to jazz theory are not academic the-
Babbitt, for example, he or she would need to orists, but this is no reason to perpetuate the
consult Chapter 3 (for reflections on Babbitt’s academy’s long-standing disinheritance of jazz.
theoretical methodology), Chapter 10 (for brief The third source of frustration pertains to
remarks on Babbitt’s mathematical orientation), style. As is to be expected in a volume of this
Chapter 19 (for Babbitt’s place in the history type, the style and tone of the essays range
of twelve-tone theory), and Chapter 22 (for a widely. Some (such as John Covach’s “Twelve-
discussion of Babbitt’s rhythmic procedures). Tone Theory”) are workmanlike contributions to
Chronological or encyclopedic organization might the encyclopedia-entry genre; others (such as Ni-
have been more useful in a collective work of this colas Cook’s “Epistemologies of Music The-
large scope. ory”) feature the more controversial type of writ-
The second problem is coverage. The book is ing that makes for interesting journal essays. The
somewhat brusque when it comes to twentieth- best essays—including Brian Hyer’s “Tonality,”
century topics. Particularly disappointing is the Patrick McCreless’s “Music and Rhetoric,” and

Scott Burnham’s “Form”—manage to be au- orous basis of analysis that ended some 150
thoritative and interesting at the same time. But years later with the replacement of infinitesimal
one senses an ambivalence in the collection as a arguments by the systematic use of limits and
whole, which veers between personal and objec- the elucidation of the notion of the real number.
tive standpoints. This development is represented here by ex-
Despite these caveats, the work is an excerpts from Colin Maclaurin, Jean le Rond
tremely valuable contribution to the history of d’Alembert, Bernard Bolzano, and Richard De-
Western music theory. Almost all of the essays dekind. The selections from Bolzano are particu-
are of high quality, and the scholarship is im- larly valuable, as his works are difficult to access
peccable. Though there is probably no single and the extent of his research is not widely
reader who stands to benefit from all of the es- known.
says in the book, nearly every reader will find The Kantian view of mathematics is repre-
something of value herein. The book can serve sented by only twenty pages of the master him-
both as a reference work and as a snapshot of self, followed by ninety pages of Hermann von
current theoretical opinion. It belongs on the Helmholtz, a major figure in the revival of Kant-
shelf of every scholar who has a serious interest ianism.
in music theory and its development. Another line of inquiry with ancient roots is
DMITRI TYMOCZKO investigations into the role of the fifth postulate
of Euclid. This work, which tied the logical
William Ewald. From Kant to Hilbert: A Source question of the independence of axioms to the
Book in the Foundations of Mathematics. 2 vol- philosophical problem of the relation of geom-
umes. xviii Ⳮ xvi Ⳮ 1,340 Ⳮ xxviii pp., bibl., etry to empirical space, is represented here by
index. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. $300 less-known excerpts from J. H. Lambert and by
(cloth). famous remarks of C. F. Gauss extracted from
his correspondence. Ewald’s introduction to
This large collection of writings on the founda- Lambert, a veritable essay on the history of the
tions of mathematics is organized chronologi- axiom of parallels, is particularly valuable.
cally. Exceeding the temporal limits of the title, The new era in geometry was started by the
it stretches from Bishop Berkeley to Bourbaki. inaugural dissertation of Bernhard Riemann; it is
It contains eighty-nine selections divided into included here in its entirety and is followed by
twenty-eight groups: each group consists of re- various excerpts of a philosophical nature from
lated papers, generally by one writer, and each Helmholtz. It may be noted that while Rie-
paper is introduced in a comment by William mann’s study opened a new field of mathemat-
Ewald. ics, Helmholtz’s writings did not much influence
The foundations of mathematics is a field that subsequent developments. Not so with Felix
has been cultivated by both mathematicians and Klein; however, the selection from Klein in this
philosophers. The main topics of inquiry are nat- collection centers on his more general views of
urally common to both: the nature of mathemat- mathematics rather than on the Erlangen pro-
ical objects, in particular the relation of mathe- gram.
matics to experience; the methodology of The widening of the concept of number, the
mathematical proof and the basis for belief in the gradual acceptance of negative and complex
certainty of mathematical theorems; the chang- numbers, and the invention of quaternions is rep-
ing notion of rigor. It is well known that the at- resented here by a brief selection from Gauss and
titudes of mathematicians toward the work of a lengthy one from W. R. Hamilton. However,
philosophers have often ranged from mistrust to omission of the work of A. L. Cauchy results in
lack of interest. This view is exemplified here by an incomplete presentation. In 1821 Cauchy in-
Gauss’s dismissive comments about all philos- troduced the field of complex numbers as the set
ophers, including Kant (see p. 293). With the of “symbolic expressions,” together with two al-
exception of Berkeley, Kant, and Helmholtz, all gebraic operations on them. Since the equality
of Ewald’s selections are taken from the writings of two “expressions” was defined as the simul-
of mathematicians, quite often those of the very taneous equality of their real and imaginary
first rank. parts, there does not seem to be more than a lin-
The anthology opens with a group of excerpts guistic difference between this definition and
from George Berkeley that are remarkable in that as pairs of real numbers credited by Ewald
their astute criticism of the foundations of infin- to Hamilton. Moreover, in his investigations of
itesimal calculus. The bishop had a point: his integration in the complex plane, Cauchy explic-
arguments started the protracted search for a rig- itly considers integrals from a Ⳮ bi to c Ⳮ di

as integrals along a plane curve from the point easier to comprehend in the work of his follow-
with coordinates (a, b) to the point (c, d) (see ers. Here the reader can consult the anthology of
Cauchy’s Mémoire sur les intégrales définies Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, Philosophy
prises entre des limites imaginaires [1825]). of Mathematics (Prentice Hall, 1964).
When Hamilton’s publications started appearing There are two selections from G. H. Hardy.
in 1833, both the nature of complex numbers and One gives a lucid exposition of the views of a
some principal theorems about functions of com- professional mathematician on the philosophical
plex variable were already known to the most controversies of the 1920s: logicism, intuition-
prominent mathematicians of the time. (This ism, and formalism. The second is a brief but
does not diminish the importance of Hamilton’s definitive article on the famous controversy con-
discovery of quaternions—which, incidentally, cerning an incomplete statement of Cauchy con-
are considerably more today than “a historical cerning the convergence of series of continuous
curiosity,” as Ewald would have it [p. 362].) functions. It will be particularly appreciated by
One last element was necessary for the rigor- mathematicians who are acquainted with the va-
ous grounding of real analysis: the “arithmeti- porous musings of some prominent present-day
zation of continuum”—that is, a theory of real philosophers.
numbers. This task was achieved by Dedekind. The last selection in the anthology is a brief
He is represented here by a very solid selection article by Bourbaki describing their approach to
that includes a complete translation of “Was sind mathematics, a development of ideas of Dede-
und was sollen die Zahlen”; it is complemented kind and Hilbert that attempts to present math-
by a brief selection from Leopold Kronecker, ematics in terms of axiomatized structures.
who held quite different ontological views. There is no doubt that Ewald’s anthology will
A number of selections from the British math- be of great value to both historians of mathe-
ematicians Duncan Gregory, Augustus De Mor- matics and philosophers interested in the foun-
gan, Hamilton, and George Boole trace the rise dations of mathematics. It covers the period pre-
of a new, more abstract conception of algebra. ceding that treated by van Heijenoort and
They are followed by essays on more general complements the purely mathematical collec-
topics by J. J. Sylvester, W. K. Clifford, and Ar- tions of D. J. Struik (A Source Book in Mathe-
thur Cayley. The last is most interesting, offer-
matics [Harvard, 1969]) and D. E. Smith (A
ing, as Ewald notes, “a masterly survey of the
Source Book in Mathematics [Dover, 1959]).
developments in nineteenth century mathematics
Many selections are made available in English
as they appeared to one of its leading practition-
for the first time, and many are from sources that
ers” (p. 542).
are difficult to access. The chief merit of Ewald’s
With the emergence of mathematical logic and
of the set theory the philosophical inquiry collection is that he has selected appropriate ex-
changed its focus. The former is represented here cerpts—not an easy task in the case of more pro-
by the complete text of Boole’s “Mathematical lix writers (like Hamilton) or those who left
Analysis of Logic.” The development of set the- many volumes of collected works (like Cayley,
ory is represented by a substantial selection from with fourteen volumes).
Georg Cantor, by some selections from the work Each selection is preceded by an introduction
of French mathematicians (Emile E. Borel, René containing, at a minimum, basic biographical
Baire, et al.), and by a later paper of Ernst Zer- facts and bibliographical references. Some of the
melo. The renewed discussion on infinity in longer introductions are valuable essays on par-
mathematics is only lightly touched upon. For a ticular topics or writers: besides the introduc-
presentation of more recent and more technical tions already mentioned, I would single out the
developments in mathematical logic, the reader introduction to C. S. Peirce’s life and work as
should see Jean van Heijenoort’s anthology well as the introductions to Bolzano, Hamilton,
From Frege to Gödel (Harvard, 1967). Gregory, and Zermelo.
The most prominent trends in the philosophy A brief review is not the place for a reviewer
of mathematics in the twentieth century were to register his every disagreement with an au-
David Hilbert’s formalism and L. E. J. Brou- thor. Ewald himself lists some topics that had to
wer’s intuitionism; Ewald devotes substantial be omitted to allow adequate treatment of those
space to both. Indeed, all of Hilbert’s published that are represented. It should be noted, however,
articles on the foundations of mathematics are that the collection is heavily skewed in the di-
now available either here or in van Heijenoort’s rection of English and German authors, omit-
anthology. Brouwer’s ideas are also given a ting—with one exception—French mathemati-
good deal of space, but it appears that they are cians up to the time of Henri Poincaré. Thus its

picture of the search for the foundations of cal- serious part of intellectual history for two mil-
culus is not complete. lennia. Whitfield is not concerned whether as-
Recently the publishers reissued this anthol- trology is true. “True or false, the history of the
ogy in paperback at a more reasonable price subject is important and intriguing in its own
($85). This is fortunate, as the price of the origi- right, as crossing the boundaries between sci-
nal edition made this publication of formerly in- ence, philosophy, and religion. During the twen-
accessible material inaccessible for another rea- tieth century, the century of science, astrology
son—at least for most private purchasers. stubbornly resisted all the rational and scientific
ANTONI A. KOSINSKI arguments against it, in a manner which reminds
one of astrology’s progress through the univer-
Peter Whitfield. Astrology: A History. 207 pp., sities and courts of medieval Europe in the teeth
illus., bibl., notes, index. London: British Li- of all the theological objections to it. The out-
brary; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. $35. standing fact about astrology is that for centuries
people wanted to believe it: they longed for it to
At first glance Astrology: A History looks like a be true, and around that longing they created an
sophisticated coffee-table book. Brilliantly illus- elaborate intellectual edifice” (p. 202).
trated with color pictures—some familiar and Whitfield has succeeded in presenting astrol-
others quite fresh—this attractive volume will ogy not as an independent subject but in the con-
no doubt captivate an audience fascinated by as- text of the philosophical outlook of each succes-
trology and lured in by the images of a wide sive period. As such he has achieved a synthesis
range of books and manuscripts. that goes well beyond any other astrological his-
Surprise! Included is a very respectable text, tory of which I am aware. In the hands of Ptol-
even more impressive than the rich selection of emy, astrology became a scientific topic; Whit-
illustrations. Peter Whitfield, an independent field argues this claim well. By the time of the
scholar in Britain, has produced a number of Renaissance, “it was, as it had always been, a
splendidly illustrated books, and here he offers spacious philosophical structure, somewhere be-
an informative, nonpolemical account of the tween a science and a religion, offering a uni-
chameleon-like qualities of astrology that en- fying perspective on questions of cosmology and
abled it to evolve with the times and to be a physics, medicine and biology, and above all on
human destiny” (p. 165).
But by the late seventeenth century, William
Lilly’s very success as a popularizer/charlatan
eventually proved fatal to the art. As science be-
came empirical, astrology lost its place. The
character of the astrologers themselves alienated
serious thinkers, Whitfield writes. “Thus astrol-
ogy suffered a process of social destruction as
well as an intellectual one, and the importance
of the first should not be underestimated”
(p. 186).
Whitfield stumbles only very rarely, as when
he confuses astronomical tables with ephemeri-
des. If I were again offering a seminar on the
history of astrology, I would surely adopt this
book as a text, and such a peccadillo would offer
a fine opportunity to discourse on the basic ma-
terials required by astrologers of all ages to con-
duct their analyses.
The presentation is enhanced by a generous
series of sidebars that illuminate topics ranging
from Shakespeare or Chaucer to Origen or the
Black Death. I was, however, disappointed by
the large illustration of “the lion of Comma-
gene,” the earliest horoscope in O. Neugebauer
and H. B. Van Hoesen’s Greek Horoscopes
Astrolabe used in astrological calculation (from (American Philosophical Society, 1959), be-
Peter Whitfield, Astrology: A History, p. 124). cause it is totally textured with enlarged half-

tone dots—surely a better photograph is avail- fields, including chemistry, biology, biochemis-
able. But this was the single exception in a try, pharmacology, molecular biology, protein
dazzling selection of illustrations. More impor- therapy research, and health fields. However, the
tant, I was frustrated by the lack of identifica- particular contributions of each of the twelve to
tions of many of the books and manuscripts the contents of the book remain unspecified. The
shown; even though they generally carry the call coverage is largely descriptive. Mathematical
numbers of the volumes in the British Library, expressions and chemical formulas are almost
they unfortunately rarely reveal the author or ti- completely absent. Readers who are interested in
tle. a detailed technical description of mass spec-
Altogether this is an impressive and elegant trometry and its applications might refer to Fred-
volume, surely the best history of astrology cur- erick A. White and George M. Wood’s excellent
rently available. book Mass Spectrometry: Applications in Sci-
OWEN GINGERICH ence and Engineering (Wiley, 1986).
The subject matter of the present book is di-
Michael A. Grayson (Editor). Measuring Mass: vided into ten chapters. The first covers the im-
From Positive Rays to Proteins. x Ⳮ 149 pp., portant discoveries in the physical sciences in the
illus., figs., index. Philadelphia: Chemical Heri- nineteenth century and the first half of the twen-
tage Press, 2002. $35 (cloth). tieth century, culminating with the major devel-
opments in mass spectrometry during the Man-
This carefully crafted volume can be described hattan Project. The second chapter is devoted to
as a coffee-table book for mass spectroscopists. the applications of mass spectrometry after
It is lavishly illustrated with many photographs World War II. It includes the work of Willard
and figures. At the bottom of each page of text Libby, who in the late 1940s first measured 14C
there is a running summary of important events in organic material by detecting its radioactive
in physics in general and mass spectrometry in decay rather than by measuring its mass because
particular and, below that, of general historical of interference from the vastly more abundant
events from 1895 to the present. The contribu- 14
N. This problem was overcome in 1977 with
tors are twelve eminent scientists from many the development of accelerator mass spectrom-
A Calutron “racetrack” at Oak Ridge, which produced enriched uranium for early atomic weapons
(from Michael A. Grayson, ed., Measuring Mass, p. 16).

etry employing tandem Van de Graaff accelera- During the past decade cosmology has become
tors normally used in nuclear physics research. an increasingly experimental science in which
This important and relatively new branch of the history of our universe since the first second
mass spectrometry encompasses the ultrasensi- of its existence is scientifically well established.
tive detection of many long-lived radioactive Martin Rees, Royal Society Professor at Cam-
isotopes in addition to 14C and has many fasci- bridge and Astronomer Royal of Great Britain,
nating applications. It deserves much more ex- provides an overview of these developments and
tensive treatment than is provided by this book. a proposed answer to Einstein’s question,
Chapter 3 covers the applications of mass spec- “Could God have made the world any differ-
trometry in the petroleum industry. Chapter 4 is ently?” The book is not a technical one, being
devoted to the fundamental physical and chem- based on Princeton’s first Scribner Lectures, but
ical processes involved in ion formation in sam- it is rich in scientific detail and historic insight.
ples to be mass analyzed. All mass spectrome- The first half of the book is a very well presented
ters, of course, require an input of positive or, in overview of the present state of Big Bang cos-
some cases, negative ions. Chapter 5 is devoted mology, including the history of recent devel-
to the biochemical applications of mass spec- opments. In particular, Rees demonstrates that
trometers—the study of living cells, both
both for the existence of life on earth and for the
healthy and diseased. The labeling of large bio-
current state of the observed universe the values
logical molecules with rare stable isotopes such
2
H, 13C, and 15N is an important aspect of this of the constants of nature, the strength of its
field of research. forces, and the parameters of the early cosmos
Chapter 6 covers pharmaceutical applications must lie within a very narrow range.
of mass spectrometry. This is a particularly fas- Part 2, “The Beginning and the End,” looks
cinating chapter, dealing with what may be the first at very recent experimental evidence point-
most important contribution made by mass spec- ing to a slight acceleration in the rate of our uni-
trometry to mankind. Chapter 7 treats the use of verse’s expansion. The most likely cause is some
mass spectrometry as an analytical tool to in- “vacuum energy,” but current theory predicts
crease our knowledge of the earth, our solar sys- that, if such exists, it would produce a far too
tem, and the entire universe. The eighth chapter large effect. The other puzzle lies at the begin-
concerns the application of mass spectrometry to ning of time, the first thousandth of a second of
environmental problems involving the distribu- the universe’s existence. The critical constraints
tion of potentially dangerous chemicals in soil, are the proportions of matter and radiation, the
water, and air. In 1962 the ecologist Rachel cosmic expansion rate, how smooth the expan-
Carson publicized the dangers of environmental sion is, and the fundamental properties of matter.
pollution, and this led the U.S. government to Rees predicts that by 2010 cosmologists will
create the Environmental Protection Agency in know the nature of dark matter and vacuum pres-
1970. The regulations promulgated by this sure with sufficient precision to push the thresh-
agency created a demand for new analytical old of the well-established model cosmos well
techniques that were soon satisfied by various back from one millisecond but that they will not
innovations in mass spectrometry. Chapter 9 re- have solved the “deep question” of the origin of
lates the applications of mass spectrometry in the the Big Bang.
field of law and order, including the detection of Rees writes, “We seek unified theories of the
performance-enhancing drugs in horse racing cosmos and microworld not because the rest of
and other sports, drugs of abuse, and poisons. science (or even the rest of physics) depends on
The final chapter is a brief summary of the com- them, but because they deal with deep aspects of
munity of mass spectrometrists. It describes the reality.” In the concluding chapters he speculates
founding of the American Society for Mass on such aspects as possible answers to Einstein’s
Spectrometry, the awards that society has made question. First he recounts the history of early
for distinguished contributions to the field, and speculation about the stability of so-called con-
a list of its presidents from 1969 to the present.
stants of nature (e.g., Newton’s G or the speed
The book is very readable and entertaining; it
of light) over time. When the speculations arose
should have wide appeal, especially to experts
in the field but also to scientists in other fields no experimental means existed to test them, but
and even to the general public. subsequent advances in experimental technique
HARRY E. GOVE have shown them to be constant on cosmic time
scales. We currently lack laws of physics ade-
Martin Rees. Our Cosmic Habitat. 240 pp., il- quate to connect gravity and other forces of
lus. Princeton, N.J./Oxford: Princeton Univer- nature as needed to deal with the very early
sity Press, 2001. $22.50 (cloth). universe. Recently, however, physicists have

proposed that string theories involving more riod through the late 1930s. Interested in the
than three spatial dimensions can solve this impact medicine had on the construction of mod-
problem, and Rees suggests that these theories ern Jewish identity, as well as its historic place
will soon be experimentally testable. In fact, the in German-Jewish culture, this cogent study con-
February 2002 issue of Physics Today contains tributes to extant scholarship concerning the em-
a long article suggesting experiments to test beddedness of science and medicine in culture.
them at particle accelerators already under con- Efron’s periodization from the early seven-
struction, lending further support to Rees’s con- teenth century until 1938 is ambitious, yet it al-
jecture on testability. We must simply reserve lows him to chart over time the different ways
judgment. in which Jews contributed as producers, consum-
Having shown how special our cosmos is, ers, and objects of attention within the German
Rees continues, “If our existence depends on a medical community. Large numbers of German
seemingly special cosmic recipe, how should we Jews did not become professionally involved in
react to the apparent fine tuning?” Three possi- the field of medicine before the eighteenth cen-
bilities occur to him: “Happenstance,” “Provi- tury. Restrictions on Jews at German Catholic
dence of Design,” and “A Special Universe and Protestant universities, the slow develop-
Drawn from an Ensemble, or Multiverse.” If by ment of professional medicine there, and the be-
happenstance we found the unique set of theories lief that Jewish physicians desired to cause their
that would yield the special cosmic recipe, he non-Jewish patients harm prevented many Jews
feels that we would still want to know why. An- from becoming part of the German medical es-
other interpretation he cites is that of John Polk- tablishment. Furthermore, even when German
inghorne, a Cambridge physics professor and Jews became physicians in certain communities,
theologian, who calls our cosmos “the creation they experienced discrimination from Jewish
of a Creator who wills that it should be so.” Rees, communal authorities who worried that Jewish
however, favors a third way and elaborates the doctors threatened to undermine existing insti-
physics of multiverses, arguing for its being a tutions, power structures, and ways of life.
scientific enterprise by showing how it may be Several historical phenomena transformed the
tested and how other universes that have fun- relationship between Jews and medicine in the
damental constants wholly unlike those in our eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
universe may be possible within a multiverse. As namely the rise of the German Jewish and non-
he speculates in the preface, “Our entire universe Jewish middle classes, with their belief in
is a fertile oasis within the multiverse.” change, education, and self-betterment (Bil-
This book’s clarity of exposition, targeted to dung), the quest for political emancipation, and
a broad readership, makes it a good introduction the Enlightenment. According to Efron, this pe-
to a subject that challenges who we are and what riod witnessed the rise of the “maskilic physi-
the nature of our world is. It is neither a history cian,” a Jewish doctor who used the language of
nor a scientific monograph but an exciting in- the Enlightenment to analyze Jewish society,
sight into “our cosmic habitat” that deserves a criticize the physical condition and health of the
wide readership among all who are curious about Jewish people, advocate Judaism’s reform, and
discoveries that might have an impact on our aspire to positions of communal power. His
worldview as great as that of the Copernican presence helped to contribute to a paradox that
Revolution. would later characterize nineteenth- and early
JOHN L. MCKNIGHT twentieth-century medical science: the simulta-
neous conviction on the part of Jewish and non-
John M. Efron. Medicine and the German Jewish physicians that Jews represented ill
Jews: A History. viii Ⳮ 343 pp., illus., index. health and that they were disproportionately
New Haven, Conn./London: Yale University healthy. Efron traces these concerns by analyz-
Press, 2001. $35. ing the study of Jewish statistics, the interest in
Jewish ritual behavior, and the published dis-
The historic relationship between Jews and med- courses on alleged Jewish pathologies, specifi-
icine has long been a source of self-respect, cally the relationship between Jews, alcohol
pride, and legend. John Efron’s superb study, abuse, mental illness, and certain physical dis-
however, does not simply reconstruct a list of eases.
contributions Jewish physicians have offered to Interestingly, Efron finds that the medical es-
the field. Instead, this volume examines the com- tablishment witnessed two paradigm shifts. Dur-
plicated relationship between the Jews of Ger- ing the early twentieth century, Jewish psychia-
many and medicine from the early modern pe- trists changed in the ways in which they

imagined the Jewish mentally ill. During much broad field (the history of pharmacy), a compac-
of the nineteenth century, Jewish physicians— tion relating several subfields into an attempted
like the maskilic doctors before them—depicted unified whole. Rudolf Schmitz was neither a
Eastern European Jews as psychologically weak pharmacist nor a physician in his early training,
and Western European Jews as physically at risk. so that sometimes his presentations of specific
Over time, however, increasing numbers of Jew- drugstuffs and pharmacal techniques are rather
ish psychiatrists characterized the Western Eu- vague, if not wobbly; on the other hand, Schmitz
ropean Jew as psychologically unstable and the does what “universal historians” do—and does
Eastern European Jew as mentally sound. This it well: one can see the interweaving of cultural
shift took place as increasing numbers of Jewish with political history, the intermeshing of eco-
physicians rejected the acculturatory sensibilities nomics with social systems (especially in the last
of their elders and embraced Zionism. The cen- sections on Byzantium, the early Middle Ages,
sure of Jewish physicians also changed. Eigh- classical Islam, and the later Middle Ages in Eu-
teenth- and early nineteenth-century critics in- rope [pp. 205–589]), much as ancient and me-
voked anxieties over quackery to attack Jewish dieval historians now commonly presume the in-
physicians. By the late 1800s, critics censured fluence of widespread trade as the economic
Jewish doctors for their presence in the medical underpinning of changes in particular societies.
establishment and questioned their motivations. Excellent are Schmitz’s accounts of the later
Opponents now utilized concerns about sexual- Roman Empire (in both politics and medical/
ity, urbanization, and modernization to revive pharmacal matters), Byzantium (albeit the treat-
earlier charges that Jewish doctors wished to ment is too brief ), and the Muslims on trade in
maltreat non-Jews. drugs and spices, leading quite naturally into the
As Efron makes clear, Germany was home to so-called High Middle Ages and the early Re-
thousands of Jewish physicians, served as a naissance: the volume ends with a clipped syn-
medical leader in the international community, opsis of how the “new disease” (syphilis) would
and acted as a national setting in which Jews and affect the European states in the near future; the
non-Jews used medicine and science to define year 1493 is a fitting end to the book, which
Germanness and Jewishness. Yet his ambitious seeks to encapsulate as much ancient and me-
analysis sometimes leads him to assume a uni- dieval theory in medicine and pharmacy as pos-
formity in Germany that may not have existed. sible, as well as how and why medicine and
This is particularly true for his examination of pharmacy remained wedded and dependent on
the pre-1871 period, before unification took botanicals, mineral drugs, and animal products
place. Moreover, because his analysis focuses on well into the modern era. To be sure, one can
pre-1848 and post-1871 moments, one is left discern the gradual separation of pharmacy from
wondering about the continuities and disconti- medicine in late medieval Italy and France, but
nuities that the relationship between Jews and again the specifics as drawn from legal texts do
medicine underwent during the so-called quieter not lend clarity to the specific botany or phar-
years of 1850 to 1869. maceuticals used, as the law codes grant status,
This deftly written book advances our under- leaving “professional matters” (drugs, plants,
standing of the interrelationship of science and primary teaching texts) to the practitioners.
medicine in culture. As an intellectual history, Moreover, by emphasizing what passes as “early
which utilizes mostly published materials, it German pharmacy” (pp. 84–92) as a fuzzy
leaves open possibilities for future cultural stud- forerunner of German practices in the early Mid-
ies on similar themes. It is a rich and welcome dle Ages (pp. 218–226) and in “Latin Europe”
contribution to the fields of medical and Jewish (pp. 293–589), Schmitz becomes more Eurocen-
history. tric than perhaps he intended. One is surprised by
ROBIN JUDD this tendency, since there are short narratives on
China (pp. 53–72) and Japan (pp. 74–83); the
Rudolf Schmitz. Geschichte der Pharmazie. Chinese materials are rather fuller, given the large
Volume 1: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang literature on this topic in modern German schol-
des Mittelalters. xvi Ⳮ 836 pp., illus., apps., arship. It is to Schmitz’s credit that he gives full
bibl., index. Eschborn: Govi-Verlag, 1998. DM credit to medical and pharmaceutical magic, al-
198. chemy, and the erstwhile “miracle tracts” in clas-
sical pagan, Christian, Byzantine, Arabic, and
This lengthy volume (the first of two projected; early modern (German) documents, but the ex-
the author died in 1992) may prove to be one of tremely hazy notions of a German “Frau” in early
the last single-author compactions of a very times, coupled with “Druidic medicine and phar-

macy” (the latter within “The Celts” [pp. 89–92]), lowed by Italian and Spanish, with German
should have been excised by the literary execu- works gradually growing fewer in number as the
tors of the unfinished manuscript. decades pass. It is sad to see such a fine example
Unlike in the classic German-language histo- of the dying process of a “universal history” (in-
ries of pharmacy (e.g., Hermann Schelenz, Ge- clusive rather than exclusive) relegated to a lan-
schichte der Pharmazie [Berlin, 1904; rpt., Hil- guage that no longer gains the allegiance of sci-
desheim, 1965]; and Julius Berendes, Die ence, let alone many of the humanities. It seems,
Pharmacie bei den alten Kulturvölkern [Halle, therefore, that if a short version of this splendid
1891; rpt., Hildesheim, 1989] and Das Apoth- book could be re-edited and translated into En-
ekenwesen [Stuttgart, 1907; rpt., Hildesheim, glish (especially the portions on Greek, Roman,
1967], this last with a “Vorwort” by Rudolf Byzantine, and classical Arabic medicine and
Schmitz himself ), there are no specific refer- pharmacy, including the marvelous tracts from
ences to texts and sources, excepting longer and Islamic Spain), it would function as a much-
shorter quotations, with the citation given within needed supplementary text for all current histo-
the main narrative. The reader is, thereby, pre- ries of pharmacy, which tend to be exclusive in
sumed to know which primary sources and their focus and devoted to more modern eras
which modern scholars to pursue in the enor- (Renaissance to the present), in which pharmacy
mous bibliography (pp. 593–778 [almost five definitely broke from medicine, becoming its
thousand references in Latinized Greek, Latin, own respected profession within the medical sci-
the majority in German, followed by items in ences. For those who have German (the vocab-
French, English, Spanish, and Italian]). Without ulary is not difficult, with the expected excep-
expert guidance, the novitiate will know little tions of technical terms), Schmitz’s Geschichte
about those texts and studies, and the scholar der Pharmazie offers delicious insights even
knows them all too well, so that the readership with “dipping” into sections of special interest;
of this new Geschichte is left in doubt. It is the volume as a whole ranks as a solid encyclo-
unlikely that even graduate students would be pedia of the history of pharmacy from prehistory
willing to plow through five thousand titles in through the arrival of syphilis in Europe.
an attempt to narrow down a particular era or JOHN SCARBOROUGH
subject, although the very fulsome Register
(pp. 781–836) somewhat mitigates this problem. Robert Whitaker. Mad in America: Bad Sci-
With a little digging, the prospective reader ence, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreat-
does find solid accounts of weights and measures ment of the Mentally Ill. 320 pp. Cambridge,
and of the twisting nomenclatures of pharmacal Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2002. $27 (cloth).
substances in a multilingual literature that incor-
porates nonmedical, religious, and other techni- This history of psychiatry deliberately chal-
cal tracts (viz., “Das Arzneimittel in der Litera- lenges the success story of the introduction of
tur”; pp. 357–402); and perhaps the best section antipsychotic drugs in the 1950s, according to
of Schmitz’s huge assemblage is the controver- which individuals suffering from schizophrenia
sial subject of “monastic medicine” in medieval could lead normal lives again, thereby making
times, particularly in the West (e.g., “Klöster als deinstitutionalization feasible. To shed doubts
Pflanzstätten der Wissenschaft,” beginning on on this account, Robert Whitaker starts out with
p. 294). Unhappily, all of these treasures and observations made by the World Health Orga-
many more are closed to those who do not com- nisation that individuals suffering from schizo-
mand German, so that monolingual scientists, phrenia in developing nations, where antipsy-
pharmacists, and doctors alike will not have ac- chotic medications are generally not available,
cess to the surfeit of early scientific riches scat- have higher recovery and lower relapse rates
tered throughout this thick tome. Indeed, the than patients treated with the most advanced
modern reader must be reminded of the long medications in North America. Nevertheless,
shadows of Greco-Roman theory of the “bal- North American psychiatrists continue to pre-
ances” of elements, qualities, and humors, pre- scribe antipsychotic drugs to many more patients
sumably first enunciated by Hippocratic Greek and in much higher doses than their counterparts
physicians and canonized by Galen of Pergamon elsewhere in the Western world. Mad in America
(A.D. 129–after 210); those long shadows of al- explores the historical reasons for this state of
most dogmatic influence on later Roman, Byz- affairs and draws a number of rather discom-
antine, classical Arabic, and early modern Eu- forting conclusions. Rather than the well-being
ropean medicine and pharmacy now have a large of mentally ill individuals, profits and the man-
literature, generally in English and French, fol- agement of patient populations appear to have

been the central concerns of researchers and psy- tions about the recent history of psychiatry in a
chiatrists. challenging manner. It thereby puts a dent in the
The first chapters deal with the heroic and of- virtually unquestioned hegemony of biological
ten barbaric treatment methods of the eighteenth psychiatry today.
century and the somatic treatment methods de- HANS POLS
veloped during the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury. The remainder and most interesting part of Margarete Sandelowski. Devices and Desires:
this study deals with the introduction of psycho- Gender, Technology, and American Nursing.
pharmacological treatments for schizophrenia, (Studies in Social Medicine.) xx Ⳮ 295 pp., il-
first offered in the United States in 1954 in the lus., bibl., index. Chapel Hill/London: Univer-
form of Thorazine. Whitaker relates how psy- sity of North Carolina Press, 2000. $45 (cloth);
chiatrists at that time described how Thorazine $19.95 (paper).
made mental patients emotionally detached and
profoundly disinterested in their environment. Histories of science and technology have typi-
They often mentioned the appearance of side ef- cally portrayed “exceptional” women who suc-
fects that resembled the symptoms of Parkin- ceeded within traditionally male professions,
son’s disease. The following ten years saw a while ordinary women are conspicuously absent
complete reversal of these opinions. In the 1960s except as users of technology (particularly in the
Thorazine was praised for reducing apathy, im- domestic sphere) or as victims of technology.
proving motor activity, and making patients less Some feminists have perpetuated male norms
indifferent. Whitaker explains this process as the regarding what constitutes important scien-
outcome of a smart public relations campaign tific work in their reticence to study female-
organized by a profit-driven pharmaceutical in- dominated professions. Yet nursing offers an
dustry. Ghostwriting articles, manipulating the ideal context in which to examine the intersect-
popular press, lobbying state legislatures, and or- ing and reciprocal relationships between gender,
ganizing speakers’ bureaus stacked with propo- work, science, and technology. Margarete San-
nents of the new treatment methods were among delowski’s research begins to address this sig-
the strategies employed. Unfavorable research nificant gap in the literature.
reports were repressed, and psychiatrists who In Devices and Desires Sandelowski asks im-
wanted to experiment with rehabilitation pro- portant questions about how technology has
grams that did not rely on medications had dif- shaped the nature and definition of nursing prac-
ficulty obtaining funding. By quoting critical tice, how nurses perceived and used new tech-
medical research, criticizing supportive articles, nologies, what choices were available, and how
and relating the experiences of patients on psy- power, social relations, and divisions of labor
chopharmacological medications, Whitaker paints between nurses, patients, and physicians were re-
a profoundly disturbing picture. He speculates negotiated based on new technologies (pp. 9–
that most symptoms considered characteristic of 10). She points out that nurses have “always
schizophrenia today (high relapse rates, assaultive used a variety of tools, instruments, and ma-
behavior, and social withdrawal) are outcomes chines” but seldom thought of them as technol-
of the medications used, not of the disease itself. ogy (p. 1). On the basis of the centrality of ma-
In the case of schizophrenia, the treatment is terial devices to nurses’ work, she argues that
much worse than the disease. devices both satisfied and thwarted nurses’ pro-
Whitaker’s conclusions are well argued and at fessional desires.
times convincing. He sketches how medical re- Sandelowski begins with a discussion of theo-
search and treatment have been shaped by the retical issues (Ch. 2) and then moves on to anal-
powerful pharmaceutical industry, which crafted ysis of the continuities and changes related to
unwarranted perceptions of antipsychotic medi- nurses’ skilled observation of patients. She sug-
cations. In this respect, he provides a welcome gests that increased diagnostic technologies after
counternarrative to the standard positive ac- World War II partially transformed nurses’ work
counts in the psychiatric and historical literature. from being situated “behind the screens” at the
However, some readers might be put off by the beginning of the twentieth century to work that
generalizations, the conspiratorial tone of the was situated “in front of the screens” by the end
book, and the speculations about the effects of of the century. Nurses shifted from “hands-on”
medications and the causes of schizophrenia. In knowledge of their patients to “hands-off ”
these matters Whitaker often moves beyond the knowledge generated by machines—but not
purview of the historian. That being said, this without contesting and negotiating health-care
provocative study raises many troubling ques- terrain. Sandelowski examines their use of

