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3-1-2002 Review: Richard F. Wetzell, Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology, 1880-1945 (Chapel Hill and London, 2000) Andre Wakefield Pitzer College

Recommended Citation Andre Wakefield. Review of Wetzell, Richard F., Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology, 1880-1945. Isis 93.1 (March 2002): 100-101. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/343270

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Ⅲ General ical texts and related to the division of the cubit into seven palms, each of four fingers. But the Roger Herz-Fischler. The Shape of the Great close relation between these two methods of -pp., figs., tables, apps., bibl., measurement in practical terms is clear, and ei 293 ם Pyramid. xii index. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfried Laurier Uni- ther one could have been used with ease by an versity Press, 2000. $29.95 (paper). ancient builder. Herz-Fischler states that “there simply is no The existence of a mathematical theory deter- archaeological evidence for the above three rise mining the shape of the Great Pyramid is a long- over run based theories” (p. 168). Here he is too standing assumption, and speculation on the quick to dismiss the evidence presented by Flin- subject dates back to Herodotus. Roger Herz- ders Petrie from a mastaba at Meidum (pp. 41– Fischler’s study presents and discusses eleven 42, 168). Outside the corners of the structure are major theories and their proponents in the light walls with traces of horizontal lines at cubit in- of archaeological and philosophical considera- tervals and sloping lines marking the inclination tions. The historiographical aspect of the study of the faces. Herz-Fischler points to the lack of is very useful, as is the formulation and discus- marks to indicate how the slope was constructed, sion of some of the problems. A brief sociologi- but he fails to consider how an identical slope cal case study of the Pi-theory and the reasons was constructed eight times around the structure for its propagation and popularity in Britain is if such a horizontal measurement was not used. particularly interesting. But although this book Nor are the corners of the structure level; thus offers much that will be of interest to profes- the correct measurements must be calculated sional and amateur historians of mathematics relative to the depth. Mark Lehner, in his Com- and pyramid enthusiasts, it does not provide a plete Pyramids (Thames & Hudson, 1997), page definitive conclusion to the 2,500-year-old de- 220, offers evidence from Giza that the builders bate. constructed the corners by measuring in a certain Having dismissed all but three of the theories distance from reference points outside the sides. and unable to decide among them, Herz-Fischler The pyramid drawing from Meroe based on a reaches the rather extraordinary conclusion that rectangular grid (pp. 37–38) does not necessar- there may have been no true theoretical basis for ily conflict with a rise and run theory and cer- the angles of inclination that might have been tainly shows that a proportional system was used established “by eye” (p. 168). In settling for this relating side length to height. I find this archae- interpretation, however, he fails to consider how ological evidence for the use of rise over run the angle would have been replicated on the dif- theories convincing, if limited, and it strongly ferent sides of a pyramid or how angles of in- supports side-inclination based theories over clination would have been maintained or trans- those relating to the arris. ferred to other pyramids of different sizes: for The Meroe drawing cannot be taken as reli- example, Khufu’s three queens’ pyramids have able evidence that the seked theory was not used slopes virtually identical to those of the main in Fourth Dynasty structures (p. 38), as it dates pyramid (see V. Maragioglio and C. Rinaldi, to over 2,000 years after the Great Pyramid was L’architettura delle piramidi menfite IV [Centro constructed and lies outside Egypt. As for the per le Antichita` e la Storia dell’Arte del Vicino question of whether a seked-based system or in- Oriente-Roma, 1965], pp. 80, 86, 92). tegers were used to construct the angle of the The three theories among which Herz-Fischler sides, Herz-Fischler could have used the mea- cannot decide are all proportion-based theories, sured angles of sloping corridors and shafts in- two relating to the angle of inclination and one side the Great Pyramid that must have been con- to the angle of the arris (all theories involving structed using similar techniques. Further, he complex mathematics were those Herz-Fischler makes no attempt to apply these theories to the dismissed). This conclusion is significant in its slopes of other pyramids, although in some cases own right and relates to practical building con- he does consider examples presented by other siderations. Herz-Fischler is keen to distinguish authors. Applying these theories more broadly mathematically between integer proportional might lead to more decisive results. Before read- systems and the seked theory (see note on p. 28), ers undertake to do so themselves, however, they a system attested in ancient Egyptian mathemat- should be alerted that some of the measurements

83 84 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) given in Appendix 2 are out of date. Corrected MS Istanbul, Aya Sofya 4832, fols. 66b–75b, figures are: Abu Rawash, c. 52Њ (Michel Vallo- which contains ibn Sina¯n’s treatise. gia, Au coeur d’une pyramid [Muse´e Romain de Hogendijk offers this reprint of Luckey’s the- Lausanne-Vidy, 2001], pp. 56–57); Bent Pyra- sis as “a tribute to the man and his work” (p. mid, 55Њ 00Ј 30Љ (lower section), 43Њ 01Ј 30Љ viii). This dedication reflects the opinion that, as (upper) (Josef Dorner, “Form und Ausmaße der Hogendijk says, Luckey was one of the foremost Knickpyramide,” MDAIK, 1986, 42:43–58); historians of Arabic-Islamic mathematics in the Red Pyramid, 44Њ 44Ј (Josef Dorner, “Neue Mes- twentieth century (p. vii). His thesis focused on sungen an der Roten Pyramid,” in H. Guksch and the mathematical and astronomical contents of D. Polz, eds., Stationen: Beitrage zur Kulturges- ibn Sina¯n’s treatise. Luckey embedded the tech- chichte A¨ gyptens Rainer Stadelmann gewidmet nical analysis of ibn Sina¯n’s particular work in [P. von Zabern, 1998], pp. 23–29). In this last brief surveys of the religious community ibn example considerable variation (up to 43Ј) was Sina¯n belonged to—that of the so-called Sa- noted in the inclination of different stretches of baeans—of the medieval scholar’s life and the same pyramid face, which suggests that an works, of his method of determining the area of angle of 45Њ was intended. This observed varia- the segment of a parabola, and of the theories of tion is very significant considering how little of sundials espoused by ancient and medieval (Ar- the casing of the next pyramid constructed—the abic) authors. Finally, he discusses two writings Great Pyramid—is preserved (as we can see in by al-Kindi and some aspects of a text by al- the photograph on the cover of the book). Mahani, both of whom lived in the ninth century. Although I find Herz-Fischler’s conclusions Luckey’s work is thus a good example of the rather weak and some of his treatments of ar- particular approach to the history of mathematics chaeological sources too dismissive, this volume that prevailed at the time he wrote. provides a useful introduction to the subject and His dissertation does, however, have a few pe- a clear formulation of the problems involved. It cularities. Luckey is concerned not only with is, then, a thought-provoking contribution to a mathematical progress and sources but also with long-standing debate. the intellectual excellence of individuals and KATE SPENCE groups (see, e.g., pp. 2, 3, 18, 22, 32–33, 80– 81). Like the author of his major source for the Die Schrift des Ibra¯hı¯m b. Sina¯n b. Ta¯bit u¨ber chapter on the Sabaeans, Daniel Chwolsohn die Schatteninstrumente. Translated and anno- (1858), Luckey is interested in the issue of their tated by Paul Luckey. Edited by Jan P. Hogen- race (p. 2). He applauds or chastises historical dijk. (Islamic Mathematics and Astronomy, actors or communities for their actions and spec- ,pp., illus., bibl. Frankfurt am ulates on their aspirations and emotions (pp. 2 283 ם xvi (.101 Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic 7, 31, 83). He introduces problems outside the Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Univer- limited realm of his own subject but does not sity, 1999. engage in a deeper historical investigation in or- der to discuss or evaluate them (see, among other This book is one volume in a series consisting passages his discussion of ibn Sina¯n’s preference of reprints of writings on the history of science for the chord function over the sine, cosine, and in Muslim societies undertaken by the Institute versed sine functions used by his two predeces- for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the sors Thabit ibn Qurra and al-Battani [p. 45]). Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt These aspects of Luckey’s study raise an im- am Main, and edited by Fuat Sezgin. This par- portant question: Shouldn’t reprinted works ticular volume presents Paul Luckey’s 1941 doc- based on approaches to the historiography of sci- toral thesis on Ibra¯hı¯m ibn Sina¯n’s treatise on ence and mathematics that, by now, are them- sundials, now published for the first time. It also selves historical be accompanied by at least a includes an introduction by the editor of the vol- brief consideration of the author’s historiograph- ume, Jan P. Hogendijk, that describes Luckey’s ical methodology? Such a consideration, of life and scholarly career; a bibliography of course, may entail its own difficulties, as Ho- Luckey’s works; the Arabic editions of two texts gendijk’s attempt to provide some context in fact by al-Kindi (d. about 874), of ibn Sina¯n’s text illustrates. In his biographical sketch of Luckey, on the sundials, and of the beginning of a treatise Hogendijk remarks on Luckey’s concern with by al-Mahani (ninth century); Hogendijk’s issues of race in his other papers and notes that notes; Luckey’s curriculum vitae; diagrams pre- he published an article in the racist journal pared by Luckey as well as by Hogendijk; and Deutsche Mathematik. Although Hogendijk saw the (technically poorly executed) facsimile of the need to ask what these facts imply about BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 85

Luckey’s political positions—that is, his attitude tury, and as Hogendijk’s editing, despite the toward the Nazi regime—Hogendijk did not ask problems I have mentioned, is basically sensible whether they represent beliefs that were wide- and responsible, this reprint can only be consid- spread among the community of historians of ered a welcome addition to the substantial, science and mathematics, not only in Germany though far from satisfying, number of publica- but also in other Western countries, during the tions of original mathematical and astronomical first half of the twentieth century. In Luckey’s works by scholars of the medieval Muslim world case, there may not be sufficient documentation investigated by contemporary historians of sci- for an extensive investigation of his political ence and mathematics. view. The publication of his thesis, however, re- SONJA BRENTJES minds us that no good studies of the methodo- logical as well as political stances of German Colin A. Russell (Editor). Chemistry, Society, historians of science and mathematics are cur- and Environment: A New History of the British -pp., frontis., il 372 ם rently available. Chemical Industry. xvi Hogendijk’s work as an editor was compli- lus., figs., tables, indexes. Cambridge: Royal So- cated by the fact that Luckey’s thesis does not ciety of Chemistry, 2000. £59.50. include a critical edition of any of the four texts he examines. Hogendijk discovered the Arabic In this book Colin Russell and his colleagues versions of two of them as prepared by Luckey tread a somewhat difficult path between apologia in his papers at the Oriental Seminar of the Uni- for the British chemical industry and the histori- versity of Tu¨bingen, but he himself had to edit cal account of its development. It is not an al- the two remaining texts, among them ibn Sina¯n’s together comfortable journey, less from the point treatise. In doing so, he was guided by Luckey’s of view of maintaining balance between apolo- remarks on the philological peculiarities of this getics and critique, a difficulty of which the au- text as manifested in MS Aya Sofya 4832 (pp. thors are clearly aware, than from the need to 75–78). Further, in ambiguous cases Hogendijk balance “general” history of the industry with the reasonably decided to choose “a reading which “environmental” theme. Looking first at the for- is consistent with Luckey’s translation” (p. 96). mer, the book represents a considerable achieve- He inserted in Luckey’s German translation a ment for the authors. They have marshaled a few references to his notes as editor (these ap- very wide array of technical and other informa- pear on p. 222) but without, unfortunately, tion in order to offer largely narrative accounts catching all the typographical, and other, errors. of a wide range of industries. It is unlikely that Finally, he supplemented Luckey’s own repro- this degree of expertise could be brought together ductions of the diagrams, which are adaptations in any other group, particularly since the death of to modern convention (pp. 96, 225–247); these W. A. Campbell. The broad canvas that they diagrams reconstruct the figures of the original cover means that many of the themes and topics manuscript (pp. 96, 248–263). are skated over quite briefly. Nevertheless there is As reasonable as Hogendijk’s approach to ed- a good deal of technical detail and substantial, iting the Arabic text is—that is, maintaining though rather less, social and human detail. I did consistency with Luckey’s German transla- find myself wondering who would read this study: tion—it creates some problems. I discuss these it attempts to be all things to all people, but risks problems in detail, with a list of corrections to satisfying neither the specialist nor the general Hogendijk’s edition, in a review in Zeitschrift fu¨r reader, if the latter person exists. Overall, how- Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissen- ever, the authors have fulfilled effectively what I schaften, in which I compare this edition with take to have been their brief and can expect their the one published by Roshdi Rashed in 2000 book to become a standard reference work. (Roshdi Rashed and He´le`ne Bellosta, Ibrahim I was less convinced by the environmental ibn Sinan: Logique et ge´ome´trie au Xe sie`cle theme. The very self-conscious evenhandedness [Leiden: Brill, 2000]). Rashed and Hogendijk of the authors grew wearisome—in fact I began edited the text independently, without any to feel as if I was being talked down to in the knowledge of each other’s work. Both editions final chapter. Surely a reader of this book does contain errors that could have been avoided had not need to be convinced that “modern life the two editors consulted each other, so it is a would be impossible without the methods and pity they did not collaborate on this project. products of the chemical industry” (p. 348). As Luckey’s dissertation deals with an im- Similarly, there is little to be gained, in my opin- portant text on mathematical and astronomical ion, from offering quasi-moral judgments on the issues by an outstanding scholar of the tenth cen- failures or otherwise of the chemical industry or 86 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Inspection of construction at Foyers in the early 1890s. Lord Kelvin is third from left (from Russell, ed., Chemistry, Society, and Environment, p. 314). from telling us in the manner of a school text- of the History of Science and Technology, Uni- book that “chemists have endeavored to improve versity of California, 1999. $24 (paper). the quality of water supply” (pp. 345–346). Chemists, I suspect, have done what they were In this monograph Robert Fox and Anna Guag- nini aim to reinterpret the nature of “research” told and paid to do. We know that the chemical and the relations of science and industry in Eu- industry has been a polluter and has attempted rope between 1800 and 1914. They compare and to recycle its waste products for economic and contrast industrial developments in what they political reasons. What is of interest are the tech- call the “slow-lane” countries (Britain, France, nical and socioeconomic determinants of this. and Italy) with those in the “fast lane” (Germany We get a good deal of the former but rather little and the United States). They make their case by of the latter. This is disappointing when one examining four large issues. knows that one of the authors, Sarah Wilmott, The first is conceptions of applied research be- has written a sophisticated analysis of one aspect fore 1870. Fox and Guagnini notably begin not of this question, particularly emphasizing how with the English industrial revolution but with a the industry employed chemical knowledge to discussion of how France’s state-supported sa- reconfigure the notion and legal positioning of vants and engineers in the revolutionary and Na- chemical pollution (in E. Homburg, A. S. Travis, poleonic eras helped bring science into the in- and H. G. Schro¨ter, The Chemical Industry in dustrial realm, principally that of the chemical Europe, 1850–1914 [Dordrecht: Kluwer, industry. By the mid-nineteenth century, they ar- 1998]). Of course it would be asking a lot to gue, the British slowly, and the Germans extend this type of empirically grounded analy- quickly, began to change their attitudes toward sis across the divisions and issues associated applied science, while the French remained with the chemical industry. largely at a standstill. Yet the main result of these This then is a worthy book of reference that developments was not any dramatic impact of brings together good technical and synoptic ac- science on industry but, rather, the diffusion of counts of many aspects of the British chemical a new rhetoric bearing the message that science industry in one location. However, it employs a could be applied to aid national industry, al- cautious—if one were being brutal one might though to do so it must, paradoxically, also retain say pedestrian—historiography, and I did not and advance its “pure” dimension. feel that it broke new historical or conceptual Fox and Guagnini next outline the functions ground. But perhaps it was never intended to. of physics laboratories in Germany, France, and JAMES DONNELLY Britain. They stress that these laboratories grew part and parcel with the rise of new aspects of Robert Fox; Anna Guagnini. Laboratories, teaching (especially the training of future sec- Workshops, and Sites: Concepts and Practices ondary school teachers and technologists) and an of Research in Industrial Europe, 1800–1914.ii increased interest in research in the discipline. pp., illus., tables, index. Berkeley: Office They believe that the new teaching goals were 214 ם BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 87 probably the single most influential cause of the of the relations of science, technology, and the rise of physics laboratories. Especially by the economy in general. 1870s and 1880s, the ideals of academic physics DAVID CAHAN began to affect and were affected by applications of physics (above all, electricity) in industry; this Felix Driver. Geography Militant: Cultures of ,.pp., illus 258 ם development in turn initiated a never-ending de- Exploration and Empire. viii bate about the “demands of utility” versus “dis- figs., bibl., index. Oxford/Malden, Mass.: Black- interested inquiry” (p. 42). well Publishers, 2001. $29.95 (paper). Third, the authors analyze the rise of electrical In this widely researched and well-written study, engineering as an academic discipline from the Felix Driver investigates the relationship be- 1880s on. They discern two patterns: electrical tween geographical knowledge and the cultures engineering was introduced either as an integral of exploration and imperialism in nineteenth- part of the mechanical engineering curriculum or and early twentieth-century Britain. The book’s as a one-year, advanced program based on a stu- title—taken from an essay by Joseph Conrad dent’s previous training in mechanical or civil that was reprinted in the National Geographic in engineering. They emphasize that teaching, not 1924—refers to the heroic era of exploration research, remained the principal activity of aca- that Conrad laments as passing at the close of demic electrical engineers until late in the cen- the nineteenth century. Driver traces the history tury. They argue that the search for novelty in of this ideal of exploration and is especially in- electrical (as in mechanical) engineering oc- terested in the hold it has had over modern un- curred principally in the manufacturer’s work- derstandings of geography. shop or on work sites. Driver is one of several geographers and his- Fourth and finally, Fox and Guagnini address torians who have broadened the history of ge- “the realities of industrial research.” Although ography in recent years. In his estimation the tra- they fully recognize that many industrial re- ditional focus on the intellectual history of search laboratories (above all in the United geography as a discipline has come at the ex- States and Germany) were first conceived and pense of other important manifestations of ge- took embryonic form before World War I, they ography, among them the culture of fieldwork. think that to understand the nature and loci of In a related vein, Driver also cautions against the industrial research before 1918, scholars must tendency among postcolonial scholars of colo- consider two broad interpretations: first, that nialism to focus excessively on travel narratives. even in the nascent “research laboratories” in Both of these emphases have led to a misleading Germany and the United States there was a characterization of imperialism as having hege- strong emphasis on “testing, quality control, and monic motives and essential functions. Instead investigations directed at the protection of pat- of emphasizing the textual “end product” of ents, rather than a preoccupation with the devel- travel narratives, Driver investigates the lives opment of new products and processes” (p. 149); and practices of the explorers themselves. This second, they assert that experimental work oc- change of focus makes his a more complex and curred largely on “the shop floor and the site by subtle approach, which in turn highlights the technical staff engaged in day-to-day work of de- conflictual and contingent role of colonial dis- sign, production, and installation” (p. 150). course. Fox and Guagnini persuasively argue that as- Because he wants to know how geography sessment of developments in the slow-lane coun- functioned both as an idea and as a practice, tries must be appreciated in terms of their de- Driver places explorers at the center of analysis mographies, politics, economies, and traditions and raises questions about how they built repu- of higher education. Innovation, they demon- tations, secured funding, and cultivated the myth strate, appeared in a variety of contexts and of the lone explorer that paradoxically depended places in both fast-lane and slow-lane countries. on recognition by others. Among the most inter- They maintain that our understanding of “re- esting of Driver’s themes is the history of the search” must be expansive enough to include the heroic ideal of exploration that evoked the mis- incremental sort that occurred in the workshops sionary role of European scientific knowledge. and sites as well as the more theoretical sort that He repeatedly demonstrates that this ideal was (later) occurred in academic and industrial re- only half the story, for it was always contested search laboratories. Their thoughtful monograph in practice. The work of Henry Morton Stanley should be carefully studied by all scholars con- nicely illustrates this problem. By recovering the cerned with the history of applied research and controversy, criticism, and conflict surrounding 88 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Stanley’s explorations, Driver debunks the fa- Of the several persons central to Christopher miliar story of Stanley as representing the ideal McGowan’s topic, Mary Anning, William Cony- of progress that we associate so closely with the beare, and Thomas Hawkins had little or no role nineteenth-century culture of exploration. Sub- in the discovery of dinosaurs. All three of them stantial attention is given to Stanley’s own need were instead devoted to ichthyosaurs and plesi- to position himself apart from armchair geogra- osaurs; McGowan writes confidently and relia- phers and philanthropists who he felt detracted bly about each of these impressive prehistoric from his reputation and work. What emerges is families. Despite his subtitle, the fossil reptile a man whose reputation as explorer became as depicted on McGowan’s title page is not a di- important as the expeditions themselves. nosaur but an ichthyosaur—and an excessively Driver traces both the production and the con- “made up” one at that (see p. 138). He begins sumption of geographical knowledge. The inter- and ends the book with Mary Anning and her est in the former leads him to the Royal Geo- famously fossiliferous hometown. In the Blue graphical Society (RGS), the largest scientific Lias cliffs of Lyme Regis, both ichthyosaurs and society in London by 1870 and a critical insti- plesiosaurs were found—but no dinosaurs. tution for the collection of information from Though Lyell, Agassiz, and Darwin appear as around the world in the nineteenth century. One dragon seekers also, none of them was associ- of Driver’s great strengths is to demonstrate the ated importantly with saurians. Cuvier, a French sheer diversity of what counted as “exploration” seeker of dragons and much else, is mentioned or “geography” in this period. Instead of por- only in passing. traying the RGS as a monolithic structure with The three dinosaur discoverers important to a consistent ideological bent, he points out the McGowan’s book are William Buckland, Gid- breadth of the society’s membership. As a result, eon Mantell, and Richard Owen (which is hardly we see a culture of exploration that is full of unexpected). A more energetic researcher than tension and contradiction, manifest in the mutual some, McGowan actually visited the Kirkdale suspicion of professional and popular geogra- and Paviland caves made famous by Buckland. phers and the increasingly important distinction He provides up-to-date information about each between exploration and travel. Driver encour- cave, as he does about other topics throughout ages us to think of the RGS as a “coalition of the text. Unfortunately, his exploration of the interests” rather than as an organization with one available literature on Buckland, Mantell, and orchestrated position, an “information exchange Owen is less impressive. McGowan is clearly rather than a center of calculation” (pp. 36–37). unacquainted with major publications by all The range of material included in this book, three; their later thinking in particular is gener- only a portion of which can be covered here, is ally ignored. More broadly, McGowan has too exceptional. Geography Militant is a welcome obviously written in haste. He never provides the contribution and will certainly spark a reconsid- more coherent reading of Victorian vertebrate eration of assumptions in a number of fields, in- paleontology and associated sciences that his au- cluding the history of science, cultural history, dience-seeking thesis requires. and the history of imperialism. Persons familiar with early dinosaur discov- SUSAN SCHULTEN eries will notice the absence from McGowan’s book of many useful sources and studies. The Christopher McGowan. The Dragon Seekers: weak notes and “further reading” bibliography How an Extraordinary Circle of Fossilists Dis- that he provides are inadequate. Only direct quo- covered the Dinosaurs and Paved the Way for tations have been identified; all other matters of -pp., illus., bibl., index. Cam 254 ם Darwin. xvi substance, frequently controversial, are left to be bridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2001. $26, taken on faith. In some introductory remarks (p. Can $39.50. 