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DICTIONARY of the HISTORY of SCIENCE Subject Editors DICTIONARY OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE Subject Editors Astronomy Michael A. Hoskin, Churchill College, Cambridge. Biology Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr, Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Chemistry William H. Brock, Victorian Studies Centre, University of Leicester. Earth sciences Roy Porter, W ellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London. Historiography Steven Shapin, & sociology Science Studies Unit, of science University of Edinburgh. Human Roger Smith, sciences Department of History, University of Lancaster. Mathematics Eric J. Aiton, Mathematics Faculty, Manchester Polytechnic. Medicine William F. Bynum, W ellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London. Philosophy Roy Bhaskar, of science School of Social Sciences, University of Sussex. Physics John L. Heilbron, Office for History of Science & Technology, University of California, Berkeley. DICTIONARY OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE edited by W.EBynum E.J.Browne Roy Porter M © The Macmillan Press Ltd 1981 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1981 978-0-333-29316-4 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published 1981 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated Companies throughout the world. ISBN 978-1-349-05551-7 ISBN 978-1-349-05549-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05549-4 Typeset by Computacomp (UK) Ltd, Fort William, Scotland Macmillan Consultant Editor Klaus Boehm Contents Introduction vii Acknowledgements viii Contributors X Analytical table of contents xiii Bibliography xxiii Abbreviations xxxiv Dictionary Bibliographical index 452 Introduction How is the historical dimension of science relevant to understanding its place in our lives? It is widely agreed that our present attitudes and ideas about religion, art, or morals are oriented the way they are, and thus related to other beliefs, because of their history. And this history needs careful study because the processes by which ideas themselves come and go are complicated. Some would argue that ideas have evolved in competition, by a kind of intellectual natural selection, favoured ones finding social niches; others, for instance, hold that the succession of ideas reflects the succession of groups dominant in society. All this also applies to science. Not only are the key doctrines of science - such as quantum theory, genetics, psychoanalysis- central to the modern world, and daily applied in ways ever more closely affecting our lives, but we live within a world in which the outlooks of science- the stress on facts, on experiment, on objectivity - dominate our consciousness and actions. Yet science is changing faster than other parts of culture, and every day becomes more technical, complex and obscure. We have planned this Dictionary in the hope of explaining - to lay people as well as the scientifically trained- core features of recent Western science within the context of its development. We have organized it thematically around the key ideas of science. This seemed to us the most useful approach. Biographically-organized reference works on science and its history already exist, from one volume books to the monumental 16-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography, and most brief histories of science concentrate on the contributions and discoveries of individual scientists. But science is far more than heroic individuals; it is a highly complex river of thought that swells, sometimes changes course, stagnating here, going through rapids there, with many tributaries and junctions. Hence we have judged it more useful to have articles on the Atom, the Unconscious, or Mendelism, than on Dalton, Freud or Mendel. Sometimes reference works, aiming for encyclopaedic completeness, give all too brief accounts of a very wide sample of topics. We have believed it more important to grant our contributors more generous allowance of space for the really substantial scientific concepts, so that the foundation ideas of Western science can be explained in a single extended article (as in, for example, Evolution, Light, or Nature). Shorter entries have been written on more specialized sub-areas clustering around these large fields (for example on Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism), cross referenced back and forth to the major ones. At the foot of many entries the reader is further referred to additional pieces on cognate subjects. For readers wishing to follow up concepts in greater depth, the longer articles have short bibliographies appended, and, at the end of this Introduction, a list of general books in the history of science, and short subject bibliographies for the major sciences may be found. We have tried to make this volume as comprehensive as a handy single-volume reference work can be, but have obviously had to be highly selective. Most articles focus chiefly on the leading ideas of Western science over the past five centuries, with discussion of the roots of such theories in Antiquity and the Middle Ages where relevant. But there are also articles dealing with the central scientific ideas of Classical Antiquity and Mediaeval times, and also survey essays examining science in Chinese, Hindu and Islamic cultures. Also, because this is primarily a dictionary of concepts, coverage of areas such as the development of technology or clinical medicine is necessarily slight. We have, however, included articles on aspects of these (such as the development of scientific instruments like the thermometer) which were closely involved in conceptual developments in scientific theory. Coverage of the social sciences is also only partial: adequate treatment of them all would at least have doubled the length of this work. Our policy has been to give most space to those parts of the social and human sciences historically most closely linked with the natural sciences. Generously represented in this Dictionary, however, is discussion of the historiography of science, of the philosophical and metaphysical principles underpinning science, and of philosophical accounts of the scientific process. A key development in our understanding of science and its history over the past generation has been the fuller recognition that science does not simply proceed, gradually and inevitably, through the successful application of 'scientific method' (observation, experiment, induction, etc.) to Nature, revealing its 'truth'. Historians and philosophers have shown how far science has been and continues to be built upon foundations of words, ideas and theories not empirically derived from Nature, but brought to scientific inquiry from a variety of sources - from theology, from metaphysics, from social and political experience. For much of the history of science the attempt to drive hard-and-fast wedges between science and philosophy and theology, between the scientist, the philosopher and the general thinker, is anachronistic- as is recognized by the fact that in many teaching programmes the history of science and the philosophy of science are taught alongside one another. Furthermore, recent scholarship has also shown how controversial is our understanding of the processes of scientific discovery and change. (Whatever else it may be, the history of science is not scientific in the traditional sense!) Historians view the development of science in many different ways, according as they see its development as relatively evolutionary or revolutionary, relatively autonomous from general culture or totally bound up within it. Hence, in addition to articles on the history of philosophy and the philosophy of science, we have included numerous pieces dealing with the methods and viewpoints of historians of science. Janet Browne William Bynum Roy Porter Acknowledgements We have incurred many debts since this volume was first planned in July 1979. Our advisory editors have been exemplary, suggesting entries and contributors within their field, and overseeing the manuscripts as they appeared. Roy Bhaskar took over the philosophy of science section at short notice when Rom Harre fell ill. Our contributors and editors have produced copy promptly and efficiently, often at short notice and with good humour, even when asked to condense several years' research into a 200-word entry! The staff at Macmillan- particularly Klaus Boehm and Rosemary Foster- have also encouraged us with their enthusiasm and cooperation. Many friends and colleagues have answered specific queries, suggested additional entries and cross references, and helped us in numerous ways. In the later stages, Alwyn Arkle, Jerry Donat, Charlotte Mackenzie and Lawrence Pedersen have all been willing helpers. On the personal level the editors would like to thank Dr Trevor Turner and Nicholas Browne for invaluable psychological support, and all the advisory editors for their constant interest in the project, good humour and expertise. Towards the end we were saddened to hear of the death of Dov Ospovat, one of the contributors to this volume. Finally, it would have been difficult to complete this work without the support of the Wellcome Trustees and the staff of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. Our secretaries, Heather Edwards and Frieda Houser, have aided immensely. Frieda Houser has administered the whole project, coordinating the vast correspondence and paper work generated by a book with almost I 00 contributors on three continents and was always able to tell us where we stood. How to use this Dictionary The main body of this Dictionary
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