Artist’s conception of a “Nurse Robot” published in the American Journal of Nursing in 1963 (from
Margarete Sandelowski, Devices and Desires, p. 123).
“unaided but trained senses” (Ch. 3), the “diag- ment, nurses transformed them as nursing tech-
nostic revolution” (Ch. 4), increasing speciali- nologies for the comfort and support of patients
zation and delegation (Ch. 5), and the specific through illness experiences. For example, ther-
technology of electronic fetal monitoring (Ch. 6) mometer readings provided diagnostic informa-
and then concludes with a discussion of current tion to physicians while also guiding nurses’ de-
issues and debates around health-care technol- cisions regarding bathing, feeding, and activity
ogy (Ch. 7). for patients.
One valuable discussion involves the concept The scope of this research is ambitious (rang-
of “shared technology,” as Sandelowski points ing from 1873 to the twenty-first century), as is
out the difficulty of isolating medical technology the diversity of analytical frameworks. Sande-
exclusive to nursing. Nurses shared devices with lowski includes excellent portrayals of what
untrained women. As she explains, “While nurses did and still do at the bedside. There is,
women might arrange flowers, nurses cared for however, a thread of technological determinism
them as part of the management of the environ- that runs through the analysis, while the conclu-
ment around the patient. Women might make sions are universalized to all nurses. Sande-
beds, but nurses used beds to comfort and treat lowski claims, for example, that there is “an
patients” (p. 45). Similarly, nurses shared spe- increasing democratization of health care func-
cialty objects (such as thermometers, hypoder- tions and access to technology” (p. 177) but
mic syringes, and catheters) with physicians— without asking important questions about race,
typically becoming more familiar and more class, and ethnicity that would address “for
proficient with their use (p. 46). While these ob- which nurses” and “in which settings” democ-
jects supported physicians’ diagnosis and treat- ratization happened. That being said, Devices

and Desires does make a valuable contribution well as for its future failures. Section 3, “Blood
to the history of technology and the history of Money” (two hundred pages), sees plasmaphe-
nursing. resis bring the United States (Starr calls it the
CYNTHIA TOMAN “OPEC” of blood) into the heart of the story and
traces the eventual national responses to the
Douglas Starr. Blood: An Epic History of Med- HIV-contaminated blood supply. Ultimately, he
icine and Commerce. xvi Ⳮ 446 pp., illus., in- uncovers only relative degrees of failure. He
dex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. $27.50, concludes with an epilogue on blood in a “post-
Can $39.50. AIDS society.”
Starr has thus devoted considerable attention
Historians shun epics as nature shuns vacuums. to history, ostensibly to illuminate more recent
Yet epics tap into elements of humanity (or in- events. Unfortunately, much of that history
humanity) that appear, at least, to transcend tran- seems only a device to underscore the distance
sient particularities and reveal something more we have since traveled. Beyond numerous errors
enduring. Perhaps this is why Douglas Starr’s of fact, Starr makes serious errors of presentation
epic tale of blood—a subject deserving of such and interpretation. His dismissals of bloodlet-
treatment, if ever there was one—has attracted ting—“there was never any evidence that blood-
such widespread attention. It has been released letting did any good” (p. 17)—of humors as
in paperback. It has inspired readers to write into “vague,” and of traditional clinical judgment as
the Amazon.com review section, exclaiming “It working “on impression” evince Starr’s own in-
has ignited my interest in medical history gen- ability to understand how disease and therapeu-
erally”; “I couldn’t put it down. . . . riveting . . . tics were perceived before the mid-nineteenth
compelling . . . destined to become a classic.” It century. His abrupt explanation of transfusion’s
has even merited translation into a four-hour fall from favor by that century’s end exemplifies
documentary, produced jointly by PBS (U.S.) his tendency to oversimplify causality to the
and Channel 4 (U.K.). point of falsification. And then, there’s his ac-
Starr gathers his larger story around a modern count of transfusion’s twentieth-century rebirth.
tragedy: the deaths of thousands of hemophilia Here Starr’s eye for a good story and his appar-
sufferers, not from the disease, but from its treat- ent unwillingness to consider physiology lead
ment. This treatment, Factor VIII, was derived him astray. One night in 1908 the future Nobel
from large pools of donated blood, some of Prize winner Alexis Carrel—then in New
which had been contaminated with HIV. The York—was brought a dying infant, her desper-
tragedy was heightened by the fact that doctors ate doctors pleading that she would die without
eventually learned that the blood supply had a transfusion. He transfused; she survived. (Car-
been compromised and nonetheless encouraged rel did not win the prize for transfusions, as one
patients to continue using Factor VIII. Starr might assume from Starr’s presentation [p. 36].)
opens with a scene from the subsequent French This begs an important question: Why, if blood
trial of some of these doctors. How, he asks, had fallen from favor, should doctors have con-
could all this have happened? To find his answer, cluded that this patient—unlike thousands of
he sets the story aside (a favored literary device others—could be saved only by blood? The truth
here) and turns to history. Though he calls this is less glamorous. The Cleveland surgeon
“the” history of blood, it is in fact a history of George Washington Crile had conducted exten-
the movement of blood in and out of bodies— sive research on blood pressure and fluid loss in
be they persons or nations. Near his book’s end animals and had successfully transfused a patient
he returns to the French trials, only to recount a (using Carrel’s vessel attachment technique) a
denouement (the doctors were convicted but suf- year before Carrel. His 1907 paper was widely
fered little formal punishment) that reflects the known. There are similar problems with Starr’s
larger ambiguities inherent in humanity’s at- treatment (or lack thereof ) of World War I and
tempts to control so complex a fluid as blood. of Norman Bethune’s work during the Spanish
The story unfolds in three parts. The first, Civil War.
“Blood Magic” (fifty pages), moves from antiq- Many of the stories in Blood have been told
uity to the seventeenth-century transfusion trials, before: by Richard Titmuss and Randy Shilts, to
through a side excursion on bloodletting, and name two. Starr has, however, frequently re-
into the “modern” era of transfusion. Part 2, turned to primary sources (both publications and
“Blood Wars” (one hundred pages), moves from interviews), spun his narratives artfully, and
the 1920s through World War II, setting the brought them together with an eye to a broader
stage for transfusion’s widespread acceptance as history. There are two lessons the historian

might teach those with the courage to write such trict courts, where Anglo lawyers and judges set-
epics. First, the past reveals more when ap- tled the water conflicts of Hispanic and Indian
proached on its own terms. Second, it is some- communities using unfamiliar principles, lan-
times not the heroic events that alter the course guage, and technology. The incorporation act of
of history. What Starr’s success might teach his- 1887 gave large-scale irrigation ventures the
torians is obvious. right to enter private property and condemn any
KIM PELIS lands needed for right-of-way. Court decisions
allocating water rights and rights-of-way to the
John O. Baxter. Dividing New Mexico’s Wa- emerging canal companies granted precise quan-
ters, 1700–1912. viii Ⳮ 136 pp., illus., tables, tities of water rights in an environment where
bibl., index. Albuquerque: University of New the total yield of a stream system was in fact
Mexico Press, 1997. $24.95. unknown. This meant that substantial new rights
were established in fully appropriated systems.
Technical water measurement concepts and sci- While territorial law, including the 1907 water
entific terminology had a role in the expropria- code, recognized established rights, the shift
tion of the water rights established under Spanish away from local dispute-resolution institutions
and Mexican rule in New Mexico. John Baxter’s and the measurement of water in unfamiliar and
slim history of water administration from the unrealistically precise terms put the original ir-
Spanish colonial period to New Mexico’s state- rigation community at a disadvantage relative to
hood is, therefore, of interest to water scientists the incoming speculators and developers. The si-
who are concerned about the social conse- multaneous resolution of land-grant claims (not
quences of science. It also clarifies the water- treated in this history) followed a similar pattern,
allocation rules of the Spanish and Mexican gov- with the result that title to much of the land and
ernments. These are frequently referred to today waters of New Mexico was lost by the region’s
as the source of the “doctrine of prior appropri- original population. Some of the original titles
ations,” often in ways that are contradictory to remain, and the conflicts described here continue
their spirit and intent. today, with some new characters—notably the
As Baxter shows, water administration during Bureau of Reclamation, the Corps of Engineers,
both the Spanish colonial and Mexican eras fo- and a covey of endangered species.
cused on reconciliation of opposing interests This history is interesting on its own account
rather than the enforcement of legal rules and and also provides insight into one aspect of the
property principles. While land and water fre- legal basis for prior appropriations. Finally, it is
quently changed hands, there was no real market a valuable cautionary tale on how a neutral tech-
environment, and the emphasis was on access to nical advance can have powerful equitable im-
resources rather than on the asset value of water. pacts.
Prior appropriation was recognized more as a CHRIS NUNN GARCIA
matter of equity than as the property rule en-
forced today. Giuseppe Olmi; Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi;
Eighteenth-century New Mexican settlements Attilio Zanca (Editors). Natura-Cultura:
were vulnerable to drought, flood, and Indian at- L’interpretazione del mondo fisico nei testi e
tack; continuous occupation was the exception nelle immagini. Preface by Marc Fumaroli.
rather than the rule. Hacendados driven off their (Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana di Scienze
lands by drought or massacre often returned to Lettere e Arti, Miscellanea, 8.) (Based on papers
find their water being used by latecomers. Span- presented at the Convegno Internazionale di
ish and Mexican governors and alcaldes (local Studi, October 5–8, 1996, Mantova.) xvi Ⳮ 627
officials) encouraged claimants to work out mu- pp., illus., figs., tables, index. Florence: Leo
tually satisfactory arrangements; failing this, res- Olschki, 2000.
olution by local officials was favored over res-
olution by the distant governor. The prior claims In 1962 the art historian Eugenio Battisti pub-
were generally recognized and confirmed, and lished his successful and controversial
adjustments were made to provide for the en- L’antirinascimento. By exploring monsters,
croachers as well as could be. Rarely did deci- magic, automata, and emblems, he made a fun-
sions leave any party with no access to water, damental contribution to our view of the
and rarely were disputes resolved definitively. Renaissance as a multifaceted and ambiguous
The coming of the railroads in 1878 brought phenomenon. To celebrate Battisti’s ground-
two new influences: federal engineers and land breaking interdisciplinary work, the editors of
speculators. Dispute resolution moved to the dis- this volume invited a wide range of scholars who

research the history of images or use images in icon of colors and attempts to establish a tax-
their work—historians of science and art as well onomy. Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi’s discussion of
as scientists—to explore the relationship be- Ligozzi’s “secrets” for achieving the renowned
tween words and images. brightness of his colors reminds science histo-
The editors’ short introduction does not aim rians of the rewards of taking research to the
to offer a tight interpretative framework for the level of the “artisanal” and material production
thirty-one chapters that follow, nor does Marc of the images. Renato Mazzolini analyzes how
Fumaroli’s preface on how the philosophical Marcello Malpighi’s anatomical investigations
meaning of imitation changed in response to of the skin, in particular the causes of its color,
Cartesianism. Written in Italian, English, and were received and expanded in the eighteenth-
French, the contributions cover topics ranging century debate on the origins of human races.
from the early sixteenth century to the present, It is a pity that the contributions on contem-
though most fit into the period 1550–1800. The porary issues, mainly on computer-generated
variety of approaches is truly remarkable. Unfor- medical images, are little more than clear expo-
tunately, some of the chapters do not go beyond sitions of the new techniques. In the end, while
very narrow reconstruction of how a certain or- the book fulfills the editors’ intention to encour-
gan, animal, or disease has been represented over age the dialogue between art and science histo-
the centuries and do not engage with any histori- rians, the presence of various absorbing chapters
cally specific interpretations. Others are built does not make up for the lack of a more coherent
around questions that historians of science and focused editorial project.
would consider outdated and, for example, as- SILVIA DE RENZI
sess the “scientific value” of past images or ex-
amine earlier naturalists’ anticipation of modern Matthew H. Sommer. Sex, Law, and Society in
discoveries. Late Imperial China. (Law, Society, and Culture
Yet there are chapters that readers of Isis will in China.) xx Ⳮ 413 pp., illus., apps., bibl., in-
find stimulating. Peter Mason’s discussion of the dex. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
migration of images (found in his case on an 2000. $55.
English burial stone) is interestingly comple-
mented by Jose Pardo Tomás’s analysis of the In sober and sometimes chilling detail, Matthew
production of Oviedo’s work, one of the first in Sommer compares the Qing dynasty (1644–
which European readers encountered the exotic 1911) legal codes with newly available archival
nature of America. The authorship and function case records on the subjects of “marriage, sex
of one of the richest collections of early modern offences, family disputes.” In doing so, he is able
botanical drawings, the Libri Picturati in to show the continuities of legal philosophy with
Cracow, is revealed by Claudia Swan’s fasci- regard to sex, property, and family structure
nating detective work. In his dossier on the re- alongside the substantial practical changes dem-
lationships between Luigi Ferdinando Mar- onstrated by the substatutes and actual cases.
sigli—soldier, diplomat, and founder of the The enduring principle of family relations was
Accademia delle Scienze of Bologna—and the the protection of the patriarchal lineage. Neo-
various draftsmen and engravers who prepared Confucian political philosophy was explicit
the illustrations for his works, Giuseppe Olmi about the link between family order and political
admirably reconstructs the complex process of stability: in sexual terms, this meant that inter-
transforming natural specimens or stretches of course should be governed by ritual. Marriage
landscape into printed images. Roberto Paolo was contracted by the heads of families through
Ciardi’s discussion of Michelangelo’s anatomi- matchmaker intermediaries: daughters and sons
cal representations of the living body is an im- obeyed, and a wife owed her husband sexual ser-
portant contribution to moving beyond the mere vice and absolute sexual loyalty, concepts
celebration of artists’ and naturalists’ “accu- couched in the same terms as the political fealty
racy,” with which some other chapters are sat- a subject owed his ruler. Female licentiousness
isfied. was a threat to the social order, to the degree that
Several authors write interestingly on the widow remarriage was a crime if it occurred dur-
problem of how color was represented visually ing the three-year mourning period. Widows
and verbally. By engaging with sources that are who chose—or were wealthy enough—to re-
usually little explored—for example, technical main chaste after the death of a husband or fiancé
literature on horses—Alberto Mugnaini offers a were eligible for canonization in the imperial
compelling investigation of sixteenth-century chastity cult. Women who died resisting rape, or
disagreements over the use of an expanding lex- who committed suicide rather than succumb to

family pressures to remarry or be pimped in ceived as threats both to the chastity of women
prostitution, might be similarly honored. There and to the gender performance of young men.
was no legal concept of a woman’s consent to This meticulous scholarship demonstrates the
intercourse except in terms of the criminal be- imperial state’s interest in the sexual choices of
havior of “consensual illicit sex” (i.e., adultery even the poor and status debased in late imperial
or consensual prostitution), though inadequate China. Sommer promises more investigation of
displays of resistance to rape were often re- the state’s reasons for this interest in his next
garded (as in the West) as de facto consent. work.
For a woman who inherited property from her BRIDIE ANDREWS
husband, maintaining the role of the chaste pro-
tector of her husband’s property (for the lineage) 䡲 Antiquity
gave a unique degree of independence and legal
protection from avaricious in-laws. By contrast, Hermann Hunger; David Pingree. Astral Sci-
the wives of poorer men found that chastity was ences in Mesopotamia. (Handbook of Oriental
a luxury they and their children could not afford. Studies: The Near and Middle East.) xviii Ⳮ 303
The book centers on the reforms enacted dur- pp., tables, app., bibl., index. Leiden: Brill, 1999.
ing the Yongzheng Emperor’s reign (1723– $112.
1735). Before these, prostitution was tolerated Cuneiform tablets excavated from Nineveh,
when confined to hereditary “music house- Babylon, and other sites in Iraq have provided
holds,” a legally debased group whose status of- historians with a wealth of material for studying
ten derived from punishment for political crimes. the astral sciences (astronomy and astrology) in
Afterward, all such debased status groups were ancient Mesopotamia. They have revealed an as-
elevated to commoner status, a move that made tronomical heritage stretching back to at least the
prostitution effectively illegal for all. Sommer early second millennium B.C., culminating in the
characterizes this change in policy as one that development of an advanced mathematical as-
made “every woman a wife.” For the first time, tronomy during the latter half of the first millen-
commoners, servants, and even the offspring of nium B.C., that had a major influence on the prac-
former music/prostitute families became eligible tice and development of astronomy in India and
for chaste widow status. He sees this as a logical the Greco-Roman world. Indeed, it is no exag-
extension of a growing tendency to extend Con- geration to state that Mesopotamian astronomy
fucian standards of ritual and propriety to the was the foundation on which Greek and the
mainly peasant population rather than as a sud- whole of the subsequent Western astronomical
den change. Still, it is hard to deny that these tradition was based. Through the work of schol-
changes had unusually far-reaching conse- ars over the past hundred years, large parts of the
quences. astromomical corpus are now understood, at
Also during the Qing dynasty, sodomy first least on a technical level. However, our under-
appeared as a criminal offense. Here Sommer standing of the cuneiform astrological material
takes issue with other historians who view the is less well developed, since many more texts
new prohibition of consensual sodomy as an in- remain to be studied. As a result, only the first
dicator of Qing homophobia. Sommer argues thirty-one pages of this three-hundred-page book
that it is the damage to the sodomized male’s are devoted to “omens”; Hermann Hunger and
performance of familial gender roles that is the David Pingree refer the reader to the recent sur-
key issue, because of the powerful stigma asso- vey of Mesopotamian astrology by Ulla Koch-
ciated only with being penetrated. As evidence, Westenholz for a more detailed study of what is
he demonstrates that virtually all sodomy cases currently known. The remainder of the book
involved older men penetrating youths. Magis- deals with “astronomy,” although of course the
trates found it hard to accept the idea of an older distinction between the two is not sharp.
man being a victim of homosexual rape. More- One of the challenges facing historians work-
over, consensual sodomy appears in the legal ing on Mesopotamian science is the biblio-
record only when it was associated with more graphic nightmare of locating earlier work.
serious crimes such as murder. During the Qing, There has been no natural home for publications
male numbers substantially exceeded those of on cuneiform astronomy. Articles are spread
women, causing widespread fear of the “rootless fairly evenly between Assyriology and history of
rascal,” the marginalized male who could not af- science journals, together with a smaller number
ford a bride-price and was not invested in the appearing in theology, history, or astronomy
social order. These “rootless rascals” were per- journals. But a significant number of important

essays have also appeared in a wide variety of lished in Japan, and an encyclopedia of the his-
Festschriften where one would not think to look. tory of disease, among other venues. Many
The situation for earlier publications, many of whose work stood to benefit were unaware of his
which are still highly useful, is even worse. For original approach to scholarship on classical
example, Franz Xavier Kugler’s monumental medical and cosmological sources. Now that The
Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, published Expressiveness of the Body is out as a coherent
in three volumes plus supplements between 1909 monograph, however, it has quickly become an
and 1935, is a mine of information—but a mine important presence in a number of fields. Clas-
without a map, where related issues are spread sical historians of both Greek and Chinese med-
out, almost as if at random, throughout the vari- icine, historians of philosophy and science in
ous volumes. Perhaps the most useful aspect of East Asia, medical anthropologists, and scholars
Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia is therefore the in the humanities who are generating a huge lit-
wealth of bibliographical information it offers. erature on the history of the human body have
For every text and topic, the authors provide a all had to sit up and take notice. It is Kuriyama’s
summary of all previous publications. Where synthetic vision of the differing assumptions
two or more interpretations of a text have been about embodiment, and their relationship to
proposed, they describe both but are not afraid forms of systematic knowledge and writing, that
to give their own opinion as to which interpre- now demands some form of address from all
tation they believe to be the more plausible. Of who are embarked on comparative historical
course, not everyone (myself included) will studies.
agree with every one of these opinions, but that The guiding problem of the book is stated sim-
does not detract from the book’s usefulness. ply at the outset: “The true structure and work-
The book is more than just a very useful criti- ings of the human body are, we casually assume,
cal bibliography, however. In discussing many everywhere the same, a universal reality. But
texts and problems, the authors are also able to then we look into history, and our sense of reality
make significant new contributions toward their wavers. . . . Accounts of the body in diverse
understanding. For example, their comparison of medical traditions frequently appear to describe
overlapping texts from the various different cate- mutually alien, almost unrelated worlds” (p. 8).
gories of nonmathematical astronomical texts il- The question has been stated even more clearly
lustrates that the relationship between these texts in Kuriyama’s earlier works: If the body is ev-
is not as simple as has often been thought. erywhere the same, how can there be a history
Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia is not, nor is of medicine? Given that history is concerned
it intended to be, a “history of Babylonian with variation through time and space, why are
astronomy.” It is something far more useful: a there such deep differences in forms of knowl-
true reference work for researchers studying as- edge about the body? Kuriyama’s answer, stated
tronomy in Mesopotamia. It will provide the more clearly in this book than previously, is that
starting point for all future researches in the field, “conceptions of the body owe as much to partic-
allowing the reader quickly to find the essential ular uses of the senses as to particular ‘ways of
basic information about any aspect of Mesopo- thinking’” (p. 12).
tamian astronomy, with references to all of the Once these powerful questions have been
relevant publications. I, for one, refer to it almost posed as a frame for research, it is a novel style
every day. of reading sources—at least for medical histo-
J. M. STEELE rians—that constitutes perhaps the greatest con-
tribution of this study. Kuriyama is able to read
Shigehisa Kuriyama. The Expressiveness of the Hippocratic and Galenic texts, the Huangdi Nei-
Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese jing and the Zuozhuan, not so much for hidden
Medicine. 340 pp., illus., apps., bibl., index. New meanings as for necessary assumptive structures
York: Zone Books, 1999. $29.50. about the body. By interrogating sources on such
fundamental questions as the nature of touch and
In the several years since its appearance, Shi- seeing, ways of experiencing blood and breath,
gehisa Kuriyama’s comparative study of Greek new riches are revealed in canonical materials.
and Chinese medicine has become a landmark in Reading through these beautifully phrased ex-
several fields. Prior to the publication of this plorations of alien ways of knowing and being,
handsome Zone volume, Kuriyama’s research on we begin to see at a deep level just how basic
medical history appeared in somewhat obscure the problem of difference is to any scholarly un-
places: volumes edited by medical anthropolo- dertaking.
gists and historians, a conference volume pub- The rhetorical force of this book works for

readers at all levels of sophistication. As an an- Word of God; in this regard one important work
thropologist working on Chinese medicine, I to be added to the bibliography is D. R. Black-
have found it theoretically and methodologically man and A. T. Hodge, Frontinus’ Legacy: Es-
inspiring, while my undergraduate students and says on Frontinus’ De aquis urbis Romae
generalist friends have been excited by its ex- (Michigan, 2001).
periential insights. Possibly historians of Greek Chapter 2 explores the old problem of con-
medicine and Chinese science will find this verting Frontinus’s quinaria measurements into
study less detailed and esoteric than those they modern equivalents, concluding that the depths
are accustomed to reading. But they can only and widths of aqueduct channels give better es-
benefit from taking Kuriyama’s method and syn- timates of delivery and total water volume. De
thetic vision seriously. Kleijn also reviews the issue of ancient Rome’s
Arguably The Expressiveness of the Body is population, arguing that the increase in water
less useful as a history of Greek than of Chinese supply under the principate in the first century
medicine (though the force of the project is in C.E. does not necessarily constitute proof of the
the comparison), and the problematic literary vi- city’s growth. Chapter 3 discusses the wide
gnette that opens the book is neither charming range of quality and different uses of aqueduct
nor especially functional. But this is one of those water.
books the appearance of which should be con- Chapters 4 and 5 present the book’s real con-
sidered a genuine event. Everyone who sees tribution, a review of the administration of the
value in comparison (and everyone who touches, cura aquarum and evidence of fistulae or aque-
sees, breathes, or bleeds) should read it. duct pipes. De Kleijn’s lengthy discussion of
JUDITH FARQUHAR pipe stamps is based on recent work by Christer
Bruun and Werner Eck but goes beyond them in
Gerda de Kleijn. The Water Supply of Ancient documenting the find-spots of fistulae with
Rome: City Area, Water, and Population. v Ⳮ names in the genitive; these, she argues, are an
365 pp., maps, apps., bibl., index. Amsterdam: important topographical tool in identifying prop-
J. C. Gieben, 2001. $69 (cloth).
erty owners and the size of properties supplied
This book, which investigates “whether data de- by aqueduct water. Because these find-spots are
rived from the water supply of ancient Rome concentrated in the northeastern parts of the city
might add to our understanding of the social fab- and its nearby surroundings, de Kleijn concludes
ric, the population size, and the extent of the that a green zone of gardens and estates on
urbs” (p. iv), begins with a survey of the city’s Rome’s northern and eastern perimeter blocked
eleven aqueducts, their technical functioning, the expansion of the city into the suburbium in that
volume of water delivered, and the size of the area and influenced the growth of nonelite hous-
city’s population in the first century C.E. Gerda ing to the south, extending along the Via Appia.
de Kleijn’s review of Rome’s aqueducts in This argument, while interesting, is not with-
Chapter 1, while sensible and well documented, out its problems. As de Kleijn herself acknowl-
is largely derivative and perhaps relies a bit too edges (pp. 5–7), only some 4–5 percent of
much on Vitruvius’s De architectura, frequently Rome’s fistulae have survived, and we are rea-
regarded by students of Roman hydraulics as the sonably sure of the find-spots for half of these,
Sketch of a large-scale Roman aqueduct supplying water from outlying sources to the city (from
Gerda de Kleijn, The Water Supply of Ancient Rome, p. 259).

too small a sampling to inspire total confidence uses. Besides the already-mentioned resort to ex-
in any conclusions to be drawn. Her final chap- ternal evidence, he relies extensively on linguis-
ter, on the fabric and extent of the ancient city, tic analyses, which are used sometimes to con-
sensibly goes beyond fistulae to discuss literary textualize the use of ancient terms and
evidence on who lived where in Rome. There are sometimes as an index for conceptual develop-
useful appendixes on the meaning of the terms ment. Furthermore, Szabó makes extensive use
“urbs” and “suburbium,” as well as “domus” and of “plausible conjectures” when the textual evi-
“insula,” not to mention maps of find-spots and dence is defective or when he wants to organize
listings of the fistulae cited. it chronologically.
In many respects de Kleijn advances our un- Those features were already present in
derstanding of water distribution in ancient Szabó’s earlier works, especially Anfänge der
Rome, particularly in her documentation of the griechischen Mathematik (Akademiai Kiado,
fistulae evidence. Her book is thoroughly re- 1969), which is the basis for the text reviewed
searched, with an impressive bibliography, and here. The deficiencies of Szabó’s results and
her treatment of topics like Rome’s population method have already been discussed at length.
and the fabric of particular neighborhoods is bal- In my view, one of the main problems lies in his
anced and well documented. Although she rec- eagerness to tell a tidy story about the early de-
ognizes the value of Frontinus as a source on velopment of Greek mathematics. This story cul-
Rome’s water supply (pp. 4–5), de Kleijn seems minates, unsurprisingly, in Euclid’s Elements,
to discount his evidence for making sense of wa- which Szabó sees as the “system of Greek math-
ter distribution within the city (p. 30 n 89). ematics” (p. 11). This historical approach is typ-
Closer attention to Frontinus’s statistics might ical of Proclus, on whom Szabó relies—impru-
have made a more convincing case for her re- dently, given the many difficulties inherent in
construction of the city’s expansion. But hard using such a late source (the same is true for his
work and careful study have gone into this book. use of Ptolemy and late neo-Pythagorean au-
Frontinus himself may have been shortchanged, thors).
but he would not, I think, be displeased. I doubt that those who know Szabó’s previous
HARRY B. EVANS works will find anything new or convincing an-
swers to earlier criticisms in this volume. Szabó
Árpád Szabó. L’aube des mathématiques either haughtily dismisses his critics by claiming
grecques. Translated by Michel Federspiel. that they have not understood him (p. 167) or
(Mathesis.) 367 pp., figs., bibl., indexes. Paris: further complicates his already intricate expla-
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2000. Fr 280, nations.
€42.69. Nevertheless, this text is as suggestive as
Szabó’s previous works. It reflects the warm per-
This is the French translation of Árpád Szabó’s sonality of the author, who died in 2001. He was
Die Entfaltung der griechischen Mathematik both a stimulating teacher and a challenging
(B. I. Wissenschaftsverlag, 1994), which at- scholar, as is illustrated by the numerous reac-
tempts to describe the development of pre- tions his conjectures have provoked. As such, I
Euclidean mathematics by using “external” evi- would recommend this volume as a good intro-
dence. Part 1 discusses the relation between early duction to the historical issues of the period.
Greek astronomy, Euclid’s geometry of the cir- Szabó’s approach reveals the many difficulties
cle, and (supposedly) early trigonometry. Part 2 implicit in any attempt to reconstruct the devel-
examines the origin of Euclid’s theory of pro- opment of early Greek mathematics and raises a
portions in the theory of music. Part 3 explains number of challenging questions worthy of con-
the development of Pythagorean “geometry of sideration.
areas” by referring to the discovery of incom- Michel Federspiel’s translation is clear but not
mensurable lines and the correlated notion of entirely faithful to the original. Besides some
dunamis. In Part 4 the structure of Euclid’s Ele- surprising changes and omissions (“Entfaltung”
ments is explained in the context of Eleatic phi- is turned into “aube” and “Rechenoperationen”
losophy. There are three appendixes, the first on into “opérations” on p. 131; “Rückblick” disap-
the “mathematical passage” in Plato’s Theaete- pears on p. 166), many quotations in Greek have
tus (147d–148b), the second on the allusion in been added and words that Szabó only translit-
Aristotle’s Topics to a pre-Eudoxean definition erates are given in Greek. This makes the origi-
of proportion, and the third on the often-debated nal work less accessible and in at least one case
question of Greek “geometrical algebra.” changes Szabó’s argument (p. 133). However,
Szabó puts much emphasis on the method he some of theses slips actually seem intended to

correct Szabó’s most blatant mistakes (“asum- discuss more generally the genre, purpose, and
metron,” wrongly translated by Szabó as intentions of the commentaries. This type of
“unmeßbar,” simply becomes “incommensura- work gets very little attention otherwise in this
ble” [p. 155]). The typesetting for quotations is volume: for example, Glenn Most’s edited vol-
not uniform throughout and certain key words ume Commentaries/Kommentare (Vandenhoeck
are not italicized as in the original, an important & Ruprecht, 1999) is only mentioned in note 2
omission given Szabó’s concern for words. The on page 3 and has not made it into the general
final editing was very careless. In addition to the bibliography. This is also the case for the other
many typographical errors, the indexes contain contributions mentioned on that page. This
so many errors that they are almost unusable; means that some of the more sophisticated theo-
some bibliographical references are wrong as retical and rhetorical approaches to the genre are
well. ignored; see Ihm’s remark (p. 14) on Galen’s
ALAIN BERNARD claim that good commentators should not be-
come outright champions of the authors they are
Sibylle Ihm. Clavis Commentariorum der anti- working on: she takes this as an unproblematic
ken medizinischen Texte. vii Ⳮ 268 pp., bibl., indication that some such “bad” commentaries
indexes. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, existed. Of course, almost every ancient com-
2002. (Cloth.) mentator, and certainly Galen himself, at times
falls prey to such excesses of the principle of
Sibylle Ihm has collected and organized the charity while loudly protesting that such would
available information on ancient and medieval be bad practice—a rhetorical topos if ever there
commentaries dealing with medical texts—the was one. However, given the restrictions the au-
authors commented on are Hippocrates and Ga- thor has imposed on herself, the omission is un-
len (Galen himself also commented on some derstandable.
other medical authors, but those commentaries The Clavis itself is well laid out, is eminently
are no longer extant). The Clavis itself is pre- usable, and seems generally reliable. Should one
ceded by a more general introduction discussing wish to find all commentaries to a certain work
the different commentary types included; Ihm by Hippocrates or Galen, the indexes make these
has rightly decided to cast her net widely (p. 4) easy to locate.
and includes works that contain line-by-line This volume will prove a very valuable in-
commentaries on a lemmatized text, works that strument, perhaps primarily for those who are
are called commentaries, scholia, and summa- interested in the more technical aspects of indi-
ries. The Clavis entries contain information on vidual commentaries (text, local interpretation,
the author of the commentary (the basic orga- state of the medical art), issues proper to the his-
nizational principle of the body of the Clavis is tory of medicine. It is not primarily designed to
alphabetical), the title of the commentary, author promote research into the cultural or rhetorical
of the work commented on, title of the work functions of commentaries as such.
commented on, date of commentary/author, type INEKE SLUITER
of commentary, how much is extant, structure of
the commentary, editions/translations, manu- Jerry Stannard. Pristina Medicamenta: An-
scripts, secondary literature, and other remarks. cient and Medieval Medical Botany. Edited by
Ihm has not aspired to completeness in quoting Katherine E. Stannard and Richard Kay.
secondary literature, but as far as I have been (Variorum Collected Studies Series.) xxii Ⳮ 324
able to ascertain her references are certainly ad- pp., frontis., illus., index. Brookfield, Vt.: Ash-
equate as a starting point for further research. gate, 1999. $110.95.
In the last part of her introduction Ihm pro-
vides a short overview of the different periods Jerry Stannard. Herbs and Herbalism in the
she distinguishes. This section is a little disap- Middle Ages and Renaissance. Edited by Kath-
pointing; it has little to offer apart from a very erine E. Stannard and Richard Kay. (Vario-
rough periodization: Galen, the time after Galen, rum Collected Studies Series.) xvi Ⳮ 342 pp.,
the time after the Alexandrian period (from the frontis., illus., tables, index. Brookfield, Vt.:
sixth century), and the school of Salerno and Ashgate, 1999. $110.95.
later (i.e., from the eleventh century)—this last
period is not covered in the Clavis. The very In the four decades between 1953 and 1993, the
general indications about Galen’s conception of late Jerry Stannard published 106 essays, arti-
the work of a commentator are not very helpful cles, books, and encyclopedia entries. Thirty-five
but may be intended simply as an opening to of these articles and essays, published between

1961 and 1985, are gathered in the two volumes ylon, others in paradise!). The best herbalists
under review, which are arranged chronologi- were those who, like Albertus Magnus and Mat-
cally according to their subjects. Pristina Medi- tioli, combined an intimate knowledge of the tra-
camenta begins with an essay on “Hippocratic dition with broad experience of the natural world
pharmacology” and continues through ancient and a keen eye for detail, for “the heart and cen-
Greek, Roman, and Byzantine pharmacology, ter of medieval herbalism was its empiricism”
ending with the Latin Middle Ages, including (Pristina Medicamenta, Essay 13, p. 376). The
three essays on the botanical works of Albertus presence of magical and superstitious practices
Magnus. Herbs and Herbalism begins with mein the works of Albertus and other enlightened
dieval European herbals and recipe literature, empiricists, Stannard insists, does not indicate
then turns to the sixteenth-century revival of an- that they believed such nonsense; instead, they
cient medical botany before ending with three felt obliged to report it because it was “worthy
studies of individual species: “moly,” squill, and of inclusion.” (The skeptical reader may be par-
dill. Despite the inevitable repetition occasioned doned if he or she does not immediately under-
by the essays’ having been written for different stand the difference.) Most writers were not as
audiences at different times, the volumes, taken talented and industrious as Albertus, of course,
together, can be read as Stannard’s history of but this is no drawback for the historian. Plod-
ancient and medieval plant lore and use. ding, derivative figures like Baptista Fiera,
Stannard’s greatest strength was as a creative, whose late fifteenth-century poem on the virtues
meticulous, and dogged researcher. The first of herbs Stannard examines, allow historians to
thing that strikes the reader of these essays is establish the widespread everyday beliefs
their erudition. The notes refer to a wide range against which new movements in medicine and
of primary and secondary sources, both well botany were directed.
known and obscure, in print and in manuscript. Stannard thus displays a sensitivity to the
The main focus of these articles is on plants complexity of the ancient and medieval tradi-
themselves, traditions of knowledge about them, tions of medical botany and to how the fortunes
and their medical uses. Stannard does not neglect of transmission have shaped our understanding
the social and cultural history of the ancient, me- of that tradition. The short article “Lost Botani-
dieval, and Renaissance worlds—he observes, cal Writings of Antiquity” addresses the range
for instance, that books on antidotes became im- of genres in which ancient writers, Greek and
portant only in Hellenistic times, when poison- Roman, discussed plants and their uses. Many
ing was more widespread than earlier—but nei- more books were written than survived, and the
ther does he emphasize them. Some of the historian must take this fact into account when
articles are largely synopses and commentaries reconstructing the past. The history of medicine
on ancient and medieval sources, such as Are- and the history of natural history have changed
taeus, Marcellus of Bordeaux, and Benedictus signficantly since Stannard wrote most of these
Crispus. Others offer accounts of important gen- essays; we are now more interested in the cul-
res. In addition to being erudite, Stannard was a tural uses and social organization of the study of
skilled botanist and pharmacist; not the least of nature and therapeutics than Stannard was. But
the virtues of these essays is that he drew on his these essays contain a range of material and in-
own practical experience to assess the skill and terpretations that no historian of ancient, medi-
knowledge of his historical subjects. eval, or Renaissance medicine and natural his-
Most of these essays address specific texts or tory can afford to ignore.
corpora, from the Hippocratic corpus to the Some of these articles first appeared in jour-
sixteenth-century works of Pier Andrea Mattioli. nals that can be found in any good research li-
But a common theme runs through Stannard’s brary, such as Isis, Sudhoffs Archiv, and the Bul-
work: the tension between, on the one hand, the letin of the History of Medicine. But others were
rational empiricism of Hippocratic medicine and published in conference proceedings, Festschrif-
the firsthand knowledge embodied in folk tra- ten, commemorative volumes, and other hard-to-
dition and, on the other hand, the irrationality find places. Katherine Stannard, Richard Kay,
and servile traditionalism of much late antique and Ashgate Publishing have done historians of
and medieval medical botany. We learn repeat- science and medicine a good service by bringing
edly that medieval botanists and pharmacologi- them together in these two volumes. Following
cal writers began to omit descriptions as they lost Ashgate’s normal practice for the Variorum se-
firsthand knowledge of plants, turning instead to ries, the original pagination has been retained,
fanciful etymologies and uncertain indications of allowing users to provide citations to the original
provenance (some plants grew in India or Bab- articles. The price puts the volumes beyond the

reach of most individual scholars, but libraries Grant surveys the changing perceptions of the
with strong collections in the history of science Middle Ages, starting from Renaissance human-
and medicine will find them a welcome addition. ists and Reformation theologians, whose prox-
BRIAN W. OGILVIE imity to medieval scholasticism might have per-
mitted a more charitable assessment of the
䡲 Middle Ages and Renaissance period but for their own parochial agendas, and
ending with the Enlightenment, when historical
Edward Grant. God and Reason in the Middle distance from the Middle Ages and unfamiliarity
Ages. 398 pp., notes, bibl., index. New York: with scholastic texts meant that eighteenth-
Cambridge University Press, 2001. $64.95 century authors drew on a storehouse of medie-
(cloth); $22.95 (paper). valisms that bore little resemblance to the earlier
period. Grant concludes the chapter with a sur-
Edward Grant’s purpose in this volume is two-
vey of nineteenth-century historiography of the
fold: first, to describe how reason came to be the
Middle Ages, Jeffrey Burton Russell’s investi-
foundation of the medieval scholastic university
tradition in logic, natural philosophy, and the- gations of flat-earth theory, and modern popular
ology and to argue that these medieval devel- perceptions of the barbaric Middle Ages, includ-
opments served to initiate approaches to the nating citations of Dave Berry and Jack Kevorkian.
ural world that eventually grew into modern These will undoubtedly prove useful in class-
science; and second, to explain how the Middle rooms, where students may arrive with their own
Ages subsequently received the popular image prior conceptions of the Middle Ages.
of antirational, barbarous, and unscientific. It The pervasive application of reason in the
would be impossible to summarize all the evi- Middle Ages constitutes for Grant a “culture of
dence he marshals in support of the first issue, poking around” in which the scholastic quaestio
but perhaps more important still is the observa- serves as the central tool for the “irrepressible
tion that the fields he investigates go consider- urge to probe into many things” (p. 356). Gone
ably beyond what one generally finds in surveys is Grant’s earlier suggestion that quaestiones
of medieval science. In setting up his analysis of themselves served to atomize medieval knowl-
medieval intellectual culture, Grant draws on is- edge of the natural world, effectively precluding
sues like the Investiture Contest, the medieval the creation of a synthetic theory (Edward Grant,
study of law (although one might quibble with “Aristotelianism and the Longevity of the Me-
the stark contrast between customary and “ra- dieval World View,” History of Science, 1978,
tional” law), early theological literature, and the 16:93–106, esp. p. 98 ff.). Instead, the applica-
evolution of scholastic literatures. Historians tion of reason to natural questions constitutes the
outside the history of science tradition will find heritage of the Western Middle Ages, to which
this an uncontroversial list of sources, but it is a modern scientists are heir, in spirit if not precise
refreshingly broad domain within general survey form.
texts in the history of early science. There are central questions that many scholars
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 focus on the application will have about this book. Certainly one is the
of reason in the scholastic logical, natural phil- prominent role in the development of modern
osophical, and theological traditions. Those fa- science that Grant assigns to Western culture.
miliar with Grant’s previous work will find While he does not reserve rational techniques
strong ties to those earlier sources, both in the exclusively to Western society, in his view what
theses pursued and in the evidence used to sup- distinguishes the West from other rational soci-
port them. Perhaps the most interesting and ped- eties is “the self-consciousness with which [rea-
agogically useful aspect of the book is reserved son] was used, and the scope, intensity and du-
for Chapter 7, where Grant turns to the second ration of its application” (p. 9), and the
of his themes, the “assault on the middle ages.” institutionalization of reason in the universities.
His view that the Age of Reason began in the Both culturally and institutionally, recent schol-
Middle Ages invites a reperiodization of histori- arship has narrowed this perceived distinction
cal inquiry that sees the eighteenth century as between Western and non-Western science, and
more closely connected with the fourteenth than certainly Grant’s book will produce some inter-
is generally acknowledged, a view recently ar- esting future discussions. Inside and outside the
ticulated by Peter Raedts (“When Were the Mid- classroom, it promises to be a useful catalyst for
dle Ages?” paper presented at the Nineteenth In- rethinking and debating a period often consid-
ternational Congress of Historical Sciences, ered marginal.
Oslo, 6–13 August 2000). At the same time, STEVEN J. LIVESEY