1), McGowan tells us that fossils have been Though it is an attractive popular book dealing known since the time of classical Greece. They with some major episodes in the history of nine- have actually been found among the grave goods teenth-century vertebrate paleontology, The of Neanderthals. Some persons, Greeks among Dragon Seekers fails to establish the connection them, realized the significance of fossils (as rec- between Darwin and his predecessors promised ords of past life) long before the latter eighteenth by its title. As scholarship, it is seriously defi- century. McGowan even fails to acknowledge cient except when dealing with ichthyosaurs, that there were evolutionary theories before Ves- about which its Canadian author, a paleontolo- tiges (1844). He ignores James Secord’s recent gist, is thoroughly knowledgeable. facsimile of the latter and is apparently unaware BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 89 that a magnificent new edition of Darwin’s cor- ences have appeared recently, none of them respondence is appearing. based on sound historical arguments. The writ- A number of factual mistakes are disconcert- ing of defensible history is not so simple a task ing. Cuvier’s seminal Recherches (1812) is dated as these facile popularizers would like the public 1799 (p. 6). No other foreign publication is con- to believe. sidered, though there were several of impor- DENNIS R. DEAN tance. Mantell and Owen are described as phy- sicians, which they were not; both were instead Michael Ruse. The Evolution Wars: A Guide to surgeons, an occupation not involving university the Debates. Foreword by Edward O. Wilson. ,pp., illus., figs., index. Santa Barbara 428 ם education. Mantell joined the Geological Society xx in 1818, not 1820. McGowan is significantly Calif./Denver: ABC-CLIO, 2000. misleading when he describes the financing of Mantell’s first book (pp. 44–45) and the chro- Beginning his fourth decade as one of the lead- nology of its writing. It appeared in May 1822, ing students of the evolution controversies, the not four months later (p. 48). The first chapter philosopher Michael Ruse is well known as a of Mantell’s book was contributed by the Rev. gifted writer, able historian, and careful observer Henry Hoper, not Harper (p. 48). Mantell was of the many facets of the response to Darwin. surgeon to three parishes, not just one (p. 49). This latest contribution seeks to perform a dif- McGowan fails to realize that the name “Mega- ferent task from his earlier endeavors. Ruse has losaurus” had been published by James Parkin- designed this book to provide a succinct over- son in 1822 (p. 77). He also distorts the history view of the background of and response to Dar- of Buckland’s famous 1824 paper on Megalo- winism, focusing equally well on the history, re- saurus by assuming that some later additions ligion, politics, and science involved. His goal is were already in it at the time of presentation (pp. to inform the lay reader of the substance behind 77–78). Once again, however, he includes some the continuing controversy, correcting errors and useful modern knowledge. clarifying often-misunderstood concepts. He On page 87 MCGowan insists that Mantell and succeeds admirably in achieving this goal. Conybeare had not yet met, though they were Ruse rounds up the usual suspects in his dis- both present at the meeting of 20 February 1824 cussion of the development of Darwinian evo- and had corresponded earlier. Mantell did not lution. Examining the work of earlier naturalists, receive Conybeare’s most recent letter “shortly he describes developmental ideas and lays the after” 10 February 1825 but on 24 November foundation for the concept of evolution through 1824 (p. 87). On page 89 Robert Trotter is not natural selection. His necessarily brief account fully identified, and his later generosity to Man- of Darwin’s own work nonetheless provides the tell is ignored. Though Lyell’s geological views reader with a clear understanding of what Dar- influenced Mantell’s, they would never be en- win did and did not argue in Origin of Species tirely congruent. Mantell was still very much a and Descent of Man. Equally impressive, catastrophist in 1832 (p. 93). On page 111 though, Ruse discusses the major developments McGowan’s explanation of British money is er- in evolutionary theory that followed Darwin in roneous. According to page 113, Mantell and the same informative way. The impact of genet- Benjamin Silliman never met. Yet they spent ics and the varied roles of paleontology are well several days together in 1851. In January 1837 covered, as are various theoretical develop- Darwin was actually living at Cambridge (p. ments. Ruse’s discussion of Sewall Wright’s 160). On page 179 McGowan claims that “our concept of the “adaptive landscape,” for exam- present preoccupation with dinosaurs dates back ple, is especially well done. He is no less effec- less than three decades.” Finally, there is some tive in integrating recent developments into his inadequate editing, as with “their’s” (p. 137) and account of the present state of evolutionary “Gooses” (p. 165). On page 229 a note from Ly- knowledge. ell to Owen is quoted but not cited. Ruse also provides the reader with a good Though many of these lapses will be of no analysis of the various challenges to Darwinian consequence to the general reader, scholars evolution, exploring the antievolutionists of the should be forewarned. This is not a book on 1920s as well as the creation scientists who have which one can rely, despite occasionally useful been active since the 1960s. He rightly empha- points. It should not be recommended to stu- sizes the current “intelligent design” campaign dents, for whom better sources are available. It as the latest manifestation of antievolution sen- should not be taken as a model. Several would- timent, but carefully presents these ideas as dis- be popularizations of the history of the earth sci- tinct from earlier ones. Ruse similarly analyzes 90 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) the “punctuated equilibria” concept of Stephen the archipelago caused by the 1997–1998 El Jay Gould, pointing out weaknesses in this idea Nin˜o event. When I visited Gala´pagos again, in and suggesting that Gould may be doing more February 1999, the islands were suffering one of harm than good in educating the public on the the driest periods on record, and terrestrial veg- realities of organic evolution. etation had died back; but the cool, nourishing Ruse includes much that will aid the reader in upwelling had resumed, and the marine environ- the pursuit of additional understanding of the ment was thriving. controversy. Each chapter includes a brief essay A “study in contrasts” aptly describes the two discussing and evaluating standard sources. A extremes in environmental conditions in the Ga- list of references, a chronology, and a glossary la´pagos Islands in 1998 and 1999 and, as Edward add to the volume, as do nearly 100 pages of Larson captures beautifully in this book, many documents that are included as a separate sec- aspects of their history. Indeed, a theme that tion. The writings of individuals as diverse as emerges in Larson’s historical account of the Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Henry Huxley, Gala´pagos is one of irony. Compare Herman and Pope John Paul II are complemented by Melville’s characterization of the islands as “an works of such noted scientists as Darwin, Gould, archipelago of aridities, without inhabitant, his- Edward O. Wilson, and Richard Dawkins. tory, or hope of either in all time to come” (p. Ruse makes another important contribution in 7), with modern biologists’ and eco-tourists’ his effective critique of the “science studies” fo- view of the Gala´pagos as “hallowed ground” and cus that seems increasingly popular among his- “enchanting”; the view of Gala´pagos as a place torians of science. Rejecting the concept that sci- where one can so easily see Creation (e.g., Ag- ence is merely another belief system, Ruse assiz) with the view that is is a place where one stresses that the personal beliefs of scientists are can so easily see evolution (e.g., Darwin); the largely irrelevant to an evaluation of the science popular belief that Darwin used Gala´pagos they produce. Of even greater value, Ruse finches as the basis of his theory of natural se- stresses that scientists’ beliefs must, at any rate, lection with the reality that a complete picture of be evaluated on the basis of their own times, and Gala´pagos finch evolution didn’t emerge until it not on the basis of current perspectives or fash- was unveiled in 1947 by David Lack, who re- ions. This observation should, of course, be ob- named “Gala´pagos finches” “Darwin’s finches”; vious to historians, so it is somewhat embarrass- the treatment of Gala´pagos as a land of plenty ing that a philosopher must come along and from which early sailors, buccaneers, and greedy remind us of this fact. naturalists removed tens of thousands of tor- Ruse has provided a well-written and thought- toises with its current status as a land in which provoking study of the evolution controversy in a single tortoise named Lonesome George is an its myriad forms. In his foreword, the sociobiol- icon for conservation worldwide; and its small ogist Edward O. Wilson argues that The Evolu- stature in terms of geographical size with its tion Wars would be his choice for the single vol- monumental stature in terms of impact on the ume to read by someone who had no knowledge history of biological science. of the evolution controversy. Wilson’s evalua- Expanding on the last contrast, Larson offers tion cogently describes the value of this book. the following insight from Robert Bowman: “No GEORGE E. WEBB area on Earth of comparable size has inspired more fundamental changes in Man’s perspective Edward J. Larson. Evolution’s Workshop: God of himself and his environment than the Gala´- -pagos Islands” (p. 12). As such, the comprehen ם and Science on the Gala´pagos Islands. xiv 320 pp., frontis., illus., index. New York: Basic sive history of the place provided by Larson is Books, 2001. $27.50, Can $41.50. well justified. It is also fascinating, and Larson tells the tale well—concisely, occasionally with I first visited the Gala´pagos Islands in June 1998, wit, and always with inclusive documentation. and little was as I expected. Rather than craggy The text is divided into three parts, the first cov- barrens covered with scrub, lush foliage beauti- ering the period from the discovery of the New fied many islands. Rather than flourishing World, including Gala´pagos in 1535, to Dar- coastal habitats, surface water temperatures were win’s legendary visit in 1835 and the subsequent well above normal, and throughout the archipel- publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859; ago dead or dying sea lions, sea birds, and ma- the second, the explosion of interest in the ar- rine iguanas littered the shores. All of this was chipelago by American and European naturalists the result of increased rainfall and the disruption in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu- of the normal upwelling in waters surrounding ries; and the third, the remarkable transformation BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 91 of the Gala´pagos between World War II, during quently called “Bru¨ckner cycles.” This was ap- which it served as a military base for the United parently a rediscovery of a similar weather cycle States, to the present. Following and cited in the long noted in the Netherlands and first remarked text are sixty-three pages of notes, a veritable upon by Sir Francis Bacon. Bru¨ckner popular- gold mine of references to classic and obscure ized his ideas by attempting to correlate these published material that demonstrate both how (real or imagined) fluctuations with sunspots, thoroughly Larson researched the topic and how economic conditions, migrations, lake levels, persistently this small archipelago has pervaded and other cyclical phenomena worldwide. scientific, governmental, religious, and public This book includes eleven articles or chapters thought. in English translation that are broadly represen- This book is more than a historical account of tative of Bru¨ckner’s writings on climate varia- scientific exploration in Gala´pagos; it is also a tions with one article each on hydrology and dramatic story of the history of Gala´pagos in hu- oceanography. These include “Ground Water man thought. By incorporating thoughts and and Typhus” (1887–1888); “Fluctuations of findings of nearly every famous, infamous, and Water Levels in the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, forgettable player in Gala´pagos exploration in and the Baltic Sea Relative to Weather” (1888); roughly chronological order and in the context “How Constant Is Today’s Climate?” (1889); of prevailing social or scientific mores, Larson three chapters from Climate Change Since 1700 provides an extraordinary glimpse into human (1890): “The Current Status of the Inquiry into nature. Regarding the evolution of human Climate Changes” (Ch. 1), “Periodization of Cli- thought in conceptualizing organic evolution, matic Variations” (Ch. 8), and “The Significance Larson demonstrates that spiritual concerns or of Climatic Variations in Theory and Practice” other constraints prevent some individuals from (Ch. 9); “On the Influence of the Snow Cover on progressing intellectually, others eagerly aban- the Climate of the Alps” (1893); “Influence of don all tradition to embrace new concepts, and Climate Variability on Harvest and Grain Prices still others find middle ground. As noted poi- in Europe” (1895); “Weather Prophets” (1896); gnantly, no less than ironically, by Larson, crea- “An Inquiry about the 35-Year Periods of Cli- tion science, not evolution, is taught in Gala´pa- matic Variations” (1902); “On Climate Vari- gos schools, and this once-pristine archipelago ability” (1909); “Climate Variability and Mass is now bustling with humans and the predictable Migration” (1912); and “The Settlement of the problems that accompany us. The history of Ga- United States as Controlled by Climate and Cli- la´pagos, both in terms of its ultimate fate and its matic Oscillations” (1915). Bru¨ckner’s interests in influence on human thought, is not finished. The glaciers, glacial ages, geomorphology, polar re- sequel to Evolution’s Workshop may be equally search, and cartography are not represented here. intriguing. The editors, Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch, CAROLE BALDWIN provide a brief introduction, including an outline of Bru¨ckner’s influence on his contemporaries, Nico Stehr; Hans von Storch (Editors). Eduard notably Julius Hann, and a plea that current re- Bru¨ckner: The Sources and Consequences of searchers in the human dimensions of global Climate Change and Climate Variability in His- change take Bru¨ckner seriously because of what torical Times. Translations by Barbara Stehr they believe is an “analogy to the present state ם .Gordon Gamlin and x 338 pp., illus., figs., of affairs” (p. 18), particularly the political and tables, bibl., index. Dordrecht/Boston/London: economic consequences of climate variations on Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. $167, £96, human time scales (decades to centuries). The NLG 275. book concludes with a thirteen-page bibliogra- Eduard Bru¨ckner (1862–1927), professor of ge- phy of over 200 of Bru¨ckner’s publications. ography at Bern, Halle, and Vienna, editor of Scattered typographical and other errors do not Meteorologische Zeitschrift, and founder of Zeit- seriously detract from the utility of the book or schrift fu¨r Gletscherkunde, fu¨r Eiszeitforschung the graceful translations by Barbara Stehr and und Geschichte des Klimas, focused his research Gordon Gamlin. This tantalizing peek into a ne- on climatological and glaciological themes, glected body of literature on climate variations broadly construed, with forays into hydrology in historical times should serve to keep Bru¨ck- and oceanography. He is most widely known for ner’s legacy alive within the English-speaking his observation that cool, damp conditions global change community and may entice schol- seemed to alternate with warm, dry conditions ars to reappraise his influence. in approximately thirty-five year cycles, subse- JAMES RODGER FLEMING 92 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Sherry L. Smith. Reimagining Indians: Native This is not a book about Indians. Indeed, the Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880–1940. xii only Indian individual about whose life we hear pp., illus., index. Oxford/New York: Ox- any detail is Tony Luhan, the Taos man who 273 ם ford University Press, 2000. $35. married Mabel Dodge. Smith’s deft character sketches of a group of writers whom she char- The notion of the exotic Other gives writers acterizes as “middlebrow purveyors of Indian- something against which to define themselves. ness” do show, however, the roots of their fas- Sherry Smith deals with that process of self-def- cination with Indians and their attempts to inition in her study of a group of writers whose counter the harsh federal policy of assimilation. subjects were American Indians. The group in- Their works, uneven in quality and sometimes cludes Charles Erskine Scott Wood, a military contradictory of each other, were often poorly officer involved in the pursuit of the Nez Perce; reviewed by eastern critics and sold poorly, but George Bird Grinnell, Walter McClintock, and some, like McClintock and Grinnell, through Mary Roberts Rinehart, who studied northern publication and public lectures, reached fairly Plains tribes; Frank Bird Linderman, biographer wide audiences. As Smith notes in her conclu- of the Crows Plenty-Coup and Pretty Shield; sion, most of these works have been reissued in Charles Fletcher Lummis, founder of the South- new paperback editions, available to influence a west Museum in Los Angeles; George Wharton new generation of people who are interested in James, a self-taught authority on southwestern the cultures of American Indian tribes. In many Indian cultures; and Mary Austin, Anna Ickes, cases, members of some tribes can salvage ele- and Mabel Dodge Luhan, who romanticized ments of their own cultures through these works. Pueblo cultures. Smith argues that all of these Thoroughly researched and gracefully written, authors, although from different backgrounds Smith’s book is a strong contribution to a body and holding divergent views about Indians, pre- of literature that includes Philip Deloria’s Play- sented Indians as individual human beings ing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, whose cultures and beliefs were worthy of ac- 1998), Margaret Jacobs’s Engendered Encoun- ceptance and even emulation. In a time when ters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures (Lincoln: federal policy was assimilationist and designed University of Nebraska Press, 1999), and Leah to suppress Indian cultures, the works of these Dilworth’s Imagining Indians in the Southwest: authors delivered a different message. Persistent Visions of a Primitive Past (Washing- The message was often prompted as much by ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), the fear of the effects of modernism and rampant books that tell us not about Indians but how re- individualism on American society as it was by sponses to Indians reveal aspects of American respect for Indians. It was also prompted by some- popular culture. times deep-seated yearnings to find new sources CLARA SUE KIDWELL of personal identity. Mabel Dodge went so far as to marry a Taos Indian, while Walter McClintock Thomas C. Jepsen. My Sisters Telegraphic: claimed to have been adopted by the Blackfeet. Women in the Telegraph Office, 1846–1950. xii :pp., illus., tables, bibl., index. Athens 231 ם -Most of these individuals became political ac tivists, either directly (Linderman ran unsuccess- Ohio University Press, 2000. $49.95 (cloth); fully for Congress; Ickes was a member of the $21.95 (paper). Illinois state legislature and was an active par- ticipant in her husband’s political career as sec- Thomas C. Jepsen takes his place among the in- retary of the interior) or indirectly (Austin shared creasing number of historians who have drawn her outspoken opinions with Commissioner of attention to the often overlooked role that Indian Affairs John Collier). Certainly in their women have played in technology-based indus- writings they promoted positive images of In- tries. My Sisters Telegraphic documents the dians and were advocates for the preservation of work experiences of women telegraph operators, Indian cultures. mainly in the second half of the nineteenth cen- Of the group, only Ickes had any formal train- tury. The book describes the working conditions ing in ethnography. The others were self-taught women encountered in telegraph offices and the experts whose personal associations with Indians ways in which they were represented in popular informed their work. Participation in aspects of culture. While he devotes most of his attention Indian life undoubtedly influenced their presen- to events in the United States, the author also tation of Indians as human beings. Grinnell’s provides useful comparative data on women work on Cheyenne culture is the most systematic telegraphers in Canada, Europe, and South and detailed of any of the group. America. BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 93

Jepsen vividly depicts daily life in the tele- This book will be most useful to scholars in- graph industry, drawing on trade journals, dia- terested in the intersection of technology and la- ries, newspapers, corporate records, and popular bor history. There is relatively little technical de- literature. There are chapters on the tasks and tail; instead, the author focuses on the social role routines of the telegraph office, the social back- that science and technology play as symbols of ground of female operators, and representations modernity and sources of economic power. Jep- of women telegraphers in fiction and cinema. sen makes excellent use of his sources to provide Working conditions could be grueling and dan- a wealth of detail about the work practices of gerous; women who operated the telegraph in operators, much of it in the words of the women railroad depots, for example, had to hand instruc- themselves. My Sisters Telegraphic offers a tions up to the train crew as the trains went highly readable social history of women’s par- speeding by. Jepsen considers “women’s issues,” ticipation in what was once a high-tech industry. especially the question of equal pay, as well as JANET ABBATE women’s participation in the labor movement. The chapter on popular culture discusses films, Daniel R. Headrick. When Information Came novels, and stories (including one by Henry of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age 246 םJames) that were based on the adventures and ro- of Reason and Revolution, 1700–1850.x mantic entanglements of telegraph women. pp., figs., bibl., index. Oxford/New York: Ox- Telegraph work demanded considerable tech- ford University Press, 2000. $29.95. nical skill, since the operator had to master Morse code, transmit messages at high speed, The agenda informing this compact book has the and often maintain the telegraph equipment in transparency of crystal. Against the widely re- working condition. Women with these skills peated claim that the so-called Information Age were able to achieve independence in many began with the invention of the transistor in ways: high wages gave them (relative) financial 1947, a claim trumpeted both by the knowledge- independence, the distribution of telegraph of- able (Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson) fices throughout the country offered geographic and the ignorant (Bill Gates), Daniel Headrick mobility, and operators had a long-distance com- seeks a more distant source for the information- munications medium at their disposal. Women saturated environment in which we now live. He who worked in small towns or railway stations sensibly points out that human demand for in- usually ran the office by themselves, while formation is as old as humanity itself, and con- women in large urban offices had the freedom of sequently we should not look to name any single the city in addition to the possibility of promo- moment as the “dawn” of the Information Age. tion. Women thus benefited greatly from their Instead we should be attentive to historical pe- association with this new technology, a point riods during which the availability of informa- Jepsen underscores by comparing telegraph op- tion accelerates sharply. Often such moments are erators with modern computer programmers, associated with particular technical innovations, who have also been able to translate technical such as the appearance of double-entry book- competence into rewarding employment. At the keeping, printing, the telegraph, and, yes, the same time, women faced discrimination from computer. But Headrick wants to direct attention employers and unions, and their skilled status away from particular machines and technologies was undermined by the introduction around as accelerators of information and toward the 1915 of the Teletype machine, which replaced eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a pe- Morse code with typewritten input and output. riod during which a host of novel information Jepsen argues that telegraph operators embod- systems were introduced. ied a “modern” outlook because of their inde- On this basis the book discusses a series of pendence and embrace of new technology. “It is developments in information systems under five [their] ability to step in and out of the social headings. The first, “Organizing Information,” bounds of their time that makes them seem so describes how Linnaeus and Lavoisier and Guy- contemporary to us” (p. 116). This point is not ton de Morveau created new languages to pro- entirely convincing: the women may seem to us cess and communicate scientific information. to have had a “modern” lifestyle, but the book The creation of the metric system finds a niche offers little evidence that they saw themselves as in this chapter as well. Headrick’s second head- being outside the mainstream. Indeed, Jepsen ing, “Transforming Information,” discusses the notes that most female operators stayed in the attempt by governments to collect statistics business for only a few years before leaving to about populations, culminating in the specifica- get married (p. 60). tion of a decennial census in the American Con- 94 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) stitution and the repeated attempts by French because they were inherently more rational. Lin- revolutionary regimes to conduct a census dur- naeus’s nomenclature appealed to the “orderly ing the 1790s. The third heading, “Displaying minds of mid-eighteenth-century rationalists” Information,” turns to innovations in mapmak- (p. 25), while the physician William Farr’s sta- ing during the eighteenth century and the inven- tistical compilation of disease data for the En- tion of graphical representation. Under the fourth glish General Register Office gave “a more sci- heading, “Storing Information,” Headrick de- entific basis to the classification of diseases” (p. scribes eighteenth-century encyclopedias and 88), and so on. dictionaries, an overview that thankfully ranges THOMAS BROMAN considerably more widely than Diderot’s Ency- clope´die. Finally, the heading “Communicating Randall A. Dodgen. Controlling the Dragon: Information” discusses the development of Confucian Engineers and the Yellow River in ,.pp., illus., apps 245 םpostal systems in various European countries Late Imperial China.x and North America, as well as the invention of bibl., index. Honolulu: University of Hawaii telegraphy. Of particular interest here is the ex- Press, 2001. $29.95 (paper). tensive network of visual telegraphs established in France during the 1790s and then elsewhere Because of its extremely heavy silt load and vari- in Europe. able regime, control of the Yellow River’s This breadth of coverage is impressive and course over the alluvial, densely populated North suggests the comprehensiveness and signifi- China Plain has been an intractable problem for cance of Headrick’s story, but it also betrays cer- many centuries. In the thirteenth century the tain weaknesses. First, the treatment of topics is Mongol dynasty used part of the river’s down- highly uneven. The discussion of encyclopedias stream section to create a transport route, “the and dictionaries, for example, is deep and well Grand Canal,” from the Yangtze River to the informed by the primary sources. The treatment capital of Beijing. The main solution to Yellow of Linnaeus’s taxonomy, Lavoisier’s chemical River floods used to be diversion into flood chan- nomenclature, and the metric system is far more nels of smaller rivers, but from the sixteenth cen- superficial, as is the analysis of postal systems. tury onward the Yellow River was confined to a Second, this same breadth causes one to wonder single channel. The steady rise of its river bed just what the phenomenon is that Headrick created problems of drainage and dike mainte- means to describe. Such concerns are certainly nance. Its dual function as a floodway and a ca- not diminished by the wholly unsatisfactory def- nal became increasingly difficult and costly to inition provided for the book’s central concept, maintain, and the system became more and more information. As the book defines it, information complex and elaborate: some 800 kilometers of is “the patterns of energy and matter that humans dikes, spillways, floodgates, and locks. Because understand” (p. 4). That somewhat underdeter- of the Grand Canal’s vital function in supplying mines the object, I should say. the capital and garrisons in the north with tax Disappointing too was the book’s failure to rice and commercial rice from the south, the engage very deeply with an explanation of why Ming and Qing dynasties were prepared to al- these changes occurred. Leaving aside the ques- locate great sums of money to keep the system tion of whether all of the changes described re- going. It finally broke down in the 1850s. ally constitute changes in information systems In a 1991 article in Late Imperial China, (whatever those might be), and also the question Randall Dodgen concluded that the eventual of whether all of these eighteenth-century nov- breakdown of the system was an inevitable con- elties could not be traced farther back in time, as sequence of its ever-increasing complexity and several surely could, we can still ask what not due to dynastic decline and bureaucratic fail- brought such developments together. A book of ure, as most historians would have it. In Con- such synthetic reach ought to be ideal for such trolling the Dragon he has modified this posi- ruminations. As one might expect, Headrick tion. Although in the 1820s and 1830s few does attribute the rising demand for information disruptions occurred, the government suffered to the attempt by enlightened absolutist govern- from a serious fiscal crisis. Local communities ments and later revolutionary regimes to develop became less able and willing to pay. The Dao- policies to stimulate economic growth, along guang Emperor showed distrust of skilled engi- with the needs of actors in an increasingly com- neering officials and finally made some bad ap- plex and robust economic system. But all too pointments. The Board of Works did not support often the book simply asserts that because this the river officials, and tensions between national was the Age of Reason, the innovations occurred and local officials intensified. Thus, “fiscal, bu- BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 95 reaucratic and technological problems weakened stant admonitions to keep costs down reduced the state’s commitment to Yellow River con- the level of preparedness against floods. The im- trol.” The main focus of this charming and thor- perial state was commited to a minimal bureau- oughly researched book is on the role of the cracy of generalists, and technical specialists did “Confucian engineer” in the early nineteenth not command much influence. Overseeing hy- century. By that seemingly contradictory term, draulic construction work might bring one tem- Dodgen refers to high officials of the provincial porary glory and great financial reward (because Yellow River Conservancy, “hybrid literati- of handling very large budgets; without much technologists with no formal training in engi- evidence, Dodgen states that corruption was not neering.” He discusses their organizational, ad- a significant factor in this field) but equally great ministrative, and financial concerns at length, risks of punishment if dike breaks occurred or because these were their main tasks and histori- projects failed. cal sources concentrate on them. Much less at- This book could have profited from more tention is paid to the purely technical and hy- maps and drawings. It shows little concern for draulic aspects of their work. In the absence of quantitative aspects of river control—for in- proper sources, the question of these officials’ stance, the costs of materials and labor. Tech- relationship with and reliance on technical staff nical and practical aspects—such as tools, tech- (whether their own or attached to local officials) niques, the organization of manpower, and the remains largely unanswered. Dodgen discusses transport of material—are discussed little if at one of the “statecraft school” officials of the all. In a sense, Dodgen has himself adopted the early nineteenth century, the well-known com- Confucian “generalist” approach to engineering. piler of the textbook for officials An Illustrated Although this limits the scope of Controlling the Guide to River Engineering Tools Lin Qing, but Dragon, it nevertheless remains a highly inter- without going into his qualities as an author or esting and readable account of the administrative engineer. Lin Qing advocated more hydrological concerns of late Qing river officials. Moreover, training for officials in general, so that they could Dodgen’s cogent analysis enriches our under- become better judges of and more directly in- standing of the limitations of the traditional Chi- volved in the planning and implementation of nese bureaucracy and its eventual inability to repair projects. maintain the Yellow River transport system. The story of the introduction of brick as a EDUARD B. VERMEER building material in dike repairs (replacing stalks and stone) by the high provincial river official Emily Abel. Hearts of Wisdom: American 326 םLi Yumei in 1835 gives a good insight into the Women Caring for Kin, 1840–1940.x difficulties of innovation. When Li pushed for pp., index. Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard universal adoption of this new material and the University Press, 2000. Court agreed to the establishment of state-oper- ated brick kilns, the vested interests of suppliers It is virtually a cliche´ that care-giving was (is) of traditional materials were threatened. Other one of woman’s primary duties. However, we officials stressed the technical, social, and eco- often have little appreciation of the actual ex- nomic risks of a change from proven practices, perience. Emily Abel induces a visceral under- and after due investigation Li’s proposal was standing of this critical role, starting from the killed, though brick remained on the list of al- first chapter of Hearts of Wisdom, with the life lowed materials. The larger question of the rela- of Emily Hawley Gillespie, a farmwoman in the tive utility of bricks vis-a`-vis other repair mate- Midwest in the nineteenth century. Gillespie as- rials was neither tested nor resolved; their use sisted neighbors and friends during childbirth remained at the discretion of local authorities. and sickness. She was herself recipient of such Two concrete examples are used to illustrate help when ill and for the birth of her children. the concerns and actions of national and local Moreover, despite tense relationships with her river officials. The 1841 flood and siege of the father and her sister, Gillespie cared for them city of Kaifeng is a story of relief efforts and the when the need arose. There was tension between organizational and technical difficulties of re- her and her daughter, Sarah. Despite the fact that pairs. The Zhongmou debacle depicts how de- Sarah had a teaching position in another com- lays, ineffectiveness, and cost cutting led to new munity, she returned to her mother’s house in dike breaks and much higher repair costs than times of medical crises. As Emily’s health failed, initially foreseen. Dodgen concludes that the Sarah resigned in order to nurse her mother. This Daoguang Emperor’s record of concern for the story documents how care-giving dominated Yellow River administration is mixed. His con- many women’s lives. Emily, Sarah, and other 96 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) women of the nineteenth century considered ments and independent of them. Women caring care-giving a labor of love and, at the same, took for their families found (and still find) them- pride in their accomplishments. selves balancing confidence in their own em- Slowly, though, from the turn of the century pathic knowledge with the authoritative knowl- onward, physicians increasingly sought to assert edge of health-care professionals. By focusing their growing professional status. They chafed at on the role of female care-giver, Abel has drawn lay care-givers who sometimes undercut and an insightful and evocative picture of women’s even contradicted medical advice. The balance changing roles during a period of dramatic trans- of power between care-giving mothers and phy- formations in medical care and the medical pro- sicians shifted in the twentieth century for sev- fession. eral reasons, not solely because of enhanced RIMA D. APPLE medical authority built on new medical knowl- edge in areas such as bacteriology and new Peter Lewis Allen. The Wages of Sin: Sex and ,.pp 202 ם medical practice, especially surgery. Changes in Disease, Past and Present. xxiii domestic technology, developments in transpor- figs., table, bibl., index. Chicago: University of tation and communications, and the spread of Chicago Press, 2000. $25. hospitals, for example, all combined to affect women’s family care-giving. In another exten- In six chapters of uneven length, Peter Lewis sive and telling vignette, Abel traces more than Allen, a former literature professor and public thirty years of Martha Shaw Farnsworth’s life, policy activist, offers a highly readable romp dramatically illustrating how care-giving and through two millennia of beliefs and attitudes medicine changed between 1890 and 1924. True, regarding sin, sex, and disease. In particular, Al- as medical care moved from the home into the len draws on religious, medical, and popular lit- hospital, women spent less time in direct care. erature from different eras in order to exemplify However, they did not relinquish their control how particular “diseases”—lovesickness, lep- over medical situations, instead insisting on par- rosy, syphilis, bubonic plague, and masturba- ticipating in medical decision-making for them- tion—were causally connected with thoughts of selves and for others. In effect, their care-giving punishment for sinful behavior. He then extends role was redefined from one of personal care to this theme into a lengthy chapter describing how one of mediator between the patient and the the same belief contributed to the chasm between health-care provider. conservative and activist perspectives on AIDS The bulk of this study centers on the lives of in the United States over the past two decades. literate white women coping with physical ill- Allen, who is admittedly not a historian, picks ness. Recognizing this limitation, Abel investi- and chooses a “series of portraits of disease,” gates the lives of other women in other situations offering little contextualization as he creates a that involve care-giving. One particularly fasci- “tableau” of perspectives drawn from European nating chapter highlights immigrant women car- and American discourse throughout Christianity. ing for family members diagnosed in the early He flavors his chronological narrative with per- twentieth century with tuberculosis. They often sonal experiences drawn from his work in gay clashed with medical and charity workers. In an- health groups. The most significant personal ex- other chapter, Abel shows the influence of the periences he intersperses stem from thoughts Depression, using letters written to Eleanor and about his one-time lover, now dead from com- Franklin D. Roosevelt by poor mothers negoti- plications associated with AIDS. He interjects ating health care for their families. Two other key episodes from this relationship into the book chapters cogently discuss the mothers of chil- to affirm that “in its fight about how to respond dren labeled feebleminded and epileptic and the to AIDS,” American society has reenacted a mothers of deaf children. “drama that had been written centuries before” Emily Abel’s Hearts of Wisdom is a carefully (p. xv). crafted study interweaving the history of Amer- Allen’s engaging writing stands much more ican women and the history of medicine. The firmly as chronologically arranged comparative richness of the sources she uses—the diaries and literature than as historical scholarship. His the letters especially—adds a sense of immedi- greatest historiographical faux pas lies in his acy and power to her analysis. Attuned to racial anachronistic writing about disease. For exam- and ethnic differences as well as regional and ple, he introduces his chapter on medieval lep- socioeconomic distinctions, Hearts of Wisdom rosy with a description of the pathological de- demonstrates that female care-giving was both a struction caused by the leprosy bacterium. Then, reflection of contemporary medical develop- in selecting situations drawn from Herodotus BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 97 through the sixteenth-century “contagionist” Gi- in the nineteenth century, or the wide range of rolamo Fracastoro, he erroneously assumes that twentieth-century STDs prior to AIDS? Why “leprosy” implied a singular, consistent disorder was no mention made of leprosy in the twenti- throughout this long period. Similar concerns eth-century context? Its AIDS-like stigma has arise regarding his coverage of syphilis. Such er- been historically contextualized in several rors may have originated from his drawing too works, including Stephanie J. Castillo’s award- exclusively from pre-1990 historical writings. winning 1992 documentary Simple Courage. Works like Charles E. Rosenberg and Janet Similarly, one wonders why the author chose not Golden’s Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural to drawn on standard medical history accounts History (Rutgers, 1992) and Linda Merian’s ed- on AIDS, including Elizabeth Fee and Daniel M. ited volume The Secret Malady: Venereal Dis- Fox’s edited volume AIDS: The Burden of His- ease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France tory (California, 1988) and, perhaps more im- (Kentucky, 1996), and the voluminous literature portant for the Francophile Allen, Mirko D. on the history of the body, would have provided Grmek’s Histoire du SIDA: De´but et origine contextual concepts within which to place more d’une pande´mie actualle (Payot, 1989). concrete views about the intersections between Apart from my historiographical criticisms, diseases and culture. The author’s desire to flash The Wages of Sin is a most delightful popular forward from particular historical periods to rendering of key relations between disease and AIDS in our society too often leads to weakly Christianity. Works like this are extremely use- substantiated connections between time periods. ful in reminding the reading public in an artic- Allen’s strengths lie in his ability to draw on ulate, informative, and entertaining manner that works of literature, especially popular literature. they are part of humanity’s continuum that has His particular emphasis on French works reflects long sought connections between physical health his own background in medieval French litera- and moral living. Indeed, Allen’s apt description ture. His arguments are also strong when com- of the underlying usefulness of history under- paring church and society in the medieval pe- scores the importance of his own writing: “We riod. For example, his chapter on lovesickness value history because, whatever its distortions clearly delineates the persistent position of the and inaccuracies, it is a way of understanding Church Fathers (and Hildegard, too) against and giving value to our collective human expe- medics who regularly prescribed a “coital cure” rience and collective human memory” (p. 158). for the disorder, without specifying what part- PHILIP K. WILSON ners to select, instead of welcoming disease as a divine corrective. R. Ian McCallum. Antimony in Medical His- Allen’s writing on plague, the shortest chapter tory: An Account of the Medical Uses of Anti- of the book, clearly depicts the once-common mony and Its Compounds Since Early Times to ,.pp., illus., figs., apps 125 ם view that this epidemic disaster was inflicted by the Present. xviii God as a punishment for mankind’s sinful na- bibl., index. Edinburgh/Cambridge: Pentland ture. However, the omission of any discussion Press, 1999. £15. of sex in a chapter of a work subtitled “Sex and Disease, Past and Present,” is somewhat puz- Alchemists and medical practitioners were zling. Even more conspicuous is the author’s drawn to antimony for roughly the same rea- failure to expand upon the 1530 poem regarding son—its ability to expel impurities from metals the plight of the impious shepherd, Syphilis, or human bodies. Long before the sixteenth cen- from whom the disease in question received its tury, when Agricola described the process, met- name. Why would a literary scholar prone to allurgists employed compounds of the brittle, draw on popular writings not give more than a flaky metal to separate silver and impurities from single-sentence mention to this historically rele- gold. Alchemical allegory depicted antimony as vant poem? a gray wolf that devoured the king that he might Of the works Allen has drawn upon, he offers be resurrected, rising—purified—from the a pleasant mix of primary and secondary ac- flames of the wolf’s funeral pyre. This nearly counts that, like all good literary criticism, gives supernatural ability to remove impurities made original sources a clear voice. Any work so se- antimony crucial for alchemists. Medical theo- lectively focused on a few diseases will leave rists inferred a similar purifying power from the some readers wondering about others that might dramatic physiological effects of antimonial have been perceived in terms of sex and sin. compounds, making antimony a staple in the Were such associations discussed in regard to pharmacopoeia for centuries. madness in the eighteenth century, tuberculosis No mere emetic—antimony opens the sluices 98 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) at both ends—antimony seemed to its staunchest antiquity to the present, he devotes little atten- supporters a near-panacea. Sixteenth-century in- tion to the fate of antimony in the “therapeutic structions for brewing an antimonial elixir prom- revolutions” of the nineteenth and twentieth cen- ised that it “cures the plague, cancers, dullness turies, when medicine’s “semi-religious obses- of wit . . . breaks the force of every poison; if sion” with depletives of all sorts was thrown into one drinks it once a week, it cures epilepsy” (pp. high relief. It is also regrettable that McCallum, 65–66). By the eighteenth century, R. Ian who has had a long career as a specialist in oc- McCallum finds, “there were more compounds cupational medicine, gives so little attention to of antimony than any other modern element in the occupational hazards of work with antimony. the medical chemists’ repertoire” (p. 15). In These, of course, are complaints about what is 1750 the British physician John Huxham praised missing from the book. What is there makes for the flexibility of antimony in wine, claiming that a very readable introduction to an important sub- “the dose can be varied so that, in the treatment ject. of pleurisies, you may puke, you may purge, and CHRISTIAN WARREN you may sweat with it” (p. 74). In the twentieth century antimonials have been employed in ex- W. Michael Byrd; Linda A. Clayton. An Amer- perimental HIV/AIDS treatments and continue ican Health Dilemma: A Medical History of Af- to be used in tropical medicine, notably in the rican Americans and the Problem of Race: Be- treatment of leishmaniasis. ginnings to 1900. Foreword by Robert J. ,.pp., illus., tables, bibl 588 ם McCallum has produced a perplexing though Blendon. xxviii interesting little book. Some books are brief be- index. New York/London: Routledge, 2000. cause their authors have very little to say, others $35. because they present essays that are simply too long to be mere journal articles but too focused This work is the first volume of a projected two- and succinct to fill a full-length monograph. volume examination of the black experience McCallum’s slim volume—at under 90 pages of with the practices and institutions of Western text—is neither. He has plenty to say: the book medicine from its earliest beginnings to the end is brimming with erudition, jammed with infor- of the twentieth century. As a reference source, mation about what has been written about me- W. Michael Byrd and Linda Clayton’s history is dicinal antimony since the early modern period. certainly valuable: its thirty-page bibliography Some will no doubt welcome the table and ap- and nearly one hundred pages of notes offer a pendix in the back of the book listing known rich field of information for anyone who wants antimony preparations and the various anti- to know the “what” and “how” of the intersec- mony-bearing ores around the world. tion of black history and Western medicine. On the other hand, the book has no clear or- Still, after having read the book, I have more ganizing principle, no central thesis. Late in the questions—about the work itself: its purpose, its book, McCallum wonders at the “semi-religious intended audience, and the apparent lack of ed- obsession” physicians have demonstrated re- iting (the narrative is very repetitious, the au- garding antimony and judges this obsession wor- thors often saying the same thing in several thy of “further enquiry” (p. 97). Indeed, this different ways). Further, in a quest for complete- would have been a good starting point from ness Byrd and Clayton tend to introduce material which to build a very valuable book. Instead, that, for me, slows their story more than it ad- McCallum leads his readers on what is essen- vances what I believe is their central argument: tially a guided tour of the interesting facts and that difference has a way of becoming deviance, citations he has collected. This style is most no- which then produces long-term consequences for table in his chapter on antimony cups, which at those not a party to the original decision; that it points reads like an auction catalogue. Many becomes institutional racism. passages rise above this sort of historian-as- In their preface Byrd and Clayton explain how docent narrative, notably his discussion of the the book came to be; in the introduction they seventeenth-century “antimony war” between describe what it is intended to accomplish. Their conservative Galenists of Paris and their “for- principal objective, they say, was “to perform a ward looking” rivals at Montpellier, who ad- history-based descriptive and structured analysis vocated better iatrochemistry through antimony of the U.S. health system from an African Amer- (pp. 18–20). By and large, however, the book ican perspective,” a point they will repeat else- provides little in the way of historical context where in a slightly different guise. Such an anal- or analysis. ysis is necessary, they argue, because although Although McCallum discusses antimony from the American public has become more aware of BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 99 the national crisis in health care and of the need haps more than the average reader can comfort- for major reform of the health system, too many ably digest and assimilate. Part 2 and a portion commentators appear to have overlooked the of Part 3 track the health-care experiences of “older, more ominous, culturally driven health Blacks under slavery and their importance in the crisis afflicting African American and other poor evolution of a dual health system that will be- populations” (p. xxiv). To some extent this crisis come more rigid with time. The balance of Part “can be explained on the basis of a medical- 3 reviews black health care and the evolution of social culture hundreds of years old that is health policy and practice alongside the matu- heavily laden and burdened by race and class ration of the medical profession after the col- problems compounding continued social and eco- lapse of the peculiar institution to the end of the nomic deprivation.” This contention is followed nineteenth century. by a list of assumptions, beginning with “Poor Although health care for black people did im- health status and outcomes for Blacks and the prove after the Civil War and Reconstruction, poor are ‘normal’ and acceptable” and ending African Americans and the poor in general still with “Racially and ethnically divided health pro- experience a kind of differential access that has fessions have factions that are often contentious, been exacerbated by the fee-for-service sys- conflicting, and contemptuous of each other.” tem—that the system is not equal and is still In the introduction, too, Byrd and Clayton de- bedeviled by prejudicial attitudes and discrimi- scribe both the topics the book will cover and natory behavior left over from days gone by is a the many sources they consulted (some “new to given. The question that remains is, How do we the health care literature,” some “ compiled, an- improve it? Clearly this book, despite its flaws, alyzed, and reinterpreted in an unprecedented is a step in the right direction. By providing a manner”) to substantiate their historical and historical overview of how things evolved to be structured analysis. The materials included and the way they are, the authors also provide insight the need for close editing of the entire text leave into how to correct existing conditions. one wondering who will read this book and what BILL KING they might derive from it. Still, it is a thorough effort from start to finish. Randal L. Hall. William Louis Poteat: A Leader -pp., il 262 םThe book first undertakes “a history-based ex- of the Progressive-Era South.x amination and evaluation of the U.S. health de- lus., bibl., index. Lexington: University Press of livery system from an African American per- Kentucky, 2000. $34.95. spective.” Second, it reassesses “the relationship between the medical profession and issues of William Louis Poteat (1856–1938), a North race and racism in Western culture and the Carolina intellectual of the Progressive Era, United States.” Third, it evaluates the impact of gained a reputation as a leading liberal in south- race and racism as key variables that must be ern higher education. This book, which was rec- factored into the complex equation necessary to ognized by a prestigious National Endowment resolve the “American health dilemma.” Fourth, for the Humanities publication grant, is useful the book offers “a series of explanatory hypoth- for historians of science because it illustrates eses that clarify and help explain the results of the how scientific ideas, particularly Darwinism, ongoing relationships between race, the biomed- were diffused into a rural and isolated society. ical and other life sciences, health, and healthcare From his student years to the end of his life, delivery in the United States from their ancient Poteat was intimately connected with a Southern Afro-European beginnings” to 1900. (A forth- Baptist college, Wake Forest. He matriculated at coming second volume is intended to cover the Wake Forest and became a tutor there in 1878. period from 1900 to the present day.) The re- Although almost entirely self-taught in the sci- mainder of the book is divided into three sections: ences, he became a popular and respected pro- background, “Race, Medicine, and Health in the fessor of biology. As his knowledge of science North American Colonies and the Early U.S. Re- came from reading contemporary papers and public,” and “Race, Medicine, and Health in the monographs rather than from traditional study, United States from 1812 to 1900.” he developed a perspective more modern than The background section provides a reassess- that of most of his peers. He rose through the ment of the relationship between race, biology, ranks, ultimately becoming president of Wake and health in the United States and establishes Forest in 1905. the groundwork for the remainder of the book— Relatively early in his career, Poteat began the though the information on the evolution of race, work that earned him a place in southern history science, and medicine in Western culture is per- by writing articles and giving lectures on the 100 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) ways in which science and religion were related. it is also a study of the split personalities of By the end of his first decade as a faculty mem- Southern Progressives. On the one hand, they ber, he had become convinced of the importance rejected rule by educated leaders; on the other, of Darwin’s theory of evolution and had decided they wanted government to control the most in- that it posed no threat to traditional Christianity. timate aspects of life, such as reproduction. Po- In supporting this view, Poteat followed the lead teat thought that all these things should be over- of mainstream European and Northern American seen by a “genteel Christian community led by churches, which had no problem reconciling a liberal elite” (p. 167). The complexity and cog- evolution with the Book of Genesis and its de- nitive dissonance of Southern Progressives are scription of creation occurring in seven days. Af- well illustrated in this book. ter all, who knew what a day meant in the mind RUTH J. HAUG of God? Many Southern Protestants, however, rejected this position. Richard F. Wetzell. Inventing the Criminal: A Randal Hall sees Poteat as an advocate of a History of German Criminology, 1880–1945. ,.pp., bibl 348 ם liberal social philosophy fully in accord with the (Studies in Legal History.) xvi social gospel of the Progressive age. As a leading index. Chapel Hill/London: University of North proponent for change in his state, Poteat “per- Carolina Press, 2000. $39.95. sonified North Carolina Progressivism” (p. 60), and his defense of Darwin was of a piece with Some two decades ago Robert Nye began inves- his philosophy. But it is unclear whether Poteat’s tigating the emergence of criminology as a dis- admiration for Darwin stemmed from an under- cipline. At first he wanted to write a book about standing of science or an obsession with eugen- it, but he eventually thought better of the idea. ics, an obsession that in time came to dominate “It was soon evident to me, as it has been to his thinking. everyone else who has looked through the older Poteat vigorously used his position as presi- criminological literature,” he explained, “that dent of the Southern Baptist Education Associ- crime was seldom treated as an isolated phenom- ation to promote theories of eugenics. Although enon, even by those who were most eager to es- Darwin did not actively promote racism, follow- tablish scientific criminology as an isolated dis- ers of his thought such as Poteat could easily cipline” (Crime, Madness, and Politics in educe racist ideas from it. They could argue, for Modern France [Princeton: Princeton University example, that individuals should speed up the Press, 1984], p. xi). Undaunted by Nye’s words process of producing superior humans by help- of warning, Richard Wetzell has produced a ing nature along through the process of selective sweeping history of German criminology, one breeding. Concerned with the large number of that approaches “the history of crime and crim- Americans who were institutionalized, and the inal justice from the perspective of intellectual even greater number who were barely educated, history and the history of science, rather than Poteat maintained that the government should social, legal-institutional, or political history” (p. control the right to reproduce and sterilize the 2). Wetzell, that is, attempts largely to isolate the unfit, including the “self-centered, the coarse- discourse of German criminology from its social, fibered, and the discourteous” (p. 186). He institutional, and political contexts. Readers of thought that civilization would crumble unless Isis may consider this an odd conception of this such procedures were put in place, because there discipline. Moreover, those seeking insight into would be an “overproduction of under-men” (p. the questions and debates that preoccupy most 101). Indeed, following this same line of historians of science these days will search in thought, he opposed war because it foolishly vain, because Inventing the Criminal generally wasted “our best blood” (p. 185). He called for treats “science” itself as a given, as self-evident, federal legislation to govern marriage and di- as explanans rather than explanandum. vorce, requiring applicants to meet his moral re- That said, Inventing the Criminal represents quirements and to pass a rigorous medical ex- an undeniable contribution to the history of amination. Even in conservative North Carolina, criminology. Wetzell has marshaled an impres- these ideas provoked astonishment. A leading sive array of primary source material in order to Raleigh newspaper accused Poteat of wanting to tell his story, which stretches from the 1880s be the “boss of a human stock farm” (p. 186). through the Nazi regime. His approach, which Although Randal Hall’s book is primarily a combines close readings of journal articles and biography of William Louis Poteat—and sec- books with doses of archival material, tends to ondarily a history of Wake Forest as it evolved center on prominent individuals. Anyone look- from a tiny Baptist school into a major college— ing for a careful analysis of criminological dis- BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 101 course, of individual thinkers and their writings, Well before 1970 such scholars as Pierre Duhem, will find it here. Arthur Lovejoy, and Marjorie Hope Nicolson Wetzell has picked through an astounding ar- had shown that mainline intellectuals for centu- ray of seemingly disparate source material and ries have been writing about extraterrestrials. shaped it into the coherent history of a “recog- Between 1982 and 1996, three scholars pub- nized scientific field” (p. 28). That history begins lished detailed and fully referenced books doc- during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, umenting in detail the history of ideas of extra- with the German reception of Cesare Lom- terrestrial life from antiquity to the late twentieth broso’s theory of the “born criminal.” During century (Steven Dick, Plurality of Worlds: The this “early” period (that is, before WWI), Wetz- Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from ell shows how German research on crime was Democritus to Kant [Cambridge, England: Cam- dominated by psychiatrists, who favored a crim- bridge Univ. Press, 1982]; Michael J. Crowe, inal-biological approach. Wetzell, who finds a The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750–1900: trend of increasing methodological sophistica- The Idea of a Plurality of Worlds from Kant to tion in criminal-biological research between Lowell [Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. 