Miguel A. Granada. El umbral de la moderni- through reason. Granada devotes a long chapter
dad: Estudios sobre filosofı́a, religión y ciencia to another of the basic subjects of humanist phi-
entre Petrarca y Descartes. 513 pp., bibls., in- losophy—dignitas hominis—in which he
dex. Barcelona: Herder, 2000. (Paper.) chiefly addresses the figures of Ficinus, Pico, and
Giordano Bruno. Granada explains how Bruno
This book is a compilation of studies, written by made fundamental changes to the concept of the
Miguel Granada over a fifteen-year period, that “dignity and excellence of humanity” by elimi-
have appeared in different journals and collec- nating the mediation of Christ between humanity
tions. Each essay deals with philosophy, reli- and God (an essential point for Ficinus and
gion, and cosmology and their interaction during Pico), rejecting the notion of original sin, and
the Renaissance. The work consists of two parts: affirming the ascent of man and his direct com-
the first is a series of studies mainly on philo- munion with God by means of the infinite uni-
sophical and religious matters, and the second verse and the metamorphosis of humanity in
treats cosmology. The introduction addresses God. In the following chapter Granada pursues
historiographic questions and the concept of the his analysis of Bruno’s ideas on “metamorphosis
Renaissance. Granada puts forward a unified in God” by investigating the Erasmian subject of
concept of the Renaissance as “a vast intellectual hunting as a folly or madness and the use of this
movement that played a decisive role in the re- metaphor by the Neapolitan philosopher in his
newal of all fields of European culture (from lit- scathing criticism of Christianity.
erature and art to religion, philosophy, and sci- The second part opens with a chapter on Ar-
ence), based on its foundations in the humanist istotelian cosmology originally written as an in-
movement.” He does not, however, fail to rec- troduction to Aristotle’s De caelo. With regard
ognize elements of continuity with the Middle to the problem of celestial motion, Granada
Ages and the difficulties involved in distinguish- maintains that the “onto-theology” of the mo-
ing the Renaissance from the preceding and later tionless mover–incorporeal divinity appears in
periods; moreover, he points out the conven- De caelo—with, moreover, the plural nature that
tional nature of the concept of the Renaissance it has in Peri philosophias and in Metaphysics
and its relation to a set of values that might be 12. In Chapter 2 he provides a brief overview
called the distinguishing marks of the modern and synthesis of pertinent literature about the ba-
Western world. sic subjects of the “cosmological revolution
Part 1 begins with an analysis of the fortune from Copernicus to Descartes.” Written as an en-
in the Renaissance of a passage from the sixth cyclopedia entry and hence aimed at a wide au-
book of the Aeneid and provides an account of dience, this synthesis offers the general reader
the humanist claim that poets are theologians basic information on these complex matters, al-
who convey truths through images and allego- though it may not always satisfy experts. Chap-
ries: Marsilius Ficinus considered these verses ter 3 of Part 2 is the longest in the book and one
by Virgil to be an expression of Platonic cos- of the best. Entitled “Chronological Calcula-
mology. This is followed by a study of the efforts tions, Cosmological News, and Eschatological
of and problems encountered by Ficinus and Expectations,” this study is in large part an anal-
Giovanni Pico in reconciling pagan philosophi- ysis of the 1572 nova and the 1577 comet and
cal sources, the prisca theologia, with Christian- the different ways they were interpreted by the
ity and by Leon Hebreo in reconciling them with many astronomers and philosophers who studied
Judaism. Granada explains that Ficinus and Pico them. Granada demonstrates how most of these
believed that the obstacle to complete harmony authors (including Tycho Brahe) associated
was the impossibility of fully acknowledging the these celestial novelties with eschatological
presence of the Trinity in pagan philosophy, an prophecies or outlooks and upheld the principle
obstacle Leon Hebreo overcame by dissociating of the heterogeneity of heaven and earth and
the Hebrew Sapientia from Christ. In Chapter 3 celestial incorruptibility. From the Christian
Granada compares Ficinus’s view of the har- viewpoint, this principle was conducive to such
mony between Christianity and the prisca theo- celestial novelties being declared to be super-
logia, his use of the latter to justify Christianity, natural events arising from divine will and om-
and his lack of interest in skepticism with the nipotence and to God being considered as a free
hostility shown toward the Fician program by and absolute power. On the other hand, Giordano
Savonarola and Gianfrancesco Pico de la Miran- Bruno, who had carefully read the astronomical
dola, a hostility exacerbated by these authors’ literature about the nova and the comet, rejected
interest in and use of classical skepticism and all these premises and gave a new interpretation
their negation of the human ability to attain truth of celestial novelties that was neither eschato-

logical nor Christian. The book ends with a than the 1496 incunable (the 1915 facsimile edi-
chapter about the Baconian reformation of tion appears not even to be mentioned in the
knowledge. book under review, unless it is referred to, er-
The book fulfills one of the author’s aims roneously, on p. 175, as having been published
well: it demonstrates the close relationship be- in Geneva in 1919).
tween philosophical, theological-religious, and Chabás and Goldstein easily prove that the
astronomical-cosmological questions in the Re- contents of the Almanach perpetuum are
naissance, situating itself within the tradition of founded on the Alphonsine Tables, of which the
the history of ideas. Overall, the book makes an Almanach is but an elementary presentation (al-
important contribution to our understanding of manacs in the Middle Ages, it is worth mention-
this crucial period “on the threshold of modern ing, always provided the positions of the planets
times.” and not, as with the tables, only the means of
VÍCTOR NAVARRO BROTÓNS their calculation). However, the fact that the Al-
manach is based on the Alphonsine Tables
José Chabás; Bernard R. Goldstein. Astron- comes as no surprise at all, in view of the exclu-
omy in the Iberian Peninsula: Abraham Zacut sive position these tables held at the end of the
and the Transition from Manuscript to Print. fifteenth century.
(Transactions of the American Philosophical So- This said, one still needs to agree as to the def-
ciety, 90, Pt. 2.) xii Ⳮ 196 pp., illus., tables, inition and the contents of the Alphonsine Tables,
bibl., index. Philadelphia: American Philosoph- instead of which, whilst in the process of rehabil-
ical Society, 2000. itating Zacut, the authors of the present book sim-
The Jewish astronomer Abraham Zacut, who ply continue to preach historical counter-truths, as
lived at the end of the Middle Ages, is well if they were absolute ones. I demonstrated some
known to specialists of the Great Discoveries be- ten years ago (in the Journal of the History of
cause of the role ascribed to him by Portuguese Astronomy, 1988, 19:97–113) that what was be-
historians. According to these latter, it was Za- ing circulated, from Paris in 1320, as the Al-
cut’s Almanach perpetuum that provided the dis- phonsine Tables was absolutely incompatible
coverers of far lands with the scientific bases for with what we know of the astronomical work of
astronomical navigation. In devoting an entire King Alfonso of Castile, as contained in his Li-
and densely documented book to Zacut’s astro- bros del saber. In reality, the only formal con-
nomical work, José Chabás and Bernard Gold- dition that would enable us to ascribe the origin
stein have undertaken the task of re-evaluating of the so-called Alphonsine Tables to the king
his work: on the one hand, they eliminate the himself is a purely imaginary one, based on the
false reputation attributed to Zacut—that he was idea that a thoroughly different work from that
the father of astronomical navigation; on the of the Libros del saber existed; however, we
other, they restore to Zacut the eminent position have no indication whatsoever that such a work
he held in the domain of planetary astronomy, existed. To therefore pretend that the Alphonsine
the one domain in which he was truly competent, Tables were written at the same time and in the
and on a high level. same conditions under which the king’s Libros
It is regrettable, however, that Chabás and del saber was elaborated is nothing short of mis-
Goldstein limit themselves to a purely technical conception or imposture.
analysis of Zacut’s astronomical work (tables I realize that I have, over the past ten years,
and canons of tables, in Hebrew, in Latin, or in made no impact on either Chabás or Goldstein.
Spanish, transmitted both in manuscript and in They have every legitimate right to refuse my
printed form), without proposing an edition of arguments, and for this I would harbor no bad
any of his tables or of their canons. This gives feelings toward them. But should they not have
their technical analysis a somewhat esoteric at least tried to refute my argumentation? Instead
quality, depriving those who do not have access of this, they have preferred to deliberately ignore
to Zacut’s tables and canons of the possibility of it, and no mention is even made of it in their
confronting the actual subject under analysis. I bibliography. This is unacceptable: the histo-
should mention that the first printed version of rian’s trade is based on honesty, and any breach
the Almanach (1496) was reprinted in a facsimile of this golden rule can only harm the reputation
edition in 1915, in Berne and Munich, within the of the scholar taking such a risk.
collection Histoire de la science noutique por- In their refusal to accept the Parisian origin,
tugaise d l’époque des grandes decouveries; this Chabás and Goldstein are not dealing correctly
facsimile edition is certainly far easier to consult with the sources of the history of astron-

omy. When the Alphonsine Tables were printed and a Middle Dutch version, as well as his own
in 1483, the printer Ratdolt was manifestly translation of the Latin version into modern En-
happy simply to reproduce a manuscript he had glish (with some passages from the Middle
at hand, one of the many manuscripts that were Dutch also translated). Westrem situates the Itin-
being used by practicing astronomers at the time. erarius in its medieval context as well as pro-
The goal of these astronomers was obviously to viding extensive notes on sources and analogues
assemble all the tabular material they deemed a of the incidents in the narrative, making surpris-
necessary part of the Alphonsine Tables, and ingly little use of critical or postcolonial theory.
their canons of course, but also an entire tech- He points to many errors made by previous
nical corpus that predated the Alphonsine Tables scholars trying to identify the author and con-
and was not a part of them. In 1984, when I did cludes that the task is probably hopeless. Read-
a critical edition of the Alphonsine Tables, and ers of Isis will presumably be more interested in
only of these tables, I made an inventory of the the Itinerarius’s relevance to late medieval geo-
“membra adjecta” of the 1483 edition (the graphical and ethnographic knowledge than in
printer himself gave them this name) and I did its linguistic peculiarities or the complicated tex-
tual history Westrem carefully traces.
research into their origin, which proved to be
The Itinerarius is certainly no rival to the
material coming from the Toledo Tables or those
better-known medieval travel stories of Marco
of al-Battani; this material was missing from the
Polo and Sir John Mandeville. The book is short,
Alphonsine Tables and it had not been rendered
its style undistinguished, and its narrative feeble.
out-of-date by the new astronomy. Therefore, (Such was the mediocrity of the original narra-
even if this material appears in both the Libros tive that subsequent texts tend to introduce im-
del saber as well as in the editio princeps of the provements more than corruptions.) The writer’s
Alphonsine Tables, it obviously does not testify geographical knowledge blends biblical and
to any sort of continuity between the one work classical tradition with knowledge of the ac-
and the other, except if one is simply incompe- counts of travelers to the East during the Mongol
tent in matters of textual critique. period and previous legendary journeys like St.
I sincerely regret that the same critical spirit, Brendan’s. The writer is somewhat old-
which deals with the role that Zacut played in fashioned in identifying the Christian Emperor
the Great Discoveries movement, or with how Prester John as the supreme ruler in the East and
the incunable edition of the Almanach found it- “Canisgrande,” the great Khan, as a subordinate.
self with a dedication that didn’t at all concern One interesting aspect of the tale is that it is the
it, was not applied to the far more fundamental first European account of a circumnavigation.
question about Alphonsine astronomy itself. The The author matter-of-factly caps his description
discredit this is bound to shed on this outdated of his journeys ever further east with the claim
historiography unjustly risks placing this entire that his route eventually returned him to Jeru-
book in a poor light, though it merits a better salem.
fate. Another interesting aspect of the text is the
EMMANUEL POULLE author’s conflation of spatial and spiritual loca-
tions. He claims to have passed by the mountain
Scott D. Westrem. Broader Horizons: A Study at the peak of which was the earthly paradise and
of Johannes Witte de Hese’s Itinerarius and Me- to have paused for three days and nights by the
dieval Travel Narratives. (Medieval Academy island of purgatory. He even asserts that he and
Books, 105.) xix Ⳮ 359 pp., illus., figs., bibl., his shipmates heard the cries of tortured souls
index. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of and that he secured the release of three by per-
America, 2001. $50 (cloth). forming masses. The true highlight of the nar-
rative, however, is the elaborate description of
The Itinerarius of “Johannes Witte de Hese” is the seven-story palace of Prester John in “Upper
an early fifteenth-century narrative of an alleged India” (the author shows no awareness of China)
journey, from Jerusalem to parts east, carried out and the rites he carried out in honor of St.
by a priest from Utrecht. The original Latin sur- Thomas, the apostle of India, on his feast day.
vives in eight manuscripts and no fewer than One of the many miracles noted is that Thomas’s
eleven printed editions, the last dated 1565. Scott body dispenses the Eucharist and withholds it
Westrem, in a work based on his dissertation, has from unworthy communicants—a phenomenon
provided us with an exhaustive study of the Itin- the author claims to have witnessed himself.
erarius and its manuscript and printed traditions. Given the many fantastic and miraculous ele-
His book includes editions of the original Latin ments of the Itinerarius—very different from

the earlier narratives of Polo or William of Ruys- Anglo, senior medievalist at the University of
broeck—it is interesting to note that it was Wales and the author of Spectacle, Pageantry,
treated as an authority into the Age of Discovery. and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1997) and Im-
It was bound together with works of widely ac- ages of Tudor Kingship (Seaby, 1992).
cepted factuality, such as chronicles and geo- Anglo’s approach is admirably academic, in
graphical treatises, until the seventeenth century. contrast to the legion of stage actors and histori-
Westrem wisely avoids exaggerated claims for cal reenactors who simply want to mine this lit-
the Itinerarius’s influence or cultural impor- erature for information about “authentic tech-
tance, however, and points out that many com- niques” of swordplay and fighting. (Whether
mentators simply reproduced previous commen- Anglo gives enough technical detail to satisfy this
tators’ remarks rather than engaging freshly with undoubtedly large fraction of his potential read-
the text. ership is beyond my ability to assess.) There are
Westrem’s book includes a fine bibliography larger issues at play here, and Anglo is sensitive
and index. It will be of interest principally to to their subtleties. Martial arts manuals represent
libraries and students of late medieval and early a form of “didactic” literature, designed to teach
Renaissance travel narratives. the beginner a skill and to cultivate the level of
WILLIAM E. BURNS practice among those who already posses the skill.
Yet fighting—like ballroom dancing—cannot
Sydney Anglo. The Martial Arts of Renaissance really be learned except by personal instruction
Europe. xii Ⳮ 384 pp., illus., bibl., index. New and supervised practice, as anyone can attest
Haven, Conn./London: Yale University Press, who has ever tried to learn the foxtrot or the
2000. $45. tango from books containing pictures of all those
footprints. What then is the purpose of a didactic
Readers of Gulliver’s Travels may recall that the treatise on a subject that can be taught only in a
eponymous hero travels with a “hanger” always face-to-face context?
at his side. “Hanger” was the early eighteenth- For Anglo, the answer to that question is
century name for a small sword often worn by highly contingent, and it varies from master to
gentlemen for personal defense. Swift’s casual master and from age to age. For Fiore de’ Liberi
description of Gulliver as armed is one of those da Premariaccio, author of the early fifteenth-
little facts that speak volumes about changing century Flos duellarum, the manuscript treatise
gender roles and social expectations. Until the was a means of recording best practice tech-
latter decades of the 1700s, any bourgeois male niques and an aid to instruction, a point also
could freely carry a variety of weapons, usually made by Hans Thalhoffer’s heavily illustrated
swords or daggers, about his person, and he was mid-fifteenth-century Fechtbuch (also recently
expected to draw them at the slightest insult. published for the first time in English by Mark
Should he chance to kill anyone with those per- Rector). On the other hand, for Camillo Agrippa
sonal weapons, his case would be judged ac- in 1553, the point was to reveal the geometrical
cording to the gravity of the insult to his “honor.” basis for swordfighting and wrestling; while for
He was also expected to be at least minimally Geronimo Sánchez de Carranza, the treatise was
proficient in the proper use of whatever weapons to relate “mastery of the sword” to “primary
he carried, as well as able to wrestle and to fight causes”—a philosophı́a de las armas, as he put
with his fists. This was the legacy of aristocratic it in 1582. Agrippa was particularly favored by
maleness derived from medieval notions of nineteenth-century historians of fencing as the
knighthood. “founder of proper method.” Anglo represents a
Under such circumstances, it is hardly sur- quantum leap over such outdated authorities as
prising that there is a vast literature dating from Egerton Castle precisely because of his open-
the fifteenth to the late seventeenth century de- mindedness to the heterogeneous purposes that
voted to all forms of personal combat: sword didactic treatises can serve.
fighting, quarterstaves, daggers and knives, Another generic question dominates any dis-
lances, wrestling, and bare-knuckle fistfights. cussion of this sort of literature: Was what we
Any scholar who has spent sufficient time in Eu- see in these pages “real”? This is also a surpris-
ropean rare book or manuscript collections will ingly difficult question to answer, and one that
likely have noticed one or another of these requires a certain sophistication in its treatment.
works, for they are often profusely and beauti- “Real” combat, if that is taken to mean battlefield
fully illustrated, the sort of treasure that library encounters between enemies bent on inflicting
staff delight in displaying under glass. This lit- serious bodily harm, was probably never a very
erature has at last found its scholar in Sydney pretty affair and may well have involved feints

Renaissance fencing school, illustrated in Meyer’s martial arts handbook of 1600 (from Sydney Anglo,
The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe, p. 89).
and blows the marquis of Queensbury would wrestling, jousting, and a host of other forms of
have refused to countenance. Yet most forms of personal combat from the late Middle Ages until
personal combat are also, at one time or another, the death of personal swordplay as a gentleman’s
practiced as “sports,” and sport, by definition, birthright sometime in the mid-eighteenth cen-
implies rules and judgments as to what is and is tury. Few readers of Isis are likely to have the
not allowed between opponents. Over time, rules opportunity to practice any of the skills Anglo’s
tend to proliferate, and the scope for creative im- subjects discuss in such detail, but we should
provisation becomes more restricted. What then keep in mind that virtually all early modern sci-
is “real”—the brutality of face-to-face combat entists were also bourgeois gentlemen, and most
or the refinement of sport? The treatise literature of them could, in fact, handle a sword. They had
on personal combat reflects these multilayered been trained to do so as part of their education,
issues, and once again Anglo’s handling of his and we cannot entirely overlook this aspect of
subject is masterful. their formation. For that reason, as well, we
This is a large book, not merely in format but should welcome Sydney Anglo’s latest contri-
in scope. The bibliography runs to sixteen double- bution.
column pages and includes virtually every printed BERT HALL
treatise on personal combat published before
1750, as well as fifty-two manuscripts, most of John R. C. Martyn (Editor and Translator). Pe-
them still unpublished. Clearly, this is a labor of dro Nunes (1502–1578): His Lost Algebra and
love crafted over many years of careful research. Other Discoveries. (American University Stud-
Yale University Press is to be congratulated for ies, Ser. 9, 182.) viii Ⳮ 158 pp., bibl., index.
including more than 180 black-and-white illus- New York: Peter Lang, 1996. $35.95 (cloth).
trations within the text and adding as well 28
color plates, drawn mainly from Emperor Max- The present work is a translation of and com-
imilian’s Freydal, Royal Armouries MS I.33, mentary on a few pieces of a codex, extant at the
and the R. L. Scott Collection Fecht und Rin- public library in Evora, Portugal, that the editor
gerbuch. I have seen the Royal Armouries manu- attributes to Pedro Nunes. The book presents a
script, and I can attest to the fidelity of the color good deal of information, primarily concerning
reproduction. the cultural context of Nunes’s activity as a
In sum, this is the book on fencing, swordplay, mathematician. This important sixteenth-century

author deserves a series of studies on his life and nificant discrepancies that make the two texts
work; certainly John R. C. Martyn, with his quite different, and not only in terms of size:
knowledge of Portuguese humanism, has suc- solution formulas for second-degree equations
ceeded in offering a rich picture of Nunes’s are simply stated at the end of the manuscript,
world and providing new elements for his bi- while the book presents a long discussion of
ography. those formulas at the very beginning. Further-
The main part of the book is a translation of more, Nunes gives extensive demonstrations for
the manuscript that Martyn believes is an early the solution formulas, the most complete justi-
version of Nunes’s algebra. The “other discov- fication in Euclidean terms offered in this period.
eries” announced by the title are a Church cal- Overall, the printed algebra is incomparably
endar and a few pages of religious notes, both richer, not only because of the numerous exam-
transcribed from two manuscripts bound to- ples and problems—which Martyn dismisses, a
gether with the algebra. To these texts Martyn bit hastily, as “blackboard material”—but also
adds many poems that have appeared in other in its treatment of “new” topics: besides the dem-
collections he has edited. It is important to note, onstrations already mentioned, it covers prob-
however, that the editor does not provide con- lems with several unknowns. The book refers ex-
vincing proof that the manuscripts translated plicitly to Girolamo Cardano’s work (in the
here are actually Nunes’s work. The handwriting Practica arithmeticae of 1539 as well as the Ars
is attributed to Nunes only in passing and is not magna of 1545); but we might expect that a
explicitly identified by Martyn in his commen- manuscript from a specialist such as Nunes—
tary (see p. 11); the material descriptions of the even thirty years before 1567—would present at
manuscripts and the datings that appear in the least the simple version of this part of algebra,
original folios are not discussed in detail as part which had been examined in works such as Luca
of the argument for the identification (see Pacioli’s Summa of 1494. Certainly Nunes’s
p. 14 and notes): the date appearing in the 1567 book was much appreciated in France—
Church calendar—1533—is probably the time widely distributed and even translated into
of Nunes’s tutoring of the king’s brothers in French—but it seems that the earlier version
mathematics, which corroborates Martyn’s the- must have been interesting enough: Jacques Pe-
sis (the algebra manuscript should be from about letier referred to it, describing it as a manuscript
1535), but the other dates appearing in the manu- in Portuguese, in his Algèbre, published in 1554.
script codex (1544 and 1563) and the different Peletier stated that he had not read the text; in
handwritings it exhibits raise some serious any case, it is difficult to imagine that the alge-
doubts. So, when we approach what Martyn braic content of the manuscript Martyn presents
rightly considers the main piece—the algebra would have been relevant to him, for it is barely
manuscript—we are left without satisfying evi- sufficient as a sketch of the main algebraic topics
dence to convince us that these pages are actu- and contains no innovations—in either presen-
ally by Nunes and not, for instance, the work of tation or result—with respect to previous alge-
a diligent pupil of his who was simultaneously bras. In fact, what appears to be a significant
a student at the Coimbra Jesuit college (the similarity between the manuscript and the
manuscript is decorated with Jesuit symbols). In book—the table of contents—is but the standard
short, while it would be very satisfying to find skeleton of every arithmetic book since the Mid-
the earlier manuscript version that Nunes himself dle Ages, the “algorism.” For algebra, this meant
refers to in the preface to the printed algebra, we the four operations of monomials in the simple
cannot determine on the basis of Martyn’s dis- and fractionary forms, the four operations with
cussion alone whether the manuscript he pre- roots, the equations, and the rules for solving
sents is by Nunes and whether it is indeed the equations of the first and second degree.
earlier version of the published book. Having consulted the algebraic manuscript
The size of the two algebras is obviously rad- and the Church calendar in photocopies (I wish
ically different: the manuscript consists of only to thank Maria Fatima Nunes, a historian of sci-
12 folios, while the book contains 341 folios. As ence at the University of Evora, for looking for
to the content, Martyn’s main argument in iden- the manuscript and then obtaining a photocopy
tifying the algebra manuscript as Nunes’s first and information about the library catalogue for
version of his book is a comparison between its me), I would be very interested in knowing more
distribution of topics and the table of contents of about the rest of the codex, particularly about the
Nunes’s 1567 book. It is true that if we compare handwritings and datings of the various pieces:
the two tables of contents we see that they are for instance, the two pieces I have seen are
roughly the same. However, there are some sig- clearly in different handwritings. Furthermore, I

think Martyn does not offer evidence to support and the Maghreb—in which the main focus of
his attribution of the religious commentary to attention is the writings of legal scholars. The
Nunes, an attribution that is crucial to the points main figure in her inquiry is Abū ’Alı̄ al-
he makes about Nunes’s religious beliefs. Fi- Mas. mūdı̄, a “Berber” who lived in Nafis (on the
nally, in his introduction Martyn also attributes southern slopes of the Great Atlas) at the begin-
to Nunes a long rhetorical treatise, inspired by ning of the fourteenth century; besides jurispru-
Hermogenes and not translated in this volume, dence, this hitherto little known scholar was also
that is part of the same codex; he suggests that highly knowledgeable in matters of geography,
facsimiles of the algebra manuscript and these history, and folk astronomy. Rius’s study in-
rhetorical lectures should be published. I think it cludes an edition and translation of his infor-
is an excellent idea, provided that readers are mative treatise on the qibla, in which he quotes
also given all the information available to eval- no fewer than sixty-five of his predecessors.
uate the texts, including a description of the en- Chapter 3 surveys the religious and juridical
tire codex. This would enable them to assess foundations of the qibla, which, as the author
Martyn’s attributions of these manuscripts to Pe- convincingly argues, “was not a closed concept”
dro Nunes. An updated bibliography of extant (p. 257). In fact, the juridical notions of “valid”/
copies of the 1567 Libro de algebra would also “accepted” did not overlap with those of “exact”/
be welcome. “accurate.” Legal scholars did differentiate be-
GIOVANNA CIFOLETTI tween “accurate orientation” (samt) and “global
direction” ( jiha), the latter allowing for a gen-
Mònica Rius. La Alquibla en al-Andalus y al- erous margin of deviation from the samt. Some
Magrib al-Aqs. à. (Anuari de Filologia, Univer- jurists even defined up to ten different types of
sitat de Barcelona, 21.) 357 Ⳮ 61 pp., illus., qiblas with decreasing levels of certainty. Chap-
figs., tables, bibl., index. Barcelona: Institut ter 4 presents the archaeological evidence for the
“Millás Vallicrosa” d’Història de la Ciència analysis of the orientation of mosques in West-
Àrab, 2000. (Paper.) ern Islamic lands, which is compared in Chapters
5 and 6 with the information revealed in textual
In 1933 George Sarton published in the pages of sources. The relevant geographical and astro-
this journal (20:262–264) a “query” in which he nomical notions are introduced—somewhat too
expressed his amazement about the apparently late, alas—at the end of the book.
incorrect orientation of medieval Islamic The mathematical methods and instruments
mosques, whose prayer niches should be di- for determining the qibla were not accepted by
rected toward Mecca. After all, he noted, Muslim legal scholars. This was not because of some
scientists were able to compute the qibla accu- fundamental conflict with the scientists, but
rately. A contemporary historian of Islamic ar- mostly for pragmatic reasons: those scientific
chitecture, Henri Terrasse, was unable to give a methods were inaccessible to most Muslims, for
satisfying answer (Isis, 1935, 24:109–110). Sar- the Koran (22.78) insists that God “has imposed
ton would have been spellbound by the book un- no difficulties on you in religion.” In this respect,
der review. it is interesting to follow the argumentation of
The qibla—the sacred direction toward the the famed astronomer and mathematician Ibn al-
Ka’ba in Mecca—has always been a matter of Bannā’, a contemporary of al-Mas. mūdı̄ living in
general concern in Islamic society. Above all, it Marrakesh, who was also a legal scholar. He
is a complex legal issue, which has given rise to maintained that the mathematical derivation of
a substantial literature on the part of scholars of the qibla is flawed since the required geograph-
the sacred law. Since the determination of qibla ical coordinates, especially the longitudes, can-
can also be considered as a problem of mathe- not be known exactly (pp. 226–229), an opinion
matical geography, it was likewise a topic of ut- shared by some other legal scholars. Therefore,
most concern for Muslim astronomers, whose in practice, simple methods of folk astronomy
wide-ranging solutions have been subjected to were preferred: the qibla could be determined by
intense scrutiny by historians of Islamic science means of the risings and settings of astronomical
during the past century, from the work of Carl objects (sun, moon, stars, lunar mansions) or the
Schoy to more recent writings by David A. King. orientation of the believer with respect to the po-
Yet the pronouncements of jurists on the qibla lar star or particular winds.
have until recently received far less attention. Rius’s multifaceted approach to the fascinat-
Mònica Rius has written the first book-length ing topic of the qibla will be of interest to schol-
historical account of the qibla in a particular geo- ars in Islamic studies and historians of science.
graphical and cultural setting—Muslim Spain FRANÇOIS CHARETTE

Georg Hartmann. Hartmann’s Practika: A truly fortunate that, after nearly five centuries,
Manual for Making Sundials and Astrolabes John Lamprey has undertaken this task (includ-
with the Compass and Rule. Translated and ed- ing a translation into English) as a labor of love.
ited by John Lamprey. 312 pp., illus., figs., The work has taken him six years, but the re-
bibl., index. Bellvue, Colo.: John Lamprey, sult—concisely entitled Hartmann’s Practika—
2002. $174.95. is a credit to both author and editor/translator.
Now we can discover at first hand how this mas-
Georg Hartmann lived from 1489 to 1564. As a ter craftsman laid out his beautiful instruments.
young man he studied both mathematics and the- Hartmann’s method proves to have been en-
ology, becoming a Lutheran churchman. In 1518 tirely geometrical, utilizing the type of diagram-
he moved to Nuremberg to take up the post of matic projection employed in a modern book by
vicar of St. Secaldue and, to supplement his in- R. Newton Mayall and Margaret L. Mayall, Sun-
come, established a workshop to make scientific dials: How to Know, Use, and Make Them
instruments. For over forty years he designed (Branford, 1962). These and other contemporary
and constructed the astrolabes, armillary authors do, however, improve clarity and con-
spheres, sundials, globes, and quadrants that are ciseness by including tables of solar declinations
now the pride of some of the world’s most pres- and the like and using trigonometry where ap-
tigious museums. propriate. It is not clear why Hartmann—a
Hartmann must have felt a need to record ex- trained mathematician—felt constrained to stick
actly how he designed these instruments, for in so rigorously to projective geometry.
the summers of 1518 and 1526–1528 he scrib- Lamprey has rearranged and edited Hart-
bled down in Low German a rough draft (illus- mann’s draft into seven chapters (“books”) ac-
trated with even rougher sketches) of his math- cording to the type of instrument described.
ematical techniques. He never got around to Book 1 of the Practika deals with the basic
refining this outline, and the paper (entitled Col- “block” sundial in its various manifestations,
lectanea mathematica praeprimis gnomonicam calibrations, and numerations, Book 2 with the
spectania) eventually ended up in the Oster- diptych dial, and Book 3 with the shepherd’s
reichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna as MS dial. Book 4 is concerned with the layout of lines
12768. No publisher ever considered it, for to of declination, a complex and difficult matter in
refine this raw material into a logical and under- the absence of trigonometry. Book 5 returns to
standable treatise would necessitate enormous real but unusual items like the hemispherium and
effort and dedication. Hartmann is therefore chalice dial, while Book 6 details the Nuremberg
“Compast”—a portable dial incorporating a
magnetic compass. Experience with the latter en-
abled Hartmann to note the varying deviation
from true north, and according to the editor’s
introduction he independently discovered mag-
netic dip. The Practika concludes with what for
many readers will be the most important section:
Book 7, “Designing the Astrolabe.”
Hartmann and Lamprey’s comprehensive text
is for the academic specialist in sixteenth-
century gnomonics, not for someone wishing to
make a sundial for the garden. Indeed, consulting
the Practika will not enable anyone to make a
dial suitable for an outdoor location, for it ter-
minates with the production of a paper pattern.
Hartmann, a master craftsman, appears embar-
rassed and almost ashamed of the manual ability
and artistic skill on which his current reputation
rests. Agreed, a craft requires a lot more than
literary instruction; but Hartmann does not even
explain how one transfers the paper pattern to a
Georg Hartmann’s paper astrolabe component sheet of brass. This strict separation between
from a 1551 manuscript (from Hartmann’s mathematics and metalcraft is presumably in
Practika, trans. and ed. by John Lamprey, compliance with the notorious contempt and dis-
p. 298). trust between the academic and the “practical

man” that have plagued scientific and technolog- and practiced his art in both major cities and
ical education right up to the present day. small towns. An ardent student of the newly ac-
ALLAN MILLS cessible classics of Greek medicine, he rated
Hippocrates higher than Galen, although his
Nancy G. Siraisi. The Clock and the Mirror: training inevitably made him a Galenist despite
Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine. his carping at Galen’s errors. He was an early
xiv Ⳮ 362 pp., bibl., index. Princeton, N.J.: and enthusiastic advocate of Vesalius, praising
Princeton University Press, 1997. $49.50, his Hippocratic practicality, orderliness, and in-
£37.50 (cloth). sistence on learning from experience. (Cardano
also valued medieval Arab medical authorities
How many Renaissance historians does it take for these qualities and chided his contemporaries
to do justice to one Renaissance Man? for being put off by their barbaric language,
Girolamo Cardano’s Opera omnia fill ten vol- “which was the calamity of the region or the age”
umes (and still leave out material). Two first- [p. 48].) Siraisi makes it clear, however, that this
class intellectual historians, Nancy Siraisi and taste for the straightforward vied with his much
Anthony Grafton, have devoted a book apiece, stronger fascination with subtilitates. His anx-
several articles, and a jointly written essay to ious desire to comprehend and control subtle, ex-
Cardano (1501–1576) and his work in medicine traordinary, difficult-to-grasp, wondrous phe-
and astrology. The Centro Studi del Pensiero Fi- nomena—natural and supernatural—underlay
losofico del ’500 e ’600 has mounted an on-line all his work.
database and has a major project under way to Siraisi takes her title from Cardano’s remark
provide a complete critical edition (see http:// that the “studious man should always have at
www.cspf.mi.cnr.it/cardano/). The sheer bulk hand a clock and a mirror . . . to keep track of
and range of Cardano’s writing and the way this time . . . and to observe the changing condition
single figure encompasses so much of mid- of his body” (p. 3). For Cardano, the clock meant
sixteenth-century Italian life and thought easily not only the daily pressures of time in human
justify this renewed interest in his work. life but also the great sweep of history and the
However, it is the expression of Cardano’s heavens. This self-absorbed yet detached physi-
own personality in his work that over the cen- cian was born on the brink of a half-millennium.
turies has continued to attract readers and, to her It is his ultimate good fortune—and ours—that
own surprise, “caught” Siraisi (p. ix). His auto- at the far end of those five centuries, another
biography, written not long before his death, is deeply learned scholar would hold up the mirror
still a good read; and throughout his life he en- to his life, ideas, and world and give him the rich
livened his medical treatises—half of the Opera and sympathetic interpretation he deserves.
omnia—with stories about his contemporaries, KAREN REEDS
his patients, his family, and his own health. We
know what he ate, what he wore, how late he Nicolás Garcı́a Tapia. Los veintiún libros de los
slept, and what he dreamed. ingenios y máquinas de Juanelo, atribuidos a
In his gambling (an addiction that led to the Pedro Juan de Lastanosa. Foreword by Vicente
treatises on mathematics and probability for Bielza de Ory. (Colección Estudios y Monogra-
which Cardano is most famous), his professional fias, 25.) 282 pp., illus. Zaragoza: Departamento
career, and his personal life, Cardano was all too de Educación y Cultura, 1997.
familiar with sudden reverses of fortune: at
times, powerful patrons throughout Europe In 1984 a superb manuscript from the Spanish
sought his services; at others, the hostility of col- National Library in Madrid appeared in print un-
leagues or the Inquisition sent him into exile. der the title Los veintiún libros de los ingenios y
The worst blow came from the fate of Cardano’s máquinas. The manuscript is one of the most
beloved firstborn—executed for poisoning his important works in sixteenth-century hydraulic
wife. Small wonder, then, that so much of Car- engineering and a precursor of the eighteenth-
dano’s intellectual curiosity was directed into the century hydraulic literature. The name of Juan-
philosophical issues and the techniques of prog- elo Turriano, the famous Italian engineer in the
nostication, whether by the stars, by portents, by service of the Spanish Crown, appears on the
natural magic, or by the symptoms of his pa- cover of the manuscript. The edition, however,
tients. attributes the document to “Pseudo Juanelo Tur-
Cardano made his living as a physician and riano” because the authorship is suspected to be
professor of medicine. He studied at Pavia and spurious. The Spanish historian of technology in
Padua, taught at Pavia, Milan, and Bologna, charge of the publication, the late José A.

Garcı́a Diego, doubted Turriano’s authorship tant) was made, probably for a publication that
and proposed an Aragonese origin of the manu- never materialized. Finally, between 1643 and
script. In the course of the ensuing debate, Ni- 1647, a new, unsuccessful, attempt at publication
colás Garcı́a Tapia went a step further and iden- was made, at which time Juanelo Turriano was
tified, or so he claimed, the Aragonese Pedro mistakenly assumed to be the author. The vol-
Juan de Lastanosa as the proper author. But what ume under discussion is by no means a substitute
began as a scholarly dispute in highly specialized for other publications on the issue by authors like
articles had by that time reached a level of such David Goodmann, Vı́ctor Navarro Brotons, Isa-
acrimony that in 1996 Garcı́a Tapia was, to his bel Vicente Maroto, or, indeed, Garcı́a Tapia
deepest regret (p. 16), not invited to participate himself, but it makes an excellent contribution
in preparation of the new facsimile edition of the to the determination of the technical and intel-
manuscript sponsored by the Foundation Juanelo lectual, as well as social, profile of a technical
Turriano (founded by Garcı́a Diego). This pref- advisor to Felipe II, king of the most powerful
atory note is important, because the attentive empire at the time.
reader of Garcı́a Tapia’s Los veintiún libros de ALBERT PRESAS I PUIG
los ingenios y máquinas will hear echoes of these
polemics. In fact, the dispute has shaped the ar- 䡲 Early Modern
gument of the book as well as its exposition. (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)
After long and patient research (p. 11), employ-
ing, as he assures the reader, a “strictly scientific Michael Windelspecht. Groundbreaking Sci-
methodology” (p. 12) as well as a “scientific pro- entific Experiments, Inventions, and Discoveries
cedure” (p. 13), Garcı́a Tapia aspires to give a of the Seventeenth Century. xxi Ⳮ 270 pp., illus.,
definitive answer as to the authorship of the bibl., index. Westport, Conn./London: Green-
manuscript under discussion. Though not writ- wood Press, 2002. $69.95 (cloth).
ing a thematic work on the history of Spanish
technology, he introduces at length and in great We have recently seen the publication of a few
detail (and at times with considerable repetitive- works on the history of science designed for sec-
ness) the scientific, technological, and intellec- ondary school students. This is a welcome de-
tual context of the court of Felipe II, where the velopment and merits greater attention than it
treatise was written. has hitherto received. In most science courses
The book consists of four large sections and from high school through college, students are
an epilogue: the first section is dedicated to the never given the opportunity to learn that the de-
manuscript itself and its history. It is followed velopment of science is a complex process fre-
by a section on the humanism, science, and tech- quently involving contending hypotheses, that
nology of the time, in which Garcı́a Tapia also ideas and processes are affected by both scien-
works out the profile of the author to be identi- tific and nonscientific events outside a given re-
fied. This analysis constitutes the central part of search area, and that some ideas no longer part
the book, for it contains a detailed study of the of contemporary science are worth learning
content of the manuscript: the four elements (wa- about. Positivism reigns; this volume, unfortu-
ter, earth, air, fire), physics, mechanics, geome- nately, is a prime example of it.
try, and the technical applications of hydraulic Moreover, the entry list is a strange mixture
architecture (water conduction, aqueducts, mills, of specific experiments, inventions, and discov-
bridges, elevators, machines, etc.). eries such as light speed, Boyle’s law, magnetic
The third section is dedicated to the person of declination, and hydrologic cycles, along with
Pedro Juan de Lastanosa, who probably lived be- broad general topics such as optics, gases, mag-
tween 1527 and 1576. It is as much an intellec- netism, and meteorology. There are no general
tual and personal biography of Lastanosa as a entries, however, on astronomy, mathematics,
detailed study of his scientific and technological medicine, mechanics, navigation, or zoology.
endeavors. The final section deals with the his- Several entries are devoted to individual planets,
tory of the reception of the manuscript and its but there are none on force or mass.
impact on the various scientific disciplines and The work is filled with contradictory, mis-
on practical hydraulics of the time. Garcı́a Tapia leading expressions and a peculiar use of lan-
concludes that between 1564 and 1575, Lastan- guage. What are we to make of the apparently
osa wrote a treatise on hydraulics, commissioned (unintentional?) teleological statement that
by Felipe II, that remained both unfinished and Newton “held a key role in the evolution of
unsigned. Later, between 1585 and 1610, the text seventeenth-century science” (p. 76) or the claim
was revised; and then a copy (the only one ex- that he “was considered the driving force behind