1918 and 1945, argues that German jurists and Press, 1986]; Karl S. Guthke The Last Frontier: psychiatrists, confronted with an increasingly Imagining Other Worlds from the Copernican sophisticated and complex scientific field, were Revolution to Modern Science Fiction [Ithaca, forced to check some of their more extreme im- N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1990]; Steven Dick, pulses. He is at pains to show that “normal” The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century criminological science persisted even under the Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Nazi regime and that crude racist explanations Science [Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. of crime “did not predominate in mainstream Press, 1996]). In the last few years at least a half- criminal biology and criminology” (p. 230). The dozen authors have sought to repackage this ex- claim that the sophistication of criminological citing message for the literate public. The most research actually prompted serious objections to successful of these popularizations is Worlds sterilization in Nazi Germany may be Wetzell’s without End: The Historic Search for Extrater- single most interesting point. restrial Life, the most recent book by Roger Of course it is precisely here, at the most com- Hennessey, a retired British schoolteacher and pelling moments of the book, at the moments administrator with strong interests in the history where politics and science fuse, that the limita- of science and technology. tions of Wetzell’s stated approach become most The strengths of Hennessey’s volume are nu- evident. Historians of criminology simply can- merous. He has read and understood both the not, and should not try to, separate out the “sci- most authoritative scholarly work in this area entific” from the “social, legal-institutional, or and also a significant portion of the vast primary political.” It is a mission impossible. literature. He has surveyed in an engaging, ju- ANDRE WAKEFIELD

Roger Hennessey. Worlds without End: The Historic Search for Extraterrestrial Life. 160 pp., illus., bibl., index. Stroud, England: Tempus Publishing Ltd., 1999. $29.99, £18.99. As Roger Hennessey reminds us, “One of the most famous openings in English literature in- forms readers that ‘in the last years of the nine- teenth century . . . human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s yet as mortal as his own’” (p. 90). So began H. G. Wells’s famous War of the Worlds (1897), in which Martians invade the Earth. The general public seems scarcely aware that discussions of extraterrestrial intelligent beings began to appear centuries before 1897, not just The “traditional” view of the medieval cosmos— in fiction but also in serious writings by leading perhaps invented in the nineteenth century? scientists, philosophers, and religious authors. (from Hennessey, Worlds without End, p. 22). 102 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) dicious, and balanced manner materials from is “to show that the mathematics of late antiquity antiquity to the present and embellished his nar- deserves a place both in the history of science rative with seventy-two well-chosen illustra- and in the history of antiquity” (p. 3). To that tions. He has avoided sensationalism even when end she focuses on (parts of) Pappus’s Collec- writing about sensational controversies and es- tion, for which she attempts “to produce a his- chewed partisanship even while describing in- torical analysis . . . and at the same time to ex- dividuals who in many cases were nothing if not plore its wider cultural contexts” (p. 3). Thus her passionate in their convictions. He has shown text is not intended primarily as a discussion of sensitivity to the complexities and to the range the mathematics contained in the Collection; in- of issues that arose in the history of this long and stead Cuomo looks into the historical circum- continuing debate, which, although focused on stances in which Pappus produced this work and distant locales and on possibly nonexistent be- the image he wanted to convey both of mathe- ings, is capable of revealing much about the na- matics and of himself. ture of terrestrials. He has traced through more The first chapter presents some general back- than twenty centuries a debate that involved not ground on the public’s perception of mathemat- just scientific but also key religious and philo- ics and its practitioners in late antiquity. Empha- sophical issues, presenting the debate in its full sizing evidence “apart from what we find in the cultural richness. The level of informational ac- books of the famous mathematicians” (p. 9), curacy in his book is high (despite misdating the Cuomo looks at astrological treatises such as the so-called Great Moon Hoax to 1836 rather than Mathesis by Julius Firmicus Maternus and con- 1835). Although his references are significantly siders the social and fiscal status of various fewer in number and less specific than many “technical” professions, such as those of land scholars might prefer, they are at least adequate surveyor, architect, and public administrator. to assure specialists that he is not presenting as She uses Diocletian’s edict on wages and salaries his own the hard-won research results of others. and examines the role of mathematics in edu- The overall format of the book is appealing, its cation to show that, “far from being invisible or bibliography adequate, its index better than one confined to ivory towers” (p. 56), mathematics expects in popularizations. was perceived as an integral part of life and re- Historians of science wishing to enhance a garded positively. All this material is very inter- survey course in the history of science with an esting, but how relevant is it? Cuomo’s broad- attractive text that will reveal to students a his- ening of the perspective to include more than just tory filled with striking controversies and col- the works of famous mathematicians is certainly orful figures as well as little-known facets of the commendable. But should one equate the mere thought of many scientists of distinction may skill of calculating with numbers, or even that of wish to consider using this book. applying some “higher” mathematics, with theo- MICHAEL CROWE retical, philosophical, mathematical thought? Of course, Cuomo is aware of this problem. Taking Ⅲ Antiquity it to be irrelevant for her purpose, she makes a good point: claiming affiliation with mathemat- Serafina Cuomo. Pappus of Alexandria and the ics to enhance one’s status, as those professional Mathematics of Late Antiquity. (Cambridge practitioners would do, presupposes a positive .(pp., figs., bibl., in- image of mathematics among the public (p. 10 234 ם Classical Studies.) x dexes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Nevertheless, such evidence would probably not 2000. $59.95. have swayed previous historians’ opinion of the decline of mathematics in late antiquity. Greek mathematics is usually seen as having Chapters 2–4 are devoted to Book 5 of the reached its height in a “golden age” around Collection, which covers isoperimetric problems 300 B.C., after which it declined, reaching a and Platonic solids; Book 8, on mechanics; Book rather sad stage in late antiquity. In this latter 3, on cube duplication; and Book 4, on special period Pappus of Alexandria (ca. A.D. 300) curves and their classification. In Chapter 2 stands out as one of the last competent mathe- Cuomo argues that Pappus used the widely maticians, although even his Mathematical Col- known problems discussed in Book 5 to address lection has been valued by historians mainly for a general audience so as to promote mathematics its wealth of information on earlier mathematical and show that “mathematicians are better quali- achievements. In her readable book, Serafina fied than philosophers . . . to talk about isoperim- Cuomo sets out to correct the conventional view etry and the five Platonic bodies” (p. 58). At the of mathematics in late antiquity: her general goal same time, pointing out the complementarity of BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 103 mathematics and mechanics (in Book 8), Pappus ings from Greek and other languages. After stresses the usefulness of mathematics in edu- Healy the classicist considers Pliny as a writer cational and material matters. In Chapter 4 and describes his life, sources, mode of work, Cuomo examines how Pappus, addressing ex- language, and style, Healy the scientist addresses perts, “marks out his territory within the math- the topic of ancient science. Chapter 10 (a page ematical field itself” (p. 127). and a half) lays down the program, taken from In the final chapter Cuomo tries “to get a a modern (Canberra, 1993) classification of clearer grasp of Pappus’ mathematical agenda” fields of research. Healy takes the ten subdivi- (p. 169). She concludes that Pappus is not just a sions of the “natural sciences, technologies and compiler admiring the past; rather, he selected engineering” as a structure for his investigation his subjects and manipulated the mathematical into Pliny and for the format of the book. He tradition to serve his own immediate goals in the thus looks at Pliny’s thought in relation to chem- present. istry, physics, earth sciences, engineering (in- This book contains an abundance of interest- cluding mines and metal), applied sciences, bi- ing historical material, although, regrettably, ology, and agriculture. A footnote tells us that the mathematical examples are only roughly he has omitted any reference to medicine, phar- sketched. Cuomo shows that we can learn much macology, and astronomy—a pity, as these sub- from looking at Pappus’s Collection in its own jects, with their own identities and practitioners, right. Her book deserves careful study. come closer to science than most of what either ALI BEHBOUD Pliny or Healy discusses. In the style of a modern scientific textbook, Healy’s text is broken down John F. Healy. Pliny the Elder on Science and into numerous subsections to accommodate ם Technology. xvi 467 pp., bibl., indexes. New modern categories. The chapters on minerals and York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. gems are alphabetical lists. $110. The combination of classical learning and sci- In the last twenty years or so there has been a entific knowledge looks formidable and is cer- renewed interest in Pliny the Elder, once an im- tainly unusual. But the book is more an exercise mensely popular author whose reputation began in applying science to classical studies than an to suffer after Renaissance scholars challenged example of science illuminating history. The the accuracy of his work. The recent interest has confidence his scientific material gives Healy been interdisciplinary, producing contributions leads to a certain historical insensitivity. I de- from classical scholars, historians, scientists, and clare an interest here, for he badly misreads what technologists, sometimes working as a team. I have argued about “science” in antiquity. His What “interdisciplinary” has meant in practice is rigid use of modern—our—categories inevi- a collaboration rather than a blend of disciplines. tably leads to instances in which he finds Pliny What you see in Pliny is what your training confusing them or failing to separate them. Our makes obvious. categories take on a life of their own in this ex- John Healy’s book is a robust defense, indeed position: the section on “electricity,” for exam- promulgation, of the thesis that Pliny practiced ple, is largely independent of Pliny. Its subsec- “science.” This thesis implies not only that sci- tion 12.2.1c is on piezoelectricity, of which ence was a recognizable, and recognized, activ- “neither Pliny, nor other ancient authorities, ap- ity in antiquity but that “science” can tell us pear to have been aware.” Gravity has to be more clearly than any other rubric what Pliny there, because it is part of modern physics, but was up to. Science can certainly tell us about Pliny does not mention it. Pliny’s natural world, because it was very much There is no reason why classical scholars and like our own, but it does not tell us anything scientists should not be interested in Pliny and about Pliny’s enterprise. We may feel a sense of find each other’s disciplines enlightening. But intellectual satisfaction in knowing the formula the claim that Pliny was, as Healy says, making for the acetic acid in vinegar and the chemical “contributions” to our science is a historical one equation that represents its attack on calcareous and relates to Pliny’s purposes. No amount of rocks, but Pliny’s story is about something else. modern mathematical or chemical formulas will In this study Healy, a distinguished classical tell us what was in Pliny’s mind, and he was scholar, has taken aboard a lot of science. He fairly clear, after all, on his purposes in writing provides us with valuable information about the the Natural History. It’s back to “Science in An- suitability of the Latin language for the devel- tiquity?” again. opment of technical terms and about its borrow- ROGER FRENCH 104 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Malcolm Wilson. Aristotle’s Theory of the on biology (pp. 53–115), focality, first in the Unity of Science.(Phoenix [Journal of the Clas- biological works and then in the Metaphysics pp. 116–174)—this portion of the analysis is) ם sical Association of Canada], Suppl. 38.) x 271 pp., fig., bibl., index. Toronto/Buffalo/Lon- followed by a brief consideration of, in the words don: University of Toronto Press, 2000. $75, of the section title, “Mixed Uses of Analogy and £55. Focality” (pp. 175–206)—and finally cumula- tion, in a discussion that deals mainly with the The title of this book is a bit misleading. Al- sciences of psychology and ethics (pp. 207– though Malcolm Wilson does argue that Aris- 235). The book concludes with two short com- totle’s theory of science is more unified than is mentaries, one entitled “The Place of Theology usually thought to be the case, he also examines in the Science of Being” (pp. 235–239), the Aristotle’s actual practice of science, particularly other “Conclusion: Analogy, Focality, and Cu- biology but also physics, ethics, politics, and the mulation” (pp. 239–242). science of being qua being. Hence the central Wilson’s treatment of the practice of science problem of this book is how in practice as well is sometimes surprisingly brief. The important as in theory science is unified in the Aristotelian problem of speed of change (Physics 8.4), for corpus. example, is analyzed in less than two pages (pp. Wilson casts Aristotle’s theory of science 39–41). Further, Wilson, observing that the against the Platonic search for universal defini- technique of establishing superordinate and sub- tions, which leads to a suppression of differences ordinate science “and its place in the APo [have] or ambiguities both among things and their def- been well studied by the secondary literature,” initions. “Aristotle,” Wilson observes, “sought states that he will not “treat it in the same depth to redress the imbalance apparent in the Aca- as the three other techniques” (pp. 9–10). Given demic prejudice towards the universal” (p. 7). its foundational role in his analysis, this tech- He does so by restricting the demonstrative syl- nique requires a full examination here. But there logism, which forms the core of any scientific is a more serious problem: subordination among argument in two ways: terms must be related sciences also appears in the Nicomachean Ethics through their definitions, and predicates must at- 1.1, a text Wilson never mentions. Here subor- tach to a subject directly and universally (p. 8). dination rests not on mathematical abstraction Consequently, each science has a subject, what but on ends among things in the real world. Thus it is about, and “is the sum of the demonstrative Wilson does not provide a foundation strong syllogisms that concern the same subject” (p. 9). enough to support his argument. But defining science in this way creates the HELEN LANG problem that the sciences become too particular- ized, too isolated from one another. Here is Wil- Dennis Des Chene. Life’s Form: Late Aristote- ,.pp 220 ם son’s larger question: How can the project of lian Conceptions of the Soul. viii science defined in the Posterior Analytics pro- bibl., index. Ithaca, N.Y./London: Cornell Uni- duce systematic knowledge in which the parts, versity Press, 2000. $45. themselves identified with the various sciences, are sufficiently integrated with one another to Life’s Form is that rarest of books: an important form a unified whole? Wilson claims that “ab- contribution to advanced scholarship on its sub- straction” can serve as a “stepping-stone” to ject that is thoroughly accessible to nonspecial- identifying three ways in which the sciences can ists. It immerses its readers in the world of the be seen as forming a (sufficiently) unified whole sixteenth- to seventeenth-century scientia de an- (p. 10). In the process of abstraction, a more ab- ima, within which, and out of which, emerges stract science, usually a brand of mathematics, Descartes’s decidedly non-Aristotelian concep- “supplied principles and explanations for a fact tion of the body-soul relation that has haunted us or conclusion found in a distinct and subordinate ever since. We are treated to lengthy, elegant natural science” (p. 9). Understanding abstrac- translations of the Latin texts of the leading Jesuit tion allows us to identify three forms of “semi- philosophers of the period, principally Toletus, abstraction”—analogy, focality, and cumula- Sudrez, Fonseca, Arriaga, and the Coimbrans, but tion—that allow Aristotle to connect the always accompanied in footnotes by the full Latin arguments and subjects of different sciences text. These authors are portrayed as both inti- (p. 10). mately familiar with their source text, Aristotle’s A brief analysis of abstraction (pp. 14–39) De Anima, but also highly sensitive to its key sets the stage for Wilson’s larger project, a full problems: Aristotle’s insistence that the concept treatment of analogy, particularly in the writings of soul is applicable to those beings that partake BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 105 only of the capacities of nutrition, and generation The use of the Christian (A.D.) or common reproduction, i.e. plants; his equivocal pronounce- (C.E.) era is today taken for granted, but recent ments on the relationship between life and soul; “millennium” celebrations have focused atten- the problems that emerge from his definition of tion on how we measure time. The starting point soul as form and first actuality of a living body of the era was not established without difficulty. with organs; and his simultaneous insistence that Georges Declercq has produced a timely expo- the soul is a unity and has parts. All of the authors sition, starting with the scriptural evidence for examined take these problems seriously and have the events on which the dating is based and con- sustained arguments about how to resolve them. tinuing to the eleventh century when the Chris- When reading this volume one truly feels the im- tian Era as propounded by Dionysius Exiguus portance of answering these problems for these was accepted throughout Western Europe. thinkers and the power of the intellects that are The study is described as an “essay.” The grappling with them. scope of the book has led to occasional gener- One of the most interesting features of Des alization and simplification. Despite the claim on Chene’s narrative is his ability to put these “in the cover, specialists may find some of the au- house” disagreements within a wider context. thor’s statements insufficiently substantiated, Rene´ Descartes’s reaction to these debates is while for nonspecialists the text may be intimi- shown persuasively to shape those decisive de- datingly dense. partures from orthodoxy that created a body/soul Interest in chronology as a way of emphasiz- dualism that was inconceivable to these Aristo- ing the historicity of Christ grew as expectation telians. There were, of course, serious problems of his imminent return faded. It involved rec- in reconciling the text of Aristotle with Christian onciling Christian chronology with Roman his- doctrine (cf. Chapter 2, “Propositions to Be Held tory and establishing the lunar and solar param- by Faith”) but even here the reconciliations are eters for the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. widely varying and often startlingly unorthodox. The book is particularly useful in that it deals in The volume is organized into four parts. The detail with calendar developments in the Eastern first, “Data for the Study of Souls,” provides the Church. Here the traditional date of the Resur- reader with a background in both the Aristotelian rection was 25 March, not 27 March, as in the texts and the chief concerns of the commentators West—something that had important repercus- sions in later calendar reform. Declercq gives a to be discussed. The second, “Defining the succinct explanation of the different reckonings. Soul,” traces the disputes around Aristotle’s def- Particularly important for historians of science inition of the soul canvassed above. “Powers and is the adaptation of the world chronicle to com- Parts,” the book’s third part, sees these authors putistical principles. Anianus (“Annianos” in facing the problem of how one “counts” the Declercq) appears to have produced the first 532- soul’s capacities and how, in the end, one pre- year cycle. The Christian Era was known in the vents the soul from simply being a name for this East in the fifth century. In the West the Dio- set of capacities. This leads inevitably to the nysian tables were innovatory because their questions dealt with in Des Chene’s final section, starting point was the Incarnation, not the Pas- entitled “Unity.” How does one preserve the sion. unity of the soul in the face of the radical dif- Declercq gives a useful summary of the pas- ferences between its various capacities? This chal controversy, ground already well covered becomes especially pressing for a Jesuit com- by earlier writers. He describes in detail the mentator, who must allow for the potential im- Christian Era that was the legacy of Dionysius mortality of the human soul within an Aristo- to the Western Church and ultimately to the telian framework that defines it as “substance world. Declercq’s thesis, preceded by a lengthy qua form of a natural body.” Without empha- discussion of previous theories, is that the choice sizing it, there are constant reminders in every of 532 as the beginning of what became known chapter that the debate in the philosophy of mind as the Dionysian cycle was historical rather than over the past century is decisively shaped by the computistical, adducing this from Felix of Gil- argument between these Christian Aristotelians litanus. Dionysius must have been familiar with and their foes, especially Descartes. the 532-year cycle of Victorius but did not un- JAMES G. LENNOX derstand the 28-year solar cycle. The Irish knew the principles of the cycle, but Bede constructed Georges Declercq. Anno Domini: The Origins the first cycle on Dionysian lines. of the Christian Era. 206 pp., app., bibl. Turnhout, Recent work has thrown doubt on the tradi- Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2000. $35, €20. tional dating of early Irish annals. A survey of 106 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) the dissemination of the Dionysian reckoning of the documents themselves and what they re- throughout the Christian West until its general veal of ancient Egyptian medical knowledge and acceptance in the eleventh century will be useful practice. Westendorf’s recent publication is es- to those studying similar documents. sentially a summary of this series. As such, it is Establishing the date of the Incarnation was of a valuable resource for Egyptologists and his- less practical value than finding a workable cal- torians of science alike, both because the original endar. Problems with the Dionysian calculation series is no longer generally available and be- that were known from Bede’s time provoked the cause it incorporates advances in our knowledge first truly scientific writing of the Middle Ages. of the Egyptian language and culture over the A full discussion of the Dionysian “error” is be- past quarter century. yond the book’s scope and, indeed, must await A short discussion of the character of Egyp- Faith Wallis’s forthcoming edition of Gerland’s tian medicine (“Between Religion, Magic, and treatise. Science”) serves as the introduction to the work, Some difficulties with this useful survey in- the body of which is divided into seven parts. volve style rather than content and presumably Part 1 (pp. 4–79) deals with the sources them- are due to the publisher rather than the author. selves and describes the history, contents, and There is no index, and quotations are translated publication of each document; a translation is and not backed by the original text. It is difficult also provided for some of the briefer texts. Al- to refer back from the notes to the text, and the though this section is essentially a catalogue, it bibliography is not entirely alphabetical. The contains one of the rare instances in which Wes- book appears to have been written originally in tendorf’s unparalleled knowledge of the genre French, but there is no reference to a translator: can be questioned. Westendorf describes Papy- the English is occasionally unidiomatic, but to rus Edwin Smith as containing “numerous” in- the point of irritation rather than incomprehen- stances of Old Egyptian forms and spellings (p. sibility. 16), thus perpetuating the notion that the docu- JENNIFER MORETON ment was originally composed during the Old Kingdom. In fact, the grammar of the text is that Wolfhart Westendorf. Handbuch der alta¨gyp- of early Middle Egyptian. Accordingly, although tischen Medizin. (Handbook of Oriental Studies, it is the oldest of the surviving medical texts, it is certainly no older than the very end of the Old ם Pt. 1: The Near and Middle East, 36.) xviii 853 pp., apps., bibls., indexes. 2 volumes. Lei- Kingdom and probably at least a century den/Boston/Cologne: Brill, 1999. $188. younger. In Part 2 (pp. 80–100) Westendorf examines Of the many kinds of documents to have sur- the genre of medical documents as a whole. He vived from ancient Egypt, only those concerning divides the texts into several different categories: mathematical problems or medicine have usually instructions, prognoses, prescriptions, magic, been considered in studies of the history of sci- and miscellany. The third part (pp. 101–471) ence—probably because, unlike other Egyptian contains an exhaustive analysis of the various texts, they deal with their subject in relatively ailments discussed in the medical texts, and the objective terms, an approach that has tradition- fourth (pp. 472–535) deals both with the role of ally defined what is meant by “science.” Medical the physician in Egyptian society and, more ex- texts are more numerous than the mathematical tensively, with the methods and medicaments documents. They are preserved on papyri and used in the treatment of illnesses and injuries. ostraca dating from the Middle Kingdom (ca. These two parts will be of particular interest to 1900 B.C.) to the Roman Period (ca. A.D. 200); physicians and scholars of the history of medi- the most extensive and important of them were cine, along with Part 5 (pp. 536–546), in which written during the New Kingdom and Ramesside Westendorf describes survivals of Egyptian Period, about 1550 to 1250 B.C. medicine in the Christian (Coptic) period and its This corpus was published as a whole and ex- influence on Greek medicine. tensively analyzed in a nine-volume series enti- Parts 6 and 7 are presented in the second vol- tled Grundriß der Medizin der Alten A¨ gypter ume, paginated sequentially with the first. Part 6 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1954–1973). This (pp. 547–748) contains a full translation of the series, the work of three successive authors, Her- two most important medical texts, Papyrus Ebers mann Grapow, Hildegard von Deines, and Wolf- and Papyrus Edwin Smith. The final part is de- hart Westendorf, includes a hieroglyphic tran- voted to references and includes a bibliography, scription of the texts together with translations, lists of abbreviations and citations, and several dictionaries, and a grammar, as well as studies extensive indexes. BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 107