the scientific revolution” (p. 210)? While indi- This book presents itself as a philosophical study
cating that Descartes was opposed to atomism, of Robert Boyle’s thought. Peter Anstey’s de-
the author writes that in Descartes’s vortex the- clared aim is to give a systematic account of
ory “all of the atoms of matter were basically in Boyle’s philosophy. This sounds like a difficult
one continuous motion with one another” task, because Boyle was unsystematic, viewing
(p. 13). Hypotheses and experiments in Galileo’s systems as impediments to the advancement of
determination of the relationships between time experimental learning. Anstey seems to be aware
and distance in falling bodies are confused of the difficulty involved in such an approach,
(pp. 123–124). On page 15 Gasparo Berti “util- though his remark that Boyle “is still marked by
ized air pumps to create vacuums at the top of the scholastic heritage in that he sought to re-
tubes,” a neat trick for someone who died in place that system by another” (p. 6) is at odds
1643, since on page 241 we are informed that with what Boyle wrote about philosophical sys-
the air pump was invented a few years after that. tems. However, the difficulties to be anticipated
Newton’s first law was not limited to bodies at in the systematic interpretation of Boyle’s phi-
rest (p. 77), nor was it a “restating of Galileo’s losophy do not seem to worry Anstey, who
principle of inertia” (p. 177). claims to have found a solution: “the commen-
The following are but a few of the numerous tator has merely to be honest when inconsisten-
errors of fact and interpretation in the volume. cies occur” (p. 8). It is not clear how such an
Despite Michael Windelspecht’s assertions, obvious caveat can help in making sense of
Ptolemy did not live in the second century B.C.E. Boyle’s inconsistencies. A closer attention to the
(p. 166); Stonehenge is not an obelisk (p. 187); context of Boyle’s works and to his polemical
the pendulum clock did not signal “the begin- targets would help more.
ning of the quantitative analysis of the solar sys- The book is divided into two parts: the first
tem” (p. 190); Aristotle did not state that “nature part deals with Boyle’s theory of qualities; the
abhors a vacuum” or that “a fifth compound second explores his views of motion, place, laws
[sic], ether, filled the spaces between the four of nature, and the mind/body interaction. Anstey
elements” (pp. 15, 45, 241); Newton did not pub- investigates Boyle’s distinction among qualities
lish the manuscript of his De motu in 1684 (p. and proposes the following classification: me-
xxvii); Kepler did not notice “an eight-degree chanical (shape, size, motion, texture) and non-
error” in his early attempts at Mars’s orbit (p. mechanical; the latter, in turn, are divided into
118); “for most of recorded time” there were manifest (hot, cold, wet, and dry), occult (mag-
five, not four known planets (p. 201). Kepler was netism and electricity), and, finally, sensible
not Tycho’s student (pp. 117, 155), nor was Mer- (color, taste, odor). Some interesting remarks on
senne Galileo’s (p. 188). Boyle’s theory of qualities can be found in Chap-
While the publisher is to be commended for ter 4. Anstey rightly maintains that for Boyle
undertaking a work on the history of science for sensible qualities were not unreal (i.e., without
high school students, the result is wholly inade- ontological status over and above the mechanical
quate. The approach is decidedly ahistorical— properties of matter). What Boyle criticized was
whiggery abounds; most topics are dealt with as the scholastic view that they are ontologically
forerunners—the choices of topics and their distinct and independent of material substance.
lengths make no sense, and there is a good deal Anstey maintains that for Boyle sensible quali-
of redundancy in the text. This is a work appar- ties are identical with powers, but powers are not
ently drafted in great haste, without adequate at- identical with the mechanical affections of mat-
tention even to the secondary sources cited. Few ter. Following current revisionist interpretations,
of the most appropriate works published in the he does not see Boyle’s mechanical philosophy
past few years were consulted; some of the most as implying a reduction of powers to the me-
egregious blunders could have been avoided by chanical affections of matter. This interpretation
use, for example, of the Dictionary of Scientific would benefit from an analysis of Boyle’s sci-
Biography. Students and other members of the entific investigations of qualities, but unfortu-
reading public deserve better. nately Anstey fails to take them into account.
WILBUR APPLEBAUM Part 2 deals with issues related to God and the
mechanical universe. It is well known that for
Peter R. Anstey. The Philosophy of Robert Boyle God maintains the universe by regulating
Boyle. (Routledge Studies in Seventeenth- the motions of its parts. The so-called laws of
Century Philosophy, 5.) xvi Ⳮ 231 pp., fig., nature depend entirely on God’s will. Anstey
apps., bibl., index. London/New York: Rout- discusses Boyle’s position on occasionalism and
ledge, 2000. $90, Can $135. tries to assess whether he denied any causal ef-

ficacy to matter. Following Timothy Shanahan them all is valuable for understanding natural
(“God and Nature in the Thought of Robert philosophy in the seventeenth century.
Boyle,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, Most interesting is how Martens presents the
1988, 26:547–569), Anstey maintains that archetypes. She suggests that in the Mysterium
Boyle saw a via media between deism and oc- cosmographicum they were the formal and final
casionalism. He defines Boyle’s view as “nomic causes. This use of Aristotelian language is de-
occasionalism,” stating that Boyle maintained liberate. Martens uncovers, as she titles Chapter
that “while matter is causally efficacious in that 5, “The Aristotelian Kepler.” She notes, “De-
it can transmit its motion in collisions; the nature spite Kepler’s avowedly Platonic and Pythago-
of that transmission and the resultant motions are rean sympathies, his physical astronomy fit well
determined by the immanent activity of God” with Aristotle’s directives in the Posterior An-
(p. 164). If the reader has the impression that this alytics” (p. 99). In a manner that not only im-
conclusion could help explain Boyle’s complex proves our understanding of Kepler but should
views on the subject, Anstey then refers to a remind us that Aristotle’s natural philosophy is
manuscript where Boyle seems “to be attracted not as simplistic as it is often portrayed, Martens
by the occasionalism of certain neo-Cartesians” shows how Kepler’s combination of physics and
(p. 182)—which is at variance with his thesis. mathematical astronomy was, in fact, compatible
We are left without an explanation: “here is not with Aristotle’s thought. She points out that Ar-
the place to attempt to account for, or to reconcile istotle accepted a deduction that proceeded from
Boyle’s favourable attitude to occasionalism” one discipline to another provided that they used
(p. 182). The manuscript on occasionalism is the same basic principles and the appeal was to
published in the appendix, but without comment. the higher discipline. For Kepler, the archetypes
In conclusion, one must regret that in a phil- justified that appeal. Martens thus breaks new
ground in disclosing how Kepler absorbed the
osophical study of Boyle there is no reference to
Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. She
his views of scientific method or to the relation-
also shows that whereas the archetypal reasoning
ship between reason and revelation, while large
is “unscientific” to us, it could have made Kep-
portions of the book deal with topics that are
ler’s ideas more appealing to his contemporaries.
evidently marginal in Boyle’s thought, such as After all, it was the Mysterium cosmographicum
the perception of sensible qualities (Ch. 3), nat- that brought Kepler to the attention of Tycho
ural and violent motions and the concept of in- Brahe.
ertial motion (Ch. 5), and the nature of place Martens unfolds the evolution of the arche-
(Ch. 6). types in Kepler’s thinking. In the Mysterium cos-
ANTONIO CLERICUZIO mographicum, they were repositories for the
concepts of simplicity, unity, and fruitfulness.
Rhonda Martens. Kepler’s Philosophy and the He used these concepts to argue the superiority
New Astronomy. xiv Ⳮ 201 pp., figs., tables, of the Copernican system, and he continually re-
bibl., index. Princeton, N.J./Oxford: Princeton verted to such concepts to judge his hypotheses.
University Press, 2000. $37.50, £23.50. Martens suggests that the archetypes legitimated
Kepler’s use of physics in astronomy; in the Ap-
This little book makes a big contribution not
ologia “various objects and events studied by
only to Kepler studies but to our understanding
different disciplines are reflections of the same
of early modern philosophy in general. Rhonda archetypes” (p. 68). Such ideas led Kepler to be-
Martens examines the Mysterium cosmographi- lieve when working on the Astronomia nova that
cum, the Apologia, the Astronomia nova, the a simple geometrical measurement indicated a
Harmonice mundi, and the Epitome astronomiae simple physical cause, so the absence of a dis-
Copernicanae. She winnows out Kepler’s un- cussion about archetypes does not mean that
derlying philosophical assumptions. In particu- Kepler had temporarily abandoned them. Al-
lar, she focuses on his use of the archetypes, how though Kepler overtly returns to the archetypes
they functioned and why they were necessary. in the Harmonice mundi, Martens sees that his
She shows how they were a constant feature in successes caused him to change some of his ear-
Kepler’s work and how they evolved as his ideas lier ideas: the elliptical orbit forced him to reject
developed and matured. She puts Kepler’s his belief that geometry determined material
thought in the context of four early modern form, thus limiting the effectiveness of his
trends—Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, the archetypes. Martens believes that Kepler contin-
mathematization of physics, and mechanics— ued to present his physical astronomy as an out-
and shows why Kepler’s ability to assimilate growth of the archetypes in the Epitome astron-

omiae Copernicanae because he thought it dictions about political developments in the

would make his ideas more acceptable to his Thirty Years’ War and about the reigning Bar-
contemporaries. Nevertheless, she concludes berini papacy of Urban VIII. In an era when there
that Kepler was increasingly disturbed by his ob- was as yet no clear distinction between astron-
servations and calculations that showed pertur- omy and astrology, Morandi conceived of what
bations in the regularity of the orbits. It sug- we now think of as the “occult” as ultimately
gested that the physical universe did not conform empirically based knowledge connected to the
to the archetypes, which destroyed his justifica- cycles of the universe. In May 1630 he over-
tion for the merger of physics and astronomy; it reached by predicting the imminent death of the
also brought the predictability of the motions pope, which led to his arrest and trial on charges
into question. of engaging in astrology, for his political and
Martens acknowledges that, with the excep- other objectionable writings, and for his collec-
tion of the Apologia, which was not available to tion of forbidden books. Potential embarrass-
his contemporaries, Kepler’s philosophy is not ments to important public figures were avoided
easily discerned in his writings. Nevertheless, when his death in prison conveniently ended the
she suggests ways in which it influenced Mer- trial process.
senne, Descartes, and Leibniz. Martens has ef- In a six-page epilogue Dooley makes the sug-
fectively shown that to understand Kepler, to un- gestion—or, perhaps better, the conjecture—
derstand how he influenced his times, and to that Urban VIII’s later and persistent anger to-
understand how his times grappled with the is- ward Galileo, which started in 1632, was at least
sues he and other innovators were dealing with, in part a carryover effect from his vehement hos-
it is necessary to look closely at his philosophy. tility toward Morandi and astrology/astronomy
SHEILA J. RABIN two years earlier. Although this is an interesting
surmise, it is not clear that the documents in ei-
Brendan Dooley. Morandi’s Last Prophecy and ther of the two cases give much identifiable sup-
the End of Renaissance Politics. xiv Ⳮ 238 pp., port for this view.
illus., figs., index. Princeton, N.J./Oxford: RICHARD J. BLACKWELL
Princeton University Press, 2002. $36.50 (cloth).
Maria Suutula. Zur Geschichte der Natur-
This well-researched tour de force is a reconstruc- zerstörung: Frau und Tier in der wissenschaft-
tion of the life, times, trial, and apparent poison- lichen Revolution. (European Studies in the His-
ing in prison of Oratio Morandi (ca. 1570–1630), tory of Science and Ideas, 7.) 272 pp., illus.,
who was the abbot of the Vallombrosan mon- bibls. Frankfurt/Berlin: Peter Lang, 1999. $42.95
astery of Santa Prassede in Rome before his ar- (paper).
rest and trial. The result is a fascinating excur-
sion that invites the reader to enter the cultural, This book seeks to revise the history of the Sci-
political, social, and religious world of early entific Revolution from an ecofeminist perspec-
seventeenth-century Italy, and particularly of tive. Maria Suutula intended neither to write a
Rome in the 1620s. new history of ideas nor to explore new sources
The study is based on the twenty-eight hun- on the seventeenth century. Instead, she aims to
dred pages of documents preserved from Mor- criticize the scientific methodology developed in
andi’s trial. They reveal a monastery that under this period. Ecofeminism dislikes objectivity,
Morandi had become not only a noted library but empiricism, and value-free research. It advocates
also a lending library, complete with records of science in the interest of women, animals, and
who had borrowed and used specific books. nature (whatever that is). Science should be
These circulation records serve as Brendan founded in social practice and, most important,
Dooley’s main tool for peeking into the day-to- it should be ethical and done with due respect
day exchange of ideas in Morandi’s world. for life.
These book borrowings also served Morandi’s In addressing these issues, Suutula pays par-
personal goal of establishing contacts, access to ticular attention to the relation between religion
power, and his own social advancement in po- and science, to scientific descriptions of sexual-
litical and church circles, which according to ity, and to the use of animal experiments. She
Dooley was the driving force of his life. explores descriptions of “beastlike” human na-
During his tenure as abbot Morandi created a ture in contemporary philosophical thinking, dis-
very permissive regime in a wide range of areas: cusses analogies of women and animals, and
sexual practices, magic, cabala, numerology, considers the shift in perspective from a divine
medical advice and treatments, astrological pre- nature to nature as a machine.

Many seventeenth-century philosophers and parish and probate records proves that these
scientists get words in egdewise in the book’s women were widely successful, extremely ca-
numerous quotations. However, since none of pable, and highly regarded by mothers and that
them is introduced, the reader gets no idea of the most of them belonged to the middle and upper
context of their work or of why they have been classes. Her unabashed admiration for these
chosen. Like the compilation of quotations, the long-lost women should lead others to appreciate
selection of images is tendentious. The drawing seventeenth-century midwives’ impressive rec-
of a hairy woman from Ulyssis Aldrovandi ord.
(1642) is used as proof of the misogyny of sci- Evenden’s project is fueled by an equally un-
ence. Suutula finds that seventeenth-century phi- abashed disdain for male practitioners; she ex-
losophers and scientists demonized female sex- plains that doctors had no routine business in the
uality. Quotations like “The man penetrates the birth room since midwifery was only a “pseudo-
secrets of nature” (p. 57) and “A dirty woman in medical area” (p. 176). Evenden criticizes his-
bed is a sow” (p. 91) are meant to unmask sci- torians who have suggested anything negative
entists as women-haters. Suutula presumes that about seventeenth-century midwives, and she
they undertook animal experiments because they disagrees with those historical interpretations
found killing amusing and because the Christian that propose that man-midwives’ professional
religion justified what they were doing. In short: success arose from anything other than ambition
scientists in this period were barbarous, sadistic, and misogyny. She is, for instance, “in complete
and disrespectful of nature and its creatures. disagreement” (p. 203) with the central points of
To sum up, Zur Geschichte der Naturzerstö- Adrian Wilson’s well-respected The Making of
rung is highly ideological. It does no good for Man-Midwifery (Harvard, 1995), which argues
the feminist movement in science history and of- that eighteenth-century mothers were not co-
fers no new insights into the Scientific Revolu- erced but willingly chose man-midwives and
tion. A last word about the publisher’s work: Su- that man-midwives had some positive attributes.
utula is not a native German speaker, which Evenden convincingly argues that seventeenth-
should have been a reason for a careful editing century mothers chose midwives and resisted the
of her book. However, as in the case of most intrusions of instrument-wielding male sur-
books published by Peter Lang, no one besides geons. Yet she does not explicitly reveal why,
the author has read the manuscript; the predict- once women did routinely call upon man-
able result is that the German is very poor. midwives in the eighteenth century, they were
BARBARA ORLAND no longer making their own choices. Evenden
simply states in her final footnote: “As a former
Doreen Evenden. The Midwives of Seventeenth- registered nurse, mother, and historian, I make
Century London. (Cambridge History of Medi- no apologies for presenting and evaluating the
cine.) xviii Ⳮ 260 pp., illus., figs., tables, apps., evidence as I have found it” (p. 203). A more
bibl., index. New York: Cambridge University source-based argument showing how historical
Press, 2000. $64.95. actors made choices or were deluded would be
illuminating here, as would a more nuanced ap-
Doreen Evenden’s The Midwives of Seventeenth- proach to the relationship between midwives and
Century London recovers some twelve hundred mothers. Evenden presumes that women had
licensed midwives’ names and offers previously only harmonious relations (pp. 87–105, 192),
unknown information explaining how women which makes some mothers’ turn away from
became midwives. The monograph details the midwives in the eighteenth century puzzling.
careers and socioeconomic lives of about a hun- Evenden identifies two institutional causes for
dred of these intriguing women. In its explora- this later transformation. First, London’s eccle-
tion of seventeenth-century midwifery and mid- siastical licensing system died out in the 1720s
wives, this book is a remarkable piece of and, second, man-midwives established philan-
historical sleuthing. thropic lying-in hospitals for wives of the work-
Evenden’s primary goal is to counter the as- ing poor from the late 1740s onward. Although
sumption that seventeenth-century urban mid- both are very significant changes, neither fully
wives were “ignorant, incompetent, and poor” explains how, by the 1750s, midwives were los-
(p. 1). She shows that London’s midwives were ing and man-midwives were winning an affluent,
solidly trained under the guidance of older influential female clientele. In her epilogue on
women as they prepared to be licensed by the the eighteenth century, Evenden speculates
Church of England. Evenden’s insightful anal- about man-midwives’ persistently nefarious mo-
ysis of ecclesiastical licensing documents and tives that led to their successes. This chapter

would have benefited from incorporating the tific writings. Since then, owing to scholars like
broader context of gender, sexual, family, urban, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, Richard Westfall, and
and medical relations, because changes in the Rob Iliffe and especially to the extraordinary la-
home and in Enlightenment sensibilities about bors of Richard Popkin and James Force, much
gender would offer additional, subtle explana- detail has been added to Manuel’s portrait of
tions for how Evenden’s admirable community Newton’s religious occupations and preoccupa-
of talented midwives lost status and business in tions. Now, a generation of younger scholars like
the eighteenth century. Steven Snoebelin and Ayval Ramati are adding
LISA FORMAN CODY further refinements to our understanding of New-
ton, who today has come to seem a far more
Matt Goldish. Judaism in the Theology of Sir complicated and interesting figure than the
Isaac Newton. (International Archives of the champion of Enlightenment and surpassing ra-
History of Ideas, 157.) xii Ⳮ 244 pp., apps., tionalist he was earlier taken to be.
bibl., index. Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Aca- In Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac New-
demic Publishers, 1998. $195. ton Matt Goldish elaborates and complicates our
picture of Newton further still. As Goldish de-
Sir Isaac Newton bequeathed his papers to his scribes, Newton saw in Jewish texts a valuable
niece, Katherine Conduitt, and they remained in tool for understanding Scripture and its relations
the family home for 145 years. In 1872 they were to nature. His library contained twenty-four vol-
transferred to the University of Cambridge, umes devoted to Judaism and many more books
where they were catalogued by George Gabriel with large sections on Jewish history (for the
Stokes and a syndicate of other prominent sci- sake of comparison, he owned fifty-two books
entists. When Newton’s descendant, Lord Ports- on physics and optics), and he wrote about Ju-
mouth, offered to donate the papers to Cam- daism and cited Jewish sacred texts in many dif-
bridge, the university happily accepted the ferent contexts. He studied Hebrew and worked
manuscripts concerning mathematics and phys- out Hebrew etymologies. He was fascinated by
ics but returned those dealing with theology, al- the prophets of ancient Israel and their prophe-
chemy, and chronology, which were judged to cies and employed some rabbinic sources to in-
be of no scientific interest. Other institutions— terpret these. He studied intensively the Taber-
Harvard, Yale, and the British Library, to name nacle and Holy Temple in Jerusalem. He took
just three—also turned down the papers when the Temple to be a Prytanaeum, a microcosm of
they were offered in donation. Portsmouth the universe, and a key for understanding the
couldn’t give away Newton’s spiritual and eso- Book of Revelations. Newton also saw the in-
teric writings, which were considered an embar- stitutions of the Temple and synagogue as mod-
rassment and an affront to the legacy of New- els of proper governance for the Church.
ton’s scientific achievements. These unseemly Goldish is careful also to describe the limits
texts were finally sold at auction by Sotheby’s of Newton’s interest in Judaism. He was incu-
in 1936, eventually making their way to libraries rious about the Jews living in his own day. He
and private collections around the world. was uninfluenced by the philosophy of Maimon-
Students of Newton have always known that ides, which was esteemed by contemporary
he wrote much about the Bible and Revelation Christian Hebraicists. He blithely rejected some
and other such matters, of course, but felt they Jewish apocryphal beliefs. He was sharply criti-
ought to ignore these interests because they ob- cal of Cabbala, which he took as a corrupting
fuscate his important, rational scientific work. influence (perhaps, as Goldish speculates, in dis-
This attitude gave birth to a historiographical tra- paragement of Leibniz, who took a Cabbalistic
dition that might be called “the two Newtons,” emanational cosmogony very seriously indeed).
one a scientific genius and avatar of Enlighten- “Newton’s behavior was typical for his time,”
ment (worthy of historical scrutiny), the other a Goldish concludes, “using Jews and their liter-
primitive mystic (better ignored). Only in the ature in pragmatic and expedient ways. He was
past forty years have scholars begun to make se- not so much a student of Jewish history and ideas
rious use of Newton’s theological and esoteric as a consumer of them, picking what fit his needs
papers to try to understand his life and work and ignoring the rest” (p. 163).
more fully and to integrate the two Newtons. But Newton’s avid “consumption” of Judaica
Frank Manuel published several books, begin- matters more than it might at first seem. “Schol-
ning with Isaac Newton: Historian in 1963 and ars like Scaliger, Bochart, Vossius and Newton,”
culminating with Religion of Isaac Newton in Goldish tells us, “thought that ancient authorities
1974, which took seriously Newton’s nonscien- held the solutions to the problems facing Euro-

pean Christianity” in their day, and their interest ist’s fields of interest beyond the academic arena.
in Judaism was part of their more general effort Though written for a broad public, this volume
to recover the prisca sapientia. Newton’s inter- will also attract the attention of historians. It
est in Judaism, then, is one mark of the intellec- presents the latest research results on Lavoisier
tual castings of early modern Europe, castings in a concise and well-thought-out form. Beretta
that produced the “fanatic erudition” of the age portrays Lavoisier not only as the “leader” of the
and that ultimately, in Goldish’s telling, “con- Chemical Revolution but also as an important
tributed to the secularization of European financier, a respected economist, and an admin-
thought because of their failure to deliver any istrator in the final decades of the old regime.
concrete consensus of truth” (p. 164). First published in the Italian Le Scienze in 1998,
Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac Newton the text has now been translated into German by
is a wonderful book. Goldish’s grasp of the Ju- Michael Spang and published as a special issue
daic textual tradition is strong. So too is his com- of Spektrum der Wissenschaft (in the “Biogra-
mand of the historiography of Newton, and the phien” series).
book is veined with generous and nicely opin- Beretta guides the reader smoothly through
ionated references to past and contemporary the world of eighteenth-century science, follow-
scholarship. Goldish has also included as long ing Lavoisier’s development as a researcher step
appendixes fascinating and previously unpub- by step: his first encounters with chemistry, his
lished sections of the Newton manuscripts Ir- work on the analysis and synthesis of gases, the
enicum, Of the Church, and Of Prophecy. All oxygen theory, the reevaluation of the notion of
together, the book nicely illustrates the intellec- the element, the adoption of the new chemical
tual heterogeneity that marked Newton’s work nomenclature, and the rejection of phlogiston.
and, more generally, much of early modern re- Beretta shows that the emergence of chemistry
ligious and philosophical thought and natural as a scientific discipline during the eighteenth
philosophy. In so doing, it demonstrates yet century was closely tied to a rigorously quanti-
again, and beautifully this time, that there are tative mode of analysis and to the intention to
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt provide a new basis for its technical language.
of in our historiography. The importance of Lavoisier’s study of respira-
NOAH J. EFRON tion for physiology is discussed, as is his search
for a general theory explaining respiration, com-
Marco Beretta. Lavoisier: Die Revolution in bustion, calcination, and chemical combinations.
der Chemie. (Special issue of Spektrum der Wis- The reader will learn about Lavoisier’s reflec-
senschaft: Biographie.) 106 pp., illus., figs. tions on hygiene and public health that led him
Milan: Le Scienze, 1998. DM 16.80, SFr 16.80, to study the physiological factors determining
ÖS 135. states of health or illness. The achievements of
The work of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier has al- eighteenth-century chemistry are put in context,
ways attracted special attention on both sides of as Beretta considers its medical applications and
the river Rhine. It has been of particular interest extravagant offshoots such as Franz Anton Mes-
to German chemists and historians like Johann mer’s magnetic fluid.
Friedrich Gmelin, Georg Kahlbaum, and, later, Lavoisier’s scientific achievements are set
Max Speter, who never tired of evaluating the against the background of political, economic,
merits of Lavoisier’s achievements. More re- and institutional changes in Enlightenment
cently, Johann Peter Prinz published a study of France. Given his other responsibilities and in-
Lavoisier’s and Armand Seguin’s experiments terests, this biography is also a contribution to
on human respiration (Die experimentelle Meth- the history of economics: Lavoisier had impor-
ode der ersten Gasstoffwechseluntersuchungen tant roles as a tax collector and investor in the
am ruhenden und quantifiziert belasteten “Ferme Générale,” as director of the Gunpowder
Menschen [A.-.L. Lavoisier and A. Seguin Administration, as administrator of the Discount
1790]: Versuch einer kritischen Deutung [Aca- Bank, and as commissioner of the National Trea-
demia Verlag, 1992]). Despite all this attention, sury, to name a few.
a German-language biography covering the full Readers will appreciate this well-balanced and
range of Lavoisier’s activities has been lacking. vivid account of the various facets of Lavoisier’s
Thus this new volume will be very welcome. extraordinary career. The volume is exciting to
Marco Beretta presents a Lavoisier who is not read and richly illustrated. As is common in non-
confined to the mythical role of the enigmatic technical publications, there are no footnotes,
“chemical revolutionary”; we learn of the chem- and quotations are given without references. The

book includes a useful, though limited, bibliog- study the techniques of glass- and enamel-
raphy for further reading. working. In 1728 he was ordained a deacon, but
ULRIKE FELL instead of progressing to the priesthood he joined
the Société des Artes, becoming assistant to
Lewis Pyenson; Jean-François Gauvin Charles François Dufay and René-Antoine de
(Editors). The Art of Teaching Physics: The Réaumer. In 1734 he accompanied the former
Eighteenth-Century Demonstration Apparatus to England, began giving public lecture-
of Jean Antoine Nollet. xviii Ⳮ 221 pp., illus., demonstrations, and was elected to the Royal So-
bibl., index. Sillery, Quebec: Septentrion, 2002. ciety. Returning to France, he began to produce
Can $54.95 (cloth). or supervise the construction of his own dem-
onstration equipment, making additional copies
This volume combines essays on the life and for sale to defray the cost. The manufacture of
times of Jean Antoine Nollet with a photographic demonstration apparatus quickly proved a prof-
catalogue of the collection of Nollet-style phys- itable venture: Nollet had both academies and
ics demonstration equipment in the Stewart Mu- individuals, including Voltaire, as clients. In
seum in Montreal. An exhaustive bibliography 1739 he was appointed to the Académie des Sci-
of Nollet’s publications, a limited inventory of ences. His subsequent career combined original
apparatus in other collections, his catalogue of research on liquids and electricity with lecturing
instruments of 1738, and excerpts from his cor- to both public and private audiences, as well as
respondence (the latter two items in French) are a sequence of increasingly distinguished aca-
also included. demic appointments.
Nollet, a poor French country boy, had been As a tutor to young children, public lecturer,
recruited for a clerical career and studied theol- entertainer at court, and frequent guest at the sa-
ogy at Paris, receiving a bachelor’s degree in lons—and publishing instructional materials
1724. Working as a tutor to the children of the and scientific papers all the while—Nollet de-
clerk of court at the Hôtel-de-Ville, he set up a veloped a reputation as one of the leading phys-
rudimentary physics laboratory and began to icists in France while designing several hundred
pieces of demonstration apparatus. A number of
his designs are employed essentially unchanged
in physics teaching today.
Issues of style and status were pivotal in Nol-
let’s career. Though never ordained a priest, he
consistently wore clerical garb and referred to
himself as “abbé.” He himself prepared the
glasswork for some of his instruments—glass-
working being a gentlemanly pursuit—while
leaving the metal- and woodworking to employ-
ees when he could. Many of his instruments are
ornamented with gold leaf to enhance their ap-
peal to a genteel audience. The plates in his pub-
lications frequently show apparatus being used
in refined settings. He encouraged women as
well as men to participate in his electrostatic
demonstrations—a process that might have
raised eyebrows but for his clerical standing.
Nollet avoided controversial issues until 1746,
when his original theory of electrical “effluences
et affluences” brought him into conflict with the
French followers of Benjamin Franklin.
This book should prove a valuable reference
for historians of physics and eighteenth-century
science. It could also be read with profit by
teachers of physics who want to gain some per-
spective on the relatively recent origins of the
Jean Antoine Nollet’s vacuum pump apparatus lecture-demonstrations that have become so typ-
with protective cage (from Lewis Pyenson and ical in the field and their role in the public ac-
Jean-François Gauvin, eds., The Art of Teaching ceptance of physics as a genteel pursuit.
Physics, p. 140). DONALD R. FRANCESCHETTI

Lisbet Koerner. Linnaeus: Nature and Nation. confluence of science and governance” explored
x Ⳮ 298 pp., illus., figs., app., bibl., index. Cam- by Koerner’s book merits more than mere his-
bridge, Mass./London: Harvard University torical interest.
Press, 1999. $39.95, €24.95. The main body of the book is divided into
eight chapters, each readable on its own, that fol-
Despite all the diligence and energy historians of low a loose biographic and thematic order. The
science have invested to contextualize their first and second chapters set out the local cultural
topic, one of the key figures in the history of framework that determined Linnaeus’s self-
science, Carolus Linnaeus, has remained largely image as a Lutheran and civil servant as well as
a cliché: the arch-systematist beset by the mono- his understanding of natural science as a “useful
maniacal determination to reduce the living technology” rather than a “complex theory”
world to a timeless taxonomia. For those who (p. 55). This thesis is especially well corrobo-
want to get rid of this cliché, Lisbet Koerner’s rated in the long discussion Koerner devotes to
book offers a palatable antidote based on a binomial nomenclature, the innovation to which
wealth of published and unpublished sources, Linnaeus primarily owns his present fame and
most of them in Swedish and thus hitherto in- which, as Koerner convincingly shows, was de-
accessible to most historians of science. veloped “through his daily work practice rather
Koerner’s starting point in providing this an- than through a preconceived theory, and within
tidote is well chosen: from the beginning she a context of local economic problems” (p. 55).
makes it clear that she will treat Linnaeus from Chapter 3 turns to a decisive episode in Lin-
the perspective of the history of economics. naeus’s life, his 1732 Lapland journey, and de-
Identifying a “cameralist’s” concept of a “local scribes it as part of the Swedish state’s effort to
modernity” striving for “rationalistically gov- colonize Lapland. Linnaeus’s aim “to rationalize
erned autarkies,” conceptually intermediate be- the traditional relations between Lapland’s in-
tween the “classical economist’s” concept of an digenous people and their ancestral lands” is in-
“ungoverned, yet self-regulating global moder- terestingly explored for its inherent ambiguity.
nity” and the “Romantic antimodernist’s” con- Chapters 4 and 5 then describe the overall fram-
cept of “custom-governed, local, traditional ing theory of an “economy of nature” and the
communities,” Koerner promises to investigate concomitant program for a science of “econom-
the former as “it is fleshed out in the life and ics” that Linnaeus developed while engaging in
work of one of the eighteenth century’s most fa- university reform and the foundation of the
mous naturalists, the Swedish botanist Carl Lin- Stockholm Academy of Sciences. In short, Koer-
naeus” (p. 1). While this analytic scheme may ner argues, all these activities were inspired by
seem overly simplistic, or even anachronistic, to a conception of “economy” that “meant both a
some historians of economics—the footnotes re- natural order and a new human science” (p. 95).
veal that it is largely based on pre-1970s sec- Believing that “[nature] provided all the ingre-
ondary literature—it serves its purpose well as dients necessary for a complex and complete
an Ariadne’s thread through the vast and com- economy within each geographic area” (p. 109),
plex labyrinth of Linnaeana. Most notably, it al- Linnaeus advocated an economic education that,
lows Koerner to spell out the economic doctrine narrowly informed by his version of natural his-
that motivated Linnaeus in his various scientific, tory, could develop the corresponding potenti-
medical, economic, and political engagements in alities of the Swedish state territory. Chapters 6
a single sentence: “The idea was that science and 7 then turn to the concrete “economic” proj-
would create a miniaturized mercantile empire ects Linnaeus and his students engaged in. These
within the borders of the European state” (p. 188). encompassed both attempts to find domestic sub-
Each page of her book provides evidence that this stitutes for valuable import goods such as por-
is indeed not a simplification but a sound his- celain clay, dye-grasses, and medicinal herbs and
torical generalization, at least in regard to the “acclimatization” experiments to accustom ex-
economics of Linnaeus and his promoters, col- otic plants like tea, rice, and mulberry to the
laborators, and students. Whether this brand of Scandinavian climate. Chapter 8 outlines the de-
cameralism indeed “reappeared in new garb cline of Linnaeus’s economic ideas in late eigh-
within the economic doctrines of anti-imperialist teenth-century Sweden. The book concludes
nationalisms” in the twentieth century (p. 189) with a “Chronology of Linnaeus and Linnae-
may be a matter of debate. But the bridge thus ana,” “Biographical References” giving short ac-
spanned between Enlightenment economics and counts of the people mentioned, and a well-or-
current discussions about globalization and its ganized index of subjects and names.
effects indicates that the “early instance of the Koerner’s account suffers from only one se-

rious lacuna. Except for two brief sections—one writer who, in treating one of the most studied
on the reception of the Systema naturae (1735) times and places in history, has told an often
in continental Europe (pp. 26–32) and one on surprisingly new kind of story. Robbins simply
Linnaeus’s self-presentation as a “Lapp” during sees things that many other people have missed.
his stay in Holland from 1735 to 1738 (pp. 64– When she becomes our guide—which she quite
67)—Linnaeus’s involvement in the interna- literally and pleasantly does on occasion in this
tional communication network of professional book—she has us settle into the rooms of a bird-
botanists is minimally treated. More attention to seller, takes us out to the booths at the St. Ger-
this side of the story, in combination with the main, St. Laurent, and other fairs, finds us cheap
mastery Koerner has gained over Linnaeus’s tickets to the combat d’animaux, and explains
economics, could have resulted in a fresh under- how we might pack into a carriage for four hours
standing of his taxonomic work beyond the re- to view the king’s menagerie at Versailles. Rob-
ceived view that it derived from “a scholarly ge- bins is comfortable in the streets. Of the area near
nealogy dominated by the Latin West’s the quai de la Mégisserie, for example, she
reception of Aristotle” (p. 32). Yet this lacuna writes: “Pet shops are still found there, and on
can be excused by Koerner’s explicit ambition Sunday mornings tourists and city pigeons
“to locate Linnaeus within his culture, finding gather around to gawk at the cages on the side-
there a set of unexpected clues to his importance walk” (p. 109). She is equally at home, however,
in the Enlightenment.” And for this, her book with the likes of La Fontaine, Buffon, Jacques-
will remain an invaluable standard reference. Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and Rousseau.
STAFFAN MÜLLER-WILLE Her reading of Buffon, for example, reveals par-
ticularly well how apparent contradictions in his
Louise E. Robbins. Elephant Slaves and Pam- ideas about animals are perhaps best seen as
pered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-
characteristic of the period.
Century Paris. xiv Ⳮ 349 pp., illus., notes, in-
It is not a trivial task to make sense of this
dex. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
topic for a general audience (and general readers
2002. $48 (cloth).
will find Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots
This is a subtle and deeply rewarding study of a very enjoyable read) and still be able to provide
the physical, metaphorical, and ideological pres- the sort of rewarding analysis of materials de-
ence of exotic animals in Paris in the eighteenth manded by scholars in the field. Thankfully,
century. Louise Robbins is an immensely skilled Robbins avoids offering classic bracketed intro-
Fanciful anthropomorphized depiction of elephant copulation in J. P. Houel’s Histoire naturelle des

deux éléphans mâle et femelle [1803] (from Louise E. Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered
Parrots, p. 227).

ductory lessons and instead offers a carefully in- of papermaking in late eighteenth-century
terwoven narrative that combines a comprehen- France. His study of the Montgolfiers’ mill, at
sible and thoughtful account of social and Vidalon-le-Haut in the Rhone Valley, illustrates
political change with close studies of the pres- the tension between the ancien régime policies
ence of strange animals in the city. For example, of reform and promotion of the arts and the re-
in an exemplary chapter on the Parisian bird- sistance of traditional craftsman to labor
selling guild (the use of which I would strongly changes. Using the Archives Canson-Montgol-
encourage in courses addressing changes in early fier, which are kept at the Archives Nationales
modern cities), Robbins has used virtually un- in Paris, Rosenband manages to reconstruct min-
tapped guild records both to show the increasing utely the everyday life of the papermaking mill
presence and significance of imported birds in and the conflict between masters—acting in the
Paris as the eighteenth century progressed and to name of the owners—and skilled journeymen.
illuminate how political, economic, and social Under Nicolas Desmarest’s official inspection
changes began to undermine the authority of and guidance, the Montgolfiers followed the path
guild structures. Similarly, in what is probably of other eighteenth-century entrepreneurs keen
my favorite section of the book, she details frus- to promote technological change and innovation.
trated efforts to obtain a pair of zebras for Louis Aware of foreign novelties, the Montgolfiers im-
XVI’s menagerie at Versailles. As we follow the ported Dutch paper-beating machines for instal-
tribulations of a naval minister and a repeatedly lation at Vidalon and tried to adapt rapidly to
disappointed and disappointing agent in the new state regulations on papermaking and qual-
Cape Colony, we gain important insight into the ity control.
limits of and stakes in royal power in the mid In the strike and lockout of 1781, however,
1780s—and all of this, of course, in a section dreams of applying science to the art of making
that is really (or maybe just also) about the re- paper—in Desmarest’s view—dramatically
markable status of zebras in the late eighteenth clashed with the journeymen’s self-styled law.
century. The owners then took advantage of the crisis to
More than anything else, what struck me again destroy the journeymen’s culture of work. In or-
and again is how well Robbins keeps her history der to promote a more flexible labor culture in
on the ground. In a time when rhetoric about the mill, they hired a new generation of malle-
animals is often far removed from the actual cir- able employees. Moreover, new trends of mech-
cumstances of their lives (then and now), Rob- anization after the French Revolution again chal-
bins consistently looks behind the paintings, be- lenged the old journeyman culture and the
hind the memoirs, behind the curtains, and long-standing national tradition of high-quality
behind the policies to try to get a sense of how luxury goods. In 1799, the introduction of Ni-
exotic animals actually lived. About the new Jar- colas-Louis Robert’s papermaking machine was
din des Plantes, for example, she writes: “If the another key step toward the end of a traditional
menagerie was conceived with starry eyes, it was skilled papermaking workforce, which lasted
born in gritty reality. . . . The menagerie devel- only until the 1820s.
oped higgledy-piggledy, in response to un- Rosenband’s account of these historical facts
planned circumstances, and in a form quite dif- is precise and very illuminating. It sheds new
ferent from that in the idealized memoirs and
light on the complex transition between crafts-
plans” (p. 220). This is a remarkable book that
man and industrial culture in the late eighteenth
will be read and enjoyed as much by historians
century. It revisits the question of technology
of science as by social, economic, and cultural
transfer from Holland to France (similar exam-
historians.
ples can be found in dyeing and calico-printing),
NIGEL ROTHFELS
enriches the discussion about the diverse kinds
of division of labor—masters, journeymen, em-
Leonard N. Rosenband. Papermaking in
ployees— and adds new examples of the chal-
Eighteenth-Century France: Management, La-
lenges and attitudes toward new machinery.
bor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill,
Although the losers’ version is often hard to re-
1761–1805. xvi Ⳮ 210 pp., illus., tables, app.,
construct from archival material, more inputs on
bibl., index. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 2000. $39.95. the journeymen’s view of the conflict would have
been of great interest in terms of a more sym-
Thoroughly documented case studies on tech- metrical account. As a comparative framework,
nological change are always very welcome. This some additional thoughts on resistance to tech-
is the case with Leonard N. Rosenband’s history nological change in general, and on Luddism in

particular, might have been also useful—for in- tion and Cooper’s revised editions reveal an
stance, some of the papers included in Martin ever-stronger norm aligning women not with sci-
Bauer’s edited volume Resistance to New Tech- ence but with emotion, an alignment contribut-
nology (Cambridge University Press, 1994). ing to both the aestheticism of women’s writing
Of course, these are only minor points. There and the feminization of literature.)
is no doubt that this book is an excellent contri- Women could popularize, apply, and appre-
bution. It adds another well-studied case to en- ciate scientific knowledge, but could they gen-
lighten the debate on the nonlinear transition be- erate it? Elizabeth Cary Agassiz aided her hus-
tween craftsman guilds, manufactures royales, band’s work not just as an assistant in a scientific
and the factory system (Maxine Berg). It will be household but as Louis Agassiz’s “publicist and
of great interest for historians of science and ghostwriter,” a literary professional (p. 98). Ma-
technology as well as for economic and business ria Mitchell discovered a comet yet presented her
historians. discovery as the product not of genius but of a
AUGUSTÍ NIETO-GALAN methodical, collaborative science in which
women could participate, while Emma Willard
䡲 Modern (Nineteenth Century to 1950) protested against a professionalized scientific es-
tablishment for discounting her theory that the
Nina Baym. American Women of Letters and the lungs pumped the blood using steam power. At
Nineteenth-Century Sciences: Styles of Affilia- the end of the century, female physicians tended
tion. x Ⳮ 272 pp., bibl., index. Piscataway, N.J.: to affirm not their scientific acumen but their in-
Rutgers University Press, 2001. $60 (cloth). troduction of a nurturing feminine sensibility
into medicine (a pattern defied by Mary Putnam
Nina Baym’s American Women of Letters and Jacobi, who published many medical articles
the Nineteenth-Century Sciences: Styles of Affil- drawing on her clinical experience).
iation explores the varied ways in which women Some of Baym’s most intriguing investiga-
writers responded to the sciences in nineteenth- tions move out from her focus on women’s sci-
century America. Baym finds that few women ence writing per se. A chapter on Emily Dick-
writers on the sciences challenged either the inson argues for her scathing rejection of the
premises of science or the assumption that sci- pieties of natural theology and its blithe assur-
entific discovery was naturally a male province. ance of the compatibility of faith and science.
Instead, she suggests that these writers outlined And a final chapter explores both the increasing
various “affiliations” between middle-class affiliation of women with the spirit in late
women and science in order to emphasize both nineteenth-century culture and the scientific
what women could gain from science (connec- claims of Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science,
tions to reason, progress, modernity) and what Ellen White’s Seventh-Day Adventism, and
science could gain from women (a cadre of pop- women spiritualist writers.
ularizers, appreciators, and consumers). American Women of Letters and the
Working across many discourses, Baym finds Nineteenth-Century Sciences laudably avoids
a wide array of associations between women overschematization and reductiveness—with the
writers and science. As the author of popular bo- result, however, that it sometimes seems too
tanical textbooks, Almira Phelps celebrated the ready to proffer long catalogues, for instance of
role of scientific popularizer but ranked it below an author’s use of scientific language. And oc-
the masculine realm of original discovery. An casionally there is an unaccountable slip. For ex-
advocate of old-fashioned classificatory botaniz- ample, the study’s first paragraph claims that at
ing, Phelps came to view the rise of a new plant the “beginning” of the century “the word scien-
biology and women’s suffragism with analogous tist had yet to come into general use”—presum-
alarm. Sarah Hale promoted the scientific edu- ably because it had yet to be coined; a footnote
cation of women in Godey’s Lady’s Book but sends us to William Whewell, whose use of the
believed that such education served purely to term is well known, yet the note inexplicably
help women perform their domestic duties. Sim- gives him credit for “the first use of the term
ilarly, Catherine Beecher’s domestic handbooks science” (pp. 1, 211 n 2). But the volume clearly
treated women as applied scientists of household achieves its principal goal, offering analyses that
life. In contrast, Susan Fenimore Cooper’s mid- outline the strategies women writers used to as-
century nature writing presented science as a sociate themselves with science in nineteenth-
source of genteel entertainment for ladies, a century America as well as the ideological and
mark of class distinction. (But by the century’s practical limitations to such styles of affiliation.
final decades, Baym argues, both women’s fic- RICHARD MENKE