Westendorf’s “handbook” is not only the lat- Yucata´n peninsula; pre-Columbian silviculture est contribution to the study of ancient Egyptian and management of neotropical forests; pre- medicine but also the most valuable to appear Columbian farming systems of the Mississippi since the publication of the series on which it is River Valley; environmental impacts of ancient based—and to which Westendorf himself con- Hohokam irrigation and agriculture in the So- tributed in no small part. As such it deserves a noran desert; the built landscape in the Lake Ti- place in the libraries of Egyptologists and his- ticaca basin; agricultural systems, modified land- torians of science alike. scapes, and cultural values in the pre-Inca and JAMES P. ALLEN Inca-era central Andes and Peruvian coast; and impacts of pre-Columbian agriculture and other David L. Lentz (Editor). Imperfect Balance: land uses in riverine areas near the mouth of the Landscape Transformations in the Precolum- Amazon River. bian Americas. (Historical Ecology Series.) Given its somewhat uneven case study ap- proach and despite broader chapters on climate 547 ם Foreword by William M. Denevan. xxiv pp., illus., figs., apps., bibls., index. New York: change and prehuman vegetation patterns, this Columbia University Press, 2000. $65, £41.50 book is not a systematic approach to or a com- (cloth); $30, £19.50 (paper). prehensive statement on pre-Columbian land- scape (or even vegetation) transformation. It This substantial volume is dedicated to further- does not address large regions of the Americas ing an “ecological understanding of the pre-Co- or all time frames; nor does it address all forms lumbian New World by creating evaluations of of modification (e.g., changes wrought by hunt- prehuman vegetation and then offering discus- ing-gathering societies or for other nonagricul- sions as to how humans became involved in local tural purposes are little considered). Nevertheless, ecosystems” (p. 3). These topics are timely, this book’s virtues outweigh its shortcomings, and since the last decade has seen a flowering of de- bate and reconsideration of previously held views of pre-Columbian human environmental impacts in the Americas. The book contributes to those discussions by assembling examples of the current state of knowledge of pre-Columbian ecologies and of their human uses and modifi- cations for a number of selected areas in the Americas. This somewhat eclectic book, edited by David Lentz, presents empirical evidence of human use of and change to local and regional ecologies in ten chapters. Additional chapters are devoted to useful inventories of pre-Columbian vegetation patterns in North and Middle America and in the lowland tropics and tropical Andes, although the vegetation pattern theme is not uniformly ad- dressed in the case studies. One chapter is de- voted to climate change in the northern neotrop- ics since the last Ice Age, yet this discussion applies to only a small part of the hemisphere discussed in the case studies. The case study chapters mostly address agri- cultural modifications. These include entries on pre-Columbian anthropocentric food webs that are both general and specific to Mesoamerica; late precontact agricultural landscapes in the Valley of Mexico; the ancient water manage- ment systems for agriculture in central and southern Mexico and Venezuela; environmental impacts of ancient Maya deforestation and ag- Raised field platforms planted alongside ricultural intensification in lowland areas of potatoes in Peru (from Lentz, ed., Imperfect northern Guatemala, Belize, and the southern Balance, p. 335). 108 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) themes emerging from these studies address ma- parative analysis of the doctrines of the perspec- jor ongoing debates over the nature and scale of tivists and the Arab interpreters. This analysis is pre-Columbian environmental impacts. The first followed by a chapter devoted to optics and vi- is that large regions of the pre-Columbian Amer- sion in Dante’s earlier poetry. icas were transformed in some way before Eu- The two following chapters cover, respec- ropean contact—thus these regions, encompass- tively, topics such as blinding, optical illusions, ing much of the most populated New World, and visual error in Dante’s Commedia and the cannot be thought of as “pristine.” The second themes of reflection, mirrors, and meteorological is that the nature of changes wrought to these optics, also in the Commedia, a work that Gilson regions are varied. Some were profound and specifies as having nevertheless gone beyond the easily seen, others subtle and visible only to more limited sources of the earlier poetry. In the expert eyes; some represented long-term, rela- third chapter Gilson’s analysis achieves a wel- tively “sustainable” modifications, while others come degree of insight into the poet’s original- may have triggered degradation. Lastly, these ity: here Gilson shows how Dante incorporates transformations occurred over a very long time the scientific knowledge of his day in order to frame and regions that were heavily modified at establish a set of limits that circumscribe human some time may not have appeared so on the eve action in the physical world but that must be of European contact. overcome in the course of the pilgrim’s journey THOMAS M. WHITMORE through his imaginative world. Such moments provide a refreshing alternative to an otherwise Ⅲ Middle Ages & Renaissance rather positivistic view of scientific knowledge as a compendium of facts and sources one either Simon A. Gilson. Medieval Optics and Theories has or has not read. One cannot help but think of Light in the Works of Dante. (Studies in Italian that researchers in the field of the history of sci- pp., app., bibl., in- ence might be most interested in the imaginative 301 ם Literature, 8.) xiv dexes. Lewiston, N.Y./Queenston, Ont.: Edwin contributions of a specifically poetic knowledge, Mellen Press, 2000. $99.95. especially in an age in which the distinction be- tween “hard” and “soft” science was not ac- The somewhat deflating conclusion of Simon A. corded the kind of unquestioned respect it cur- Gilson’s meticulous examination of Dante’s in- rently receives. corporation of the science of optics and theories In the second part Gilson, continuing his de- of light is that the poet was considerably less well bunking analysis, argues that the scholarship on read than we have been giving him credit for. Dante and his use of theories of light has re- Gilson’s book is divided into two parts: the mained captivated by the notion of “the meta- first, dealing with the science of optics, contains physics of light.” This term, Gilson claims, has four chapters; the second, dealing with theories been used to unify and oversimplify a rather di- of light, contains three. Each of these parts is verse group of doctrines concerning the nature devoted to debunking a tendency in Dante schol- of light and its relation to knowledge, vision, arship to attribute to a particular scientific or God, and being. Against the grain of the tradi- philosophical movement a marked influence on tional critical trend, Gilson maintains that his work. In the first part Gilson maintains that Dante’s thought has nothing in common with the Dante’s use of the science of optics does not— proper metaphysics of light of a Grosseteste— as others, most forcefully and influentially Ales- who identifies light as the primary element of sandro Parronchi, have argued—rely specifi- being—and that Dante would have had rela- cally on knowledge of the authors of the tively little contact with Neoplatonic theories of perspectivae—detailed treatises on optics that emanation. Again, according to Gilson, in apply- placed the influence of light rays at the origin of ing the imagery of light to his poetic themes, terrestrial phenomena—that is, on such thinkers Dante would have had readily available models as Alhazen, Roger Bacon, and Robert Grosse- in the popular theological light imagery of his teste. Rather, Gilson contends that Dante could time; his use of light in the description of the easily have come by the requisite expertise con- Empyrean is, Gilson states, perhaps the best ex- cerning this science through contact with the ample of Dante’s relative independence from more popular and widely known doctrines of any limited set of sources. such Arab interpreters of Aristotle as Avicenna Whether Gilson’s informative examination of and Averroe¨s and the commentaries of Albert the Dante’s relative dependence on sources should Great and Thomas Aquinas. He demonstrates the be understood as liberating the poet from the plausibility of this contention by way of a com- anxiety of scientific influence remains, however, BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 109 an open question. Whatever the extent or depth each object and event could be discovered. Nor- of any enumeration of those sources, it is the mally historians of Chinese philosophy stress the moment of creation that astonishes. place of universal heavenly li in Chu’s thought, WILLIAM EGGINTON but Kim makes a concerted effort not to overlook the important place of ch’i as the aggregated col- Yung Sik Kim. The Natural Philosophy of Chu lection of stuff in the universe, some dense and Hsi, 1130–1200. (Memoirs of the American falling like the earth, some airy and rising like pp., figs., heaven. Indeed, as important as li was for Chu 380 ם Philosophical Society, 235.) xii tables, app., bibl., index. Philadelphia: American Hsi’s moral philosophy, ch’i was the most im- Philosophical Society, 2000. $30. portant concept he employed to explain natural phenomena, material changes, and earthly Yung Sik Kim’s new book is a welcome addition events. With no discontinuity between matter to the large number of studies of the thought of and life, or between materiality and mind, Chu’s Chu Hsi, arguably the most important literati philosophy made no allowance for the Western thinker (i.e., Ru, often translated as “Confucian”) distinctions between the material and spiritual in China since the Southern Song dynasty spheres or between the physical and mental (1127–1280). Chu’s ideas became orthodox em- realms. pire-wide during the early Ming dynasty (1368– It was precisely such views that troubled the 1644), and during the Ming and Qing (1644– Jesuits such as Matteo Ricci who came to China 1911) dynasties millions of candidates for the in the late sixteenth century. Ricci and his Eu- imperial civil service examinations mastered the ropean cohort would be condemned in the early “Learning of the Way” (Daoxue, often translated eighteenth century by French Jansenists and as “Neo-Confucianism”) associated with Chu Spanish Franciscans for their overly accommo- and his followers. With the exception of the pi- dational compromises with traditional Chinese oneering study by Yamada Keiji in 1978, nearly religious practices such as ancestor worship, all previous accounts of Chu’s ideas written by which Ricci interpreted as a civil rite. Nonethe- students of Chinese philosophy have emphasized less, when Ricci studied Chu Hsi’s moral phi- the metaphysical, moral, and epistemological losophy and natural thought, he was appalled at concerns in Chu’s writings. Those more con- its materialism and atheism, which he considered cerned with imperial dogma and state power in the fault of Buddhism (“sect of idols”) and its China since 1400 have tended to paint Chu Hsi’s impact on Song literati such as Chu Hsi. “Learning of the Way” as a monolithic, author- The “noninertness” of ch’i carried over from itarian ideology that legitimated the Ming and the dynamic materiality of all things, including Qing dynasty rulers politically, socially, and cul- the human mind, to the formless and unfath- turally among gentry elites. omable spirits and ghosts that existed in a border Kim acknowledges that the core of Chu Hsi’s area outside the natural realm between heaven grand intellectual synthesis was focused on and human beings. The dispersion of ch’i upon moral and social philosophy, but in this book death could take many forms but, according to Kim provides compelling information that Chu Chu Hsi, in the end all such ch’i disaggregated, was also concerned with natural knowledge leaving no ongoing or abiding spiritual form for about the three levels of reality: heaven and humans, plants, or animals. The ch’i of the an- earth, the myriad things in the world, and the cestors could be prayed to because the materi- human realm. Humans thus formed a triad with ality of their descendants was the same ch’i, but heaven and earth as the most numinous living even this continuity could not survive more thing because they were endowed with the psy- than a few generations. Again, the Jesuits were cho-physical stuff of ch’i that was most clear and shocked at this atheistic view of the human soul complete. Recognizing no boundary between the and its eventual demise materially with no pos- physical and the spiritual, Chu Hsi equated hu- sible eternal life after death. man nature with the universe. The basic concepts Accordingly, Kim’s careful study of what Chu that informed Chu’s natural world were yin- Hsi thought about the natural world makes it evi- yang, the five evolutive phases, and the dualism dent that most modern studies have elided an of li (universal and individuated rules) and ch’i essential aspect of traditional Chinese thought, (embodied and concrete materiality). particularly the centrality of ch’i in the dynamic Chu Hsi advocated a scholarly agenda that processes of collection and dispersion that pro- would explain why things and events were as duce all things, whether living or inanimate. Stu- they were. Through the “investigation of things,” dents of Chinese philosophy have tended to pri- the heavenly principle that inscribed the ch’i of oritize those aspects of Chu Hsi’s views on 110 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) universal li and its instantiated forms that are preserved. An authentic “Augustinian fire,” as he more amenable to a Western, Judeo-Christian- puts it, survives intact through the long journey Islamic reading drawn ultimately from the de- from Abbot Suger’s stone portal to Duns Scotus’s bate between Plato and Aristotle over the uni- ethereal edifice of syllogisms, which in Marrone’s versal forms of particular things. view marks the culmination of four stages of pro- Modern presentations, in other words, have gressive intellectual metamorphosis. failed to grasp why a generation of Jesuit schol- The first volume, subtitled A Doctrine of Di- ars who spent their adulthood in China during vine Illumination, shows how an initially ex- the seventeenth century found Chu Hsi’s views ploratory map of questions and affinities in the alien and dangerous. Kim deserves credit for go- early thirteenth century solidified into a self-con- ing against the tide of twentieth-century schol- scious Augustinian theory of knowledge under arly interpretation and restoring to Chu Hsi those institutional and professional pressures. Marrone aspects of his natural philosophy that have been in this volume breaks new ground in the histo- conveniently repressed to make his views more riography of late medieval “schools” by empha- palatable. Rather than just the builder of the or- sizing the importance of underlying discursive thodox brick wall of traditional Chinese moral- demands. Marrone shows how two opposing at- ism, we can see that Chu Hsi’s natural philosphy tractions—to logic and naturalist explanations challenged any view of the world that assumed on the one hand, to the (dialogic) intimacy be- theological differences between life and death, tween human mind and God on the other— mind and body, or the spiritual and physical. drove the advance toward doctrinal clarity and BENJAMIN A. ELMAN coherence, thus culminating in a “classic” Au- gustinian formulation. Steven P. Marrone. The Light of Thy Counte- Volume 2, subtitled God at the Core of Cog- nance: Science and Knowledge of God in the nition, turns to the fortunes of this newly minted Thirteenth Century. Volume 1: A Doctrine of Di- Augustinianism as it transforms in the late eigh- vine Illumination; Volume 2: God at the Core of teenth and early nineteenth centuries under the Cognition. (Studies in the History of Christian impact of a new critical temper. The detailed dis- pp., bibl., cussions of Henry of Ghent’s disciple Vital du 611 ם 250 ם [viםThought, 98.) [xii indexes. Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Pub- Four (nicely introduced on p. 268 as “an invet- lishers, 2001. erate plagiarizer”) and of Scotus’s immediate predecessor William of Ware give special value Abbot Suger spoke for a long-standing imaginal to this second volume, as they greatly flesh out tradition when, in 1140, he engraved on the por- the context in which Scotus’s subtilitates will tal of Saint Denis: “The blind soul surges to- count as meaningful solutions. Overall, I have wards truth by means of what is material and, just one major reservation: the important move, seeing light, resurrects from its earlier submer- especially among Franciscans, to substitute di- sion.” Steven Marrone’s new book follows vine infinity for divine light is overlooked. The eleven medieval authors as they struggle to adapt key, here, lies in the notion of intensity, which such metaphors of divine illumination, inherited belongs simultaneously to measuring light and largely from Augustine, to an emerging ideal of measuring “perfection.” Since this exciting apodictic science inspired by Aristotle. Some of move will bear epistemic fruit well beyond me- Marrone’s protagonists are well known to his- dieval scholasticism—think of Descartes—it torians of science (Grosseteste, Pecham) while might indeed have been cited, even briefly dis- others are more obscure (Gilbert of Tournai, cussed. William of Ware), some are major philosophical Marrone’s great contribution, however, is to figures (Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus) while show convincingly that God remains “at the core others are in every sense minores (Matthew of of cognition” in Duns Scotus’s prodigious bal- Aquasperta, Vital du Four). The narrative Mar- ancing act, which thus retains and even enshrines rone weaves out of this uneven array of theology key Augustinian features (Ockham scholars masters is rich, dynamic, and rewarding. Taken should pay special heed). By exploiting John together, their careers span the period from the Murdoch’s seminal idea that analytical lan- early thirteenth century to the early fourteenth, guages more than doctrine per se shaped the ep- during which a neo-Augustinian school came, istemic landscape of the scholastic age, Marrone saw, and (basically) yielded—forced to adapt to succeeds in stirring up new questions about the expanding new criteria of scientificity. As Mar- medieval roots of modern science. What matters, rone demonstrates, however, core elements of Maronne argues, is to understand better dia- Augustinian illumination are transformed and chronic evidence of how knowledge is defended BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 111 and displayed. In this regard, the gigantic step crossing of the transept at St. Michael’s Abbey, that separates prescholastic literate discourse from Hildesheim, makes a square ABCD, proceeding the highly formalized procedures of the late thir- clockwise from A in the northeast corner. AD teenth century offers a unique window into more and BC prolonged give the line of nave piers, fundamental and explosive questions about epi- AB and DC prolonged that of the arms of the stemic transformation and the rise of scientific transept. Lines drawn from B at angles of 54Њ elites. Philosophers and historians of science will and 60Њ with BC cut CD extended in E and F, find in these two volumes vital new perspectives respectively, locating the end piers in the side based on exceptionally refined scholarship. aisles. Now 60Њ, as the invariable angle of a ANNE A. DAVENPORT three-sided figure all of whose parts are equal, carries a cornucopia of Platonic and Christian Nigel Hiscock. The Wise Master Builder: Pla- symbolism. Also 54Њ, because derivable from a tonic Geometry in Plans of Medieval Abbeys and pentagon, has the pregnant significance of the ם ם Cathedrals. xviii 340 [108] pp., illus., figure five, which is the sum of the first male and figs., apps., bibl., index. Aldershot, England/ first female numbers. Repetition of the transept Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000. $99.95. square fixes the nave piers. Then lines between The main conclusion of Nigel Hiscock’s impor- piers, pillars, and pilasters make the special an- tant but ill-arranged book is that the ground plans of abbeys and cathedrals of the tenth and elev- enth centuries incorporate Platonic wisdom— hence the “wise” in the title catchwords, which come from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 3:10). There Paul likens himself to a sap- iens architectus who lays the foundations on which others erect the building. In three of the four translations in The Complete Parallel Bible, however, Paul does not declare himself wise but, rather, “skilled” or “trained.” The discrepancy makes an emblem for Hiscock’s investigation: Did the architects deliberately express geomet- rical ratios significant in Platonic philosophy in their designs or did they proceed by applying their practical skill and training to the lie of the land and the resources available? A subsidiary question is also symbolized in Paul’s verse: Was the designer a wise cleric who set the proportions and left the heavy work to someone else? Hiscock builds his answers in two ways. For one, he delivers a chrestomathy of Platonic snip- pets known in the tenth century and a few telling quotations from wise clerics—the latter concern the expression of significant numbers in the church fabric: a baptistery is octagonal because of an association between creation and the num- ber eight, and a church with a half-dozen altars is complete because of the perfection of the num- ber six. But, Hiscock emphasizes, numerology does not account for floor plans, and to test the wisdom of the designers he scrutinizes plans of two dozen churches, especially those associated with monastic reformers. He expresses his re- sults in color-coded lines superposed on the plans, some one hundred of which comprise a valuable appendix. St. Michael, Hildesheim, cathedral with all An example will indicate the interest of the alignments shown (from Hiscock, The Wise findings and the riskiness of the business. The Master Builder, plate 31). 112 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) gles with the north-south and east-west lines of cultural ideals. He was also given to irony, de- the grid all over the plan. spair, and bitter isolation. Grafton makes a How much of this construction is mere coin- strong case for Alberti’s dependence on an un- cidence? Requiring the intervals between piers wavering determination that compelled him to -FE assume many guises and foster numerous strat ס in the same line to be equal, we have DE -egies to achieve his literary, social, and eco מ tan60Њ)/(1 מ FD/2. And so it is: (tan54Њ ס Otherwise put, if angle FBC is 60Њ nomic goals. As his friend Cristoforo Landino .0.51 ס (1 and E divides FD equally, angle EBC must be once noted, Alberti was like a chameleon. In 54Њ without reference to a pentagon. Against Grafton’s hands, however, Alberti remains daz- such arguments, Hiscock observes that his anal- zlingly inventive and radically humanist, and ysis has uncovered previously unknown rela- he endures as appropriately leonine and the tions between churches confirmed by documents hero of his own tale. and that his technique, when applied to large With a predictable outpouring of references, nineteenth-century buildings with repeated bays Grafton evokes Alberti’s social, political, and in- such as the Crystal Palace, picks out relatively tellectual world and, reprising his earlier writ- few structurally significant elements. ings, develops several themes. These include Al- Hiscock is senior lecturer on the design, the- berti’s literary erudition and the high price he ory, and history of architecture at Oxford paid to achieve it; how Alberti applied the les- Brookes University and a master craftsman. His sons of ancient sources to the problems of his scrupulously prepared color-coded drawings own world, and in so doing subverted those les- contain much of interest and pleasure for a ge- sons to create something new; how the humanist ometer. Has he definitively answered the old author developed special vocabularies for writ- vexed question whether the sapiens architectus ing about such novel subjects as the visual arts, intended to express ancient wisdom in his plans? instruments of measure, and other current tech- If the architect thus proposed, did his builder nologies; and, perhaps most surprisingly for a faithfully dispose? Paul again may give guid- man given to bitterly mocking his contemporar- ance. “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, ies, how Alberti became involved in the creative that they are futile” (1 Cor 3:21). energy of early modern life with apparent enthu- JOHN L. HEILBRON siasm and accomplished the astonishing feat for a humanist of becoming a practicing architect. Anthony Grafton. Leon Battista Alberti: Mas- Grafton finds Alberti’s confidence in a mate- rial culture driven by technology, theoretical 417 ם ter Builder of the Italian Renaissance. xii pp., frontis., illus., index. New York: Hill & knowledge, and careful observation expressed Wang, 2000. $35. forcefully in the dedicatory letter of his essay On Painting addressed to the builder Filippo Bru- Anthony Grafton, like Jacob Burckhardt before nelleschi. Brunelleschi deserved to be praised him, begins his appreciation of Leon Battista Al- not for slavishly drinking from the fountain of berti by reviewing how the fifteenth-century Ital- the ancients, but for the brilliance of his intelli- ian author created a many-faceted identity gence and the successful application of his through willful self-fashioning. Grafton, how- knowledge. Further, by requesting that the ar- ever, offers the reader a much richer Bildungs- chitect emend his essay, Alberti, the scholar, is roman than the older portrait and exposes many shown to have treated Brunelleschi, the builder, forces undercutting the monolithic character of as an equal and thereby to have elevated all tech- Burckhardt’s Renaissance, the same forces that nical knowledge. Alberti cleverly places himself may provide a key to the contrary and doubt- within the circle of the ingenious engineers who ridden persona frequenting Alberti’s writings. were masters of practical knowledge based on Alberti’s ambitions and the leitmotifs of his life underlying principles and therefore at the fore- from his youthful aspirations to their later glo- front of an intellectual parade led by its most rious fulfillment are laid out in stunning detail. renowned practitioner. One wonders, perhaps, Moving well beyond the unrelenting bright- what Brunelleschi at the height of his fame might ness of Burckhardt’s presentation, Grafton also have desired to learn from the audacious savant. attempts to fuse what have become for scholars As Alberti masters how to make his way in the dramatic polarities of Alberti’s enigmatic Florence and among the elegant courts of his personality. An ambitious scholar and writer on day, he is seen to revisit the themes of his youth- academic subjects, on the visual and practical ful writings with ever-deepening insight. Graf- arts, Alberti was a lover of nature and a sensi- ton’s reflections on Alberti and Florence, though tive commentator on aesthetic, familial, and generally convincing, have been greatly enriched BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 113 by Luca Boschetto’s recent book devoted to that London edition of Ripley’s Compound of Al- subject (Leon Battista Alberti e Firenze [Ol- chymy—his longest and most influential work— schki, 2000]). In addition, some of Grafton’s no- a versification in rhyme royal on the making of tions about the influence of On Painting as cen- the philosophers’ stone. The reprinted text is pre- tered in courtly art seem to reach beyond the ceded by an introduction and followed by ex- evidence and the explicit directives found in Al- planatory notes, many of them making use of berti’s writings. Eirenaeus Philalethes’ (i.e., George Starkey’s) The reader interested in Alberti’s involvement Ripley Reviv’d, a lengthy commentary on the in science and technology will still want to con- Compound published in 1678, and of Elias Ash- sult Joan Gadol’s Leon Battista Alberti: Univer- mole’s Theatrum chemicum britannicum, in sal Man of the Early Renaissance (University of which the Compound was published with anno- Chicago Press, 1969), and the lack of a general tations in 1652. bibliography will be an irritation to those who The historian of science might well question like to follow an author’s research trail, the trek- why the 1591 printed edition was chosen as the ker in this case having to stumble through a primary text when there are at least nine fif- thicket of footnotes. Nonetheless, Grafton has teenth-century manuscripts of the Compound in created a richly drawn portrait of Alberti. existence. Linden expresses his belief (p. xxxix) Scholar and student alike will garner much that in the superiority of Rabbard’s 1591 edition over is important about this immensely gifted and Ashmole’s 1652 edition—though he bases this mercurial man whose writings continue to influ- preference, somewhat curiously, on the moder- ence our understanding of the beginnings of nity of the former’s spelling and punctuation— early modernity. but he does not note explicitly why Rabbard’s JANE ANDREWS AIKEN text should be preferable to manuscripts written during Ripley’s lifetime. This decision is pre- George Ripley. George Ripley’s Compound of sumably due, however, to the apparent connec- Alchymy (1591). Edited by Stanton J. Linden. tion of this book to the English Renaissance Her- pp., illus., index. Aldershot/Burling- meticism Series, and Linden’s greater interest in 138 ם 1x ton, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001. $59.95. the late sixteenth-century scene is clear in the detailed account he provides of the production The fifteenth-century Augustinian canon and al- of the 1591 edition. This treatment contrasts with chemist George Ripley is one of the most im- the relatively less critical interest shown toward portant figures in early English alchemy. As the details on Ripley himself, for the biographical chief popularizer of the alchemical principles of section simply lists items about Ripley’s life as the pseudo-Lull, he initiated an influential school summarized around 1900 (predominantly by of English alchemy that remained resilient to the John Ferguson and the Dictionary of National end of the seventeenth century. John Dee, Biography) and includes some points that must George Starkey, Robert Boyle, and Isaac New- be incorrect (e.g., that Ripley was made cham- ton all read Ripley carefully, and Michael Maier berlain by Pope Innocent VIII in 1477; Innocent is said to have learned English just so that he VIII did not ascend to the See of Peter until could read Ripley in the original tongue. 