Hermann Grassmann. Extension Theory. since the 1980s; he eventually succeeded in get-
Translated by Lloyd C. Kannenberg. (History ting it published in the wake of the 1994 ses-
of Mathematics Sources, 19.) 411 pp., frontis., quicentennial conference commemorating the
figs., apps., indexes. Providence, R.I.: American first publication of the Ausdehnungslehre with
Mathematical Society, 2000. $75 (paper). the title A New Branch of Mathematics (Open
Court, 1995). A French translation appeared in
In the history of mathematics and physics, Her- 1994.
mann Günther Grassmann (1809–1877) is Actually, Grassmann had developed two dif-
known as one of the important mathematicians ferent versions of the Ausdehnungslehre, usually
of the nineteenth century. While he developed, called A1 and A2: the A2, a radically revised ver-
concurrently with William Rowan Hamilton, a sion, was published in 1862. Responding to criti-
new vectorial calculus, his contributions range cisms of the A1, Grassmann had abandoned its
from logic and foundations of mathematics to philosophical framework and attempted to give it
mechanics and electrodynamics. Even today his a purely “Euclidean” form, thus conforming more
theories find new developments and applica- closely to common standards of mathematical
tions. This is why it is so important to have easy presentation. Since the A2 also contained further
access to his work. developments of his theory, Kannenberg judged
It is a standard topic in the historiography, it to be Grassmann’s “most mature” version.
however, to deplore the belated reception of Kannenberg has now prepared a translation of
Grassmann’s innovative theories. As recent anal- this second book, published in 2000 by the
ysis has shown, this belatedness is not as marked American Mathematical Society. Given the dif-
and dramatic as it is usually depicted (see Gert ficulties even native speakers have in under-
Schubring, “Introduction: Reflections on the standing Grassmann’s works, the complexity of
Complex History of Grassmann’s Reception,” in the task of translating them was enormous. One
Hermann Günther Grassmann [1809–1877], must keep in mind that the terms Grassmann cre-
ed. Schubring [Kluwer, 1996], pp. ix–xxix, esp. ated not only carry a technical meaning but were
p. x). There are problems inherent in Grass- loaded with philosophical and epistemological
mann’s work, however, that impede the easy re- connotations. In each case, then, the translator
ception of his concepts. Grassmann, a neohu- faces the problem of finding an equivalent term
manist scholar, also adopted the romantic strands that ideally carries the same range of meanings.
of that school, rejecting traditional mathematical In fact, in his translation of the A1 Kannenberg
terminology based on Latin and French terms already pointed out that no unanimity can be
and replacing them with German terms created achieved on the proper English equivalents even
by himself. Moreover, as he established new for such basic terms as “Strecke” (candidates be-
foundational disciplines—namely, the extension ing “stretch,” “vector,” and “displacement”—
theory—he constructed a semantics of his own his own choice) or “Verknüpfung” (“connec-
based on this terminology; as the meaning of the tion,” “join,” and “conjunction”—his choice).
terms was constituted by their interrelationships Most of the scholarly publications on Grassmann
within his semantic system, Grassmann’s theo- in English use “connection” for “Verknüpfung”
ries seemed to present a rather hermetic kind of (the French translation uses “liaison”). Kannen-
knowledge. It is evident, then, that understand- berg adheres to “conjunction” in the A2 transla-
ing Grassmann’s work constituted a difficult tion as well. In the first translation he adopted an
challenge even for German mathematicians and effective means for enabling the reader to com-
that every new generation had to face that chal- pare the basic English terms he chose with the
lenge anew to appropriate its wisdom. As long German originals: as part of the subject index,
as German was one of the major international there is a concordance between the English and
languages for mathematics, it was conceivable the German. For the A2 translation Kannenberg
that these obstacles might be overcome. They inserted a separate concordance.
attained new dimensions, however, when Ger- Even if a translation of Grassmann will not be
man became less common in the international able to convey the entire range of his meaning,
community. Translations were rare: only a few a fair indicator of its level of sophistication is
of Grassmann’s articles were translated into En- how far it enables the reader to grasp the essence
glish during the nineteenth century. The first of the ideas contained in the original. There are
translation of one of his books, the Ausdehnungs- but a few particular terms where one can argue
lehre of 1844, was published in 1947 in Spanish. with the translator (besides “Verknüpfung” there
An English translation of this principal work had is, for instance, “Produktbildung,” “formation of
been in preparation by Lloyd C. Kannenberg products,” which he translates as “product struc-

ture”—in this instance the German original is the contributions of other important logicians
not included in the concordance). In general, working at the time—logicians such as Giu-
however, Kannenberg has succeeded in produc- seppe Peano, who in turn did have more imme-
ing an English text that optimally corresponds to diate influence. Changing the focus to Russell
Grassmann’s original and at the same time is and logicism has the advantage of providing a
well organized and eminently readable. convenient point at which the full scope and
Besides presenting an excellent English ver- complexity of previous developments can be
sion, Kannenberg’s A2 offers a significant textual seen to converge.
achievement. Nowadays, the commonly used text While Grattan-Guinness identifies Russell’s
of the A2 is that published in 1896 as Volume 1, logicism as the de facto turning point in modern
Part 2, of Grassmann’s Gesammelte Werke. This formal history, he does not seek to champion
1896 text is not a reprint of the 1862 original, logicism itself as a defensible formal doctrine.
however, but an attempted “improvement”: the As he lays out in detail, any hope of basing all
editors rearranged some of the theorems, even in- of mathematics on pure logic foundered on Kurt
terpolating new theorems of their own devising Gödel’s 1931 proof of the incompatibility of
and replacing some of the proofs with versions of first-order consistency and completeness, which
their own. After careful analysis, Kannenberg has in turn led to a widespread reformulation of
restored the original text—while maintaining foundational problems, including the demise of
corrections of misprints and other unobjectiona- logicism as it had been conceived earlier in the
ble improvements. An extended apparatus of century.
notes permits comparison between the different In the process of following its main theme,
versions. In a final chapter, Kannenberg briefly Grattan-Guinness has produced a work that is
explains how to transpose Grassmann’s concepts detailed and encyclopedic. Among the most
into modern terms and theories, in particular valuable contributions is a discussion of the
those of multilinear algebra. (separate) mathematical backgrounds of “math-
Kannenberg’s translation, then, is also a truly ematicised logic”—that is, the algebraic logic of
new edition of the A2 that gives mathematicians, George Boole and Augustus De Morgan—and
physicists, and historians effective access to the later mathematical logic of Peano, White-
Grassmann’s original and important ideas. head, Russell, and others. This is territory largely
GERT SCHUBRING ignored in other histories, and its inclusion com-
pletes an otherwise partial picture.
I. Grattan-Guinness. The Search for Mathe- Grattan-Guinness’s delineation of various
matical Roots, 1870–1940: Logics, Set Theo- kinds of set theory, and particularly his analysis
ries, and the Foundations of Mathematics from of Georg Cantor’s Mengenlehre and its influence
Cantor through Russell to Gödel. xiv Ⳮ 690 pp., on Russell, is another welcome feature, as is his
illus., figs., tables, bibl., index. Princeton, N.J./ lengthy discussion of the contributions of Giu-
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000. seppe Peano. All of this is in aid of shifting the
focus of discussion toward the mathematical
Ivor Grattan-Guinness’s uniformly interesting component of the history of the period and away
and valuable account of the interwoven devel- from the primarily philosophical.
opment of logic and related fields of mathemat- That shift will not please everyone. Confining
ics (set theory, algebra, and analysis) between the account of Frege to 20 pages in a 690-page
1870 and 1940 presents a significantly revised book (while Russell receives two full chapters)
analysis of the history of the period. Standard invites charges of excess in the other direction,
twentieth-century accounts of the same period, and Grattan-Guinness’s attempt to isolate Frege
and especially those focused primarily on ana- historically in various ways is open to question.
lytic philosophy, often identified Gottlob Frege His claim, for instance, that C. S. Peirce, and not
as its major figure, with all else forming a Frege, is responsible for the modern theory of
buildup to his work or part of the great outwash quantification is a matter open to dispute:
from it. Grattan-Guinness, by contrast, offers an Peirce’s version (though earlier) remains embed-
alternative in which the primary feature is the ded in the algebraic context, while Frege intro-
logicism of Alfred North Whitehead and Ber- duced the first full version of the theory now in
trand Russell. There are several reasons for the use. Such disputes are part of an ongoing dis-
shift. While Frege produced a version of the cussion of a very complex area of inquiry (as is
modern theory of quantification, his work had made evident in the flow chart on p. 570). Re-
little influence at the time of its publication. gardless of how the landscape is eventually set-
Also, placing exclusive stress on Frege obscures tled (if it ever is), Grattan-Guinness’s book is

important because it supplies what has been nine diagrams, and emphasizes social context
lacking: a full account of the period from a pri- more than technical aspects of Braun’s work. Yet
marily mathematical perspective. this contribution deserves an English edition or
JAMES W. VAN EVRA translation.
Ferdinand Braun was a quintessential experi-
Florian Hars. Ferdinand Braun, 1850–1918: mentalist, not much interested in theoretical
Ein wilhelminischer Physiker. 272 pp., illus., speculation, and he was a prototypical academic
bibls., index. Berlin/Diepholz: GNT, 1999. professor in Wilhelmine Germany over four de-
€29.50. cades. From 1870 until his death in Brooklyn on
20 April 1918, Braun’s career spanned incredi-
This brief but cogent biography of one of the ble years of progress in human understanding of
great unsung pioneers of electrical and electronic physical nature. His role models included Fara-
physics near the end of the nineteenth century day, Maxwell, Helmholtz, Hertz, and Röntgen.
purports to be a corrective to the sparse hagi- His contemporaries included Marconi, J. J.
ography that surrounds the life and works of Thomson, H. A. Lorentz, Rutherford, Planck,
Guglielmo Marconi’s most honored competitor. and Einstein. His rivals included Marconi, of
Ferdinand Braun (1850–1918) shared the 1909 course, as well as Adolf Slaby, H. L. LeChâtelier,
Nobel Prize in physics with Marconi for making Nikola Tesla, A. S. Popov, Anton Overbeck, and
long-distance wireless telegraphy a reality. Oliver Lodge. Braun was more a lover of exper-
Braun also is generally recognized for his con- imental physics than a fighter for priorities and
tributions through meticulous experimentation patents in electrical engineering. So his aca-
to the rectifier effect (1874), to the concept of demic career in manipulating materials, measur-
free energy in thermoelectricity (1878), to the ing electrical oscillations, and analyzing electro-
birth of the cathode-ray oscilloscope (1897), to magnetic properties of radiation was widely
indirectly coupled, tuned, and directed radio sys- deemed exemplary for the exact sciences. And
tems (1898–1902), and to the discoveries of he was a beloved teacher, which perhaps com-
semiconductor magnetic materials (1892–1899). pensated for his publishing only about 150 pa-
Although Braun was a modest and energetic pro- pers in all.
fessor devoted to pure and applied physics in Born on 6 June 1850 in Fulda, a Lutheran
western Germany during the eras of Bismarck among Catholics and the fifth son of a middle-
and Wilhelm II, he died while detained in the class court clerk with seven children, young Fer-
United States during patent litigations in World dinand did well as a gymnasium student and so
War I. Thus, proper appreciation of his life and was sent to Marburg for a year before he chose
works has been obscured by unfortunate circum- to move to Berlin in 1869. There he flourished,
stances. especially under the tutelage of G. H. Quincke,
Florian Hars herewith tries to amend that sit- a specialist in physical optics; he obtained his
uation. His short biography of Braun is orga- Ph.D. in the spring of 1872 under Helmholtz.
nized chronologically in only five chapters, con- Thereafter, he moved to Würzburg as Quincke’s
tains only seven grainy photographs and about assistant, then on to Leipzig as a gymnasium
The Braun-Siemens military telegraph wagon in 1903 (from Florian Hars, Ferdinand Braun, 1850–
1918, p. 157).

teacher, then back to Marburg for two years This book presents interesting and constructive
before being called to Strasbourg. Climbing the insights into various aspects of the scientific and
academic ladder, Braun next went to Karlsruhe philosophical work of Max Planck. In chapters
in 1883 as a full professor, then to Tübingen in dealing with such topics as the mechanical the-
1885 to revitalize a physics institute; finally, in ories and the related work of Ludwig Boltzmann,
1895, he and his entourage were called back to Planck’s program is analyzed and described in
Strasbourg in Alsace to replace Friedrich Kohl- detail. One focus is the role of the philosophy of
rausch at the most prestigious center for physics, science in Planck’s work: he delivered some in-
apart from Berlin, in the German Empire. teresting public lectures in this field (e.g., on cau-
Braun’s creative skills as an experimentalist had sality in physics, determinism and indetermin-
matured, and he was considered an excellent ism, and religion and natural science). In this
teacher, a demanding mentor, and a prolific in- connection, I note that Massimiliano Badino has
ventor of laboratory apparatus and prototype in- overlooked Hans Ertel’s interesting essay “Cau-
struments. His productivity increased throughout sality, Teleology, and Freedom of Will as a
his two decades based in Strasbourg. His labo- Problem of Natural Sciences,” which has been
ratory prospered, his honors increased, and his discussed in some detail by meteorologists and
students multiplied—even as his interests led theoretical physicists (see the edition published
him farther afield. Once long-distance wireless by Wilfried Schröder [Druck & Verlag, 2000]).
telegraphy captured his full attention, Braun be- Planck’s lectures in these fields, as well as on the
came embroiled in entrepreneurial, industrial, development of his physical ideas and his phil-
financial, and nationalistic competition beyond osophical reflections, do not constitute a “sys-
his ken. But he seems to have remained true to tem” in history of science. (On the topic of phi-
his core values and academic character despite losophy, religion, and natural science Badino has
all the intense rivalries—personal, professional, also overlooked Schröder’s Naturwissenschaft
legal, and illegal—that quickly developed. und Religion [Science Edition, 1999], which of-
Many layers of intrigue and interest surround fers precise insights into the positions of Planck
and interact with Braun’s later life. There is and Werner Heisenberg. With regard to discus-
room for much more scholarship about these sions between Planck and Albert Einstein, he
stories. omits Hans-Jürgen Treder’s “Meinungsstreit
Until 1965 no full-scale biography of Braun über Relativitätstheorie,” Spektrum, 1976, 7:24–
existed, but then there appeared in German a 25.) Planck moved more toward a “system” as
lengthy study by Friedrich Kurylo. Walther Ger- the result of his thinking about certain problems
lach and Bern Dibner, among others, recognized while he was secretary of the Berlin Academy of
the virtues of Kurylo’s biography and encour- Sciences and in the context of running discus-
aged the Braun family to translate, adapt, and sions about modern physics since 1920.
contextualize that text for a wider audience. Overall, Badino offers a fruitful look at
Charles Susskind finally and admirably per- Planck’s work, and his very helpful bibliography
formed this task: in 1981 the MIT Press issued may stimulate readers to look more closely at par-
Ferdinand Braun: A Life of the Nobel Prize- ticular aspects of Planck’s thought and writings.
winner and Inventor of the Cathode-Ray Oscil- WILFRIED SCHRÖDER
loscope. This Kurylo/Susskind book remains the
standard, lengthier, better-illustrated, and most Margaret Cheney; Robert Uth. Tesla: Master
of Lightning. xiv Ⳮ 184 pp., illus., figs., bibls.,
accessible secondary source on Braun’s life and
index. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1999.
work. But Florian Hars’s book is a good supple-
$14.98.
ment, based on Kurylo and Susskind’s founda-
tions but profiting from more archival and library Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia in 1856 and
resources as well as more recent scholarly liter- died in New York City in 1943. He lived in Yu-
ature in the history of science. goslavia, Prague, Budapest, and Paris during his
LOYD S. SWENSON, JR. youth and in the United States, mostly New York
City, for all his adult years. What sets Tesla apart
Massimiliano Badino. L’espistemologia di from so many other inventors is not only that his
Planck: Nel suo contesto stori. (Consiglio Na- inventions were fundamental, but also that they
zionale delle Ricerche, Centro di Studio sulla Fi- spanned a great many separate fields. Tesla’s
losofia Contemporanea, 78.) 318 pp., bibl. Na- creations are central to fluorescent lighting,
ples: Edizione Scientifiche Italiane, 2000. alternating-current electrical power transmis-
L 48,000 (paper). sion, wireless communication, remote control,

ability to capture the imagination of the public

by presenting his electrical paraphernalia in
astonishing pyrotechnic performances, appear-
ing at such places as the Royal Academy of Sci-
ence in London, the Chicago World’s Fair of
1893, and Madison Square Garden in New York
City. When he went to Colorado Springs to ex-
periment on sending electrical impulses around
the globe, he brought along his favorite photog-
rapher, Dickerson Alley, to record the events in
photographs that still take one’s breath away.
Tesla could generate lightning bolts in excess of
60 feet; he could send hundreds of thousands of
volts through his body to show the world that
his new alternating current was safe; and, with
Alley’s help, he could produce multiple-image
photographs to display all this in fantastic arti-
cles that appeared in all the electrical journals of
the day, as well as in Johnson’s Century Maga-
zine and on the front page of newspapers such
as the World.
Tesla: Master of Lightning captures many of
these images in a very credible and almost un-
derstated fashion. Robert Uth, whose wife is a
Yugoslav, was able to obtain some amazing pho-
tographs from the Tesla Museum in Belgrade,
Serbia. Uth, who also used these images effec-
Nikola Tesla’s demonstration apparatus for tively to create a documentary on Tesla’s life for
electrical phenomena (from Margaret Cheney
PBS, further set his sights on uncovering little-
and Robert Uth, Tesla, p. 87).
known information in an attempt to do more than
rehash stories already presented in such well-
known biographies as John O’Niell’s Prodigal
Genius (Washburn, 1944) and Inez Hunt and
robotics, the induction motor, steam turbines and Wanetta Draper’s Lighting in His Hand (Omni,
pumps, tilt rotor, flying wing, and airplane de- 1977). The Tesla Museum is an excellent re-
signs, and even Star Wars technology. source for sharp images spanning Tesla’s life
Living in the Waldorf Astoria at the height of from youth to old age. Also included in the book
the Gay Nineties, Tesla hobnobbed with the so- are pictures of Tesla’s colleagues and friends, his
cial elite, including authors such as Mark Twain laboratories in New York, wireless transmission
and Rudyard Kipling, the pianist Ignace Pade- stations in Colorado and Long Island, and many
rewski (who later became prime minister of Po- of his spectacular demonstrations and inven-
land), the poet and Nazi apologist George Syl- tions. If any criticism were to be made, it would
vester Viereck, the environmentalist John Muir, be that new works on Tesla are missing from the
the architect Stanford White, the financiers John bibliography.
Jacob Astor, John Hays Hammond, and J. Pier- MARC J. SEIFER
pont Morgan, future presidents Teddy Roosevelt
and Franklin Roosevelt, the scientists Wilhelm Helmut Rechenberg; Gerald Wiemers (Edi-
Roentgen, J. J. Thomson, Lord Kelvin, and Sir tors). Werner Heisenberg: Gutachten- und Prü-
William Crookes, and such fellow inventors and fungsprotokolle für Promotionen und Habilita-
industrialists as George Westinghouse, Thomas tionen (1929–1942). (Berliner Beiträge zur
Edison, and Guglielmo Marconi. Tesla’s closest Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der
friends were Robert Underwood Johnson, editor Technik, 29.) 266 pp., illus., index. Berlin: ERS-
of the Century Magazine, and his wife Katharine. Verlag, 2002. €27.50 (paper).
What makes this picture book on Tesla’s life
so interesting is that Tesla himself was into what In the German education system, doctoral com-
can only be called “camp.” Although shy and mittee members submit written evaluations ac-
reclusive, Tesla also displayed an incredible cepting or rejecting the candidate’s dissertation.

If accepted, the candidate is subjected to graded for instance, of the careers of a number of foreign
final examinations in his or her major and minor students, such as Ivan Supek (Yugoslavia), Ed-
fields. The successful candidates are then rec- ward Teller (Hungary), and Richard Iskraut
ommended to the dean for Promotion to doctoral (United States). Soon after graduation Hildegard
status. Candidates for the Habilitation (the right Geest married the Leipzig associate physics pro-
to lecture at the university level) submit a more fessor August Karolus. In 1946 they moved to
substantial dissertation, which is likewise eval- the University of Zurich, where she died in 1990.
uated in writing. If passed, the candidate offers As the editors point out, this collection is most
a public test lecture, followed by a vote of the valuable as a snapshot of the generation of Ger-
faculty on his or her admission to the profession. man students who entered physics during or just
At the University of Leipzig the record of before the rise of the Third Reich. Most of these
these procedures for each candidate has been students stemmed from upper middle-class fam-
carefully preserved in official documents stored ilies. The impact of the Third Reich and the onset
in the university archives. These records were of World War II is evident in the decline of
accessible to Western researchers only under dif- graduates and in the course of their future ca-
ficult circumstances before the collapse of the reers. Yet, judging from these documents, the
East German government and only to visitors to level of teaching and research in Leipzig remained
the archive thereafter. Thanks to Helmut Rech- remarkably high, extending from cosmic-ray
enberg, a historian of physics in Munich, and physics and quantum field theory to the study of
Gerald Wiemers, director of the archive, the por- nuclear forces. Many of those not working on
tion of these records pertaining to the activities nuclear physics were subsequently drafted into
of the physics professor Werner Heisenberg as the army, while others contributed to German
examiner and evaluator are now available in full, wartime research on nuclear fission.
with helpful introductory commentary and ap-
DAVID C. CASSIDY
pendixes.
Heisenberg was professor of theoretical phys-
Klaus Hentschel. Mapping the Spectrum: Tech-
ics in Leipzig from 1929 to 1942. During this
niques of Visual Representation in Research and
period he wrote sixty-nine thesis evaluations and
gave twenty-eight doctoral examinations in theo- Teaching. xiv Ⳮ 562 pp., illus., figs., tables,
retical physics. Although there were a number of apps., bibl., indexes. Oxford/New York: Oxford
female physics students at the lower levels, all University Press, 2002. $125 (cloth).
but one of the candidates, Hildegard Geest, was Spectroscopy became central to physics, chem-
male. Fourteen of the doctoral candidates (not istry, and astronomy during the late nineteenth
including Geest) were Heisenberg’s own stu- and early twentieth centuries. Klaus Hentschel
dents. Four of these went on to habilitate under investigates the development of this varied set
Heisenberg: Felix Bloch, Hans Euler, Erich of techniques from roughly 1860 to 1930 along
Bagge, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. They two principal axes: interactions between spectro-
wrote four of the five Habilitation theses that he scopic research and changing printing technol-
reviewed.
ogies, and interactions between research and
These published files offer a wealth of infor-
teaching. In doing so, Hentschel delves more
mation about each candidate and about the Hei-
deeply than most historians of science have done
senberg school of theoretical physics in general.
Arranged in chronological order, each document into the intricacies of the material culture of
provides the title of the dissertation, the names printing. Whether the mode of picturing and re-
of those on the examining committee, the written production was steel engraving, lithography, or
evaluations by Heisenberg and by the first or sec- any of the variety of photomechanical reproduc-
ond examiner, the topics Heisenberg covered in tion techniques in play during the last half of the
his examination of the doctoral candidates, and nineteenth century, spectroscopists always had
the grade given, often with a short comment. In to work hard to interpret spectral maps, even
addition, the candidates were required to provide when the mapmakers purported to record di-
for the record not only the date and place of their rectly from nature. Spectroscopists struggled
birth but also a short autobiography, usually giv- over how best to work with the artisans who
ing religion, the full names and occupation of made their maps—engravers, lithographers,
parents, and prior education. In a useful appen- photographers—to convey not only spectral-line
dix, the editors present brief biographical spacings but also relative intensities. Various vi-
sketches of the candidates, focusing on their casual languages (such as cross-hatching styles)
reers after leaving the university. Thus we learn, were developed within each genre of print tech-

nology to distinguish intended signal from back- spectral maps was by no means an easy task. In
ground. fact, Hentschel argues, there was no single dis-
A large portion of Hentschel’s study contrib- cipline of “spectroscopy” during the period un-
utes to the already-rich historical literature on the der study but, rather, several distinct “spectro-
introduction of photography to scientific re- scopic domains,” constellations of preferred
search, showing that despite the claims of pho- instruments, mapping and reproduction tech-
tography’s enthusiasts that the new techniques niques, and interpretive skills for producing and
merely recorded how nature really was, a tre- reading spectra. Experts as well as novices often
mendous amount of subjective judgment re- found it quite difficult to read a spectral map
mained. Photographs almost always needed to be produced according to the pictorial codes of a dif-
retouched in order to show what the investigators ferent domain. Hentschel devotes a lengthy chap-
believed to be most significant or relevant. Even ter to the teaching and training of budding spec-
more important, for several decades after pho- troscopists and finds the very interesting
tography entered spectroscopists’ toolkit, the re- connection that most successful spectroscopists
searchers still needed to work with engravers or shared some background in the fine arts or tech-
lithographers to make “conventional” copies of nical drawing. Many of them, such as Johann Ja-
their photographs, since it remained impossible kob Balmer, taught topics such as perspectival
to reproduce large numbers of copies of the early drawing and drew on these visual skills when in-
photographs for publications. As Hentschel is at terpreting spectra. Hentschel uses these intercon-
pains to demonstrate, there was no linear pro- nections to suggest (although not really to address
gression in printing techniques that took spectral in full) broader cross-cultural styles of visuali-
maps from the realm of Romantic individual- zation at the close of the nineteenth century.
artistic modes of production to mechanical re- This is an impressive book, based on a tre-
production. Many modes coexisted, each seen at mendous amount of original research. The effort
the time as having its own strengths and weak- to understand the social and technical worlds of
nesses. nineteenth-century print techniques and their in-
Other questions of picturing were hotly con- terplay with scientific research is admirable and
tested for many decades. Should spectral maps unparalleled, though at times the reader might
be pictured in terms of wavelength or wave num- wish that the wealth of details had been better
ber (proportional to frequency)? How could nu- summarized or woven into the overall thesis.
merical scales be appended to maps, and whose DAVID KAISER
units of measure should be featured? Did glass
prisms or the newer diffraction gratings intro- David Wright. Translating Science: The Trans-
duce fewer distortions? Hentschel demonstrates mission of Western Chemistry into Late Imperial
the close affinities between spectroscopy and China, 1840–1900. (Sinica Leidensia, 48.) xxvi
geographical mapmaking. Not only were many Ⳮ 558 pp., illus., figs., tables, apps., bibls., in-
of the same artisans involved in both activities, dex. Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Publishers,
but many of the same image-manipulation tech- 2000.
niques were used: zooming in on interesting por-
tions of the overall map for some purposes; con- This book gives a very good survey of the social
densing or distilling the map into its most and historical context in which the introduction
distinctive, identifying Gestalt for others. Often of modern science and the translation of Western
the preferences for mapping style broke along scientific and technical texts took place in
disciplinary lines: physicists and instrument nineteenth-century China. The lives and works
makers tended to favor zooming in on specific of key characters, Chinese and Western, are well
regions, so as to measure or calibrate absolute documented. Regarding John Fryer, for instance,
values for various wavelengths, while chemists this text is a valuable complement to the pio-
tended to favor the distilled maps for getting the neering work by Adrian Arthur Bennett (John
“feel” for a given element’s spectrum quickly. Fryer: The Introduction of Western Science and
Hentschel notes that before Niels Bohr’s famous Technology into Nineteenth-Century China
quantized model of the atom in 1913, most re- [Cambridge, Mass., 1967]). Even if the transla-
search on spectra was not tied closely to inves- tion of the chemical language is not deeply an-
tigations of atomic structure. Many spectrosco- alyzed, there is a vivid report of the process of
pists struggled to find patterns in the spectral translation of chemical terms, with many quo-
lines, often contenting themselves with phenom- tations from the various actors themselves.
enological and numerological relationships. A seminal paper should be added to the bib-
Learning to see the appropriate quantities in liography concerning the first chapter: J. Willard

Peterson, “Western Natural Philosophy Pub- tury. It is a reference book with many pertinent
lished in Late Ming China,” Proceedings of the footnotes, rich bibliographies (of Chinese, Jap-
American Philosophical Society, 1973, 117: anese, and Western texts) and precious appen-
295–322. I regret that the period chosen does not dixes. Lastly, and not least, this scholarly book
allow the author to discuss fully the process of can also be read as a saga.
translating Western science into Chinese. We GEORGES MÉTAILIÉ
can read a very interesting tableau of the first
step, but the reader may have the feeling that by Dennis R. Dean. Gideon Mantell and the Dis-
the end of the nineteenth century what had been covery of Dinosaurs. xx Ⳮ 290 pp., illus., fig.,
done was definitive. Actually, a crucial stage of app., index. New York/Cambridge: Cambridge
the process of terminological creation occurred University Press, 1999. $69.95.
during the first thirty years of the twentieth cen-
Winos frequently bed there. As a result, the Pic-
tury, when Japanese texts and textbooks of mod-
cadilly entrance to the Burlington House prem-
ern science were widely used by Chinese sci- ises of the Geological Society of London is today
entists as a source for their new terminology. In rarely unlocked. A shame: behind those closed
this respect, Chapter 10, “The survival of the fit- doors are commemorated such pioneering giants
test terms,” which overlaps the nineteenth cen- of British geology as De La Beche, Greenough,
tury to consider modern terminology, appear Huxley, Lyell, Murchison, and Smith. There too
misleading. The choice of the author prevents an hangs a portrait—artist unknown—of Gideon
estimate of the role played by Japan in many Algernon Mantell (1790–1852). That the fel-
ways. This very interesting question is just allows of the society no longer enter Burlington
luded to (pp. 227–228, 353–354, 400, 408, House past his portrait would, I suspect, be taken
425). If we look at the field of botany, for in- by Mantell as a personal slight. He was a touchy
stance, the linguistic situation during the nine- individual.
teenth century was similar to what is described A physician by profession, Mantell practiced
for chemistry, but there was a dramatic change successively in Sussex at Lewes and Brighton
after 1900 due to the bulk of scientific terms in and then in London at Clapham Common. But
Chinese characters created in Japan, borrowed it was to geology that he pledged his soul. He
and still part of the modern vocabulary used to- became an authority on the Wealden strata, pa-
day in China (Georges Métailié, “The Formation leontological papers flowed from his pen, and he
of Botanical Terminology: A Model or a Case was the author of several popular expositions of
Study?”, in Michael Lackner, Iwo Amelung, and his chosen science. Somewhere around 1820 he
Joachim Kurtz, New Terms for New Ideas: West- came into the possession of certain fossil re-
ern Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Im- mains—some of them the discoveries of his wife
perial China, [Leiden, 2001], pp. 327–338). It Mary Ann—of the large creature that he later
seems that the part played by the Japanese chem- termed Iguanosaurus and the world now knows
ical terminology may have been much more im- as Iguanodon. It is with the dinosauria that Man-
portant than what is mentioned in the book. The tell’s name is today chiefly associated; and
statements (p. 353), “Japanese neologisms were when, on New Year’s Eve 1853, there took place
often disliked in China,” and “There was intense in the grounds of the Crystal Palace that famed
competition from the 1890’s between native banquet inside the Waterhouse Hawkins recon-
Chinese translated terms and terms borrowed via struction of Iguanodon, Mantell’s name was em-
Japanese kanji [Chinese characters] into Chi- blazoned above the guests alongside those of
nese” (p. 353), followed by Table 13 (p. 354), William Buckland, Baron Cuvier, and Richard
which gives an example of three Japanese terms Owen. Mantell became the Geological Society’s
that have replaced late Qing Chinese terms and second Wollaston Medallist, and in 1849 he and
can now be found in modern Chinese terminol- Edward Sabine were the two Royal Medallists
ogy, seem to suggest the influence of what had of the Royal Society. Mantell stood among the
been done in Japan. However, in Figure 33 scientific lions rampant of his day.
(p. 364), which proposes “A genealogy of the Literary memorials to Mantell have long ex-
modern Chinese nomenclature of the elements,” isted. The posthumous seventh edition of his
Japan is just ignored. Except for these reserva- Wonders of Geology (1857) contains reprints of
tions, I consider this book as a fundamental work several of his obituary notices; T. G. Bonney
on the circumstances of the transmission of shaped for him an obelisk in the Dictionary of
Western chemistry and some other sciences into National Biography; Sidney Spokes published a
late imperial China during the nineteenth cen- 263-page biography in 1927; an abridged ver-

sion of Mantell’s diary of 1819–1852, edited by Benjamin Silliman of Yale. British scholars, for-
E. C. Curwen, was published in 1940; and in getful of “Satchmo,” will be perplexed by
1998 Dennis Dean gave us Gideon Algernon Dean’s advice (p. 7) that Mantell’s birthplace—
Mantell: A Bibliography with Supplementary Es- Lewes—is correctly pronounced “Louis.”
says. It was Dean who reminded us that Man- GORDON H. HERRIES DAVIES
tell’s elder son, Walter Baldock Currant Mantell
(the present book bears a dedication to his mem- James E. Strick. Sparks of Life: Darwinism and
ory), had emigrated to New Zealand and that in the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Gen-
consequence there lies in Wellington’s Alexan- eration. xiv Ⳮ 283 pp., illus., apps., bibl., index.
der Tumbull Library a large quantity of manu- Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University
script material germane to his father. This ma- Press, 2000. $45 (cloth).
terial Dean has now extensively quarried in
laying before us his comprehensive modern bi- Analyses of the controversies that emerged after
ography of Mantell. Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Spe-
Dean here presents us with a valuable addition cies invariably, and perhaps inevitably, focus on
to the historical literature of geology. Displaying contemporary anxieties over apes and the ex-
all the footnoted scholarship we have learned to traordinary impact of the loss of the biblical
associate with this author, Gideon Algernon creation story on nineteenth-century society.
Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs is a Only partly to do with Darwin, to be sure, this
work that must take its place within any li- fundamental reshaping of human origins has
brary—institutional or private—that aspires to rightly been discussed by a large number of
reflect nineteenth-century progress in the earth scholars from a variety of disciplines. Nor have
sciences. That said, I found it difficult to warm the other themes that redefine the now-canonical
to the book. I became somewhat weary of the interactions of science and society been ignored.
author’s repeated affirmation that he was now Yet it is always refreshing to see how much re-
correcting the historical myths that others had mains to be said, how high a proportion of the
allowed to pass for truth. Further, I craved to feel nineteenth-century biological sciences ran rela-
a breath of sympathetic humanity a-riffling tively independently from evolutionary theory
through the pages. A full score is here, but at the while intersecting with it at various points, and
rostrum maestro Dean fails to make the music how much can be achieved by a fresh perspective
live. He is content merely to serve as Mantell’s
clinical anatomist.
Despite his geological achievements, Mantell
in essence is surely one of the more tragic fig-
ures in science. His struggles to achieve a good
living in medicine were unsuccessful. He felt
himself to be undervalued within the geological
community. His petulance clouded his personal
relationships. His wife left him. His family dis-
integrated. A spinal condition left him a pain-
wracked slave to opium. He was so soured that
when, near the close of his life, he was granted
a royal pension of £100 per annum, he could
only complain that it was “a miserable pittance
from the Crown of the British Empire.” Even in
death he seems to attract misfortune. His spine,
bequeathed for medical study, was destroyed by
German bombs in 1941; and during 1991 his be-
loved Iguanodon was featured on a British post-
age stamp associated with the name of Sir Rich-
ard Owen, of whom, Huxley assures us, Mantell
was the “arch-hater.” Perhaps he was not the
most adorable of men, but in closing Dean’s vol-
ume I did find myself hoping that someday Man- Henry Charlton Bastian, combatant in the
tell may find his warmhearted Boswell. nineteenth-century spontaneous generation
American scholars should note that from 1830 debates, around 1877 (from James E. Strick,
Mantell was in voluminous correspondence with Sparks of Life, p. 63).