1484). Given Linden’s fine researches published But Ripley has encountered the fate of many previously, this comes as a bit of a disappoint- alchemical writers: reliable biographical data ment, although it must be recalled that even Ash- about him is scarce and nearly overwhelmed by mole had trouble getting details on Ripley three the accumulation of rumors and legends, and his hundred years ago. corpus is a farrago of genuine, adulterated, and Students of alchemy should welcome the ap- spurious works springing from several periods pearance of a reprint of a primary source. Those and places. Naturally, this messy situation ren- who are interested in Renaissance publications ders solid historical inquiry difficult, and so one of alchemical works and who approach Ripley of the first tasks must be to produce more reliable primarily as an English poet and literary figure biographical and bibliographical foundations for will benefit from the book. Questions of course studies of Ripley and his influence. remain, and it is to be hoped that this volume The current volume, although published by will attract more attention to further aspects of Ashgate, greatly resembles (in layout, content, the famous Canon of Bridlington and his work. and intent) a further installment in the Garland LAWRENCE M. PRINCIPE English Renaissance Hermeticism Series, of which Stanton Linden was the general editor. D. Zecaire. Opuscule tres-eccellent de la vraye The bulk of the book is a reprint of the 1591 philosophie naturelle des metaulx. Edited by Re- 114 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) nan Crouvizier. Foreword by Jean-Claude Traite´ attributed to Bernard Le Tre´visan, printed Margolin. (Textes et Travaux de Chrysopaeia, with Zecaire’s Opuscule in the 1567 edition. 6.) 208 pp., frontis., illus., bibls., index. Paris/ However, the alchemical sources referred to Milan: Arche, 1999. (Paper.) in the second book of the Opuscule are clearly those of a pre-Paracelsian alchemist, who ac- The Opuscule written by Denis Zecaire in 1560 cepted the traditional theory of “mercurius so- is one of the most famous testimonies to Re- lus”—that is, the doctrine according to which naissance alchemy. In addition to assessing the metals are formed by one substance, mercury or medieval alchemical heritage, the work is espe- quicksilver, whose fiery aspect manifests itself cially noteworthy because of the firsthand de- as “sulphur” in the formation of metals and in scription of the alchemist’s life it contains. As a the alchemical opus. Only the transmutation of whole, it offers a lively picture of traditional al- metals is considered; there is no hint of the al- chemy, which in the following decades would be chemical distillation of alcohol. While the main deeply transformed by the impact of Paracelsian source of the Opuscule seems to be Bernard Le doctrines. Tre´visan, the most-quoted author is Petrus Bo- Zecaire’s work went through several editions, nus, and Zecaire clearly considers the doctrines in French, Latin, and German, from 1567 until of the Latin “Geber” and pseudo-Lull—the most the very end of the eighteenth century (see the important medieval alchemical authors—as mu- list on pp. 183–186), and the French text has tually consistent. been reprinted twice, in 1977 and 1990. Yet the The third part of the work is a suggestive al- present edition is the first to give the full text legory of the alchemical process, ending with in- from a manuscript probably written by the author structions for using the “grant roy” or “divine himself (Paris, Bibliothe`que Nationale de oeuvre”—that is, the alchemical elixir—to France, fr. 1089). Renan Crouvizier presents a transmute base metals, to make pearls and gems, valuable introductory essay that describes the re- and to heal the human body. Nothing new is de- sults of his thorough research. Indeed, although veloped from pseudo-Lullian alchemy; but the an important outcome of Crouvizier’s work is interest shown by the Paracelsian Gerhard Dorn the restoration of passages lacking in the earlier in Zecaire, whose work he translated into Latin editions, the main interest of this book is in the in 1583, confirms that the French author can be introduction, the careful biographical and socio- placed in the intellectual stream leading from al- logical assessment of the author, and the over- chemy to “chemical philosophy.” view of the sources and contents of his work. MICHELA PEREIRA Despite the display of biographical and his- torical data in the first part of the Opuscule, the Ⅲ Early Modern (Seventeenth and author’s identity is still unknown. Crouvizier Eighteenth Century) points to some features (the supposed Latin name of Zecaire, Johannes Cerasius; his origin Jed Z. Buchwald; I. Bernard Cohen (Editors). from Guyenne; his social status as a landlord) Isaac Newton’s Natural Philosophy. (Dibner In- that might help us to ascertain who “Denis Ze- stitute Studies in the History of Science and ,pp., illus., figs., tables 354 ם caire” really was. Yet even this well-equipped Technology.) xx scholar must at present surrender before the “ef- index. Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press, facement social de Zecaire” (p. 55), leaving us 2001. $45. with only a faint hope that new sources may con- firm the name “Johannes de Berle” proposed by This collection belongs to a distinguished series the eighteenth-century scholar Nicholas Lenglet- and contains a number of outstanding essays. Dufresnoy—or that a different name, confirming Some of the essays, notably those by Alan Sha- the features so carefully outlined, may emerge piro, Michael Nauenberg, and George Smith, ex- from archival records. pand on work published in The Foundations of Analysis of the autobiographical account in Newtonian Scholarship, edited by Richard H. the Opuscule leads Crouvizier to affirm that Ze- Dalitz and Nauenberg (Singapore, 2000), which caire and his work are to be included in the “dos- can be seen as a companion volume. sier des rapports entre protestantiste et alchimie” Jed Buchwald and I. Bernard Cohen identify (p. 43), therefore assigning it to the same intel- two strands of contemporary Newtonian re- lectual milieu where Paracelsus was to find an search. The first, “Motivations and Methods,” audience. This conclusion is strengthened by the opens with an essay by Maurizo Mamiani on the connection of the Opuscule with another alchem- sources for the Regulae Philosophandi in Book ical work linked to French Paracelsianism, the 3 of Newton’s Principia. Relying on his previ- BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 115 ous critical edition of Newton’s Treatise on the Moreover, Wilson argues that whereas the so- Apocalypse, Mamiani shows that “Robert San- lutions by Leonhard and Johann Albrecht Euler derson’s [1631] Logicae Artis Compendium is and by Hill “started from differential equations the primary source of Newton’s rules” (p. 4). that stated exactly the conditions of the problem” Thus circa 1672 Newton adapted Sanderson’s and allowed a close check of the approximations laws first to biblical exegesis and later to the in- adopted, “Newton’s calculative procedure . . . vestigation of nature. Cohen compares Newton’s provides no internal check on the accuracy of Opticks with Huygens’s Traite´ de la lumie`re, [his] assumptions or of his results” (p. 153). Al- shedding light on the history of their editions. though both Nauenberg and Wilson employ Shapiro’s study on diffraction presents a detailed modern notation, Wilson is more careful in con- analysis of Newton’s experimental investiga- veying the sense of Newton’s style and original tions, with particular emphasis on quantitative way of proceeding. Michel Blay’s fine essay methods. Shapiro argues that not only Robert identifies the main aim of Newton’s Principia as Hooke’s role but also “Newton’s inability to determining how one can “achieve mathematical conclude the part [of the Opticks] on diffraction rigor in the transition from the discontinuous to was a principal reason” for the delay of its pub- the continuous” (pp. 225–226). Traditionally lication until 1704 (p. 47). Mordechai Feingold historians have identified the laws of motion, es- outlines a picture of the Royal Society where, a pecially the second law, as the intellectual cor- few years after its foundation, two factions nerstone of Newton’s masterpiece. Blay’s con- emerge, the naturalists and the mathematicians. clusion, however, is that “the real driving force His interpretation provides a convincing key for of Newton’s dynamics, the coherence of the interpreting events at the society in Newton’s Principia, resides in the lemmas of Section 1” time and beyond. (p. 243). The second strand, “Celestial Dynamics and George Smith’s essay on Book 2 of the Prin- Rational Mechanics,” opens with an essay by cipia is probably the most original and innova- Bruce Brackenridge on the interplay among tive contribution to this volume and one of the Newton’s three different ways to represent most important studies of Newton’s work. It will curves, which he calls the “polygonal, parabolic, become a classic in the field. Smith, a philoso- and the curvature methods.” Essays by Nauen- pher and engineer by profession, has the tech- berg and Curtis Wilson provide starkly contrast- nical skills and the historicophilosophical so- ing perspectives on Newton’s investigations on phistication to deal with the complex issues of motion in resisting media and to analyze New- lunar motion in relation to those of later mathe- ton’s problematic experiments and theories. maticians. According to Nauenberg, the pertur- Book 2 has traditionally been little studied and bation method developed by Newton in the bracketed off as a rather cumbersome and un- Portsmouth papers is remarkable and “corre- fortunate aside in Newton’s oeuvre. Smith’s sponds” to later methods developed by Leonhard work sheds new light on it and at the same time Euler and George W. Hill: “The evidence pre- shows the profound links with better-known as- sented here indicates that [Newton] could have pects of Newton’s research. A useful appendix succeeded in his quest to evaluate correctly to his essay contains a translation of those pas- higher-order terms to the motion of the lunar ap- sages on fluid resistance from the first edition ogee had he continued to pursue his method (1687) that were replaced or removed in the later more carefully, particular[ly] in regard to the de- editions. Finally, an essay by the late Sam West- pendence on the orbit’s eccentricity” (p. 215). fall analyzes the background to the mathemati- By contrast, Wilson emphasizes the differences zation of nature in the sixteenth and seventeenth between Newton’s and later contributions. A centuries, focusing on four technologies: water crucial section in his essay addresses the same management, military engineering, navigation, problem that is at the center of Nauenberg’s and cartography. Westfall’s conclusion relates to work but reaches opposite conclusions. The sec- his interest in patronage and argues that the ad- tion is titled “Why It Is Unlikely that Newton vances in seventeenth-century mathematics are Would Ever Have Solved the Problem of the “perhaps partly” due to a “greater demand for Moon’s Apsidal Motion Correctly” (p. 168). In mathematical expertise than any previous soci- his remarkable study, Wilson identifies several ety ever had” (p. 336). His article is accompa- important differences between Newton and his nied by an eloge by Cohen. successors, such as the shift from geometrical to I very much hope that a paperback edition will analytic methods. The problem of the apsidal make this important volume available to a wider motion can only be solved in a “blind, iterative” audience. algorithmic fashion, one Newton did not prefer. DOMENICO BERTOLONI MELI 116 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Giancarlo Nonnoi. Saggi Galileiani: Atomi, im- he had written in 1615. It had both the Italian magini e ideologia. (Collana Agora`, 11.) 238 text and a Latin translation by Diodati and bore pp., illus., index. Cagliari, Italy: AM&D Edi- the revealing title Nov-antiqua Sanctissimorum zioni, 2000. Patrum et Probatorum Theologorum Doctrina de Sacrae Scripturae Testimoniis, in Conclusion- In 1635 a Latin translation was published of Ga- ibuis mere Naturalibus, Quae Sensata Experien- lileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief World Sys- tia et Necessariis Demonstrationibus Evinci Pos- tems (1632), which had occasioned his condem- sunt. It had a preface in which Diodati praised nation by the Inquisition in 1633. The Latin Galileo’s astronomical accomplishments, blamed translation bore the title Systema Cosmicum. It his trial on jealous rivals, and justified the depth had been organized by Elia Diodati (1576– and purity of his piety and religiousness. Diodati 1661), a Protestant of Italian origin born in Ge- used the pseudonym Robertus Robertinus, which neva and living in Paris, where he was a Parlia- corresponded to the name of a Prussian poet ment lawyer. Diodati, a confidante of Galileo, named Robert Roberthin (1600–1648). had gone into action after receiving a letter that These are some of the factual details in Non- may be regarded as Galileo’s intellectual testa- noi’s book. Other chapters deal, in a similar vein, ment, written the same day (15 January 1633) with the ambiguities of Galileo’s atomism; with his legal testament was registered and he decided icons, models, and symbols in Galileo’s Coper- to journey from Florence to Rome to stand trial. nican propaganda; and with the image of Galileo Galileo’s letter stated that “from reliable sources in the astronomical writings of John Wilkins I hear the Jesuit Fathers have managed to con- (1614–1672). vince some very important persons that my book Such details are fascinating and important for is execrable and more harmful to the Holy understanding Galileo’s work and its aftermath, Church than the writings of Luther and Calvin.” and so Nonnoi’s book is useful for contributing The translator was Mathias Bernegger (1582– such necessary spadework—in particular, the 1640), the Austrian-born Protestant rector of the bibliographical documentation is especially University of Strasbourg, who taught history and valuable and the analysis of the pictures found political science but had a background in math- in the works discussed shows considerable orig- ematics. The publisher was the influential Dutch inality. Regrettably, Nonnoi does not integrate firm of the Elseviers, based in Leiden but with such details into an overarching thesis that might branches in several cities. The place of publica- elaborate their significance; thus, the work of as- tion was Strasbourg, which at that time was (as similating them remains to be done. it had been for centuries) a free city within the MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO Holy Roman Empire. The book had two appen- dixes: a five-page selection from Kepler’s intro- Dennis Des Chene. Spirits and Clocks: Machine -pp., il 181 ם duction to his Astronomia Nova (1609), arguing and Organism in Descartes. xvi that Scripture carries no weight in natural phi- lus., bibl., index. Ithaca, N.Y./London: Cornell losophy; and a Latin translation of Paolo Fos- University Press, 2001. carini’s 1615 booklet (30 pages) that had been condemned and banned by the Decree of the In- Spirits and Clocks is the third in a series of mag- dex of 5 March 1616 for arguing that the earth’s nificent books in which Dennis Des Chene ex- motion is compatible with Scripture. The book’s plores the relationship between late Scholastic frontispiece reproduced the one from the original (particularly Jesuit) philosophy and Cartesian edition—that of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Coper- thought. The other two books are Physiologia: nicus engaged in conversation—but with the fig- Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and ure of Copernicus looking much younger than Cartesian Thought (Cornell University Press, the original. And the title page carried two epi- 1996) and Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Con- graphs: a Greek quotation from the Platonist phi- ceptions of the Soul (Cornell University Press, losopher Alcinous meaning “One must be men- 2000). Together, these three books situate Des- tally free if one wants to become a philosopher” cartes’s thinking in one important aspect of the and a Latin quotation from Seneca meaning “It intellectual context within which it developed. is especially among philosophers that one must The result is a superbly nuanced study of a have equal liberty.” thinker whose brilliance has often dazzled his A year later (1636), there appeared also in modern commentators so much that they have Strasbourg with the Elseviers and edited by Ber- forgotten he was addressing a philosophical tra- negger the first publication ever of Galileo’s dition out of which many of his own concepts “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina,” which and arguments derived. BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 117

In the present book Des Chene considers Des- placed. It serves as an excellent model for a cartes’s physiological ideas, as presented in contextualized history of early modern natural Traite´ de l’homme. He argues that Descartes’s philosophy. “rejection of the vegetative and sensitive souls MARGARET J. OSLER invented by his predecessors was no less mo- mentous for the science of life than the rejection Antonio Clericuzio. Elements, Principles, and of forms, powers, and ends was for physics. It Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry was of a piece with his program in physics, exe- in the Seventeenth Century. (International Ar- 223 ם cuted with the same motives and resting on the chives of the History of Ideas, 171.) xii same principles” (p. xi). Spirits and Clocks is a pp., index. Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic careful, historically informed conceptual analy- Publishers, 2000. $89. sis of Descartes’s notorious doctrine of the beˆte machine. Considering this idea in context high- This book addresses two related generalizations lights both the traditional and innovative features that persist in the history of seventeenth-century of Descartes’s physiological thought. This book chemistry, both of which are crucial to the ca- makes a significant contribution to the histori- nonical narrative of the scientific revolution. The ography of early modern natural philosophy by first is that the experimental program of Robert demonstrating both the continuities and discon- Boyle led him to abandon the Aristotelian and tinuities between the mechanical philosophy and Paracelsian chemical theories of his predecessors Aristotelian natural philosophy. and adopt a reductionist, materialist matter the- In the individual chapters Des Chene exam- ory from the French mechanical philosophers ines a few detailed examples of physiological Pierre Gassendi and Rene´ Descartes, forever questions that he considers particularly signifi- changing the nature of chemical theory and pav- cant. These include the explanation of self-mo- ing the way for the modernization of chemistry tion, where machines come from, and the role of during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centu- functional and teleological ideas in Descartes’s ries. The second is that the theories of Gassendi physiology. Other important topics include sen- and Descartes were unequivocally “mechanical” sation and perception, intentionality, and the and reflect the reemergence and supervention of unity of the body. In examining each of these classical atomism over alchemical and vitalist issues, Des Chene first describes the explana- ontologies. Both of these generalizations have tions favored by sixteenth- and seventeenth-cen- been successfully challenged in the past fifteen tury Scholastic philosophers. He then provides a years. The present book collects and explicates detailed analysis of Descartes’s position and these findings, while focusing on Robert Boyle shows the precise differences and similarities be- and the legacy of his matter theory for late sev- tween Descartes’s thought and that of his con- enteenth-century European chemistry. In the temporary Aristotelians. Both aspects of his dis- end, Antonio Clericuzio shows that Cartesian cussion enrich our historical understanding. Des mechanical philosophy did not have a decisive Chene is one of only a handful of scholars who impact on the matter theory of the chemists who have given serious attention to late Aristotelian held onto chemical principles and qualities even natural philosophy in recent years, and his ac- as they adopted various forms of Boyle’s cor- count in Spirits and Clocks is both informative puscular hypothesis. and useful. Similarly, Traite´ de l’homme has re- In an able historiographical overview, Cleri- ceived less scholarly attention than the Dis- cuzio shows how Boyle was thrust into the main- course on Method and the Meditations, so the stream of revolutionary science by Thomas present study is a welcome addition to the liter- Kuhn, Marie Boas, and A. R. Hall, who de- ature. pended on an eighteenth-century construction of Des Chene deploys an impressive array of Boyle that suited the needs of the experimental- scholarly skills and knowledge of Descartes’s in- ism and materialism of Enlightenment science tellectual context as well as analytic precision. but hardly reflected the thinking of Boyle and The result is an important and original reading his contemporaries, as is evident in the texts of an aspect of Cartesianism that has not re- cited here. In fact, Boyle did not rigorously apply ceived as much attention as Descartes’s physics, mechanical philosophy to his chemistry and metaphysics, and epistemology. This book not medicine, as he did to his physics, and he fash- only illuminates Descartes’s theories but also ioned his corpuscularist matter theory from the delineates the conceptual commitments of the active seminal principles of the Paracelsians and mechanical philosophy and the details of its dif- Helmontians as well as the atoms of Epicurean ferences from the late Scholasticism that it re- theory and the minima naturalia of medieval Ar- 118 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) istotelian alchemy. William Newman and Law- This book poses an interesting and important rence Principe have recently argued the impor- question: What happens to the “sacred” version tance of the medieval alchemists’ materialism of the monstrous in the “secularized” world of for seventeenth-century chemistry, and Newman the Scientific Revolution? The “monster” of the has credited J. B. Van Helmont and Daniel Sen- title is defined as “what we are not,” and its con- nert with forging medieval corpuscular minima ceptualization is explored in the context of late into the corpuscles adopted by Boyle, but here sixteenth-century to mid-eighteenth-century It- Clericuzio argues that corpuscles were hardly aly. Aware that, previous to the period she dis- evident in sixteenth-century alchemy, that Van cusses, the monster was not wholly “sacred,” Za- Helmont’s theory was not truly corpuscular, and kiya Hanafi first delineates three well-known that Sennert’s corpuscles still possessed Aristo- traditions of monsters: those of natural philoso- telian forms. This matter awaits resolution. phy (the monster as fact of nature), divination One of the strengths of this book is Clericu- (the monster as prodigy), and wonders of nature zio’s treatment of the pre-Boylean developments (the monster as curiosity or miracle). New atti- within chemical theory, documenting that cor- tudes toward the monstrous that Hanafi calls the puscularism did not emerge from the classical descriptive mode and the manipulative mode are atomism of the French mechanists but evolved said to emerge from the mid-sixteenth century from various considerations of alchemical and (Ch. 2). Her discussion of the emergence of the Paracelsian theory, combined with Aristotelian former mode is related to the story of a dissection natural philosophy. In the first place, the idea of and description of a double-bodied infant in the semina, which Boyle explained as corpuscles en- private garden of the Rucellai family of Florence dowed with generative power and specific de- in 1556. The manipulative mode is demonstrated velopmental programming, was clearly present with regard to the production of living monsters in chemical philosophy from Paracelsus and Pe- (by crossbreeding, for example) proposed by trus Severinus to Van Helmont, whose influence Giambattista Della Porta in the second book of on Boyle and his contemporaries is now well his Magia naturalis (1589). established. Moreover, a materialized version of Hanafi’s third chapter presents the central hy- semina already existed in the medical theory of pothesis on which the rest of the book will turn: Girolamo Fracastoro, who adapted the idea from that the monster and the fear and horror associ- ated with it migrated from the sacred (portentous Lucretius. As well, semina were being corpus- monstrous births, demons, etc.) into the ma- cularized and materialized in the early part of the chine. She presents the intriguing idea that one century, as reflected in treatises by Nicholas Hill. of the continuities of the construction of mon- One cannot expect a book of such wide-rang- strosities in Western culture is “that which is in- ing scholarship to reflect all of the recent litera- animate yet moves of its own accord” (p. 54). ture in the field, but the author’s failure to engage But references to “the machine” and the “Sci- Barbara Beigun Kaplan’s study of Boyle (Di- entific Revolution” in the title of the book are vulging of Useful Truths in Physick: The Medical rather misleading, for her examples are drawn Agenda of Robert Boyle [Baltimore: Johns Hop- from the narrower realm of automatons and or- kins Univ. Press, 1993]) is unfortunate, both be- ganically produced hybrids, speaking statues, cause her work speaks directly to the perspec- and distorting mirrors. She does not deal with tives on Boyle that are treated here and because the question of whether these mechanical and points on which their accounts differ need clar- artificially produced monsters necessarily signi- ification. In sum, Clericuzio’s book presents a fied a general belief that the machine itself was much-needed rectification of the entrenched En- monstrous. lightenment view of Boyle and the development Following her assumption that machine-like of corpuscular chemistry but is not the last word and monstrous are synonymous in this period, on Boyle’s relationship to his predecessors’ the fourth chapter argues that the consequence ideas on matter. of a machine-like interpretation of the human JOLE SHACKELFORD body was its inhabitation by the monstrous as well. Deviations from the proper shapes and ra- Zakiya Hanafi. The Monster in the Machine: tios in body parts—once a primary characteristic Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the monstrous races—is now a revelation of ,pp., illus., bestiality and monstrosity in all human beings 272 ם of the Scientific Revolution. xiv bibl., index. Durham, N.C./London: Duke Uni- according to Della Porta and other writers on versity Press, 2000. $59.95 (cloth); $20.95 (pa- physiognomy. Pursuing the medical theme, per). Chapter 5 explores monstrosity in the body and BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 119 the body politic through an examination of the maritime trade that supplied most of the scien- physiological theories of Giambattista Vico. The tific data about the rest of the world. More than final chapter shifts the focus onto monstrous lan- anyone else, employees of the Dutch and English guage, examining debates on the proper use of maritime enterprises collected the specimens and literary figures. observations that fed the scientific communities Throughout this book Hanafi adopts a meth- in their home countries. Many of these largely odological principle of “seeing the connections” forgotten individuals were accomplished natural- rather than “making explanations” (p. x) that dif- ists whose experience and knowledge earned fuses the scholarly value of her insights and in- them respect among the scientific elite in Europe. teresting examples by presenting the material The activities of Georgius Rumphius nicely simply as metaphors to meditate on the post- illustrate the conjunction of science and mari- modern condition. Many of the sources brought time trade. After a peripatetic military career, together in individual chapters (and, indeed, the Rumphius joined the VOC and in 1652 sailed chapters themselves) seem incompletely related to the Dutch East Indies, where he would spend to each other, particularly in the absence of gen- the rest of his life. He didn’t go to the East with eralizing explanations and a discussion of what the purpose of investigating natural history, is meant by such key terms as “secular,” “sacred,” but the strange creatures in this exotic land and “the machine.” Tenuously linked sources are caught his attention, and he began studying nat- thus placed in unilluminating (because unex- ural history, collecting specimens, and writing plored) relationships, such as the odd conjunction about them. It was a labor of love. Not even of Marsilio Ficino’s description of talisman mak- blindness could stop his research; in fact, he pro- ing with Della Porta’s of animal crossbreeding, duced most of his voluminous writings on the and peculiar omissions occur, for instance, the ab- natural history of Ambon, or Amboina, a small sence of any consideration of the golem tradition. island northeast of Java, after he lost his eye- In short, this book might itself be said to possess sight. But it would be an oversimplification to the jumbled limbs and motley order of its mon- see Rumphius as a lonesome genius marooned strous subject matter, which unfortunately miti- in a remote island struggling to produce brilliant gates against its interest for the specialist and its work that only posterity would come to appre- usefulness for the general reader. ciate. In the Dutch East Indies during this period, SOPHIE PAGE several employees of the VOC were dedicated naturalists, including the noted Hendrik van Georgius Everhardus Rumphius. The Ambo- Reede, and they exchanged ideas and informa- nese Curiosity Cabinet. Edited, translated, and tion with him. Rumphius also maintained an ac- -pp., tive correspondence with the scientific establish 567 ם annotated by E. M. Beekman. cxii frontis., illus., figs., bibl., index. New Haven, ment in Europe and was elected to a prestigious Conn./London: Yale University Press, 1999. $45. scientific academy. Rumphius’s major work was an illustrated The Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) was one herbal that described about 1,200 plants found of the most aggressive and successful trading en- in Ambon and the nearby areas. The Ambonese terprises in the seventeenth-century world. In the Curiosity Cabinet, however, focuses not on Indian Ocean it elbowed the Portuguese out of plants but on crustaceans, shells, minerals, and major ports, dominated the lucrative spice trade, other items that are grouped into three catego- and ruthlessly punished the natives if they re- ries: “Soft Shellfish,” “Hard Shellfish,” and fused to cooperate. Like the English East India “Minerals, Stones, and Other Rare Things.” Company, which would soon become a fierce Each of the volume’s 170 chapters examines one rival, the VOC was a formidable commercial, or more natural objects, often with accompany- military, and imperial complex in the expanding ing illustrations. The descriptions are usually maritime world. In recent years historians of sci- vivid and convey a sense of wonder at exotic ence have begun to examine how this growing natural objects. The text also contains rich eth- maritime trade in the early modern period con- nographic records of the maritime world of tributed to the development of natural history. Southeast Asia. Rumphius drew heavily on the Specimens and observations brought back from indigenous lore of the natural world and fre- the tropics and other exotic lands had an enor- quently cited information collected from Chi- mous impact on the European understanding of nese traders and immigrants. Combing through the natural world. Scientific voyages and explo- the text, one comes across many telling exam- rations were relatively few before the middle of ples of how a seventeenth-century naturalist pur- the eighteenth century. It was the network of sued research in the social and cultural environ- 120 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) ment of a colonial entrepot. The translator, a and readers, were engaged in practicing and pro- distinguished scholar of Dutch colonial litera- ducing curiosity itself” (p. 1). The author mod- ture, has added a long introduction detailing estly states at the outset that the work is not, and Rumphius’s life and work. The text itself is am- does not claim to be, a history of science, and ply annotated. indeed as a whole the essay perhaps falls short FA-TI FAN of the more ambitious promise of the subtitle— “a cultural history of early modern inquiry.” Yet Barbara M. Benedict. Curiosity: A Cultural it deals with a subject that is nonetheless of pro- -pp., found importance for historians of seventeenth 321 םHistory of Early Modern Inquiry.x frontis., illus., index. Chicago/London: Univer- and eighteenth-century science. sity of Chicago Press, 2001. $45. Of particular significance is the way in which the book demonstrates how curiosity and its rep- In recent years historians of science have come resentations served to demarcate the boundaries to an increasing appreciation of the role played of legitimate topics of knowledge and modes of by such moral and affective categories as “trust,” enquiry. The discourse about curiosity thus “wonder,” “pedantry,” and “self-discipline” in served to inform central epistemological ques- the knowledge-making enterprises of the early tions of the period: Is it appropriate to seek all modern period. Barbara Benedict’s book on cu- knowledge on all topics, and is it to be sought riosity is a most welcome contribution to the lit- by all people? If there are areas of knowledge erature devoted to such topics. In a lively and that are illicit, what are they and why are they entertaining work, Benedict sets out to “analyse proscribed? What are the proper methods for the literary representations of the way curious peo- various spheres of knowledge? Benedict care- ple, including scientists, authors, performers, fully articulates the role played by the discourse

“The Bottle Conjuror” (from Benedict, Curiosity, p. 165). BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 121 of curiosity in the sanctioning of some projects rope. Edited by Claire Richter Sherman and and the censuring of others. To take one of the Peter M. Lukehart. With contributions by many telling examples found in the book, the Brian P. Copenhaver, Martin Kemp, Sachiko protagonist of Thomas Shadwell’s Virtuoso Kusukawa, and Susan Forscher Weiss. 278 (1676) is presented as epitomizing the curious im- pp., illus., bibl., indexes. Seattle: University of pulse, here manifested as a puzzlingly earnest Washington Press, 2001. $35 (paper). quest for useless knowledge and a strange fasci- nation with base and undignified natural objects. This book is an expanded catalogue of an exhibit The odd proclivities of this character demonstrate of mid-fifteenth- through seventeenth-century in a forceful way how the new natural philosophy drawings, woodcuts, engravings, and etchings could be regarded as merely an outlet for the in- emphasizing hands as objects of study, as teach- tellectual vice of curiosity—and how far the new ing tools, and as reflections of the human being. knowledge-making enterprises fell short of social In addition, it contains an extended introduction approval amongst those whose approbation by the curator of the exhibit, Claire Richter Sher- mattered most. The familiar seventeenth-century man, and four essays by other contributors on rhetoric of the “usefulness of natural philoso- pertinent topics: the hand as an instrument of the phy” was thus in part a response to accusations intellect, manual reckoning, music, and chiro- of curiosity leveled against experimental philos- mancy (palmistry). These essays, which precede ophers. Benedict observes that “early modern lit- the catalogue itself, are only loosely connected erary culture struggled to mold curiosity into to the exhibit, but each deals with its subject forms that would preserve public values” (p. 68). clearly and crisply. Apologists for the scientific activities of the In his composition on the hand as a means of Royal Society, in keeping with this goal, sought expression, Martin Kemp traces the legacy of an- to depict the quest for natural knowledge as a cient thought as reflected in the various anatom- legitimate expression of a curiosity that had been ical drawings from Leonardo through the de- appropriately disciplined and directed in ways tailed Bidloo prints. Kemp concludes that the that would contribute to the common good. hand remains “a prime mechanism for personal The book also traces the varying fortunes of expression—for the manifestation of individual curiosity, nicely delineating the reciprocal rela- character and identity.” In the following essay tions between subjective and objective, between Sachiko Kusukawa provides a succinct sketch of the curious sensibility and curiosities, between finger numeration, noting that a system alluded wonder and wonders. At times it might have to by ancient authors was fully described by the been helpful for the author to have transgressed Venerable Bede in the eighth century. Bede also the self-imposed limitation of examining literary wrote of a method of using the hand as a mne- representations and to have considered some for- monic aid in determining the proper date for Eas- mal accounts of curiosity as they occur in con- ter and other movable feasts. Finger counting re- temporary works of moral psychology in which mained popular throughout the Middle Ages but this human propensity is carefully described and gradually fell into disuse in the West by the six- precisely located among the other affections. teenth century and was merely quaint by the Without more direct information about the con- eighteenth. Kusukawa does not, unfortunately, temporary taxonomy of the affections curiosity suggest a reason for the decline, but the spread too easily shades into wonder, credulity, greed, of computation with Arabic numerals was surely avarice, and acquisitiveness. In short, the rela- tions of curiosity with its neighboring affec- a major factor. tions—the subtle transformations of which con- Next, Susan Forscher Weiss discusses the use stituted an integral part of the changing status of of the hand in teaching music theory and scales. curiosity—could perhaps have been more finely Although there are some indications of this prac- drawn. This, however, is a minor issue. Benedict tice in antiquity, variations on a system devel- has written a good book on an important topic, oped in the eleventh century by Guido of Arezzo not least for historians of science because it were used to teach music through the sixteenth clearly shows how the eventual establishment of century. Finally, Brain P. Copenhaver discusses the social respectability of curious individuals the history of the pseudoscience chiromancy and objects was an essential phase in the legiti- (palmistry). Already in existence in antiquity, mation of natural history and natural philosophy. palmistry, and other forms of divination, flour- PETER HARRISON ished despite the prohibitions of the church. Co- penhaver concludes with a witty discussion of Claire Richter Sherman. Writing on Hands: the hard times on which palmistry has fallen re- Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Eu- cently in California. 122 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

As for the catalogue, it consists of eighty-three History and historians have not been kind to monochrome illustrations, each with an exten- Francisco Herna´ndez. Herna´ndez was a six- sive commentary about the artist, the subject, teenth-century physician steeped in classical and the reason the item was included in the ex- learning whom Philip II sent to the New World hibit. These descriptions are frequently fascinat- to study new exotic plants for the royal phar- ing short essays in themselves, enticing the macy. A typical humanist who befriended such reader to investigate further. The organization is luminaries as Benito Arias Montano and Fran- thematic rather than chronological, with six di- cisco Valles, Herna´ndez went well beyond Philip visions (which do not directly correspond to the II’s request and put together a mammoth natural preceding essays): “Reading the Writing on history of New Spain that took seven years (from Hands,” “Handiwork of the Creator,” “Messen- 1570 to 1577) to complete and included descrip- gers of the World,” “Knowledge on Hand,” tions of some 3,000 new species of plants (com- “Whole World in the Hand,” and “Guiding pared to some 350 inventoried by Theophrastus, Hands.” The faults are minor. Although the 500 by Dioscorides, and 600 by Islamic bota- themes of the divisions themselves are clearly nists). The financially strapped Philip II ordered described in Sherman’s introduction, several of the court physician Nardo Antonio Recchi to the illustrations seem to have only a general as- come up with a synthesis of Herna´ndez’s eleven- sociation with the stated theme. A few are filled volume illustrated natural history. The Academy with details too small to be legible in the nec- of Lincei published Recchi’s shortened version essary reduction of plates to fit the book. Most in Rome some seventy years later, with glosses of the illustrations, however, are excellent ex- and commentaries. To make things worse, in amples of the main subject of the exhibit and are 1671 Herna´ndez’s eleven volumes burned up in fascinating studies in their own right. a great fire at the library of El Escorial. Fortu- Generally, this volume is a valuable work for nately, however, many copies of Herna´ndez’s anyone interested in the history of the hand in manuscript had long been circulating in Mexico, science and the arts. The four prefatory essays Spain, Holland, and Britain, and they surfaced are particularly instructive, and the prints are re- periodically, particularly in works by Gregorio produced clearly, with elaborate descriptions of Lo´pez (ca. 1583/publ. 1678), Juan Barrios their historical context and their meaning. Ac- (1607), Francisco Xime´nez (1615), Johannes de cordingly, this book is much more than merely Laet (1625, 1630, 1633), Georg Margraf (1648), a catalogue; it is an important work in its own Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1635), Robert Lovell right. Throughout, the substantial references to (1659), Henry Stubbe (1662), Hans Sloane other works indicate directions for further study. (1707–1725), James Newton (1752), and James One only regrets that the exhibit itself was Petiver (1715). This maddening history of Her- shown in only two venues. na´ndez’s manuscripts has not been well under- RICHARD S. WILLIAMS stood, nor has the scholarship on his life and works been historically sensitive. Hailed from the eighteenth-century onward as the epitome of modernity in Spain and Mexico, a model for lo- cal scientists to emulate, Herna´ndez has system- Francisco Herna´ndez. The Mexican Treasury: atically been read out of context. The Writings of Dr. Francisco Herna´ndez. Ed- This situation has, fortunately, begun to ited by Simon Varey. Translated by Rafael change. Thanks to the patient work of scholars Chabra´n, Cynthia L. Chamberlain, and such as Jose´M.Lo´pez Pin˜ero, Jose´ Pardo To- pp., frontis., illus., ma´s, Rafael Chabra´n, Simon Varey, and Jesu´s 281 ם Simon Varey. xxii index. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Bustamente, we are now beginning to understand Press, 2000. $65. the complex history of the dissemination (and sur- vival) of Herna´ndez’s manuscripts in Europe and Simon Varey; Rafael Chabra´n; Dora B. Wei- the New World and the humanist culture in Spain ner (Editors). Searching for the Secrets of Na- that made his work possible. The two handsome ture: The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Her- -volumes published by Stanford go a long way to ם na´ndez. xviii 229 pp., frontis., illus., index. ward making this new scholarship available to Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, English-speaking audiences. 2000. $60. The Mexican Treasury offers readers a Mauricio Nieto Olarte. Remedios para el im- thoughtful selection of some of Herna´ndez’s perio: Historia natural y la apropriacio´n del writings. It includes pieces drawn from his ex- Nuevo Mondo. 280 pp., illus. Bogota´: Instituto tant manuscripts as well as selections from sev- Colombiano de Antropologı´a e Historia, 2000. eral of the authors who in the course of the sev- BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 123 enteenth and eighteenth centuries copied his Swedes, who, as Lisbet Koerner has persuasively writings. Although the selection privileges Her- shown, sought economic autarchy through a plan na´ndez’s natural history, it also includes a trans- spearheaded by Linnaeus and his disciples of im- lation of his correspondence with Philip II and port substitution, Spaniards sought to break Arias Montano, his will, his Christian Doctrine Dutch and British monopolies of valuable me- (a pedagogical poem he wrote while in Mexico dicinal plants and to keep their own (e.g., the summarizing the tenets of Catholic theology), cinchona tree). Drawing on the insights of Bruno and excerpts from his treatise on Mexican antiq- Latour, Nieto Olarte also seeks to show how nat- uities. Although these selections clearly encour- uralists and apothecaries, using the visual tech- age contextual readings of his work, they do not niques encouraged by the new Linnaean taxon- go far enough. We know, for example, that Her- omy, colonized the pharmaceutical knowledge na´ndez translated and glossed Aristotle, Pliny of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, trans- the Elder, and Pseudo-Dionysus. He also wrote ferring it to their metropolitan headquarters. Cre- essays on Stoic philosophy. Samples of these ole naturalists of the national period blindly fol- writings should have been included as well. lowed the same colonialist strategies of their The accompanying volume, Searching for the Spanish predecessors. Nieto Olarte’s book, then, Secrets of Nature, seeks to put Herna´ndez in his is welcome as a good synthesis of recent schol- appropriate historical context. Several essays in arship on Spanish botanical research in the New this collection are particularly insightful. Peter World during the Enlightenment. O’Malley Pierson presents Philip II not as an JORGE CAN˜ IZARES-ESGUERRA obscurantist monarch but as a patron of natural philosophers whose generosity was always lim- Molly McClain. Beaufort: The Duke and His ,.pp., illus 262 ם ited by a bankrupt treasury. Rafael Chabra´n lo- Duchess, 1657–1715. xviii cates Herna´ndez in the philological and experi- bibl., index. New Haven, Conn./London: Yale mental traditions of Spanish humanism that University Press, 2001. $35. thrived at the Universities of Alcala´ de Henares In a study based on archival research and imag- and Valencia. Herna´ndez found in Nahuatl ety- inative reconstruction, Molly McClain tries to mologies and taxonomies an alternative to the prove that the political and personal activities of botanical classifications of Dioscorides. He also Henry Somerset, third marquis of Worcester and sought to confirm the medical virtues of plants first duke of Beaufort (1629–1700), and his through clinical trials. Guenter B. Risse offers wife, Mary Capel Somerset (1630–1715), dem- an enlightening study of sixteenth-century Mex- onstrate the transformation of the aristocracy in ican hospitals, where local shamans introduced the Restoration period. Her work seems to em- Herna´ndez to Nahua botanical knowledge and brace the thesis of Theodore K. Rabb in The where Herna´ndez carried out his clinical re- Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe search. Essays by Lopez Pin˜ero and Pardo To- ma´s and by Chabra´n and Varey painstakingly (Oxford, 1975) about the “crisis of the seven- reconstruct the history of the dissemination of teenth century” and its resolution in confidence Herna´ndez’s manuscripts in Mexico, Spain, Brit- and stability later in the century, but in this case, ain, and the Netherlands. Finally, Jaime Vilchis as in many others, McClain fails to present the highlights the importance of understanding Her- evidence and analysis necessary for such an as- na´ndez’s Neoplatonic and Stoic writings to com- sertion. prehend why he went to Mexico in the first place. According to McClain, the duke of Beaufort Although Herna´ndez still remains a poorly un- became a rationalist in his pursuit of certainty, derstood figure, these two volumes help dissipate while the duchess turned to empiricism (and re- the fog enveloping his life and work. ligion) for her peace of mind. The Copernican The publications on Herna´ndez are a trickle landscape of their estate at Badminton in Glou- when compared to the numerous new studies on cestershire was the expression of Beaufort’s eighteenth-century Spanish botanical expedi- quest to order the world. His wife collected a tions. Mauricio Nieto Olarte’s Remedios para el vast number of plants and seeds, housed in a imperio is one example of this new literature. greenhouse at Badminton, and patronized some Building on the scholarship of Francisco Puerto of the most important naturalists and botanists Sarmiento, Nieto Olarte describes the control ex- of her age, including Sir Henry Sloane. With ercised by the guild of apothecaries of Madrid their help, she assembled a twelve-volume her- over the largest expeditions in eighteenth-cen- barium, which was used by John Ray in his bo- tury Spanish America, namely, those that went tanic taxonomy. to Mexico, Colombia, and Peru. Unlike the Mary Somerset, who suffered from periodic 124 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) bouts of depression, found in plants the expres- of the Parlement of Provence, was the pattern of sion of God’s providence and, according to beneficence and learning, heroic in his virtue, his McClain, was led through contemplation of the magnificent mind, and his care for scholars and physical world to the experience of God’s grace. scholarship. Peter N. Miller, in his profound and Unfortunately, rather than linking this argument riveting study of what might be called the Pei- with the many modern works that have sought rescian moment of European intellectual life, to understand the relationship of science and re- asks why this grand figure, the hero of his age, ligion in the late seventeenth century, McClain was subsequently almost entirely forgotten—or uses Scripture and unsupported speculation to at best considered the model pedant. bolster her argument. Peiresc was an antiquarian who investigated If McClain had developed these themes, con- the physical remains of the past with delight and textualized them, supported them with more evi- perspicacity. He felt that the past offered lessons dence, and enhanced them with reference to the to the present and that the constitution of the secondary literature, this book might have contemporary state could not be understood proved of interest to historians of science. In- without a comparative and comprehensive sur- stead, it is largely devoted to detailed political vey of former times and places. Through a far- and local history. Her discussion is historio- flung network of correspondents and friends Pei- graphically anachronistic, echoing an earlier resc collected his observations, although most of generation of scholars who rarely considered so- his resulting work remained unpublished. Pei- cial and cultural questions. resc, Miller observes, was engaged not only in a A large part of the problem with the book is its prodigious intellectual feat but in a moral disci- meager footnote citations and an extremely lim- pline teaching “the virtues of constancy, conver- ited bibliography. One can only hope that this is sation, friendship and beneficence” (p. 11). an expression of the writer’s lack of experience Among Peiresc’s friends were Galileo, Hugo rather than a dictate of Yale University Press. If Grotius, Peter Paul Rubens, Marin Mersenne, the book was intended for a popular audience, Italian humanists, Catholic prelates, Protestants, these omissions would be understandable; but and Jews. He subscribed, according to Miller, to presumably that is not the expected constituency. an irenic religiosity in which reason revealed ba- Or perhaps it is. McClain has a curious ten- sic religious truths that could be accommodated dency to introduce the rhetoric of romance nov- to all other belief systems. Miller credits neo- els into her discussion. What are we to make of Stoicism as the animating force behind this re- statements like the following: “Their marriage ligious minimalism that flourished briefly in the was held together by a strong sexual passion middle of the sectarian excesses of the Wars of which their letters hint at, but never reveal. We Religion. Broadly speaking, Stoicism taught and can only imagine what it must have been like for confirmed the virtues of constancy, duty, gen- them to spend their nights in a dark bedchamber erosity, and friendship and provided the moral hung with tapestries and warmed only by a fire” economy for a learned and tolerant civil society. (p. 27)? Probably most historians would not like Miller uses Peiresc as a touchstone for his to dwell on this question, and they would be bet- time but also as the point of departure for dis- ter off avoiding the duke and duchess of Beau- cussing the thought of others, both before and fort, and their expositor, entirely. after Peiresc, who held similar beliefs and pur- LISA T. SARASOHN sued similar interests. It is only here that Miller’s analysis falters. Disembodied minds require Peter N. Miller. Peiresc’s Europe: Learning some social context, and Miller’s traditional in- .tellectual history does not provide enough 234 םand Virtue in the Seventeenth Century.xv pp., frontis., illus., fig., index. New Haven, Conn./ This limited approach is particularly true of London: Yale University Press, 2000. $40. his analysis of friendship, gratitude, and ingrat- itude—terms with important seventeenth-cen- In his 1641 biography of Nicolaus-Claude Fabri tury social meanings as well as Stoic connota- de Peiresc (1580–1637), Pierre Gassendi de- tions. Peiresc was not simply a disinterested clared that all learned men acknowledged that Maecenas of learning; he was also the center of the most noble Peiresc “had seized the glory of a patronage network bringing him honor and kings” (The Mirrour of True Nobility: Being the power within the intellectual community. Life of the Renowned Nicolaus Claudius Fabri- Neo-Stoicism as a category also needs to be cius Lord of Peiresc, trans. W. Rand [Humphrey problematized, a fact Miller acknowledges in his Moseley, 1657]). For Gassendi