or a new historiographical aim. Of these themes, pathbreaking The Spontaneous Generation Con-
one of the most significant must surely be views troversy from Descartes to Oparin (Johns Hop-
on the origin of life. kins, 1977) by bringing into primary focus
The German naturalist Heinrich Bronn was Henry Charlton Bastian, the brilliant young bi-
only one of several who asserted in the years ologist who was groomed by Huxley to take a
immediately after the Origin that a theory of place in the Darwinian defense team and then
evolution must logically go hand in hand with cruelly dropped when he overstepped the bound-
the notion of spontaneous generation. Evolution aries dictated by the older man. Bastian deserves
by natural selection, he claimed, was methodo- close attention, both for his work in this area,
logically incomplete as an explanation if it failed mostly delivered in The Beginnings of Life
to account for the first origin of life and meth- (1871), and for his temporary role as a member
odologically insecure if it introduced divine of the Darwinian set. Strick’s account looks
agency at that origination. Of course, he put his likely to be authoritative for a long while yet.
finger on a subject that Darwin deliberately Furthermore, there are welcome analyses of
avoided in print and discussed only briefly and Tyndall’s and E. Ray Lankester’s notions about
reluctantly with a few friends in correspondence. molecules, the germ theory, contagionism, and
The possibility of life originating from biologi- the later work of Pasteur in relation to sponta-
cally inert chemicals (abiogenesis) or from or- neous generation, all of which contribute mate-
ganic starting materials (heterogenesis) was the rially to one of the most worthwhile new books
big uncertainty lying at the heart of nature, and of the decade to deal with this important period
Darwin, as well as many others, was elusive on in nineteenth-century biology.
the issue. Bronn seems not to have believed in Much of Strick’s account is given over to elu-
either the spontaneous generation of living mat- cidating the subtle shades of opinion within the
ter or evolution, even though he translated Dar- evolutionary mode of thought that were possible
win’s Origin into German in 1860 and had no during his time span and the difficulties that ac-
particular religious ax to grind. But he saw the companied the adoption of any one position. Did
links. Both before and after the publication of life originate just once? This was Darwin’s opin-
Darwin’s book, questions about the origin of life ion and, so it seems, the line taken by many of
moved like a wildly spinning top across the in-
the other leading figures in the traditional story.
tellectual world, outward from Louis Pasteur’s
Yet a single bout of spontaneous generation back
and F. A. Pouchet’s debates over what might
in the mists of time could equally well be re-
constitute valid evidence for spontaneous gen-
garded as a creative act initiated by divine
eration and inward to high evolutionary propos-
agency, the very force that many evolutionists
als, taking momentum from both. The topic in-
trigued and tormented some of the finest minds wished to remove from nature. Or were single-
of the period. celled organisms constantly emerging in their
In focusing on spontaneous generation contro- pools of sludge and replenishing the world of
versies in Britain from 1860 to 1880 James living matter? On the face of it, the latter position
Strick therefore provides an exciting and signifi- looked as if it ought to find most favor with ev-
cantly new slant on the mid-nineteenth-century olutionists. Yet this too was fraught with epis-
biological sciences. Previous accounts of these temological worries over the nature of life, since
debates have tended to emphasize the experi- most evolutionists believed that all living things
mental data—its ambiguities and political and reproduced by “germs,” that life came from life,
theological implications; this was most notable by analogy with all known organisms. Strick
in Gerry Geison’s and John Farley’s early work handles the mass of necessary detail here with
on Pasteur and Pouchet, where it was argued that panache, revealing the main figures of the British
experiments alone could never have brought the scientific landscape somewhat as the younger
problem to closure. Strick pushes this view fur- generation might have seen them. Richard
ther, taking the Darwinian debates in Britain as Owen, Huxley, and Tyndall come over as bul-
his frame, and shows how the unholy notion of lies: wedded to their own doctrines, unwilling to
spontaneous generation could perversely (once let younger men perform solo, and at times fully
in a while) exist relatively peaceably alongside prepared to murder their darlings in order to keep
natural theology, as well as cause unexpected in- personal hegemonies to the fore. The social co-
tellectual mayhem in the materialistic, godless, terie of the X Club comes in for some clear-eyed
reformist world advocated by pro-Darwinians reappraisal; and more practical intellectual af-
like Thomas Henry Huxley, John Tyndall, and fairs such as the cell theory, definitions of “mol-
others. Strick also adds considerably to Farley’s ecules,” and a number of conceptual revisions

implicated in rendering experimental materials materials represent a valuable resource in their

“sterile” are reassessed in the light of this debate. own right.
Sparks of Life is here and there rather complex In the Fundamentals Mach proposed the view
reading, even for professional historians of sci- that visual disorientation and related physical
ence interested in what Darwin called “slime, sensations could be explained as a rotational
snot or protoplasm,” but Strick should be thor- movement operating on the nerves of a part of
oughly admired for bringing such a significant the ear labyrinth. The extensive experiments set
area of nineteenth-century science back into no- out in his study indicated that the skin, blood,
tice and for the breadth of vision he found there. connective tissue, and brain played a relatively
JANET BROWNE minor role, whereas the ampullae of the semi-
circular canals of the ear labyrinth played a key
Ernst Mach. Fundamentals of the Theory of role in responding to angular movement and ac-
Movement Perception. Translated by Laurence celeration. The ampullae were also responsible
R. Young, Volker Henn, and Hansjörg Scher- for the aftereffects of rotation experienced as
berger. 191 pp., CD-ROM, figs., bibl., index. giddiness. Mach’s study therefore indicated the
New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. existence of a “final end organ” for motion sen-
$85 (cloth). sation and thus lent further support to the view
Ernst Mach held the activity of science to be the that human sensation could be explained in
pursuit of operative rules by which the obser- terms of a complete functional physiology of the
vation of a single phenomenon would evince human being.
knowledge about all phenomena in the same This new translation of the Fundamentals of
class, regardless of the circumstances in which the Theory of Movement Perception—a prelim-
they were encountered in nature. In this way, inary study that directly anticipated Mach’s ma-
science held out the hope that human beings jor work The Science of Mechanics: A Critical
could finally know the complex functional sys- and Historical Account of Its Development
tems to which they were tied and finally act with (1883)—is also a timely reminder of Mach’s
certainty in such a world. A test of this view pivotal role in the emergence of empirical psy-
arose as a result of the “visual vertigo” Mach chology at the end of the nineteenth century. In
experienced on a train ride. As the train entered the rush to publicize the results of his experi-
a sharp curve, the objects outside appeared to tilt ments on movement sensation Mach’s main ri-
away from the train on one side and toward it on val, indeed, was Josef Breuer, who had come to
the other. As Mach later explained in his Popular the same conclusions with a similar set of ex-
Scientific Lectures: “What had hitherto appeared periments. Whereas Breuer was subsequently to
to me perfectly natural, namely, the fact that we colloborate with Freud and help launch what
distinguish the vertical so perfectly and sharply later became known as psychoanalysis, Mach
from every other direction, now struck me as en- embarked on a number of studies that were to
igmatical” (quoted in Fundamentals, p. 136). ground a comprehensive theory of human sen-
This instance of visual vertigo—common to sation. Both Mach and Breuer were enlivened by
modern train passengers but new to Mach’s the problem of Cartesian dualism dominating the
age—threatened to disturb the sense in which Kantian revival in the late nineteenth century,
objects were felt to be reliably “given” to sub- but their work may also be read as a response to
jective awareness. Mach set out his reaction to early technological modernism of the same pe-
this disturbance in an experimental study of the riod. In analyzing the sense of disorientation
effects of motion on sensation originally pub- wrought by technological change (that fateful
lished in 1875 under the German title Grundli- train ride!), Mach’s work spawned a generation
nien der Lehre von den Bewegungsempfindun- of literary and philosophical responses in turn-
gen. This work has now been reprinted in a of-the-century Vienna—one of the greatest
richly annotated bilingual edition translated by flowerings of the creative spirit in recent human
Laurence Young, Volker Henn, and Hansjörg history. In his concluding remarks to the 1875
Scherberger. The annotations appended by the study, Mach looked forward to an “age of quan-
translators supply contextual information about titative psychology” where “we will understand
the science of Mach’s day and references quoted the same basic processes which make up all psy-
by Mach in his study. The CD-ROM accompa- chological phenomena” and “which then can be
nying the book contains a range of additional enumerated relative to each other much like el-
historical sources and several essays by Henn ementary processes” (p. 114). As Young, Henn,
and Young and other scholars. These additional and Scherberger observe in the introduction,

Mach was prescient, for this age is in many ways issues today. And he has done it again in this
now upon us. book.
TIM MEHIGAN In fact, all told, Gould offers us the equivalent
of about five normal books, and of these the first
Stephen Jay Gould. The Structure of Evolu- two (about six hundred pages in total) are his-
tionary Theory. ix Ⳮ 1,433 pp., illus., figs., bibl., torical. Here we are offered a history—hardly a
index. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University potted history—of evolutionary theory from the
Press, 2002. $39.95 (cloth). beginning to the present. There is much of value
in these chapters—Gould was deeply read in the
Stephen Jay Gould published this very large literature and obviously had pored over the origi-
book in March 2002. Two months later, he was nal sources in many languages (from comments
dead from cancer at the too-young age of sixty. he made, it seems that he owned all of the origi-
Although, as it happens, The Structure of Evo- nal sources in the many languages). One rather
lutionary Theory was not Gould’s final book regrets that this material was not prepared for
(that was a collection of essays), it is obvious independent publication, but one can see that this
that this book was intended to be his master- would not have suited Gould’s purposes. He
work, that on which his reputation as a scientist wanted to show that in opting for (what he would
was to be judged. For Gould was not only the have called extreme) Darwinism, evolutionary
most gifted popular science writer of his gener- biology had taken a wrong turn. With the history
ation, but also a man with pretensions to serious he presents establishing this fact, he himself is
scholarship. Most particularly, with fellow pa- then ready to step into the breach with his own
leontologist Niles Eldredge, he was the author of theory (of punctuated equilibrium) that would
the claim that the fossil record is not, as gener- avoid the faults of the past and provide the an-
ally interpreted, a smooth, gradual process ex- swers of the future. In other words, like the
plicable by conventional Darwinism—natural works of other scientist/historians of evolution-
selection promoting adaptation—but rather a ary theory—notoriously Ernst Mayr—Gould’s
more jerky affair with stops and starts. Fa- history was written to promote Gould’s science
mously, he and Eldredge put forward their the- and Gould’s claim to an honored place in pro-
ory of “punctuated equilibrium”; and although fessional scientific history.
the book under review contains much more All history is of course written with an end in
(very, very much more), it is this theory that is view. Otherwise it is just a collection of facts.
the keystone to Gould’s mammoth-sized produc- But I have to say that Gould’s aims do rather
tion. distort his material. His treatment of British
I will not presume to suggest that readers of adaptationists of the early part of the twentieth
this journal have no interest in contemporary sci- century (like R. A. Fisher) verges on the ludi-
ence. Even if you are interested only tangentially crous, as their achievements are belittled and
in modern thinking and achievements, I urge you their motives impugned. (In Fisher’s case,
to get this work and (if not to read it straight Gould’s claims notwithstanding, there is cer-
through) to dip into it judiciously, for there is tainly no conspiracy of silence about his eugen-
much of great worth here, and as a guide to the ics, and indeed much effort has gone to show
way that today’s evolutionists think it is surely how Fisher’s science survives despite his odd
destined to be a classic. But for readers of Isis and somewhat repulsive views on race and
qua historians of science, there is a more press- class.) Gould’s discussion is guided by his no-
ing reason to pick up The Structure of Evolu- torious metaphor that evolutionary thinking, in
tionary Theory. Gould was a thinker who be- becoming more adaptationist, “hardened” (a pro-
lieved that evolution pervades everything: in cess akin to the unfortunate degeneration of the
order to understand the present in the realm of arteries). Gould’s facts are made to fit the meta-
ideas, no less than in the realm of organisms, one phor, no matter what—rather like those unfor-
must dig back into the past and try to find out tunate visitors who stopped off for the night at
how things were then and how things then led the B and B being run by Procrustes.
to things now. He did this before, most particu- I liked Gould and admired him immensely. I
larly and successfully in his important Ontogeny was on the other side in many debates, and it
and Phylogeny (Belknap, 1977), where he ex- never affected our relationship. I wish I could
plored how past scientists dealt with the issues say nicer things about the history in The Struc-
of paleontology and embryology and how this ture of Evolutionary Theory. But the best way I
throws light on the way that we should treat such can honor his memory is by being truthful. There

is much to commend this volume. I wish it were camera as a means to check their observational
better than it is. bias or their selectivity in isolating data to fit
MICHAEL RUSE hypotheses, they came to understand Bateson’s
photo-documentation as a form of “note taking.”
Gerald Sullivan. Margaret Mead, Gregory Bate- As Sullivan points out, they saw almost none of
son, and Highland Bali: Fieldwork Photographs what they had photographed until they returned
of Bayung Gedé, 1936–1939. x Ⳮ 213 pp., fron- to New York in 1939. Soon after viewing the
tis., illus., app., bibl., index. Chicago: University images, they changed their publication plans:
of Chicago Press, 1999. $45, £31.50. rather than a broad study of Balinese customs
and behavior, they produced a book establishing
This book consists of two essays on the field- the connections between Balinese child rearing
work photographs taken by Gregory Bateson and personality structure. At this point, Sullivan
during his 1930s Bali expeditions with his wife would argue, the photographs transformed from
Margaret Mead. Gerald Sullivan’s first essay is “notes” to “signs”—that is, they became part of
a textual commentary on photography and eth- the ethnographers’ argument.
nography; the second, a photo-essay, is an origi- In his photo-essay Sullivan uses the Batesons’
nal compilation of selected photographs from Balinese photo archive collection to survey the
Mead’s and Bateson’s photo archives, some pre- complex and overlapping social identities of the
viously unpublished. In both essays Sullivan people of Bayung Gedé, along with the rich cer-
concerns himself with the “problem of ethno- emonial life these villagers used to resolve and
graphic writing,” by which he means the field- placate the spirit world. The camera, Sullivan ar-
worker’s conscious goal of objectively recording gues, can record only what is visible, but much
and writing about a culture. This book is a wel- that is important to the Balinese—most notably
come addition to recent works on the photograph their encounters with a sometimes-unpredictable
as evidence, most of which grapple with this spirit world—cannot be seen and therefore can-
question. Is the photograph an analogue of re- not be recorded on film. Mead, Bateson, and Sul-
ality or is it an analogue of culture-bound visual livan have this in common: each ethnographer
experience? draws attention to what she or he wants viewers
Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were not of photos to see. By juxtaposing his own textual
the first anthropologists to photograph in the commentary with archival photographs, Sulli-
field, but their Balinese still photos and cine- van, himself an expert on Balinese culture, dem-
matography may well be the most famous ex- onstrates how field photos originally conceptu-
amples both because of the “methodological and alized as equivalent to field notes can take on
analytic importance” they assigned to the pho- different meanings when reinterpreted into an-
tographs as a means “for taking notes” and as other ethnographer’s texts. He notes that Mead
direct, albeit interpreted, evidence of human be- and Bateson anticipated as much and that this
havior. Indeed, the most interesting narrative understanding underlaid their effort to experi-
line of Sullivan’s text, which relies heavily on ment with photography in the field.
the two fieldworkers’ unpublished writings, doc- VIRGINIA YANS-MCLAUGHLIN
uments the shifting status and methodological
significance of the photograph, from the team’s Matthew J. Raphael. Bill W. and Mr. Wilson:
pre-expedition plans to their publication of Ba- The Legend and Life of A.A.’s Cofounder. xvi Ⳮ
linese Character (New York Academy of Sci- 206 pp., index. Amherst: University of Massa-
ences, 1942). It is clear that Bateson’s training chusetts Press, 2000. $24.95.
in the natural sciences and his theoretical con-
cerns with the fieldworker’s point of view sen- In 1935 two drunks, Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith
sitized him to the phenomenological difficulties and William Griffith Wilson, met at the May-
of field recording. Mead and Bateson had origi- flower Hotel in Akron, Ohio, to talk and keep
nally intended to document only a small number each other sober. The encounter between the
of photographic sequences. In fact, they shot two, who later became known as Dr. Bob and
more than twenty-five thousand photos and thou- Bill W., marked the founding of Alcoholics
sands of feet of movies. The two fieldworkers Anonymous (A.A.). An A.A. member, using the
improvised their methodology and altered their pseudonym “Matthew J. Raphael,” tells the story
objectives as they went along, finding, for ex- of their encounter in the opening of his book
ample, that Bateson’s photographing could not Bill W. and Mr. Wilson: The Legend and Life of
always be synchronized with Mead’s note tak- A.A.’s Cofounder before beginning his explora-
ing. While they originally conceptualized the tion of Bill W. His goal is to “rehumanize the

cult figure” and to recover “the unchurchly and American Medical Association noted that it was
often irreverent spirit of the A.A. fellowship dur- without scientific merit; in the Journal of Ner-
ing its apostolic era” (p. 14). Eschewing both the vous and Mental Diseases it was dismissed as
foundation myths of the organization and the an- worthless, along with the alcoholics the book ad-
alytical efforts of scholars seeking to understand dressed.
A.A. as a movement, Raphael explores both While Raphael looks at the ideas of A.A., his
Bill W.’s history and the movements and ideas book remains closely focused on Wilson’s life
that shaped his thinking. both within A.A. and outside it. He details Wil-
The opening chapters of the book explore son’s later years, in which he experimented with
Bill’s childhood, the beginning of his drinking LSD and became an advocate of niacin (vitamin
career, and his heavy boozing during Prohibition B-3) therapy for alcoholism. His spiritual life
and the Great Depression. Raphael’s interpreta- and his flirtation with Catholicism are also ex-
tion is heavily psychological; for example, plored.
he links Wilson the “alcohol adult” with As a biography, Bill W. and Mr. Wilson is
the “lengthened shadow of the obsessive- entertaining, although perhaps laced with too
compulsive child” (p. 27) and scatters similar much psychological speculation. Its contribution
forms of analysis throughout the book. The to the history of science is more limited. Because
chapters move back and forth from biography to it focuses exclusively on Bill W. and on the
interpretations of Wilson’s writings, and the au- movements and ideas that influenced his think-
thor offers his own view of Wilson’s drinking ing, the reader gains few insights into how A.A.
and downfall. Lois Wilson, Bill’s wife, is also grew and why it has become so successful as a
well profiled. Raphael recounts both her contri- model “recovery movement.” For this reason, I
butions to A.A. and her support of Bill, which suspect that the primary audience for the book
continued despite his philandering.
will be individuals who are interested in Bill W.
A key theme for Raphael is the way Wilson
They will appreciate Raphael’s debunking of
developed his program of recovery by drawing
some of the myths regarding his life and work
from other groups, among them the Washington
and his exploration of the movement that Bill W.
Temperance Society, a mutual assistance group
founded in 1840, and the Oxford Group, an early and Dr. Bob helped to found.
twentieth-century religious movement that JANET GOLDEN
worked to change lives through self-reflection
and surrender to God. The Oxford Group’s six Margaret Humphreys. Malaria: Poverty,
tenets, among them the taking of a moral inven- Race, and Public Health in the United States.
tory, the making of restitution, and reliance on a 196 pp., illus., notes, index. Baltimore, Md.:
higher power, became the inspiration for A.A.’s Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. $41.50
Twelve Steps, as Raphael and other historians of (cloth).
A.A., including Dick B. and Ernie Kurtz, have While malaria continues to be a leading cause of
pointed out. Wilson also drew from the ideas of death and disability worldwide, endemic malaria
William D. Silkworth, a physician at the Charles
has disappeared in the United States. Margaret
B. Towns Hospital, where the well-to-do dried
Humphreys’s new book tries to disentangle the
out and were treated for narcotic addiction. Silk-
web of geographic, economic, and public policy
worth argued that alcoholism was both a physi-
cal allergy and a mental obsession. Another in- factors to learn whether, and how, each might
fluence was the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. have contributed to its disappearance and what
Wilson’s fascination with Jung’s work led him lessons might be gained for those countries
to psychoanalysis in which he confronted his where endemic malaria transmission continues.
troubled childhood and his adult depression. In the face of this ambitious goal, Humphreys’s
The final third of the book analyzes what Bill success is best measured not by the achievement
W. and Dr. Bob wrought. The author explores of her aim but by her energetic efforts to recon-
what members refer to as the Big Book, Alco- struct the history of malaria in the South and her
holics Anonymous, in which the twelve steps are cogent and compelling analysis of its twists and
laid out and one hundred men recount how they turns. And, perhaps most important, while she
became sober. Although it would sell five mil- reads the scientific record expertly, her story is
lion copies by the time A.A. turned fifty, the thoroughly integrated into the social history of
book initially met with hostility from many re- the South. Thus, while many recent works in the
viewers and unsold copies languished in the history of medicine have contributed to a broader
warehouse. The reviewer for the Journal of the social history, there are fewer works like this

one, in which the line between scientific and so- thousands from the land and, with them, a major
cial history is so nearly erased. host population for malaria. This was perhaps
Humphreys does well in reviewing earlier especially true in the Deep South, the region in
work showing that malaria was active over much which malaria was most entrenched and in which
of colonial North America, powerfully contrib- public efforts to control the disease were often
uting to the shape of settlement patterns from the the most limited. Thus, Humphreys contends, it
Chesapeake Bay south to the Gulf of Mexico. was the unintended consequences of the AAA,
Indeed, it has been argued that the intensity of and not programmatic efforts to eliminate the
malaria transmission in the Carolinas played a disease, that ultimately played the greatest role
significant role in confirming reliance there on in its collapse.
African rather than European agricultural labor- Undoubtedly the arguments of this relatively
ers. And, as Erwin Ackerknecht showed in his brief book will deserve further, more detailed,
classic Malaria in the Upper Mississippi Valley, examination, but with this work Humphreys
1760–1900 (Johns Hopkins, 1945), the disease again brings front and center the view that dis-
followed the path of settlers west into the Mis- ease control is not merely a technical problem,
sissippi Valley and was probably responsible for which we can always expect will yield to the
much of the recurrent pattern of relatively brief logic of technical solutions; rather, as Acker-
settlement followed by another round of migra- knecht quotes an anonymous medical reviewer
tion as local populations grew large enough to writing in 1828, “every book on malaria is also
support sustained malarial transmission. But the a book on political economy.”
bulk of Humphreys’s work focuses on the PAUL J. EDELSON
twentieth-century history, especially the period
from 1910 to 1940, the era of the so-called New Michael French; Jim Phillips. Cheated Not
South. Poisoned? Food Regulation in the United King-
By the beginning of the Great Depression ma- dom, 1875–1938. viii Ⳮ 213 pp., bibl., index.
laria had been an endemic disease of the South Manchester/New York: Manchester University
for over two hundred years. And yet, by the end Press, 2000. $69.95.
of World War II malaria had been extinguished
in the South. It is this period on which Hum- Cheated Not Poisoned? traces the development
phreys focuses to understand how malaria was of British food regulation from the Sale of Food
controlled—and where she offers her most in- and Drugs Act (SFDA) of 1875, which made
teresting conclusions. Contrary to the nearly ca- food inspection a mandatory duty of each local
nonical teaching that it was DDT that eradicated authority, to the Public Act of 1938. Michael
malaria in the South, Humphreys notes that the French and Jim Phillips treat the topic in the con-
widespread Public Health Service campaign to text of models of the public regulation of com-
control mosquitoes through the use of DDT be- merce drawn mainly from cases in the Progres-
gan after the prevalence rates of malaria had al- sive Era United States. In some respects the
ready fallen strikingly. Neither the great hydro- British experience was quite different from the
electric projects of the 1930s and prewar 1940s American. Although there were some remark-
nor the large public works projects of the early able scandals—notably the poisoning in the
New Deal contributed significantly to reducing winter of 1900–1901 of roughly four thousand
malaria rates. In Humphreys’s view, it was the drinkers whose beer had been contaminated with
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1933, arsenic contained in the sugar used to speed fer-
which took thousands of acres of cropland out mentation—food safety regulation does not ap-
of production, that had the greatest hand in erad- pear to have become a broadly based reform
icating malaria in the South. Returning cropland movement in Britain during the period. Upton
to fallow would be expected to increase malaria Sinclair’s Jungle did make a splash, but it did
rates in an endemic region, and, indeed, some not focus British attention on the horrors of the
rise in rates did occur when land was left un- slaughterhouse, much less the compatibility of
planted. But the greatest effect of the AAA was capitalism with food safety—but led simply to
to depopulate the land of the sharecropper fam- a wariness of American potted meat. There was
ilies who lived and worked in the areas of highest no British analogue to Harvey Washington Wi-
endemicity and whose housing and nutrition ley, crusading head of the U.S. Department of
were among the very poorest in the South. With Agriculture’s Bureau of Chemistry, no “poison
fewer acres planted, and with government funds squad” of youthful volunteers willing to discover
available to purchase tractors and mechanical the body’s response to food additives. Regula-
cotton-harvesting equipment, owners ejected tory policy was mainly worked out behind the

scenes by expert committees with varying pro- ulation (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny), and
portions of analytical chemists, minor civil ser- Wilhelm His, opposing this view, he shows how
vants, medical academics, and representatives of Adolf Ziegler ended up making models for anat-
trade organizations. The compromises they omists on both sides of the debate.
worked out were often ephemeral and minimal. Hopwood also is presenting the history of a
More conspicuously than in America, regulatory family firm, arguing for its contribution to the
capture was a prominent issue. Regulation be- science of anatomy. This adds an interesting new
came a means by which some competitors, dimension to the “invisible technician,” a pop-
chiefly domestic producers of high-quality prod- ular figure in the new historiography of science.
ucts, could achieve a market advantage over Hopwood suggests that the owners and employ-
competitors. ees producing the embryological models made
Concerned mainly with regulatory practice, very real, albeit largely unacknowledged (Fried-
French and Phillips give only passing attention rich Ziegler did eventually get an honorary doc-
to the emergence of food science. They take— torate from Freiburg University), contributions
probably rightly—a low opinion of the expertise to embryological anatomy, while at the same
offered to the committees—a mix of a priori time operating in an artisanal culture relatively
platitude and anecdote—but do not review it in independent of the anatomy departments they
detail (p. 104). They do note the ongoing strug- supplied. Thus, although universities were its
gle and considerable professional achievement primary clients, the Ziegler studio was not itself
of the Society of Public Analysts, made up of state supported, nor did it have any direct edu-
those holding positions as analysts to local units cational mission, which sets it apart from most
of government under the SFDA. Competent (at scientific institutions that one encounters in the
least some of the time) to determine the com- history of nineteenth-century science. By the time
position of foods, the public analysts (or at least of Adolf Ziegler’s retirement in 1883, the use of
their leaders, Otto Hehner and Charles Cassal) the microtome and a semiautomated method for
did manage nevertheless to transcend technician constructing models by layers was already bring-
status and pronounce as professionals on truth, ing modelers and anatomists into closer collabo-
beauty, and virtue—and even, despite the com- ration, heralding a golden era for wax embryo-
plaints of the medical profession, on toxicology logical models at the end of the century. Indeed,
as well. we find His arguing for the essential comple-
This fine study should provide an excellent mentarity between such wax models, graphic il-
framework for further research by historians of lustrations, and written descriptions.
science interested in professionalization and in In his introductory chapter Hopwood suggests
the creation and regulation of expertise. that the lessons to be learned from this history
CHRISTOPHER HAMLIN are quite general, but one does get the impression
that the only time the models passed from their
Nick Hopwood. Embryos in Wax: Models from role as pedagogical aids to tools for scientific
the Ziegler Studio. ix Ⳮ 206 pp., illus., notes, discovery was this particular period at the end of
tables, bibl., index. Cambridge: University of the nineteenth century. In light of this particu-
Cambridge, 2002. £13.50 (paper). larity, it is difficult to assess how general the
lessons drawn from this history might be. Nev-
Embryos in Wax is a remarkable contribution to ertheless, it is important that the question of the
the history of science in several respects. First, place of three-dimensional models in science is
the topic of the study is quite out of the ordinary: posed, as the answer will no doubt prove very
scaled-up wax models of fetal development in interesting for the history of science, the history
animals and humans produced by the Ziegler stu- of education, and other fields, such as the history
dio between 1850 and 1936. We are all familiar of art. Indeed, one of the drawbacks of a rela-
with the shift in emphasis in the history of sci- tively short book is that it does not permit the
ence from anatomizing revolutions in theory to author to explore all the topics he does raise in
studying scientific practice, but it is nevertheless sufficient depth—here, in particular, the rela-
suprising to find a book dedicated to one partic- tionship between the models of human embryos
ular modeling practice. Here, then, there is rela- and views on motherhood at the turn of the cen-
tively little discussion of embryological theory, tury.
with the focus resolutely on the lives and models Finally, it is worth mentioning the quality of
of Adolf and Friedrich Ziegler—father and son. the book production and the fact that it is pub-
Indeed, when Nick Hopwood discusses the de- lished by Cambridge University itself, and not
bate between Ernst Haeckel, arguing for recapit- by one of the university presses. Embryos in Wax

Friedrich Ziegler (foreground) in his wax model studio around 1912 (from Nick Hopwood, Embryos in
Wax, p. 89).
contains twenty-seven full-page color plates and in place. Discord, disappointment, and eccen-
about twice that number of high-quality black- tricity fill this short volume’s 150 pages, con-
and-white photographs (including a whole cata- trasting bizarrely with the general cheerfulness
logue prepared by Friedrich Ziegler in 1912), of its ornamental photographs. Throughout the
and yet it sells for around $20 (£13.50). Al- work the author attempts to place the political
though it no doubt required many hours of vol- history of the University of Wisconsin Medical
untary production labor and will not benefit from School—and it is largely the political, or admin-
the advertising budgets of the university presses, istrative, history that he offers—in the context
this venture gives pause for thought about the of unceasing changes within the environments of
margins involved in academic book publishing. science, medical education, and health-care fi-
JONATHAN SIMON nancing. Oliver does this succinctly and intelli-
gently, to the benefit of the Wisconsin alumnus,
Robert Oliver. Making the Modern Medical faculty member, or student who lacks much
School: The Wisconsin Stories. ix Ⳮ 156 pp., knowledge of the history of medicine and medi-
illus., index. Nantucket, Mass.: Science History cal education in twentieth-century America and
Publications/USA, 2002. $24.95 (cloth). who picks up the book.
Wisconsin’s medical school was authorized
Robert Oliver’s history of the University of Wis- by the state legislature in 1907 as a two-year
consin Medical School exemplifies the antider- college—students had to transfer elsewhere to
matological approach to medical school his- complete their training—though it emerges in
tory—warts and blemishes are left prominently Oliver’s narrative less as having been founded

wider recognition than the medical school for
medically related research productivity.
When the reader gets to the 1940s and Chapter
4 of Making the Modern Medical School (“The
War of the Dean’s Succession”), things really get
bleak, as the narrative dwells from there until its
end almost entirely on the school’s improbable
and hectic inability to secure stable leadership
during the second half of the twentieth century.
Oliver seems to have become entranced with his
series of sordid stories documenting Wisconsin’s
difficulty in finding and nurturing an acceptable
medical dean and other senior officers. Trying to
make some sense of the successive calamities,
the author does offer a plausible schema for un-
derstanding the changing attributes of medical
school deanship. He points out the increasing
complexity of the dean’s job, the nuances of
power balances within the medical school, and
the virtues and costs of local loyalty and insti-
tutional inbreeding. It’s a wretched story Oliver
tells, but not, I suspect, an uncommon one: per-
sonality, idiosyncrasy, egomania, contention—
and the whole scale of human fallibility—might
well have played a larger part in the shaping of
American medical colleges than would be sus-
The late Howard Temin, the only University of pected from Kenneth Ludmerer’s comprehen-
Wisconsin scientist to win the Nobel Prize while sive and synthetic volumes (Learning to Heal
on the university faculty (from Robert Oliver, [Basic, 1985], Time to Heal [Oxford, 1999]). Re-
Making the Modern Medical School, p. 138). cent scholarship on several of Philadelphia’s
medical schools would, regrettably, suggest this.
And yet there is a great deal more, and surely
and more as having stumbled fitfully into exis- so at Wisconsin’s medical school, which for
tence, entirely unwelcome to the physicians of many decades has been accorded high standing
Madison. They feared competition from univer- among its peers. Oliver’s account does not, at
sity doctors (which equaled government doctors) least implicitly, purport to be anything approach-
within the relatively small college city: even at- ing an adequate history of a medical school—or
of any other sort of school, for that matter. (And
tempts by the first dean, an honest and dedicated
perhaps explicitly: on page vii of his “Introduc-
man named Charles Bardeen, to establish a stu-
tion” Oliver suggests that the book is really
dent health clinic and physical diagnosis course
about “the American medical school,” using
proved threatening. In response, the young Wisconsin “as a kind of historical laboratory.”)
school hit upon the innovative expedient of Students appear rarely in his text (though atti-
sending its students to practitioners throughout tudes toward women and minorities are dis-
the state for their introductory preceptorship in cussed). Curriculum finds hardly a mention. The
what is now called “clinical skills.” In 1924 the eventual achievement of wide recognition for re-
school was finally able to establish its own center search and other attainments, despite the endless
for clinical instruction, Wisconsin General Hos- strife, remains an unattended mystery. I can at-
pital, which was organized as a charity that test that no matter how chaotic or desperate the
would draw patients from throughout the state, happenings in the administration wing of a medi-
lessening concerns of “town” practitioners in cal school under stress may be, faculty and stu-
Madison. With its hospital, the medical school dents, sometimes with quiet gallantry, return
could expand to the full four-year program. As each day to classroom, clinic, and laboratory.
was probably true for most medical schools, This daily sustaining of the enterprise, in trou-
meaningful interactions with other segments of bled times or tranquil, must form part of the
the parent university were few, and for some story, even if it is sometimes a challenging com-
time Wisconsin’s College of Agriculture gained ponent to document.

Making the Modern Medical School generally property of the firm. Strains between inventors
reads well, though in an effort to enliven the and industrialists increased through the 1920s,
writing its author at times irksomely extends in concert with the broader polarization of so-
metaphors and figures of speech or strives un- ciety that eventually brought down the demo-
successfully for dramatic flair. Relatively scant cratic Weimar government.
archival material is cited: does little exist for the Gispen argues persuasively that inventors in-
University of Wisconsin Medical School, or was creasingly embraced language and ideological
the author not granted access? For events since turf that the Nazis also had claimed: that the sti-
1960 he relies almost entirely on interviews as fled elements in German society deserved eman-
primary sources; these are, of course, essential cipation, that economic planners needed to think
for institutional history, though they can be haz- in terms of autarky and protecting German na-
ardous. tional interests, and that there were distinctions
Histories of medical schools (and other insti- between creative and destructive forms of capi-
tutions) will continue to appear, often called into talism. Thus many engineers applauded Hitler’s
being by an anniversary. This rather peculiar 1933 seizure of power. Despite pressure from
specimen about Wisconsin, a near-antithesis to industrialists, the Nazi regime issued new patent
the familiar celebratory photo collection, helps codes and ordinances that firmly favored the
raise questions of what an institutional history rights of independent and employee inventors.
should or can be and about how the genre can Especially during World War II, Albert Speer
contribute to our understanding of science and and others instituted programs that encouraged
medicine in relation to their often perplexing and German (not Jewish or foreign) employees to de-
unruly settings. velop their inventive ideas and empowered the
STEVEN J. PEITZMAN state rather than the firm with calculating a fair
rate of compensation for creative inventors. Al-
Kees Gispen. Poems in Steel: National Social- though these codes were stripped of racist lan-
ism and the Politics of Inventing from Weimar guage and Nazi ideology following 1945, their
to Bonn. xvi Ⳮ 356 pp., figs., bibl., index. New basic principles have remained in effect in the
York: Berghahn Books, 2002. $75 (cloth). Federal Republic of Germany ever since.
In his analysis of these events, Gispen is more
Amidst its pronouncements on political, racial, in tune with the issues of German historiography
and other issues, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf also than many historians of German science and
includes a few pages of significant comments technology. He effectively turns the notion of
about the creative potential of individuals and Germany’s “special path” on its head, for his fo-
the inventor’s role in society. According to Hit- cus is not the nation’s alleged lack of bourgeois
ler, industrial capitalism threatened to stifle the values but the Nazis’ ability to play a role as the
spark of individual creativity and invention; savior of the unprotected middle class. Likewise,
once in power, the National Socialist regime re- Gispen also demonstrates that the politics of in-
structured the patent system in ways that mir- vention tempered the regime’s purported ties to
rored this philosophy. In Poems in Steel, Kees the business elite. And for those who like to
Gispen traces this and many other examples of think of 1945 as a “zero hour” that signaled a
the “politics of inventing” in Germany before, clear break from Germany’s Nazi past, Gispen
during, and after the Nazi years. The result is a forcefully argues that “continuity” best describes
sophisticated analysis of the interplay among in- a legacy of Nazi ties that could be found in the
ventors, engineering organizations, industrial patent code and its administrators for a genera-
firms, and governmental leaders that brings sig- tion to come.
nificance to a topic that could easily be over- Gispen deftly handles the disturbing realities
looked. of his subject. Indeed, some of the same engi-
Poems in Steel begins with the Patent Code of neers who brutally employed slave labor and
1877, legislation that clearly favored the Second condoned the Holocaust also strove to develop
Reich’s large industries. Indeed, the code dimin- fair and equitable compensation schemes for
ished the achievements of individual and inde- other inventors. Like historians of science who
pendent inventors to the point that the name of have looked beyond the simplistic dead end of
the inventor did not even appear on the patent “Aryan physics” to find significance in other as-
application. Although certain engineering and pects of Nazi scientific research, Gispen admits
chemical societies fought for inventors’ rights, that the Nazi regime left a “positive legacy . . .
industrialists countered with the argument that in the politics of inventing” (p. 8). These reve-
inventions developed on company time were the lations do not deny the fundamental barbarism

Plan for cooperative joint use of Bell telephone and Western Union telegraph lines in 1911 (from
Gregory J. Downey, Telegraph Messenger Boys, p. 141).
of the Nazi regime, but they do provide a fresh messenger service from the beginnings of the
perspective on the place that science and tech- telegraph industry in the mid-nineteenth century
nology have held in the tumultuous German past. to its post–World War II decline. His analysis
For these reasons and more, Poems in Steel de- focuses on the evolution of messenger service
serves a wide audience that encompasses both and the relationship between the Western Union
historians of science and German historians. Telegraph Company, the dominant company for
MARK FINLAY most of the period covered, and the American
District Telegraph Company (ADT), the first
Gregory J. Downey. Telegraph Messenger company to develop a large-scale urban message-
Boys: Labor, Technology, and Geography, delivery service. He also discusses the often-
1850–1950. xiv Ⳮ 242 pp., illus., figs., tables. complex and symbiotic relationship between the
New York/London: Routledge, 2002. $23.95 privately owned telegraph companies and the
(paper). United States Postal Service, which included ele-
ments of both competition and cooperation. The
Gregory Downey’s book, Telegraph Messenger work of the telegraph messengers in delivering
Boys, addresses a much-neglected segment of messages sometimes put them in direct compe-
the telegraph industry—the messengers who de- tition with the mail carriers, but at other times
livered telegrams to customers and who were the two services worked together cooperatively.
largely responsible for creating, in the public While the Postal Service was sometimes used for
mind, an image of the world’s first telecommu- delivery of telegrams, Western Union provided
nications network. While most previous schol- an early form of electronic mail delivery, Mail-
arship on the telegraph industry has dealt with grams, for the post office.
the operators, technology, and corporate history The term “geography” in the title is signifi-
of the business, Downey has taken a unique ap- cant: while the electrical technology of the tele-
proach in focusing on what would be called “the graph made it possible to transmit messages
last mile” in modern telecommunications ter- across the entire country, or even across the
minology. ocean, in a matter of minutes, telegrams still
Downey’s ten chapters cover the history, com- needed to be copied onto a paper form at the
position, and demographics of the telegraphic local telegraph office and delivered to the cus-

tomer. What Downey calls the “uneven geogra- rapid international growth of other German busi-
phy” of the national telegraph network (p. 37) nesses that also made use of the resources of
posed different challenges for message delivery Germany’s colonies. Hagenbeck built his fa-
in, for example, rural Iowa and urban New York mous Tierpark outside Hamburg in 1907, at the
City. He describes how the absorption of ADT’s end of his career. During the sixty years leading
intracity message-delivery system into Western up to the opening of this zoo and animal holding
Union’s intercity telegraph network played a key facility, capturing and trading exotic animals—
role in Western Union’s expansion in the 1870s particularly African fauna—formed the core of
and its eventual domination of the industry. the Hagenbeck business. The volume of wildlife
While the level of detail is admirable, the ed- that passed through Hagenbeck’s hands conveys
iting is somewhat uneven and there are occasional a sense of that business’s scope: between the
lapses in accuracy—as, for example, when West- 1860s and the 1880s he sold a thousand lions,
ern Union president William Orton delivers an three hundred elephants, and hundreds of tigers,
opinion ten years posthumously (p. 83). And the antelope, and camels. His financial success par-
author’s conceptualization of the telegraph sys- alleled that of German traders in other natural
tem as part of an “analog network” (p. 146), resources such as guano, sugar, and coffee. As
while appropriate in conveying the intercon- supply and demand for animals fluctuated, Hag-
nectedness and generative capabilities of the enbeck turned to other means of making a profit,
postal, telephone, and telegraph networks, could including organizing traveling anthropological
be misleading if taken out of context. The tele- “people shows,” developing methods for train-
graph system was, in fact, the earliest digital net- ing animals, and touring these trained animals in
work, technically speaking, and the superior sig- circuses.
nal resolution capability of the telegraph’s Savages and Beasts is the first book-length
Morse coding system made it possible for the history of the Hagenbeck company in English
telegraph network to cross the oceans and con- since Carl Hagenbeck’s autobiography was
nect the continents fully ninety years before the translated in 1909. In this lucid and detailed ac-
development of suitable amplifiers allowed the count, Nigel Rothfels focuses on three aspects of
analog telephone system to accomplish the same the Hagenbeck enterprise—animal catching,
feat. showing people, and the displays at the Tier-
The author concludes with some thoughts on park—and Hagenbeck’s role as an interpreter of
the decline of the telegraph industry, which he nature to the public in each of these realms. Hag-
attributes in part to its reliance on messenger de- enbeck’s animal catchers, for example, wrote
livery; he also discusses the evolution of mes- many popular books in which they portrayed
senger delivery service in the Internet age. All their work as more humane than hunting. Central
in all, Downey’s book is a much-needed work to the success of Hagenbeck’s displays of people
that fills a large gap in the literature on the and animals, Rothfels argues, was his claim to
world’s first telecommunications system and in- authenticity in representing the natural world. In
vites further scholarship on the subject. crude terms, authenticity meant that, compared
THOMAS JEPSEN with contemporary displays of indigenous peo-
ples, Hagenbeck’s shows were relatively un-
Nigel Rothfels. Savages and Beasts: The Birth scripted. His animals, unlike in zoos of the pe-
of the Modern Zoo. (Animals, History, Culture.) riod, were exhibited in groups, in settings with
xii Ⳮ 268 pp., illus., index. Baltimore: Johns rocks and shrubbery. These efforts won Hagen-
Hopkins University Press, 2002. $34.95 (cloth). beck support in academic circles—for example,
from anthropologists such as Rudolf Virchow—
The German animal dealer Carl Hagenbeck and they helped him craft an image of quality
(1844–1913) is best remembered as a designer and integrity for his company. Just as important,
of early twentieth-century zoo exhibits that re- these displays represented a natural world of or-
strained animals behind moats and hedges rather der and happiness that appealed to the ticket-
than in cages with bars. Zoo professionals today buying public.
often look back to Hagenbeck’s “panoramas,” as Rothfels’s project is to complicate two
he called them, as the point of origin for the nat- entrenched stories, the Hagenbeck company’s
uralistic style of exhibition that has become com- century-long portrayal of its founder as a simple
mon in zoos in recent years. friend of animals and the tale of progress told by
Hagenbeck’s displays, however, were only present-day zoo professionals who discount the
one product of an unusual enterprise that flour- efforts of their predecessors as amateurish. Roth-
ished in the late nineteenth century alongside the fels situates the Hagenbeck story in the larger

history of zoological parks, arguing that it pro- consciousness, that the general public now pos-
vides insight into present-day public ambiva- sesses a greater sense of history than ever before,
lence toward zoos and the stories about nature as shown by the (alleged) fact that more people
that they display. read historical materials than read novels. In-
Historians of science will wish that Rothfels deed, Lukacs predicts that the novel is giving
had explored more deeply the notion of authen- way to history as the dominant form of human-
ticity in representing nature and made more ref- istic expression and therefore the dominant form
erence to the secondary literature on the popular of cultivated human expression. Chapter 3 chal-
display of nature and peoples at fairs and in mu- lenges the value and cultural dominance of the
seums and films. That said, Rothfels has made scientific enterprise. Chapter 4 continues and il-
good use of the Hagenbeck company archives lustrates this theme by discussing the limits of
and of personal papers held by descendants of knowledge, objectivity, definitions, and mathe-
Hagenbeck’s animal collectors. Savages and matics and by defending contextualized (but not
Beasts should appeal to the broad audience for relativistic) claims over absolute claims. He cites
which it is intended. The book is a welcome ad- little of the huge recent literature on these
dition to the growing literature on the interpre- themes, however. In the final chapter Lukacs ex-
tation of nature and the relationship between hu- plains his claim that human beings are, in a
mans and animals in Western culture. sense, at the center of the universe. A reversal of
ELIZABETH HANSON the Copernican revolution (that harbinger of
modern science) is the general idea. We need to
䡲 Recent (1950–) appreciate that our fallibility makes everything
we do human centered, writes Lukacs.
John Lukacs. At the End of an Age. x Ⳮ 230 pp., Lukacs is a self-described Burkean conserva-
table, index. New Haven, Conn./London: Yale tive—a reactionary rather than a conservative by
University Press, 2002. $22.95 (cloth). today’s political lights. As such, he is antipro-
gressive and a defender of traditional humanistic
John Lukacs is a respected historian of twentieth- expression. Writing as a philosopher, I can cer-
century politics and mass societies, especially of tainly agree that strong defenses of the humani-
the World War II and the Cold War eras. Among ties and the arts are badly needed, given today’s
his many books are also larger-scale reflections aggressive linkup of science and technology
on historical change. Historical Consciousness; with corporate capitalism and consumerism. Un-
or, The Remembered Past (Harper & Row, 1968) fortunately, his treatment of these matters is too
is a history of history and of the evolution of ill informed to have any purchase on the uncon-
historical consciousness, and The Passing of the verted.
Modern Age (Harper & Row, 1970) and The End In the introduction Lukacs characterizes his
of the Twentieth Century and the End of the book as “an essay, without scientific or scholarly
Modern Age (Ticknor & Fields, 1993) advance presumptions” (p. ix), but that does not stop him
his version of the thesis that the modern age is from rendering many self-assured, even harsh
over. The book under review is a late-career, judgments, and his longest chapters are about
highly personal work that draws heavily on his science. Despite his central theme of the evolu-
previous books—indeed, quotes from them ex- tion of historical consciousness, he shows no ap-
tensively. As such, I had hoped that, at the end preciation for the revolution in consciousness
of an age, it would be “the best of John Lukacs.” within history of science. For example, he dis-
Unfortunately, that is not the case. There are misses Thomas Kuhn, one of the principals in
good moments, to be sure, but also disappoint- that transformation, with “Enough of this”
ments and even irritations. (p. 103), partly on the basis of his own misquo-
Chapter 1 recapitulates Lukacs’s thesis that tations and gratuitous misinterpretations in
the modern age is over. For Lukacs the modern which he confuses Kuhn’s own position with the
age is “the Bourgeois Age . . . the Age of the views of those whom Kuhn is attacking. Lukacs
State; the Age of Money; the Age of Industry; is equally dismissive of social history of science
the Age of the Cities; the Age of Privacy; the and, while denying that he is an idealist, favors
Age of the Family; the Age of Schooling; the something like intellectual history and biography
Age of the Book; the Age of Representation; that expresses the power of mind and free will
the Age of Science, and the age of an evolving over materialistic determinism. He vehemently
historical consciousness” (p. 15)—all now in de- rejects determinism as a “positivist” error while
cline except for the last two. Chapter 2 asserts assuring us that Darwin was not original, since
that we have entered a new phase of historical his achievement was “predictable” (p. 119)—in

fact, a “more or less predictable . . . result of the may have ended with Andrei Dmitrievich Sak-
evolution of human consciousness (again: Sci- harov. For about 150 years Russian society bred
ence being part of history and not the other way a caste of intellectuals whose raison d’être was
around)” (p. 120). He cites William Whewell as to revolt in idealistic pursuit of highly moral
a “biologist . . . forerunner” of Darwin (p. 91). goals against the social order that ensured their
Lukacs writes as though historians of science own privileged status and existence. With their
are still engaged in hero worship, and he thinks contribution, that order was broken twice during
it arrogant of scientists themselves even to seek the last century. The first revolution undermined
laws of universal validity or to search for extra- their position, yet the intelligentsia phenomenon
terrestrial life and intelligence. Yet he does not managed to revive in later Soviet society. The
hesitate to assert that God-created human beings second revolution, at the century’s end, seems—
are the most complex creatures in the entire uni- at least for now—to have leveled their social
verse or to engage in hero worship of his own— condition more thoroughly into a “normal,” “civ-
for example, of Goethe and Cardinal Newman. ilized,” or “democratic” state of affairs, in which
His favorite humanists are obviously far more intellectuals en masse entertain higher principles
original than any scientist. insofar as this does not contradict the basic foun-
Curmudgeonly defenses of the humanities are dations of their own well-being.
surely welcome to this usually generous re- Born in 1921 and graduated from Moscow
viewer, but Lukacs’s book does not succeed. We University’s physics department in 1943, Sak-
may be living in a postmodern age, but many harov belongs to the intelligentsia’s Soviet gen-
general intellectual readers (and not only aca- eration. His studies in theoretical physics were
demics) will still prefer novel insight and evi- interrupted in 1948 with the recruitment of his
dence and argument, however critical, to repe- graduate advisor, Igor Tamm, to help the H-
tition of one-sided assertions. bomb effort. As members of the Tamm group,
THOMAS NICKLES Sakharov and Vitaly Ginzburg made two crucial
suggestions that helped the Soviet team to beat
Gennady Gorelik. Andrei Sakharov: Nauka i their American rivals in testing the first ther-
Svoboda. 512 pp., illus., bibl. Izhevsk: R&C Dy- monuclear bomb in August 1953. That year Sak-
namics, 2000. harov became the youngest scientist ever to be
elected to full membership in the Soviet Acad-
Richard Lourie. Sakharov: A Biography. xiv Ⳮ emy of Sciences. Until 1968 he worked in a re-
465 pp., illus., bibl., index. Hanover, N.H.: Bran- mote secret laboratory on the design and im-
deis University Press, 2002. $30 (cloth). provement of nuclear weapons. The recipient of
a string of the highest government honors, he
The cultural tradition of the intelligentsia—“the regretted the diversion from fundamental phys-
largest single Russian contribution to social ics but found higher satisfaction in the feeling
change in the world,” in Isaiah Berlin’s words— that the weapons work was morally important,
contributing to the preservation of world peace,
deterrence against the superior U.S. nuclear
threat, and the prevention of further Hiroshimas
and Nagasakis.
Starting with a 1958 article on the environ-
mental dangers of radioactive fallout, Sakharov
increasingly devoted his attention to social top-
ics. His expertise helped bring about the 1963
Moscow treaty that banned all but underground
nuclear tests. As the politicians did not always
follow his other advice, Sakharov became more
critical of the Soviet regime’s failure to satisfy
its own—and his—ideal image. Relying on the
high social and moral standing of science in
Soviet society, he applied his authority to issues
Andrei Sakharov, Soviet physicist and activist,
beyond his direct professional expertise, petition-
speaking at the First Congress of People’s ing the government to continue de-Stalinization
Deputies, with Mikhail Gorbachev in the and pleading on behalf of victims of political
background (from Gennady Gorelik, Andrei persecution. His move from reformist insider to
Sakharov, p. 65). open critic occurred around 1968, the time of

international rebellion against the Cold War or- for professional historians as well. Richard
der. While the death of Martin Luther King did Lourie, writing as an American journalist in the
not stop the movement toward civil rights in the genre of political biography, gravitates toward
United States, the Soviet regime managed with explaining Sakharov’s character in terms of his
only limited repression to frustrate demands for family upbringing, with roots leading back to the
further democratic reforms. As one of the leaders old Russian intelligentsia. His account is par-
of the dissident movement, Sakharov continued ticularly impressive on the psychological side,
to act and argue courageously in defense of le- empathizing with Sakharov’s struggles and
gality and human rights. The struggle cost him thoughts and paying close attention to his life in
many of his former privileges but was recog- politics and as a family man. The author’s atti-
nized internationally in 1975 by the Nobel Peace tudes and outlook are close to Sakharov’s own
Prize. Hardest to bear, however, was the feeling at the end of his life, as expressed in his Memoirs
of hopelessness: arrests and exiles of fellow dis- (Knopf, 1990), which Lourie translated into En-
sidents were increasingly reducing the move- glish. Gennady Gorelik writes as a historian of
ment to defending the rights of the defenders science within the established Russian/Soviet
themselves. tradition of science popularization. He sets Sak-
In early 1980 Sakharov’s protest against So- harov’s biography in the historical context of So-
viet intervention in Afghanistan’s civil war viet physics and provides enlightening but non-
prompted the government’s decision to exile him technical discussions of his contributions to both
to the city of Gorky, where he lived with his nuclear weapons design and fundamental theo-
wife, inaccessible to foreign correspondents and retical physics. Placing less emphasis on the
other visitors except for occasional colleagues family tradition, he explains the formation of
from the Physical Institute of the Academy of Sakharov’s character largely through reference
Sciences. Practically all expression of open op- to the uninterrupted tradition of the Russian sci-
position was silenced in the country, yet the feel- entific intelligentsia. This too is traced to its pre-
ings driven underground continued to spread. revolutionary roots: through Tamm, Sakharov’s
The accumulated energy broke loose after Mik- teacher in life and science, to Leonid Mandel-
hail Gorbachev came to power and resumed stam, Tamm’s academic mentor and role model.
democratic reforms in the late 1980s. The The books’ weaknesses are related to their
changes from above came fifteen years too late, strengths. Lourie feels somewhat uncomfortable
since in the meantime the intelligentsia had be- about his hero’s long-held socialist mentality
come irreparably alienated from the regime and and ideals, which he mentions briefly but is
its values. After returning from exile in late afraid or unprepared to discuss seriously as an
1986, Sakharov became the moral leader of the important cause of Sakharov’s idealist rebellion
growing democratic opposition to Communist against the Soviet political establishment. Gore-
Party rule. Facing a hundred-thousand-strong lik takes for granted the view that science and
demonstration outside the Kremlin walls, Gor- scientists are natural sources of moral authority
bachev finally agreed to satisfy Sakharov’s call and allies of freedom, which, as a basic corner-
to remove from the constitution the article pro- stone of the intelligentsia’s peculiar worldview,
claiming the Communist Party “the guiding should belong to the explanandum rather than
force of Soviet society.” This crucial concession the explanans. Investigating these two additional
came two months after Sakharov’s sudden death aspects of Sakharov’s beliefs and life story will
from heart failure in December 1989, at the time bring us closer to understanding the specific phe-
when he had started drafting a new constitution nomenon of the Soviet intelligentsia. However,
of the Union of Soviet Republics of Eurasia. The this may require (or lead to) a new understanding
revolution driven by the intelligentsia proceeded of still-too-recent Soviet history and experience
much further on its own momentum, destroying in general, the time for which may not yet have
the Soviet Union itself along with the society and come.
culture that had allowed scientists and intellec- ALEXEI KOJEVNIKOV
tuals to speak from a position of moral and po-
litical authority. Tian Yu Cao (Editor). Conceptual Foundations
The two books under review are not exactly of Quantum Field Theory. (Based on papers pre-
academic biographies: they aim at a much sented at the Center for Philosophy and History
broader range of readers, though in rather dif- of Science, Boston University, 1–3 March
ferent ways. Each succeeds admirably on its own 1996.) xx Ⳮ 399 pp., illus., figs., indexes. Cam-
terms; their strengths complement each other, bridge/New York: Cambridge University Press,
and they provide extremely informative reading 1999. $100.

This book is a collection of about thirty talks and to follow philosophical implications. For exam-
discussions, enriched by some nice photographs, ple, S. Treiman, in his role as chairman of a dis-
from a two-day symposium followed by a one- cussion session, mentions the relative ontology
day workshop at Boston University in March in the experimental interpretation of quantum
1996. The organizers, philosophers and histori- mechanics and then begins the discussion with
ans, intended the meeting as an in-depth analysis questions like: “Does relativistic QFT introduce
of the foundations of quantum field theory, es- really distinctive philosophical questions?” and,
pecially with respect to its philosophical impli- concerning “the question of virtual reality: Are
cations. real particles real when they are on the inside
In this respect the conference—at least so far somewhere in a Feynman diagram? And what
as can be judged from the proceedings—was not about quarks— . . . do they exist?” But then he
a full success. The volume is dominated by con- stops: “I’ll bite my tongue and try to stick to the
tributions from illustrious physicists, both theo- commentator role.” The ontology theme is taken
reticians and mathematicians, whose attitude is up in the contribution by Fritz Rohrlich. Al-
most clearly stated in the article by S. L. though—with D. J. Gross—one of the leading
Glashow: “Most physicists are too much con- proponents makes a strong case for string theory,
cerned with the phenomena they explore or the not omitting the encouraging whistling in the
theories they build to worry about the logical woods (that “we are living in revolutionary
foundations or historical origin of their disci- times”), his theme is not taken up and discussed
pline.” Among the ten groups of articles, the in depth, pondered with respect to the strength
headings of two may hint at questions outside or weakness of the philosophical and conceptual
physics: “Philosophers’ Interest in Quantum physical assumptions and prejudices it implies.
Field Theory” and “The Ontology of Particles In other talks, string theory is mentioned only
and Fields.”
as a possibility or as the “only hope in town.”
The rather restricted focus on physics does not
Mathematical physicists often have a hard time
mean that the volume does not contain interest-
explaining the relevance of their detailed work
ing and, sometimes, deep articles. It offers a
to phenomenologically oriented physicists, and
good survey—for example, in Steve Weinberg’s
“What Is Quantum Field Theory, and What Did even more to philosophers or historians. Never-
We Think It Was?”—of the methods and the theless, A. Jaffe offers interesting comments
directions followed today to solve the mysteries connected with what he calls “Wigner’s con-
of the particle spectrum and to understand the verse”: “we marvel today at the unreasonable
origin of the electroweak and strong gauge in- effectiveness of theoretical physics in mathe-
teractions as formalized in the standard model matics.”
and of the attempts to reconcile the quantum HEINRICH SALLER
methods for particles with the geometrical meth-
ods used in general relativity for space-time (i.e., Michael Novacek. Time Traveler: In Search of
to heal the old rift characterized by the attitudes Dinosaurs and Ancient Mammals from Montana
of Einstein and Bohr). Yet there is a long way to Mongolia. 352 pp., figs., notes, index. New
to go in the harmonization of space-time and York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2002. $26
matter concepts, as seen, for example, in Brice (cloth).
DeWitt’s “Quantum Field Theory and Space-
time—Formalism and Reality,” which talks The title of Nuala O’Faolain’s memoir Are You
about a space-time–dependent Schrödinger Somebody? (New Island Books, 1996) came
wave function, possibly in a nonlinear equation, from a question once asked the author. As Mi-
and its use for the “second quantization.” chael Novacek confidently launches into his life
In most of the essays the reader is left to guess story in Time Traveler, uninitiated readers might
the philosophical and conceptual attitudes of the ask the same question. His nebulous flirtation
authors—if they hold any at all. They are buried with rock music aside, Novacek has had an ex-
in the jargon of the working physicist or math- tremely successful career as an influential ver-
ematician. This is sometimes excessive—for ex- tebrate paleontologist, globe-trotter extraordi-
ample, in the renormalization group article by naire, and, most recently, Senior Vice President
M. E. Fisher and the quantum geometry article and Provost of Science at the American Museum
by A. Ashtekar and J. Lewandowsky—a for- of Natural History, overseer of the renovation
malized language that, I’m sure, most philoso- and display of the most famous and inspiring
phers and historians are not familiar with. Some vertebrate fossil collection in history. Novacek,
participants seem to be unwilling or afraid a charming and unassuming man whose modesty

Nesting oviraptorid (from Michael Novacek, Time Traveler, p. 301).
belies his accomplishments, truly is “some- more two-dimensional than those that we meet
body.” earlier. Depths and shades of human emotion are
What does he have to say? Time Traveler is not really plumbed in Time Traveler.
really a collection of fieldwork stories. Most Most successful scientists are good writers,
field paleontologists have a repertoire of strange and Novacek is no exception. There are places
tales, and Novacek is certainly no exception. The where the writing approaches riveting, and these
title of the book is a double entendre: profes- are most often found in the field stories. On the
sionally he is a time traveler, and the book is also other hand, resplendent natural beauty tempts
a time traveler, spooling chronologically through Novacek to wax poetic, but here (as for many of
his life. “Los Angeles,” he writes in the opening the rest of us) the result can be somewhat self-
paragraph, “is a particularly good place to be- conscious and stilted.
come a paleontologist” (p. 3), and to judge from “These recollections,” Novacek writes, “are
the empirical evidence—the number of accom- meant to show how a childhood of dinosaur
plished paleontologists from L.A.—he is right. dreams was transformed into a paleontological
The stories go from there to all over the American career” (p. 324). That being the case, this book
West, Latin America, Yemen, and Mongolia. ultimately takes its place alongside Roy Chap-
This makes for lots of rugged conditions, surreal man Andrews’s All About Dinosaurs (Random
experiences, and spectacular fossils. House, 1953) and Jack Horner’s (and James Gor-
Novacek appears not to be content just to man’s) Digging Dinosaurs (Workman, 1988) as
write a book of good field stories, however, and inspiration for potential paleontologists. The
he attempts throughout the book to weave in sci- best of such books should not be underrated; it
entific themes. Here he is a bit less convincing: takes considerable craft to portray the richness
the themes—plate tectonics, biogeography, and, of the life of a field paleontologist. In this sense,
to a lesser extent, evolution—are lightly treated Novacek may count himself successful; here is
and not particularly memorable. Paleontology a book that will surely inspire more than one
already has a reputation for typological ap- talented young student to pursue a career in pa-
proaches (Luis Alvarez famously characterized leontology. And this may turn out to be Nova-
it as “stamp collecting”), and Novacek does not cek’s most enduring accomplishment.
generate the same excitement for the great sci- DAVID E. FASTOVSKY
entific questions that he does for fossil collect-
ing. Ironically, in his own career he took on such Robert D. Ballard; Will Hively. The Eternal
questions directly and made important contri- Darkness: A Personal History of Deep-Sea Ex-
butions. ploration. xii Ⳮ 388 pp., frontis., illus., figs.,
Novacek is a deeply private man, and while bibl., index. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2000. $29.95 (cloth).
there is surely more to him than his “personal
attachment to rocks and bones” (p. 322), you Few scientists have received as much popular
won’t find it here. Indeed, La Brea Woman (a attention as the explorer and oceanographer Rob-
fossil) gets far more attention than does his wife. ert Ballard. His discoveries, using the Woods
Likewise, the individuals that we meet simply Hole Oceanographic Institution’s submersible
come and go as props in the stories, and, paral- Alvin and its unmanned robotic vehicle Jason, of
leling Novacek’s personal revelations, individ- the Titanic, the Bismarck, and ancient Roman
uals that are introduced later in the book are ships have received extensive media attention

worldwide. In this autobiographical account Bal- Ballard’s account also fails to recognize the
lard traces the history of deep-sea exploration, profound importance of the military for ocean-
devoting over half the book to his own famous ography and deep-sea exploration. He refers to
activities. the importance of military equipment for under-
Ballard begins by discussing early deep-sea water investigations but never properly inte-
explorers. After briefly describing the underwa- grates the role of military preparedness and na-
ter exploits of William Beebe, Jacques Piccard, tional security into the narrative. Since the early
and Jacques Costeau, he recounts efforts to de- 1940s, military objectives and patronage have
ploy submersibles to find a sunken nuclear sub- been central to virtually all work in oceanogra-
marine, the USS Thresher. Ballard then turns to phy. Oreskes’s recent work has demonstrated
the use of Alvin and other submersibles by sci- that Aluminaut and Alvin were built to assess
entists. In the late 1950s, when suggestions of deep-sea sound surveillance systems for tracking
seafloor spreading fostered increased interest in Soviet submarines and underwater ballistic mis-
bathymetry, scientists considered the possibility siles. In 1964, when Alvin came on line, its first
of making direct observations of the ocean floor. task was to ensure that a hydrophone system
In the 1970s Ballard and others, working in sub- remained in proper working order. Projects
mersibles, participated in the French-American FAMOUS and South Tow were not solely sci-
Mid-Ocean Undersea Study (FAMOUS) that entific investigations; they were designed to test
yielded dramatic photographic images of lava new forms of Navy sonar. By suggesting that
flows in the Mid-Ocean Ridge that “confirmed deep-sea exploration was an autonomous scien-
the theory of seafloor spreading, providing the tific activity, Ballard provides only one part of a
first systematic documentation of a crust-making much more complex story.
process that has global significance” (p. 153). Nor does Ballard address problems associated
Later work onboard Alvin resulted in a funda- with the visible scientist. He fails to explain his
mentally new scientific discovery: hydrothermal own shift from science to popular exploits in un-
vents and a community of organisms capable of derwater archaeology, nor does he examine the
existing by chemosynthesis. The book concludes consequences of popularization for the science
with a section entitled “Detachment: Using Re- and scientists involved, himself included. The
mote Controlled Vehicles to Gather and Distrib- Eternal Darkness may appeal to a general au-
ute Underwater Data Electronically”; it describes dience, but historians of science will be disap-
a breakthrough that, according to Ballard, will pointed.
enable underwater explorers to “leave the body RONALD RAINGER
behind” and make science more democratic
(p. 310). Mark L. Winston. Travels in the Genetically
Ballard’s study, although well written and re- Modified Zone. viii Ⳮ 280 pp., bibl., index.
plete with excellent photographs, holds little sig- Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University
nificance for historians of science. The historical Press, 2002. $27.95.
overview of deep-sea exploration contains noth-
ing that is original, and it is narrowly conceived Mark Winston has provided an excellent book
and driven by a sense of triumphalism. More se- for those interested in the interactions of science
rious is the author’s lack of attention to context. and society. Travels in the Genetically Modified
Developments in deep-sea exploration are not Zone is an astute commentary about genetically
examined in relation to contemporary scientific, modified organisms, a subject desperately need-
political, or economic concerns. Ballard offers ing a nonadvocatory overview.
only cursory treatments of bathymetry, seafloor Travels begins with a discourse on seeds.
mapping, and the revolution in plate tectonics Winston establishes a framework that presents
and in some cases focuses on the work of Alvin modification of crop seeds as a foundation of
and Woods Hole to the neglect of other scien- modern agriculture. He also establishes that
tists. Ballard and his colleagues may have been farming today is highly international in the de-
the first to see hydrothermal vents in 1977, but velopment and trade of both inputs and harvested
scientists from the Scripps Institution of Ocean- crops. It would be difficult to understand the
ography who participated in the South Tow ex- squabble over genetically modified crops with-
pedition were interpreting temperature anoma- out understanding the centrality of modified
lies at the Galápagos Rift as due to hydrothermal seeds and international flows of goods and ideas.
vents in 1974 (as Naomi Oreskes has shown in In subsequent chapters, Winston recounts his
her unpublished essay “From Hydrophones to interviews with and observations and readings of
Hydrothermal Vents”). the major protagonists in the debate. He traveled

widely to meet with staff scientists in the seed imagine that fire-and-brimstone condemners of
companies, activists with environmental orga- the technology will buy into his solution.
nizations, and regulators who knew that any de- Despite my wish for a more nuanced conclu-
cision they reached would result in litigation. sion, Travels will be of interest to scholars work-
Winston’s book is an enjoyable read because ing on contemporary issues of science and so-
of his clear exposition of both the personalities ciety. Its style of providing references for each
of people involved and the biology of prominent chapter but no footnotes for specific claims will
cases. He captures the scientific enthusiasm of annoy researchers seeking to extend the study.
scientists working for the seed companies, which Its readability, however, makes it eminently suit-
are increasingly parts of large companies origi- able for undergraduate and graduate seminars in
nally focused on chemicals and pharmaceuticals. history of science and technology, science and
Equally well, he portrays the fervor with which society studies, and environmental studies.
international environmental organizations such JOHN H. PERKINS
as Greenpeace have attacked the development
and use of genetically modified crops. Stanley Shostak. Evolution of Sameness and
Different chapters also explain famous inci- Difference: Perspectives on the Human Genome
dents of the campaigns. Winston leads us, for Project. xiv Ⳮ 342 pp., tables, bibl., index. Am-
example, through StarLink corn from Aventis, sterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999.
the canola farmer Percy Schmeiser’s legal defeat (Cloth.)
by Monsanto, the debated threats to the beautiful Readers of Isis will likely find this a curious
monarch butterfly from Bt corn, the plight of or- book. The subtitle is misleading as a guide to its
ganic farmers who utterly reject genetically en- contents, and only indirectly does the volume
gineered seeds, and the fear of genetic contam- deal with the Human Genome Project (HGP).
ination as a threat to the beauty and morals of Generally it is a set of reflections indebted to
rural England. These are all stories that have hit Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (Co-
the daily newspapers and various scientific jour- lumbia, 1994), and the general thesis of the work
nals. What Winston does that is so valuable is is to take issue with the predominance of models,
explain each one coherently. metaphors, and theoretical claims that assume a
Winston also provides a brief overview of the fundamental identity or similarity of living
legal landscape. He takes us from the 1930 Plant forms and processes. In this respect the work
Protection Act to the 1970 Plant Variety Protec- conducts an often thinly veiled polemic against
tion Act to the 1980 Supreme Court case Dia- several biological orthodoxies, including neose-
mond v. Chakrabarty. These provided the basis lectionist evolution, the concept of homology,
for patenting genetically modified organisms in the assumptions of gene identity between differ-
the United States. They also enabled the growth ent organisms, cladistics, and the assumptions of
of an industry that later successfully lobbied the much of the theory of molecular biology. Stanley
first President Bush to keep the United Nations Shostak, an invertebrate embryologist and his-
convention on protection of biodiversity a “vol- tologist, sets these arguments forth in five chap-
untary” agreement. ters. The first deals with the basic notions of
In the end, Winston reaches a clear but not sameness and difference in biology, using his-
terribly satisfying conclusion: the claims for torical data, often problematically, to develop
both risks and benefits of genetic engineering these points. Chapter 2 offers an analysis and
have been exaggerated. He has a powerful and critique of the “normal” science of contemporary
enduring faith that the truth lies somewhere in molecular biology. This is extended to a critique
the center, not at the extremes. He provides a of cladistics and its collaboration with molecular
brief sketch of a sensible way to resolve many biology through the use of degrees of genomic
of the scientific dimensions of the genetic tech- difference to determine taxonomic relationship
nology. and, ultimately, evolutionary ancestry. Chapter
I believe that he is correct on scientific 3 introduces alternative notions of difference in
grounds to head for the middle, but the unsatis- biology in opposition to these unifying claims of
fying part of his conclusion pertains to morals biological orthodoxy, using data from viral re-
and values. His book excellently portrays the search, RNA differences, classification, and
moral dimensions of the arguments over genetic other data that illustrate the fundamental differ-
modification, so how can he expect those who ences between living things. Chapter 4 continues
object on moral grounds to agree to a solution this theme into a discussion of theories of exo-
based in scientific proceduralism? It is hard to biology and theories of the origins of life, sup-

plying an overview of the theory of the original son: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.
“RNA” world and its alternatives. A final chapter $19.95 (paper).
then explores the alternatives of “evolution” and
“devolution,” with a defense of the latter as cap- In Japan, people say “Furuki wo atatamete atar-
turing the emergence of sameness from “redun- ashiki wo shiru”: by mulling over the past, one
can discover a new idea. For this reason, history
dant differences” in the nature of life (p. 237).
of science might be an important field even for
On the positive side, the book brings together
scientists. But it needs to be done correctly—
a good deal of literature on a wide array of top-
ideally, perhaps, in cooperation with scientists.
ics, from history of science to molecular genetics
This is not to say that historians of science
and contemporary debates on abiogenesis. As a
should just give way to scientists and accept their
professional biologist, the author moves easily
“biases.” It simply means that the gap between
through complex theoretical debates in genetics,
the highly technical language used by scientists
molecular biology, and developmental embry-
and the standard language used by the general
ology. The book also raises an important theo-
public often leads to much confusion and mis-
retical issue concerning the notion of “gene ho- understanding, and so historians need to make
mologies” that forms a primary assumption of sure that the information they give the public is
the work of the HGP that I find too little dis- accurate.
cussed. Unfortunately, the analysis does not at- One of the most important tasks for historians
tempt to situate these issues within a recognition of recent science has been to translate between
of the alternative definitions of genes in trans- these two sets of languages. Yet because in the
mission, populational, and developmental biol- past such efforts have often gone in only one
ogy that could provide some more satisfactory direction, with historians left to interpret highly
solution to this issue. technical scientific language on their own, the
The organizing theme of the book is a defense accuracy of historians’ accounts of science has
of “devolution,” as distinguished from neoselec- received serious criticisms from scientists. Sci-
tionist “evolution.” The latter is interpreted as entists are often under extreme pressure to pub-
relying too heavily on the concepts of homology lish their work in a timely manner within their
and sameness. Only by emphasizing the differ- scientific communities, so some may not want to
ences of living forms, from the level of whole spend the extra time it would take to explain
organisms to that of their most elementary con- their “sophisticated” work to the public. There
stituents, can some further advance in under- is, of course, a tradition for some senior scien-
standing be achieved. “Devolution” is proposed tists to write historical books on their own work
as a third alternative theory to neo-Darwinian se- for a general audience. The public should cer-
lectionism, along with complexity theory and tainly appreciate these efforts. But such books
chaos theory. are often criticized because historians of sci-
If I did find several of the general points made ence—and even scientists themselves—think
in this book to have some theoretical merit, I that the authors have a “bias” toward their sub-
found the arguments too polemical and over- jects or that they are simply trying to promote
stated. Historians will be surprised at some of their own work. Moreover, despite the authors’
the claims. Cuvier is considered to be the author best efforts, these books are sometimes still too
of the notion of unity of plan (p. 9); uniformi- technical for the general public to understand.
tarianism is attributed to the “profoundly reli- Perspectives on Genetics, edited by James F.
gious” Lyell (p. 17); Koch, Lister, and Pasteur Crow and William F. Dove, is unique in this con-
are identified as “19th century mechanists” text. It is a collection of essays originally pub-
(p. 42). Such examples can be multiplied. lished in the journal Genetics under the title
Through the book runs an uncritical commitment “Perspectives: Anecdotal, Historical, and Criti-
to a Popperian falsificationist methodology in cal Commentaries on Genetics.” Genetics is the
which the best science is assumed to progress official journal of the Genetics Society of Amer-
by positing alternative falsifiable hypotheses, ica, established in 1931. The society and the
“devolution” forming a principle example. journal have created a wonderful common
PHILLIP R. SLOAN ground for geneticists in the United States and
in many other countries. Yet among practicing
James F. Crow; William F. Dove (Editors). geneticists and evolutionary biologists, Genetics
Perspectives on Genetics: Anecdotal, Historical, has a reputation for being highly technical and
and Critical Commentaries, 1987–1998. xiv Ⳮ mathematical. The “Perspectives” section,
723 pp., illus., figs., tables, bibls., indexes. Madi- started in 1987, introduced fresh views into this

journal by expanding the common ground and with topics outside their specialties and for those
adding historical depth. who have never had a chance to interact with the
Crow and Dove, distinguished U.S. geneti- leading geneticists of the first half of the twen-
cists, selected authors for the essays in this sec- tieth century in order to learn about these topics.
tion of the journal in a sophisticated manner, tak- It is also a good reference book for historians of
ing their specialties into account. Variations genetics and biology. In reading through the en-
among the authors are great—they range from tire volume, historians will meet the history of
young to senior, from geneticists to historians of genetics in great depth. Historians will find those
science. The essays cover a broad range of issues essays by scientists an insiders’ guide to these
in genetics: there are scholarly reviews, obitu- topics, they can then analyze them in their own
aries, historical essays, biographical essays, and way. Most important, this volume is a first step
anecdotal essays. For example, Joshua Leder- in encouraging scientists and historians to col-
berg’s “Replica Plating and Indirect Selection of laborate and attempt to write accessible and
Bacterial Mutants” explains an important original essays for a broader audience. Such ef-
method he developed to test mechanisms of mu- forts should be promoted in the future.
tation in bacteria populations in depth. This TOMOKO Y. STEEN
method was later used by critics of the directed
mutation hypothesis to produce a counterargu- David Healy. The Creation of Psychopharma-
ment to it. The essay will be useful for young cology. 469 pp., notes, index. Cambridge, Mass./
geneticists who have not had a chance to work London: Harvard University Press, 2002. $39.95
on bacterial genetics. Since it is written in a con- (cloth).
cise manner for uninformed readers, it will also
be useful for anyone who is interested in learning Readers of David Healy’s three-volume block-
about a unique test for bacterial mutation mech- buster, The Psychopharmacologists (Arnold/Ox-
anisms. Crow’s “Twenty-five Years Ago in Ge- ford, 2000), will have plenty of confidence in his
netics,” an obituary for Motoo Kimura, is a sub- erudition, good judgment, and lucidity. His ex-
jective piece on one of his most successful positions of complex pharmacological issues are
students. Here, a subjective style effectively ad- marvels of clarity. Some of the best accounts
dresses readers who never met Kimura, helping from the previous work are summarized and up-
them to learn about him almost at a personal dated in this new book. Quite apart from their
level. Diane Paul’s “H. J. Muller, Communism, historical interest, many are excellent stories. A
and the Cold War” is a historical and biograph- latter-day Shakespeare could readily find mate-
ical essay that shows readers the political side of rial here for an entire cycle of plays. The char-
this well-known Nobel laureate. There are many acter and fate of Jean Delay, one of the discov-
more biographical essays, some of which treat erers of chlorpromazine (Thorazine), for
figures whose names will not be familiar to example, offer a cautionary tale reminiscent of
young geneticists and historians in the United Richard III.
States. The biographical sketch “Hitoshi Kihara, The Creation of Psychopharmacology is
Japan’s Pioneer Geneticist,” by Crow, gives in- therefore welcome in that it makes fascinating
formation not only on Kihara’s life but also on subject matter more readily available. Its main
the early development of cytogenetics in Japan. purpose, however, is to argue a case that has im-
Thomas Nagylaki’s “Gustave Malécot and the portant implications for us all, regardless of
Transition from Classic to Modern Population whether we are psychiatric professionals:
Genetics” is outstanding for its precision. Even namely, a case “for the possibility that marketing
today, only a few population geneticists know now determines culture” (p. 67). Healy suggests
and understand the details of Malécot’s work, that a psychopharmaceutical complex has devel-
which was written in French and is highly math- oped, perhaps analogous to the military-
ematical. Nagylaki patiently explains Malécot’s industrial complex so feared by liberals in the
work at great length. Essays on genetic meth- 1960s, that to some extent determines the psy-
odologies that changed the direction of the field chiatric diseases that we recognize, the treat-
are also important pieces. O. Smithies’s “Early ments that we approve, and the research agendas
Days of Gel Electrophoresis,” for example, viv- that we adopt. The argument depends on show-
idly documents the excitement and confusion ing in convincing detail that theories, therapies,
that surrounded the first uses of gel electropho- and areas of particular clinical concern have
resis. chopped and changed in a manner that often has
Perspectives on Genetics provides useful ma- had little to do with the scientific information
terial for young geneticists who are not familiar available at the time. Sometimes promising ideas

or clinically appropriate findings drop suddenly the most well-known series of fighter aircraft
out of sight, occasionally to pop up again years made anywhere in the world, was founded in
later, while inappropriate notions and practices 1939 by two young Soviet aeronautical engi-
can be found that have long outlived their sell- neers, Artyom Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich.
by dates. Moreover, as time has passed, it has The pair chose the three-letter “MiG” designa-
become increasingly obvious that these phenom- tion (a contraction of Mikoyan and Gurevich) as
ena may sometimes be driven by the marketing the name for their product line. Their choice was
strategies of drug companies. Whereas in the doubly inspired, in that by a stroke of coinci-
1950s and early 1960s there was a healthy reci- dence the word mig in Russian stood for “in-
procity between psychiatrists and the pharma- stant” (for example, v odin mig, or “in a twink-
ceutical industry, it is now apparent that the mar- ling”) and had long been commonly used to
keting tail can wag the entire dog. denote speed. In the decades that followed, their
Healy goes on to suggest that companies have bureau progressively evolved into a close-knit
been enabled by a range of circumstances to hi- entity in which senior management, the various
jack the randomized control trial, supposedly the design subgroups, and the flight-test staff came
gold standard by which the value of new thera- to interact almost as an extended family, with
pies is judged, and use it to sell expensive al- high morale and fierce pride in their organiza-
leged cures for a range of dubious “diseases.” tion’s products. By the time of the bureau’s fif-
Many of these “cures” are probably less effective tieth anniversary in 1989 these individuals, col-
than older and cheaper drugs, albeit sometimes lectively known as Mikoyanovtsy (or Migovtsy),
safer, while psychiatry has played its part by had achieved a place of rare stature in the Soviet
helping to label the merely nervous or deviant as aviation industry
ill and by failing to discriminate appropriately In MiG Aircraft since 1937, the British mili-
between genuine disease entities. All this is untary aviation popularizer Bill Gunston and the
likely to be due to any uniquely pernicious qual- Russian aircraft photographer Yefim Gordon
ities of the pharmaceutical industry, because have produced a remarkable contribution to the
analogous trends can be seen in connection with literature on Soviet aircraft that clearly shows
purely psychological treatments. An attempt is how the bureau rose to become synonymous
made in the final chapter to identify the under- with leading-edge fighter design in the USSR.
lying factors responsible; it is followed by a brief True to its title, the book offers only a fleeting
excursion into futurology that really belongs in history of the bureau itself, and it devotes no
a forthcoming book. attention whatever to the personalities, pro-
Whatever the validity of this indictment—and cesses, and politics that figured so prominently
certainly many aspects of it are true, even if one in that history. Yet it presents a unique cornu-
might quibble about the details of some of the copia of technical data, much of it hitherto un-
claims—the book performs two enormously known in the West, on the entire roster of MiG
useful functions. First, it provides a marvelous aircraft, from the MiG-3, the bureau’s first mass-
demonstration of how the course of an applied produced fighter of World War II vintage,
science can be determined far more by the whims through the MiG-29 and MiG-31 of the later
of fashion, happenstance, and the marketplace Cold War years.
than by scientific rationality. Second, it shows Gunston and Gordon provide especially abun-
beyond reasonable doubt that clinical psychiatry dant detail on the MiG-15 of Korean War fame,
and commercial pharmaceutics have become far nicknamed the samolyot soldat (“soldier air-
too closely intertwined for the health of the for- plane”) for its rare maintainability and rugged-
mer and probably, in the longer term, for that of ness. That aircraft ushered the USSR into the jet
the latter as well. There are many people who age and vaulted the Mikoyan bureau into the pre-
will not like this message. Let us hope that they eminent position among Soviet fighter produc-
will be unable to ignore or subvert it. ers. The authors offer a similarly rich treatment
CHRIS NUNN of the subsequent series of MiG fighters, as well
as an interesting look at the many hand-built,
Bill Gunston; Yefim Gordon. MiG Aircraft one-of-a-kind MiG prototypes never meant for
since 1937. 288 pp., illus., app., index. Annap- production that were unique to the Soviet ap-
olis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1998. $59.95 proach to fighter development.
(cloth). With no overview or conclusion, the book is
more an encyclopedia than a narrative and does
The USSR’s renowned Mikoyan Design Bureau, not make for effortless reading by any stretch.
which for three generations turned out perhaps Yet it is not really meant to be read cover to

cover so much as to be perused as a reference mersed in the study of large-scale bureaucratic

volume replete with good photography. Not only institutions and have sampled much of the lit-
is it an exemplary treatment of the design, de- erature. NASA and the Space Industry shares
velopment, and flight testing of all Mikoyan air- many of the best qualities of the genre. Students
craft; it offers in the course of that coverage a de of post–World War II science and technology
facto survey of the bureau’s leading engineers policy in the United States will find it of great
and test pilots and their various achievements value. But they must be prepared to deal with a
from the most senior level down. In marked con- book that is not a traditional narrative.
trast to the assorted straphangers and Party hacks Using primarily printed sources, the author
who dominated the Soviet political system, these surveys the ever-changing patterns of NASA’s
quiet professionals showed every sign of being relations with its major industrial partners—
practical people with a high regard for their own Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the like. The pe-
abilities and a strong commitment to excel- riod covered is from the inception of NASA
lence—even, if it had to be so, within a political (1958) to the 1990s. This is a very complex story
system that severely stifled their initiative and that involves a large and fluid cast of characters.
creativity. The author thoughtfully supplies readers with a
Published in 1998, MiG Aircraft since 1937 kind of scorecard (pp. 10–13) that identifies the
came off the press just too soon to capture in industrial players (including name changes and
detail the unveiling and limited flight testing of mergers) as well as the components of NASA.
the abortive “Article 1.42,” the bureau’s long- Chronological divisions run from the founding
promised successor to the MiG-29 and the Soviet of NASA to the Challenger disaster, the fall of
Union’s planned answer to the U.S. Air Force’s the Soviet Union, and NASA’s more recent fo-
F/A-22. It also just preceded the bureau’s decline cus on the space shuttle and space station.
in the wake of the USSR’s collapse and its sub- What may trouble traditionalists most is the
sequent absorption by a succession of enterprises lack of a single thread or unifying factor of the
that retained the MiG name but little of the bu- sort found in biography or the study of scientific
reau’s former élan. That said, Gunston and Gor- ideas or technological processes. But this is not
don have produced a compendium with which that kind of history. The story twists, turns,
the principals of the once-vibrant Mikoyan De- moves forward and backward from point to
sign Bureau would be justly pleased. The authors point. At NASA, many projects were proposed,
offer no acknowledgments other than a passing discussed, and discarded. Others were started
note that they had access to bureau archival ma- and then dropped. A few, like the lunar landings
terial. Clearly, however, they benefited from and the space shuttle, were brought to fruition.
considerable help by knowledgeable members of How these aspects of the story play out is a key
the bureau’s senior staff. Thanks in large part to focus of the book.
that authoritative support, their book offers the The cast of characters is like that in a nineteenth-
most detailed and comprehensive compilation of century novel: large, rich, and diverse. This adds
MiG-related facts and anecdotes yet available in to the interest of the study and, occasionally, to
the West. the reader’s frustration. It is sometimes hard to
BENJAMIN S. LAMBETH keep all the players clearly in mind. Consider the
key players: First there is NASA itself, with its
Joan Lisa Bromberg. NASA and the Space internal tensions and rivalries in terms of de-
Industry. (New Series in NASA History.) x Ⳮ partments, individuals, and the eight R&D cen-
247 pp., illus., bibl., index. Baltimore, Md.: ters scattered from Alabama and Ohio to Cali-
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. $38.50. fornia. Then there is the rest of the federal
government. For NASA, this includes the De-
This is not a book for historians of science whose partments of Commerce, Transportation, and
concern is the world of ideas; nor is it a book for Defense, with its three (Army, Navy, and Air
students of the history of technology whose fo- Force) warring factions, as well as the executive
cus is on the process of discovery and fabrica- branch, which in addition to the office of the
tion. This is a study of political and economic president includes the Office of Management and
interactions between large-scale bureaucracies Budget, one of the least understood and most
and the role policy plays in these interactions. powerful agencies of the federal bureaucracy.
Joan Bromberg’s book is best located in the Let us not forget the president’s science advisor
scholarly traditions of political science, eco- and the various interagency committees that re-
nomic and business history, and organization port to the executive office. Then there is the
theory. In the past few years I have been im- aerospace industry, with old, established firms

and start-ups, all competing for NASA contracts, Proceedings of the 1998 Conference on the His-
striving to influence NASA’s decision-making tory and Heritage of Science Information Sys-
process, and warring against each other or join- tems shares the work of an interdisciplinary
ing forces to achieve specific goals. meeting that brought together both scholars and
At the heart of this study is the story of how practitioners interested in the history of scientific
the space industry was created from the complex information. Academics in library and informa-
interactions of this huge cast of characters. tion science, history and philosophy of science,
NASA moved from a heroic Cold War bureau- and communications at work on the historical
cracy that achieved John Kennedy’s goal of a and sociological aspects of science information
manned lunar landing in the 1960s to an agency system development and use are joined by li-
pressured by the Reagan and first Bush admin- brarians and science information pioneers whose
istrations to privatize its operations by giving the own histories include work with the many tech-
private sector control over design and production niques and technologies discussed throughout
of space hardware as well as ownership of the the volume.
product. This went on against the background of That the participants hail from several fields,
emerging commercial uses of space. Satellites and include both academics and practitioners, is
became functional and even profitable in such one of the strengths of the collection. Many of
areas as navigation, communications, and re- the authors make special efforts to avoid jargon
mote sensing. Just how NASA nurtured and then and internal disciplinary debates in favor of writ-
negotiated control of these activities with the pri- ing that can speak to a general reader. This clar-
vate sector is a key part of the story. But we are ity of presentation would be valuable in any
not allowed to forget that the process involved scholarly effort, but it is especially useful here
the executive branch and the Departments of De- in turning a conference proceedings into a useful
fense, Commerce, and Transportation as well. In compendium of readings about an emerging
this context, tensions between politics and poli- field. Nonetheless, readers from the history of
cies are also part of the story, and it was often science and technology will recognize subtle al-
the case that policy signals got lost in the noise lusions to ongoing debates within our discipline.
of bureaucratic infighting. While the book does not offer the same level
If one were to fault this work at all, it would of theoretical coherence as a volume in a more
be for the lack of a human dimension. People are developed subfield might, it is nonetheless well
mentioned, their activities chronicled, but we organized into several thematically consistent ar-
never get to know them as real human beings. eas. These include “History and Historiography
But then, there were clear limits on what could of Science Information Systems,” “Information
and could not be done under the NASA contract Retrieval in Science: The Technical Aspects,”
that guided the author. For those who argue that and “Science and Information: Some National
there is not enough about the input of the sci- Perspectives.” Likely to be of special interest to
entific community, the response is simple. That historians of science and technology are the
was not a theme of this book. Indeed, it is an- chapters detailing the history of the information
other story altogether. and indexing systems that scholars in our field
Bromberg is to be congratulated on her skillful work with in our own research—for example,
navigation of that ever-changing and stormy bu- the Science Citation Index.
reaucratic process out of which emerged the This book does its best work in showcasing
space industry in the United States. the richness of an emerging subfield in several
JOHN LANKFORD disciplines. With essays ranging from a study of
classified scientific communication in the Amer-
Mary Ellen Bowden; Trudi Bellardo Hahn; ican federal government to the history of Japa-
Robert V. Williams (Editors). Proceedings of nese library science to a history of microfilm
the 1998 Conference on the History and Heri- technology, this volume suggests to any scholar
tage of Science Information Systems. Foreword or student interested in scientific information
by Arnold Thackray. (ASIS Monograph Se- systems that there is enormous capacity for origi-
ries.) (Based on papers presented at the Confer- nal work to be done.
ence on the History and Heritage of Science In- JENNIFER S. LIGHT
formation Systems, 23–25 October 1998,
Pittsburgh.) xii Ⳮ 291 pp., figs., illus., tables, John Ziman (Editor). Technological Innovation
bibls., index. Medford, N.J.: Information Today, as an Evolutionary Process. (On behalf of the
1999. $39.50. Epistemology Group.) xviii Ⳮ 379 pp., illus.,

figs., tables, bibl., index. Cambridge: Cambridge volume is in fact dedicated to the late evolution-
University Press, 2000. $64.95. ary epistemologist Donald Campbell, although
its interdisciplinary center of gravity is the work
This collection of twenty-two papers by nineteen of historians and sociologists. Indeed, almost a
authors derives from a research program on the third of the chapters constitute something like
evolution of knowledge and invention under- historical or sociological case studies on, for ex-
taken by the “Epistemology Group” of London,
ample, Europe versus Japan (Ch. 7), Gothic ar-
directed by the noted scientist and science policy
chitecture (Ch. 9), Edison and the telephone (Ch.
scholar John Ziman. The issues involved were
11), bridge design and aeronautics (Ch. 13), edu-
debated in a series of seminars that began in
cation (Ch. 14), innovative enterprises (Ch. 19),
1994 and culminated in a workshop three years
and warfare (Ch. 20). Historians of technology
later. The result is an integrated (i.e., cross-
such as Walter Vincenti (Ch. 13) and Edward
referenced and nonduplicating) proceedings
Constant (Chs. 16 and 20) do much of the case
volume divided into five thematic sections:
study heavy lifting; historians of science and
“Evolutionary Theory,” “Innovation as Cultural
Practice,” “The Process of Invention,” “The In- those who might deal more with the epistemic
stitutionalization of Innovation,” and “General dimensions of technical change are conspicuous
Reflections on Technological Change.” by their absence.
As these themes indicate, crucial to the argu- The interests of the editor (who authors or co-
ment is an otherwise unanalyzed distinction, authors four chapters) permeate the book. Its ex-
traceable to the economist Joseph Schumpeter’s tended attempt to explain the extent to which the
work from the early twentieth century, between social selection of technological variation is
invention—the creation of new artifacts or pro- analogous to the natural selection of chance var-
cesses—and innovation—the economic devel- iations among organisms is undertaken not sim-
opment and exploitation of such artifacts or pro- ply as an academic exercise but in order to im-
cesses. As the volume’s title emphasizes, the prove social intelligence. Despite its limitations,
main interest here is innovation, not invention. “an evolutionary perspective—whether we call
But when evolution is described as the selective it an ‘analogy,’ a ‘metaphor’ or a ‘model’—is
retention of variations, technical invention pro- clearly a very fruitful way of [posing] practical
viding the variations among which various types questions and suggests useful answers for de-
of innovation “select” to produce technological signers, technology managers, policy makers
change, then innovation becomes the more in- and others in industry, government and acade-
clusive concept. The aim of the book as a whole mia” (p. 316). This interdisciplinary, cooperative
is to articulate more clearly than before the mul- analysis thus ultimately aims not just at schol-
tiple mechanisms of technological variation and, arship but at the increase of practical intelli-
especially, selection—historical, cultural, socio- gence.
logical, economic—and their interactions. Al- There are three qualifiers to my generally
though Charles Darwin began the Origin of Spe- positive assessment. One, the referencing system
cies (1859) with observations about how the is unnecessarily clumsy. Of the 631 notes, all but
artificial breeding of plants and animals leads to three simply give names and dates that then must
the evolution of new varieties, and numerous aube looked up in the bibliography. A whole step
thors from Karl Marx on have attempted to turn in the reading process could have been elimi-
the tables and use Darwin’s theory of natural se- nated by placing the relevant names and dates in
lection as a paradigm to explain technical parentheses in the text itself. Two, there are a
change, this volume constitutes the most inten- few significant works on technological evolution
sive effort to date. Yet the authors are perhaps that are not referenced, one of the most note-
even more at pains to note the manifold differ- worthy being Gilbert Simondon’s Du mode
ences between organic and technological evo- d’existence des objets techniques (Aubier,
lution—the most obvious being that with tech- 1958). Third, the proceedings could have been
nology neither variation nor selection is blind in measurably enhanced by a comprehensive
the same way that it is in the organic world— bibliographical analysis of previous contribu-
and thus the limitations of the paradigm. tions to the topic.
Scholars from at least four different disci- CARL MITCHAM
plines have attempted to utilize evolution as a
framework to explain various dimensions of Edward Teller; Judith Shoolery. Memoirs: A
technological change: epistemologists, histori- Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Poli-
ans, sociologists, and economists. The present tics. xii Ⳮ 640 pp., illus., app., index. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Perseus Book Group, 2001. $35 tional home) as a second nuclear weapons lab-
(cloth). oratory in the early 1950s, testified against
Oppenheimer, opposed the test-ban treaty, ad-
Legend has it that at a conference one physicist vocated antiballistic missiles in the 1960s and
told another: “If you’ve got a problem, Ed’s got the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) in
a bomb.” Perhaps more than any other scientist, the 1980s. In the book Teller curiously mini-
Edward Teller has been associated in the public mizes his role in the test-ban and ABM contro-
mind with the dark force of modern science and versies. On other matters, he largely confirms
technology as he aggressively pushed for various what has been reported in two previously pub-
nuclear weapons programs, notably the hydro- lished biographies based on interviews with him:
gen bomb and the Strategic Defense Initiative, Energy and Conflict, by Stanley Blumberg and
during the second half of the twentieth century. Gwinn Owens (Putnam, 1976) and Edward
While conservative politicians and military of- Teller, by Blumberg and Louis Panos (Scrib-
ficials adored him as an icon during the Cold ner’s, 1990). For example, he traced his political
War, many of his physicist colleagues and other differences with Oppenheimer to a conversation
scholars condemned him for fueling the nuclear they had in 1942, when Oppenheimer reportedly
arms race and especially for testifying against J. said, in reference to the Manhattan Project, that
Robert Oppenheimer in the latter’s security “the time is coming when we will have to do
clearance hearings in 1954. Now Teller tells his things differently and resist the military.” Teller
side of the story in a long-awaited memoir writ- was shocked and replied, “I don’t think I would
ten with the assistance of Judith Shoolery, a want to do that” (p. 163 in Memoirs; pp. 134–
book editor, now retired, at the Hoover Institu- 135 in Energy and Conflict). In the new book
tion of Stanford University, where Teller is a se- Teller explains further that “even today, I find
nior research fellow. The book is highly readable the idea of civil disobedience in a democracy
and adds more detail about his version of the wrong” (p. 379). It’s not clear whether he op-
facts but, despite its bulk, reveals little beyond posed and still objects to the civil rights move-
what we already know. ment for this reason.
Teller opens the book with a detailed and at ZUOYUE WANG
times moving description of his childhood and
youth in Hungary, where his Jewish family suf- Samuel P. Hays. A History of Environmental
fered at the hands of the Communists who briefly Politics since 1945. ix Ⳮ 256 pp., index. Pitts-
gained power in 1919 and from prevalent anti- burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000.
Semitism. In the 1920s Teller pursued chemistry $19.95 (paper).
at Karlsruhe Technical Institute in Germany on
his father’s advice but switched to theoretical A fuller title for this book might add the phrase
physics, his true love, briefly at Munich (where “in the United States, with special reference to
he lost his right foot in a trolley accident) and the federal government.” Since the 1950s Sam
eventually at Leipzig with Werner Heisenberg, Hays has explored the terrain of U.S. environ-
who became a lifelong friend. Teller completed mental politics, and he knows it as well as any-
his thesis on the energy states of the hydrogen body. Here he offers a capsule account of the
molecular ion, received his Ph.D. in 1930, and last fifty-five years’ worth, reviewing and up-
then headed for Göttingen as a research assistant dating matters that he explored at greater length
to a physical chemist at the university. With the in one of his landmark books (Beauty, Health,
rise of the Nazi menace, he moved to several and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the
places in Europe—Rome, Copenhagen, and United States [Cambridge, 1987]).
London—for long or short stays in the 1930s. The scope is relentlessly domestic. Like most
Gregarious by nature, Teller made friends with historians of the United States, Hays writes as if
many of the major figures in modern physics in Canada and Mexico did not exist. Even acid rain
this period. In 1935 he came to the United States is treated exclusively as a domestic political is-
as a professor of physics at George Washington sue. The chronological scope is mainly 1945–
University. 1997, although Hays does cast a glance back-
The rest of Teller’s career is well known: he ward in time wherever appropriate.
went to Los Alamos to work on the atomic bomb After a brief chronological survey of environ-
during World War II, left for the University of mental issues and politics in the United States
Chicago at its end, helped develop the H-bomb, from Amerindian times to the present (Ch. 2),
lobbied successfully for the founding of Liver- Hays adopts a thematic approach in which the
more (which became his new and final institu- entire postwar era appears as a whole. Fourteen

short chapters take up various themes, from the Christian C. Young. In the Absence of Preda-
politics of environmental technology to the man- tors: Conservation and Controversy on the Kai-
agement of policy implementation. Almost all of bab Plateau. 269 pp., illus., bibl., index. Lin-
them focus on politics and policy at the federal coln/London: University of Nebraska Press,
level. The best, in my opinion, is his chapter on 2002. $49.95, £37.95 (cloth).
antienvironmental politics. He rightly notes that
these forces are often ignored by environmental By the 1920s the Kaibab Plateau had become a
historians, which is absurd—but few except textbook example for two sciences: geology, be-
Hays have noticed. cause of the Grand Canyon; and biology, because
At two points in particular Hays offers dis- of its immense herd of mule deer. The two were,
cussions that will be of interest to historians of in fact, politically related, because in 1906 Pres-
science. The first of these is within the chapter ident Roosevelt had declared the entire plateau a
on antienvironmentalism, where he discusses game preserve, thus sparing the canyon from de-
what he calls “the science wars,” struggles by velopment. National park status did not arrive un-
various factions to claim that the weight of sci- til 1919. Shortly thereafter the deer population
ence is on their side. Then, in Chapter 11, he seemed to explode, from perhaps four thousand
assesses the emergence, evolution, and contri- to one hundred thousand, becoming the very par-
bution of environmental science in general, re- adigm of a wildlife “irruption.” The swarm posed
marking on its extraordinary growth. Curi- fundamental challenges both to conservation and
ously—to my mind—this discussion does not to the sciences on which conservationists puta-
include global change science, which is surely tively based their policies. The Kaibab deer was,
among the larger components of environmental in brief, the spotted owl of its day.
science, at least since the late 1980s. What happened—or, more correctly, what the
His most interesting conclusions come in various agencies, scientists, and popular media
Chapter 15, on the results of U.S. environmental thought happened and what they sought to make
policy and politics. He judges the greatest suc- of it—is the subject of this important and
cesses to lie in nature conservation and the elim- thoughtful study. It isn’t a pretty story. Everyone
ination of leaded gasoline, the greatest failures could agree that the swollen population of deer
to be the unwillingness to confront population exceeded what the Kaibab’s forage could sup-
growth and consumption habits. Hays regards port. But how this situation arose, what exactly
population growth as of fundamental importance it meant, whether it was in truth a crisis, and
in U.S. environmental history, but I do not think what one might do about it—on such matters
he makes a strong case for this notion. His treat- there was little consensus. There was scant
ment of population is slender (pp. 11–12, 16) agreement even about how many deer there
and offers no data at all. In summarizing (p. 233) were, much less how many the Kaibab might
he mistakenly says that since 1945 the U.S. support, and still less about how to massage a
population has grown “equally rapidly” as the bouncing population in a landscape subject to
economy (if that were true, per capita income wild climatic swings. Ecology, game manage-
would be the same today as in 1945). His general ment, the concept of carrying capacity, tech-
conclusion, that the impact of environmental niques for estimating populations—all seemed
concern on U.S. politics has been “modest, se- to promise science-based formulas for analysis,
lective, and incremental, rather than comprehen- but they collapsed in the field, often proving to
sive” (p. 234), is about right; no one open to be little more than metaphors. Management fell
persuasion is likely to believe otherwise after to politics, itself deeply divided between the For-
reading the book. est Service and National Park Service, the Ari-
A History of Environmental Politics since zona Game Commission, the Biological Survey,
1945 has no footnotes. Hays refers the reader to the ranching and tourist industries, and environ-
his 1987 book and to documents deposited in the mental groups with their special access to pop-
Archives of Industrial Society at the University ular media. The “facts” of the Kaibab deer
of Pittsburgh. But he does provide sixteen pages proved as elusive as the herd.
of annotated bibliography. The prose is clear and Every group spun the events to its own pur-
serviceable, not flashy. The book will not attract pose, resulting in a menagerie of political para-
readers for its style, but it offers a considered, bles, ever-simplifying diagrams, and anecdotal
comprehensive account of its subject, with numbers. Surely the deepest casualty, however,
greater insight into the political process than any was the naive belief that science could solve the
other book in the field. problem. It was never even clear that the “prob-
J. R. MCNEILL lem” was scientific. Rather, it was about val-

ues—aesthetics, ethics, economics—among ular influences on scientific knowledge produc-

which politics alone could decide. Eventually the tion, such as feminism.
deer herd declined. In 1970 Graeme Caughley Miriam Solomon’s Social Empiricism falls
published in Ecology a damning critique of the into the first category, although she is also influ-
“Kaibab story,” and with the deer no longer enced by feminist theories. She believes that, at
scouring imaginations as they browsed, the best, truth in scientific theories can be known
“problem” went away. only in hindsight. Hence she sets out to develop
The strength of the book is that it lays out in a method by which empirical success in science,
grinding detail just how the situation evolved. which she takes to be a central indicator of truth,
Christian Young’s style, with one declarative can be both measured and normatively evalu-
sentence following another, is ideal for convey- ated. To do this—and this is what will be of
ing the numbing confusion that resulted as one most interest and relevance to historians—Sol-
inadequate survey succeeded another and one omon suggests that philosophers apply what she
flawed idea stumbled after the next until an ar- calls “whig realism” to their interpretations of
tificial clarity was imposed. Yet at times the text historical accounts of scientific change. Like
hovers close to the imitative fallacy, as though whig history, whig realism evaluates past theo-
it must recapitulate (not simply explain) the state ries in terms of the present; however, in Solo-
of misunderstanding. It needs an occasional Ho- mon’s social empiricist version of whiggism,
meric period or Ciceronian peroration to make there is a slight modification of the premise. In
this muddle into a narrative. Just as the Kaibab keeping with a naturalistic orientation to epis-
story is about politics, not fact-based science, so temology that values empirical investigation
its history is about art, not citation-based social over theoretical constructs, past theories are
science. evaluated according to the empirical success
In the Absence of Predators deserves a wide they enjoyed during the time that they existed;
audience. It challenges naive confessions of sci- however, that success is explained from a whig
ence and creeds of environmentalism much as perspective. For example, the success of a sci-
the higher criticism did simple religious faith. entific theory that was once popular but that is
Interestingly, what worked best on the Kaibab now consigned to the scrap heap can be ex-
were annual winter counts undertaken by repre- plained by the axiom that “there is some truth in
sentatives of the major agencies. The numbers the theory.” In other words, even though theories
they tallied were suspect, but the camaraderie from the past might have been wrong, if they
produced by working on a common problem were accompanied by significant and robust em-
helped make possible the political compromises pirical success we can, because we have access
on which regular management depended. That’s to subsequent theorizing, see what it was that
not a bad model for historians. made them so compelling to earlier scientific
STEPHEN J. PYNE communities.
Naturalized social epistemologies such as so-
䡲 Sociology & Philosophy of Science cial empiricism aim to reconceptualize episte-
mology as an empirical discipline to be ap-
Miriam Solomon. Social Empiricism. xi Ⳮ 189 proached with the methods of natural science. To
pp., notes, refs., index. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT that end, Solomon advocates a form of multi-
Press, 2001. $32 (cloth). variate analysis of theoretical change that is de-
signed to measure the distribution of research
At some point in the intellectual history of sci- effort in a scientific community. She uses written
entific belief, we invented a space between tra- accounts of historical controversies as her raw
ditional epistemology, which focuses on ration- data, mines them for factors that influence the
ality, truth, and cognition, and conventional direction of theory choice, extracts these factors
sociology of knowledge, which focuses on so- and lists them, and then assigns a positive or neg-
cial, institutional, and historical contexts of ative value to them depending on whether they
knowledge. Theorists rushed in. As it now favor or disfavor a particular theory choice. In or-
stands, social epistemology, as this new space der not to reproduce the internal/external and cog-
has come to be known, counts among its mem- nitive/social dichotomies that characterize older
bers scholars who retain a primary interest in epistemologies, Solomon separates influencing
truth and its justification, those that are more factors into what she calls empirical and nonem-
concerned with the general social norms that in- pirical decision vectors. Empirical decision vec-
fluence the development of distinct patterns of tors cause preferences for theories with empirical
belief, and those that concentrate on very partic- success, while nonempirical decision vectors in-

clude all other reasons for choosing one theory but also because Merton’s program starts with a
over another. Typically, though not wholly, em- detailed analysis of the limitations of Mannheim-
pirical decision vectors relate to data and non- ian sociology of knowledge.
empirical decision vectors relate to ideologies, Part 2 covers in more detail the sociology of
psychologies, and values. If, when all has been scientific communities as seen through Merton’s
plotted and added, the numbers indicate that em- norms and T. S. Kuhn’s paradigms, while Part 3
pirical decision vectors have been distributed eq- looks at social stratification, work organization,
uitably between competing theories, and nonem- and networks. Part 4 is more philosophical and
pirical decision vectors have been distributed focuses on conventionalism, centering the anal-
equally, then it can be said that the scientific com- ysis on Pierre Duhem’s thesis while also dis-
munity has been ideally normative. cussing Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend. Fi-
While Social Empiricism may be of crucial nally, Part 5 discusses problem choices in
interest to other like-minded social epistemolo- science and the emergence of specialties, as well
gists, it is unlikely that this quasi-quantitative as the social construction of facts.
method will be preferred by historians over well- Generally speaking, Michel Dubois’s choices
argued, reflexive, rigorously documented, nar- of topics reflect a fair presentation of the diverse
rative interpretations of scientific change. traditions; he does not try to diminish the value
ANNE GATENSBY of one to the profit of another, though I do per-
ceive a bias against the constructivist school and
Michel Dubois. Introduction à la sociologie des a leaning toward a classical rationalism repre-
sciences et des connaissances scientifiques. x Ⳮ sented in France by the sociologist Raymond
321 pp., tables, apps, indexes. Paris: Presses Boudon (who, by the way, receives too much
Universitaires de France, 1999. Fr 139 (paper). credit here, for he never really contributed to the
sociology of science). One virtue of the book is
In the English-speaking world, there are as yet that it gives due credit to the role of Gerard Le-
no general introductions to the sociology of sci- maine and Benjamin Matalon, who did impor-
ence. We find “advanced introductions” that tant work in the 1970s and whose contributions
concentrate on one approach, but no overall view have, curiously, been erased from the “Anglo-
from which one could measure the evolution of Saxon” view of the field since the 1980s. These
the field from, say, Émile Durkheim and Marcel details have some importance in light of the fact
Mauss’s famous 1903 paper on primitive forms that textbooks are also a way of presenting an
of classification to contemporary research in the “official history” of the field to newcomers, who
sociology of scientific knowledge, including learn what we want them to know and remain
Max Scheler’s and Karl Mannheim’s philosophi- ignorant of what is left out of the table of con-
cally oriented sociology of knowledge and Rob- tents.
ert K. Merton’s empirical analysis of scientific As a faithful disciple of Boudon, his thesis
communities. It is no small paradox that such a advisor, Dubois has difficulty understanding
textbook comes from a country in which the so- Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the scientific field,
ciology of science is a specialty much less de- which, he says, is based on a “psychology of
veloped than in the Anglo-Saxon world. For ob- scientists.” For Bourdieu, the so-called strategies
scure reasons, four introductions to the sociology and interests of actors are dictated by a practical
of science were published in France between sense (the habitus) that has nothing to do with
1995 and 2000, despite the fact that few courses psychology or with consciously calculating the
in this field are offered in the republic. Two are odds of an event but more with a sense of play,
short (128 pages each), and two are more sub- like hitting or catching a ball in a baseball game.
stantial (more than 300 pages). The weakest part of the book is certainly its ten-
Whatever the reasons for this editorial surge, tative explanation of the success of the construc-
the book under review offers a general introduc- tivist view of science. Following the lead of
tion to the field. It is divided into five parts. The Boudon, Dubois suggests that this success can
first is a chronological overview that briefly be explained simply by invoking general social
presents Durkheim, Hessen, Scheler, Merton, factors like the fact that relativists’ values are
Kuhn, Barnes, Bloor, Collins, Knorr-Cetina, La- consonant with the dominant trend of modern
tour, Lynch, Mulkay, Law, and Lemaine. It is societies—as if there were no good conceptual
surprising to note the absence of Mannheim, reasons for the success of relativism. The prob-
who should have been given more prominence lem is that an explanation in terms of “values”
than Scheler—not only because he will reappear is too simplistic, vague, and borders on the tau-
in the 1970s in the context of the strong program tological. Though the social context obviously

must be taken into account, Dubois should at history of science will not generally find any in-
least have added that there are good “internal” dication of scientific texts written by university
(or cognitive) reasons for this success, like the teachers or of the textbooks adopted for specific
fact that the constructivist/relativist approach has courses. On the other hand, they will find biblio-
raised new questions that revitalized the way we graphical indications of debates, comments, and
look at the practice of science. news about courses. In fact, the principal aim of
Despite these caveats, this work can serve as the volume is to provide a useful database for
a useful textbook for an introductory course in historians specifically interested in the Italian
sociology of science. But we must first hope that universities as institutions. Of course, the impli-
such courses will be offered more frequently in cations of the history of institutions for the his-
the French university system. tories of culture, education, and science are im-
YVES GINGRAS portant, so the book will be useful for a larger
number of scholars. In particular, the role of uni-
䡲 Reference Tools versities in the political and social development
of the Italian national state after its constitution
Ilaria Porciani; Mauro Moretti (Editors). was very significant in many different aspects,
L’università italiana: Bibliografia 1848–1914. including the development of the various disci-
(Biblioteca di Bibliografia Italiana, 172.) x Ⳮ plines, the creation and expansion of the ruling
217 pp., indexes. Florence: Leo S. Olschki Edi- classes, and the tension between trends toward
tore, 2002. $26 (paper). national unification and those toward local dif-
ferentiation.
This book provides a list of bibliographical ref- Two other books are closely connected to this
erences regarding Italian universities from 1859 one. The first, L’università italiana: Repertorio
to 1914. It also includes an introduction by the di atti e provvedimenti ufficiali, 1959–1914, by
editors, an author index, and a subject index. The Ilaria Porciani (Olschki, 1992), includes refer-
period considered begins in 1859, the year in ences to official documents regarding Italian uni-
which the temporary governments of the old Ital- versities in the same period. The second,
ian states initiated new policies for universities L’istruzione universitaria (1859–1915), by Gig-
in expectation of the creation of a unified na- liola Fioravanti, Mauro Moretti, and Porciani
tional state, which would come into being in (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali,
1861. Significant items for the years from 1848 2000), is the fifth in a series of books regarding
to 1858 are also included. The end of the period the sources on the history of Italian education
is marked by the beginning of World War I. that are stored in the Archivio Centrale dello
The list contains 4,423 items. They relate not Stato. Unlike the Bibliografia and the Repertorio
only to the five “faculties” that during the period of official documents, L’istruzione universitaria
in question constituted the Italian university in does not include a list of sources but presents a
the narrow sense (i.e., “giurisprudenza” [law], selection of documents.
“medicina” [medicine], “lettere e filosofia” These three books, both individually and
[humanities], “matematica e scienze naturali” taken together, provide a useful tool for the study
[mathematics and natural sciences], and, until of significant events in the history of the Italian
1873, “teologia” [theology]), but also the so- university system. Among numerous examples,
called superior schools, which later became the we can consider the attempt at reform carried out
nuclei of the new faculties of Italian universities. by the physicist Carlo Matteucci when he be-
The items listed in this bibliography are gener- came a senator and then, at the end of March
ally books or articles that appeared in periodi- 1862, a government minister. That attempt pro-
cals. The journals considered are of three kinds: voked a strong reaction in the academic com-
significant periodicals focused on culture and munity and largely failed. In the Bibliografia
politics, either from a general viewpoint, such as there are thirty-eight records regarding Mat-
the Rivista dei Comuni Italiani [Journal of Ital- teucci in the years 1861–1867, including letters
ian Towns], or from a particular viewpoint, such and reports that he wrote or that were written to
as La Civiltà Cattolica [Catholic Civilization]; him, speeches in Parliament, contributions to
periodicals focused on specific scientific disci- journals, and collections of writings. The first of
plines; and periodicals focused on the problems these documents is the important “Relazione
of the university. e progetto di legge per il riordinamento
All the references in the Bibliografia pertain dell’istruzione superiore” [“Report and Draft
to the debate on Italian university education in Law for a New Organization of Higher Educa-
the period considered. Readers interested in the tion”], presented in June 1861, a few months af-

ter the institution of the kingdom. The Reperto- Clifford M. Nelson (Editor). Records and His-
rio notes sixteen items regarding Matteucci, tory of the United States Geological Survey.
including decrees, circulars, and the important (USGS Circular 1179.) Reston, Va.: U.S. Geo-
law of 31 July 1862. References to Matteucci are logical Survey, 2000. CD-ROM. Free.
also frequent in the documents presented in
L’istruzione universitaria. For instance, a letter We all know how expensive and time consuming
archival trips can be, especially if one is pros-
written in July 1862 by the mathematician Luigi
pecting and not yet in sure possession of a schol-
Cremona, who would become a government
arly mother lode. It is therefore very useful and
minister in 1898, is very enlightening about the
economical to have an index of accessioned doc-
debate over Matteucci’s policies toward univer-
uments (in easily portable form) to peruse before
sities.
arriving at the archive. Clifford Nelson of the
This book was published in the series “Bibli-
U.S. Geological Survey has put together just
oteca di Bibliografia Italiana,” which started in
such a useful tool for historians of science and
1923 and now includes more than 150 books.
technology and students of U.S. environmental
This series documents a lasting interest in the history.
history of books, and also of manuscripts, and Circular 1179 is a CD-ROM that bundles to-
the idea that accurate catalogues are very useful gether two previously prepared documents. The
for this history. first is Reneé M. Jaussaud’s inventory of the
The Bibliografia was put together in the cul- documents accessioned, by the end of 1997, into
tural environment of Unistoria, a center for the Record Group 57 (U.S. Geological Survey) at
study of the development of Italian universities the National Archives and Records Administra-
founded in 1991. The first book published by the tion’s (NARA) Archives II facility in College
center, L’università italiana tra Otto e Nove- Park, Maryland. (Materials in NARA’s regional
cento: I modelli europei il caso italiano [Italian archives are not a part of the inventory.) The
Universities between the Nineteenth and the second is a reissue of USGS Circular 1050, Mary
Twentieth Century: The European Model and C. Rabbitt’s The United States Geological Sur-
the Italian Case] (Jovene, 1994), includes convey, 1879–1989, a pamphlet-sized (ca. 60 pages)
tributions by various authors, among them the reduction of her well-known history of the
editors of the Bibliografia. The essay by Porciani USGS, available here in both HTML and PDF
is focused on Matteucci’s attempted reform, that formats (a copy of Adobe Acrobat 4.0 is in-
by Moretti on another reform effort, about half cluded on the disk). The inventory of documents
a century later, by the “Royal Committee” and the organizational chart of the survey are in
chaired by the mathematician Ulisse Dini. The PDF only.
three books published by Unistoria to date are This is a huge archive of material. The anno-
devoted to the study of the connections between tated index (by Jaussaud) runs to 679 pages. It
the building of the Italian nation, the history of begins with the records of the King, Powell,
Italian universities, and the development of the Hayden, and Wheeler surveys, moves on to the
various disciplines in Italy. They also carry out records of the USGS, 1879–1997 (mistitled in
comparisons between the history of Italian uni- the index header as 1839–1997, but 1879 is
versities in the period under consideration and clearly meant), and then presents the records of
the history of the universities of other European the Administrative Division, the Publications
countries. For example, this last topic is treated Division, the Engraving and Printing Division
in “Modelli di università nell’Ottocento Euro- (dates of coverage differ for these different seg-
peo: problemi di scienza e di potere” [“Univer- ments of the survey), the Geologic Division, the
sity Models in the European Nineteenth Century: Mapping Division, the Water Resources Divi-
Problems about Science and Power”], by Pier- sion, the Conservation Division, and the Alaska
angelo Schiera, included in L’università italiana Branch.
tra Otto e Novecento. An example of a direct The annotations are extremely helpful. How
application of the Unistoria approach to a spe- else would one know that the records of the
cific discipline is Roberto Maiocchi’s essay USGS participation in Operation Plowshare
“Scienza e nascita dell’industria elettrica itali- (geared to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy),
ana” [“Science and the Birth of the Italian Elec- control of continental shelf oil drilling, and co-
trical Industry”], published in Università e operation with the BIA (Bureau of Indian Af-
scienza nazionale, edited by Porciani (Jovene, fairs), the BLM (Bureau of Land Management),
2001). and many other agencies are all to be found in
UMBERTO BARCARO the records of the Conservation Division? Or that

the Mapping Division produced fifteen films by 6 pages. Thus if you type “page 120” in the
about map-making, including Global Concepts page field you will be sent to page 114 because
in Maps (1947)? Or that correspondence on the the computer has counted pages i–vi as 1–6, so
very interesting subject of the disposal of nuclear that the numerical entry “1–6” is read as “7–12,”
waste between 1947 and 1974 is found in the and so on. A distraction, but easily overcome.
Office of Radiohydrology subsection of the Wa- I was astonished by the wealth of documents
ter Resources Division? and by how far the Geological Survey’s activi-
The annotated part of the accession list, ties have penetrated natural resource manage-
treated by document group and administrative ment beyond the original survey charter of “min-
division and subdivision, takes up the first 220 erals, lands, and geology for the common
or so pages. The next 400-plus pages are an an- defense and general welfare.” There seems to be
alytical index of the material’s actual location, no part of national life and economic develop-
box by box, in a series of appendixes. Thus we ment left untouched by the activities of the sur-
have not only the annotated description but the vey—and it is massively documented and read-
exact location; so that it would be possible to ily available (now!) for study.
preselect documents—all on the same topic, This CD-ROM is available free from USGS
from widely separated subdivisions—before Information Services, Box 25286, Federal Cen-
ever arriving at the archive. This is a wonderful ter, Denver, Colorado 80225 (fax: 303-202-
achievement. 4693). The file number is 21-1179. Reneé Jaus-
One warning: because a decision was made to saud and Clifford Nelson (and also Mary
add an introduction to the index of RG 57 with Rabbitt) deserve our thanks for this extraordi-
roman numerals (i–vi), the “go to page –” utility narily useful and promising research tool.
on the Acrobat Reader is thrown off consistently MOTT GREENE


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Peter Whitfield : Astrology: A History

Astrology: A History by Peter Whitfield

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in the universities. Only recently has the history

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Anouk Barberousse. La physique face à la the well-known irreversibility paradoxes. With

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omiae Copernicanae because he thought it dictions about political developments in the

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Fanciful anthropomorphized depiction of elephant copulation in J. P. Houel’s Histoire naturelle des

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ability to capture the imagination of the public