and his circle footnotes but rarely addresses in the text. Other of savants, Peiresc, in his public life a member ancient traditions informed the thought of the BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 125 early seventeenth century, most notably skepti- wanted to maintain the mind-body dualism that cism and Epicureanism—which was rehabili- characterized the Scottish school. In addition, his tated by Gassendi at the same time he wrote his main statement on the Scottish Enlightenment Life of Peiresc. The most recent historiography appeared as an essay on the history of the prog- of these movements is largely absent from ress of metaphysics and morals that was paired Miller’s study. Thus his analysis would have with John Leslie’s essay on the progress of the benefited from a broader investigation of both natural sciences in the supplement to the fourth the social and the intellectual context of the Pei- edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and he rescian world. was simply responding to the limits of his as- Nevertheless, one can only be awed by Miller’s signment. Regardless of his motives, one major vast if somewhat idiosyncratic erudition. His mas- consequence of Stewart’s approach has been the tery of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century exclusion of the natural sciences from a central neo-Stoic sources is immense and his integration role in most subsequent interpretations of the of echoes of these themes into later centuries is Scottish Enlightenment not written by historians provocative. His conclusion that the polymath of science—an exclusion Wood laments. Peiresc could seem only a pedant to Enlighten- The second essay, by John Robertson, seems, ment figures who idolized the practitioners of the on one level, almost designed to prove Wood’s New Science, or who valued the polite gentleman main point, for it explicitly denies natural sci- over the learned scholar, is perhaps too sweeping. ence a significant role. For Robertson, moral phi- Nonetheless, Miller shares the attributes of his losophy, history, and, above all, political econ- seventeenth-century subject: learning, curiosity, omy are at the core of Scottish concerns. He and the ability to penetrate and befriend the minds departs from Stewart, however, by insisting on of those both past and present. a fundamental opposition between Hume and LISA T. SARASOHN Hutcheson and by arguing that the Scottish En- lightenment would be better understood as part Paul Wood (Editor). The Scottish Enlighten- of a broader European Enlightenment, with less ment: Essays in Reinterpretation. (Rochester patriotic fervor about Scots exceptionalism. pp., illus., Richard Sher’s essay on what book history can 399 ם Studies in Philosophy, 1.) xii tables, index. Rochester, N.Y./Woodbridge, U.K.: tell us about science and medicine in the Scottish University of Rochester Press, 2000. $75. Enlightenment is remarkably insightful and il- luminating; it left me waiting with great antici- Ten of the twelve essays in this fine collection pation for his book-length study on the subject. treat subjects that are relevant to any reasonably Although Sher rejects Roger Emerson’s claims comprehensive understanding of the nature of the that the natural sciences were the driving force history of science. The first four essays are either for the Enlightenment in Scotland, he insists that completely or largely historiographical. Each ex- science and medicine were important. He then plores the extent to which the natural sciences goes on to suggest a series of fascinating ways have been, or should be, seen as central to the in which characteristics of the book trade both Scottish Enlightenment. As all four provide ex- shaped and can illuminate the place of science. tended descriptive historiographies, there is exten- Among the other essays likely to interest his- sive repetition here, but as the four also offer rad- torians of science are those by Anita Guerrini, ically different answers, they are worth reading. John Wright, and Fiona MacDonald. These au- In the first essay Paul Wood argues that Du- thors explore aspects of medical theory and gald Stewart created an imaginary picture of the medical care in very different but very illumi- Scottish Enlightenment that has influenced al- nating ways. (MacDonald’s empirical analysis of most all subsequent interpretations of the move- admissions’ patient care at the Glasgow Town’s ment. These interpretations have promoted the Hospital Infirmary from 1733 to 1800 departs idea that there was a coherent “Scottish school” most from the traditional history of ideas pattern of philosophy of which David Hume and Francis that dominates many of the other essays.) Hutcheson were the cofounders; that the Scottish One other related set of essays consists of school emphasized moral philosophy and social pieces by James Moore, Christopher Berry, and theory; and that it included figures from Glas- Alexander Broadie, all of which focus on aspects gow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen. Wood claims of the theorized relationship between science and that Stewart downplayed the relationship be- religion. Here, the major theme is the difference tween natural knowledge and social theory, ex- in emphases between those who followed the an- cept for some minor methodological common- cient materialists in seeing fear as the primary alities, for several reasons. In part, he desperately motive in the origins of religion and those who 126 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) emphasized some version of the design argu- main problems that the work of each of the math- ment. ematicians discussed here was originally meant to This volume provides a good introduction to resolve. In a book of this kind (i.e., a technically the current state of interpretations of the Scottish detailed historical overview of a particular math- Enlightenment, and its special emphasis on the ematical discipline) this is surely one of the major place of science among eighteenth-century Scot- benefits that the reader may expect to obtain. tish intellectuals should make it attractive to There are biographical sketches of the major many readers of Isis. figures involved, as well as additional informa- RICHARD OLSON tion about other participants. Some illuminating documents are quoted, and Curtis supplies brief Ⅲ Modern (Nineteenth Century to 1950) accounts of the mathematical traditions within which each of the pioneers was educated and Charles W. Curtis. Pioneers of Representation worked. He acknowledges, however, that Pio- Theory: Frobenius, Burnside, Schur, and Brauer. neers of Representation Theory has only a lim- pp., il- ited claim as a work of historical research. He 287 ם History of Mathematics, 15.) xvi) lus., apps., bibl., index. Providence, R.I.: Ameri- thus provides references to more historically ori- can Mathematical Society, 1999. $49. ented work that interested readers can consult. In particular, he mentions several articles by Charles W. Curtis is a prominent mathematician Thomas Hawkins; it should be stressed that who has made important contributions to the much of Hawkins’s work has recently been pub- field of representation theory. His textbooks in lished in book form: Emergence of the Theory this field (written in collaboration with the late of Lie Groups: An Essay in the History of Math- Irving Reiner, to whose memory the present ematics, 1869–1926 (Springer, 2000). Curtis’s book is dedicated) have been classics for a long and Hawkins’s books complement each other in time. In Pioneers of Representation Theory he many important ways, and each should appeal to has set out to present the historical development readers of the other. of the main ideas of the discipline, from the work Charles Curtis has written an impressive, au- of Georg Ferdinand Frobenius in the 1890s up thoritative, and well-informed book on a diffi- to 1960. In addition to Frobenius, the book fo- cult subject. Mathematicians and historians of cuses mainly on three other “pioneers”: William twentieth-century mathematics with the rele- Burnside, Issai Schur, and Richard Brauer. vant background will find it difficult but re- Curtis states that his interest in the history of warding reading. Along the way, historiograph- representation theory arose gradually, and jointly ical questions may arise. To what extent is it with that of Reiner, in the process of writing their possible to translate, as Curtis does, the original textbooks. Thus, a main aim of the book is to proofs of the pioneers into more modern ter- show how the pioneers reached their important minology and yet remain faithful to the results while using only the mathematics then sources? In most cases, however, it will require available to them. In order to do so, Curtis pre- the technical expertise of the author himself to sents successive and thorough accounts of the answer questions like this one properly. We can works in which the new and seminal ideas of the only hope that the firm starting point this book pioneers were introduced and then developed. At provides will lead Curtis to further historical the same time, however, he simplifies some of research in this and related fields. the original arguments by translating them into LEO CORRY modern terminology. In an attempt to make the book appealing and William Rowan Hamilton. Mathematical Pa- accessible to a wider circle of potential readers, pers of Sir William Rowan Hamilton. Volume 4: some of the necessary mathematics is explained. Geometry, Analysis, Astronomy, Probability and Thus Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the Finite Differences, Miscellaneous. Edited by basic ideas and problems of nineteenth-century Brendan Scaife. (Cunningham Memoir, 16.) x -pp., frontis., figs., bibl., indexes. Cam 842 ם algebra and number theory; later on, as the need arises, additional mathematical sections ad- bridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, dressed to nonexperts are included. Of course, 2000. $150. even this very clear presentation will be acces- sible only to readers with at least a graduate-level William Rowan Hamilton was not a tidy math- knowledge of algebra. ematician. When he had to host a formal dinner Curtis also attempts to provide some historical party at the observatory, it took him two days to context. He is particularly concerned to clarify the clean up the dining room, and he achieved that BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 127 only by stuffing his papers into bags and baskets incomplete at his death and was published post- and shoving them under the beds. He did try to humously in two volumes by his son. reform. He kept much of his mathematical work The rest of Volume 4 of the Mathematical Pa- in notebooks of all sizes, which he started from pers consists of published articles on geometry, both ends, writing on only the right-hand page analysis, astronomy, probability, and miscella- so that writing from the other direction appeared neous subjects. The volume closes with a chro- upside down on the left page. But then he would nological list of Hamilton’s works, an index to relapse and write on any blank spot that he could this fourth volume, and a combined index to all find. In 1924 the Royal Irish Academy set out to four volumes. Scaife has done a good job of ed- publish Hamilton’s mathematical papers in four iting. He identifies all persons mentioned and large volumes, which meant putting them into adds helpful notes on the provenance of the man- some kind of order. The first volume, on optics, uscripts. He has not, however, attempted to re- appeared in 1931; the second, on mechanics, ap- peat the long introductions and analytical appen- peared in 1940; the third, on algebra, appeared dixes that appear in the previous three volumes. in 1967; and now, after seventy-five years, we The reader will be on his or her own in what is have the fourth and final volume, edited by Bren- often a sea of mathematical confusion. dan Scaife. The academy is to be congratulated Probably of greatest interest to potential pur- on having completed the publication of its most chasers of this volume is a CD inside the back famous member’s mathematical works. cover that includes all four volumes, so by buy- This latest volume consists mostly of previ- ing this one volume one has access to the entire ously published but hard to find papers, includ- set. The CD is an omen of things to come. This ing a few miscellaneous items of biographical is probably one of the last efforts to publish the interest, but it begins with three important un- collected works of an important mathematician published manuscripts. The first item is Part in a beautiful hardcover edition. It is a fitting Third of Hamilton’s Theory of Systems of Rays. tribute to an extraordinary man and a great math- Part First of the Systems of Rays, which he pub- ematician. lished in 1827 and which first revealed his math- THOMAS L. HANKINS ematical genius, contained a table describing the contents of all three parts, but the second two Bruce Collier; James MacLachlan. Charles parts never appeared. Instead Hamilton pub- Babbage and the Engines of Perfection. 123 pp., lished three lengthy Supplements. John L. illus., figs., tables, apps., bibl., index. New York/ Synge, one of the editors of the first volume of Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. $11.95 the Mathematical Papers, published Part Sec- (paper). ond, but no one could find Part Third because Oxford University Press proudly announces: Hamilton never finished it to his satisfaction and “Now, for the first time, Oxford offers the gen- therefore left it stirred in among his great mass eral public a series of readable accessible biog- of loose papers where it was difficult to identify. raphies of great scientists.” Included among the It is on extraordinary systems, a subject that he chosen great men (and two women) is Charles developed much further in his Third Supplement Babbage, described on the back cover of this (1832) where he predicted the phenomenon of book as “a dazzling genius with vision extending conical refraction in biaxial crystals. far beyond the limitations of the Victorian age.” The other two manuscripts are three very long Well, I’m not quite sure what this means, and “letters,” two to Augustus De Morgan on definite unfortunately our understanding of Babbage and integrals and differential equations and one to his historical context is not greatly illuminated Andrew Hart on anharmonic coordinates. These by this short book. three letters written between 1858 and 1860, to- Bruce Collier and James MacLachlan have ward the end of Hamilton’s life, make up almost produced an uncritical biography of Babbage four hundred pages of the printed text! At the that glorifies him as “the Grandfather of the time he wrote these letters Hamilton was trying modern computer” rather than shedding new to finish his Elements of Quaternions, which light on his work within the context of nine- kept expanding beyond his control and was caus- teenth-century England. Partly, no doubt, this is ing him serious financial difficulty. His desperate due to the remit of this Oxford series and its efforts to nail down his legacy caused him to targeted audience. It is good that history of sci- spin out page after page of heavy mathematical ence and technology is being taken to a wider calculation, much of which never came to a con- audience, but unfortunately very little is made of clusion. The Elements of Quaternions was still the work many historians have already done. The 128 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) book, however, does do a useful and lucid job War II without the “MAUD Committee” report of describing the aims and workings of both the by British scientists in the summer of 1941, Difference and Analytical Engines, and it has which concluded that only pounds—not tons— helpful sidebars describing some of the technical of fissionable material might yield a nuclear ex- aspects necessary to understanding Babbage’s plosion. And once the project was under way, objectives and resources. friendly but secretive wartime agreements by Overall, however, historians may find the eu- President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Min- logizing and whiggish approach of this book a ister Winston S. Churchill laid plans for the two little irritating. The authors are prone to a num- allies to collaborate on nuclear weapons devel- ber of ungrounded remarks, such as the allega- opment and decisions. tion that the government was misguided to pay Why, then, is Britain best remembered for giv- nearly £300,000 for Marc Brunel to build a tun- ing the Manhattan Project its first spy and its first nel under the Thames, in comparison to the dissenter? In popular history, the British delega- “stingy” amount given to Babbage to build his tion to Los Alamos included Klaus Fuchs, who Difference Engine (p. 49). To make judgments passed American bomb designs to the Soviet Un- about past events from the concerns of the pres- ion, and Joseph Rotblat, who quit when he saw ent is not particularly fruitful. It was not at all that his work would not be used defensively clear to contemporaries that Babbage’s engine against Germany but offensively against Japan. was worth investing in or, indeed, was possible (Fuchs confessed to spying in 1950. Rotblat within the technological parameters then avail- shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.) In fact, able. As such, perhaps a more interesting ques- there was much more activity in American-British tion would be: How did Babbage manage to get atomic relations, an engaging story explained in as much public money as he did in the first rich detail by Septimus H. Paul, a history profes- place? The authors would have been far more sor at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, helpful had they actually related industrial Brit- Illinois. Paul blends exhaustive and wide-ranging ain to the work of Babbage. research in a clear, coherent style, punctuating his Throughout this book readers will be con- account with dry wit and historical insight. stantly reminded of Babbage’s prophetic genius. Unfortunately for historians of science, there For example, on page 63 we learn that he devised is little technical detail in Paul’s account of these a scheme to replace the transport of mail by road fateful years. We never learn just what scientific with a system of elevated wires carrying letters contributions Britain’s MAUD Committee in a metal container between London and Bris- members and Los Alamos visitors made, nor do tol. This inspires the authors to remark: “Bab- we appreciate the independent allied research by bage would certainly have been overjoyed by the British and French in Canada during the war. e-mail, by which electronic symbols are trans- Paul does note that by withholding information ported all over the world in the blink of an eye.” the United States left its allies with no choice but Could it be that Babbage was also the great to develop different nuclear reactors: Canada’s grandfather of electronic mail? On page 65 we heavy-water and Britain’s gas-cooled designs. learn that he was also the originator of the idea But Paul’s admirable achievement is to untangle of having “black boxes” used to record infor- the many complex diplomatic, bureaucratic, and mation in case of train or aircraft crashes, while political intrigues that shaped atomic science. a few pages later the authors reflect: “imagine Paul explains how the personal bond between how much Ada [Lovelace] and Charles would Roosevelt and Churchill yielded secret agree- have loved word processing, spreadsheets, and ments at Quebec in 1943 and at Hyde Park in databases!” Some people will no doubt delight 1944, yet neither of their successors (Harry S in such speculations, and who am I to sour the Truman or Clement Attlee) learned about those story? As such this is a useful introduction to pacts until months after taking office in 1945. twentieth-century Babbage. Equally fascinating is Paul’s account of the bu- WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH reaucratic intrigues behind the president and prime minister—engineered in Great Britain by Septimus H. Paul. Nuclear Rivals: Anglo- Lord Cherwell, Churchill’s science advisor, and in the United States by science administrators םAmerican Atomic Relations, 1941–1952.x 266 pp., bibl., index. Columbus: Ohio State Uni- Vannevar Bush and James Conant, by the Man- versity Press, 2000. $42.50. hattan Project’s military leader, General Leslie R. Groves, and by Lewis L. Strauss, an aggres- The United States probably would not have gam- sively anti-Soviet member of the Atomic Energy bled $2 billion on its Manhattan Project in World Commission. Legislative politics also played a BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 129 fractious role. In London, Churchill (as opposi- dack, and Lise Meitner), none Americans and tion leader against Attlee) strained to reassert none available for the U.S. bomb effort. They then British influence; in Washington, Senator Brien recount the history of the Manhattan Project via McMahon created and dominated the joint com- biographical vignettes of women, organized in mittee on atomic energy, striving with Senators chapters: “The Physicists,” “The Chemists,” Bourke Hickenlooper and Arthur Vandenberg to “Mathematicians and Calculators,” “Biologists protect U.S. nuclear secrets from all foreigners. and Medical Scientists,” “The Technicians,” and Still, incentives to cooperate persisted through- “Other Women of the Manhattan Project.” out the 1940s and 1950s, with the United States It appears that few of these women knew each coveting Britain’s uranium stockpile as if it were other. In her foreword, Ellen Weaver writes: an “atomic colony” (p. 147) and Britain craving “When I read the personal reminiscences of the technical information and international prestige. men who were nuclear pioneers, I’m struck by But it was the spies who ultimately doomed real the importance they place on their friends and collaboration, making the U.K. an untrustworthy associates, and on the often intense interaction ally until there were no more secrets to protect. In among them, which could lead to major insights 1950–1951, scandals surrounded Fuchs’s arrest in both theory and practice of science. And I’m and Bruno Pontecorvo’s defection to Moscow. a bit jealous. By and large, women did not share Paul argues that while U.S. and U.K. cooperation in that give-and-take.” barely survived these ruptures, trust was lost fi- Not only was there little networking among nally when Guy Burgess from the British Em- women scientists and technicians in the early bassy in Washington and Donald Maclean, head 1940s while the bomb was being developed, but of the American Department at the Foreign Of- there was little opportunity for them to share fice, also defected to Moscow. Only after the their experiences later. Only a very small per- United States, the USSR, and the United King- centage of these women were able to continue dom all had independently developed nuclear and their professional careers. The many barriers to thermonuclear weapons did the U.S. Congress women as professional scientists and engineers, amend the Atomic Energy Act in 1958 to grant temporarily lowered owing to the manpower the president legal authority to exchange infor- shortages of wartime, were raised after the war. mation on atomic and hydrogen bombs, at last There did not develop a community of women, allowing full Anglo-American atomic coopera- engaged in teaching and research, with roots in tion. the Manhattan Project. WILLIAM LANOUETTE A web page is being developed to gather and provide further information about the women sci- Ruth H. Howes; Caroline L. Herzenberg. entific workers of the Manhattan Project. Howes Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan and Herzenberg are setting up an on-line archive Project. (Labor and Social Change.) Foreword there, hoping that others who have information pp., illus., about the women scientific workers of the 264 ם by Ellen C. Weaver. viii apps., bibl., index. Philadelphia: Temple Uni- Manhattan Project will contact them via the web versity Press, 1999. $34.50. page (www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/ 9137/Manhattan_Project_women.html) or by This book reminds us in yet another context that email ([email protected] or [email protected]). women’s contributions to science can be ren- The magnitude of their endeavor to learn dered invisible by “the historical record.” The about these women was illustrated vividly to me Manhattan Project, the supersecret midcentury while writing this review. I attended the memo- United States research, development, and pro- rial service for my aunt, Mary Matilda Morrison duction enterprise that produced the nuclear Pendleton (1908–2000), and heard in her eulogy bomb, was a massive undertaking, at one time that “she worked as a nurse at the Hanford proj- employing 130,000 persons. About 10 percent ect, near Richland, Washington, where the gov- were women, yet official histories made no men- ernment was secretly making atomic bombs. She tion of female scientists or engineers. would work shift work, two weeks of day shift, Sleuthing by the physicists Ruth Howes and two weeks of swing shift, two weeks of grave- Caroline Herzenberg has documented Manhattan yard shift, then she would get seven days off. Project contributions by more than three hundred She wore a badge every day that was checked women. Howes and Herzenberg begin with a few after each day’s work to see how much she had well-known European women pioneers in nu- been radiated.” Although I thought that I knew clear science (“The Founding Mothers”: Marie her well, my aunt’s role in the Manhattan Project Curie, Mileva Maric´, Ire`ne Joliot-Curie, Ida Nod- had been unknown to me. 130 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

The women of the Manhattan Project are fi- and commemorates the recent physical restora- nally gaining visibility. For example, Nancy tion of the building. Written in anticipation of Cook Steeper’s book-length biography of Dor- the sesquicentennial of the completion of the ob- othy Scarritt McKibbon (“the gatekeeper to Los servatory in 2004, A Creation of His Own is a Alamos”) is being published by the Los Alamos celebration of the vision of Tappan, who was Historical Society. Howes and Herzenberg have truly the father of the observatory. Whitesell, provided ideas and starting points for many ad- like Plotkin, places the transfer of German astro- ditional biographical projects. Perhaps the great- nomical techniques to the United States within a est long-term value of their book is the impetus larger context of increasing American intellec- that it will give to further research. tual appreciation for things German, especially The book is well written, easy to read, and Tappan’s desire to model American higher edu- attractively printed. An appendix, listing the cation after that of Prussia. women and their roles, and a thorough index Whitesell’s contributions are those typical of combine to make this an easily used reference the celebratory history of an observatory. She work. There is also an informative sixteen-page provides very useful appendixes, uncovers de- chronology that focuses on the crucial period tails, and corrects earlier errors regarding the his- from 1938 through 1945. tory of the observatory. Of particular interest are GEORGE FLECK the photographs she has included. Some of them are historical, while others document the resto- Patricia S. Whitesell. A Creation of His Own: ration of the observatory. Many are published for pp., the first time. Very few observatory histories can 236 םTappan’s Detroit Observatory.xx frontis., illus., figs., apps., bibl., index. Ann Ar- boast photographs of this quality and quantity. bor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. $48, On the negative side, Whitesell has included £37.50 (cloth); $24.95, £18.95 (paper). more detail than most readers will want about Histories of observatories are generally celebra- such individuals as the artist who produced an tory and narrowly focused, useful primarily for 1855 painting of the observatory, the architect of the data they include, such as staff lists, and of the observatory, and the maker of the telescope. limited interest. There are exceptions, where the Readers should also be aware that Whitesell has authors have used the history of the observatory made errors in describing historical events outside to illuminate larger themes in the history of sci- the campus of the University of Michigan. They ence and place the observatory’s history in a are minor, but annoying. For example, on page larger context. For American astronomy, the 150, in discussing the Dudley Observatory, she work of Mary Ann James on the Dudley Obser- confuses the board of trustees, who opposed B. vatory and Donald Osterbrock on Yerkes and A. Gould, with the Scientific Council, which sup- Lick comes immediately to mind. In addition, ported him. the authors of this second type of observatory I am not a fan of the book’s organization. history bring unequaled knowledge of the archi- Whitesell has ordered the chapters in a way that val records to bear in their analysis. makes following the story rather difficult. For The Detroit Observatory of the University of example, the chapter on the contributions of Michigan was one of the most important Amer- Watson, the second director of the Detroit Ob- ican astronomical observatories during the third servatory, precedes the two chapters that discuss quarter of the nineteenth century. Under its first the departures of Bru¨nnow, the first director and two directors, Franz F. E. Bru¨nnow and James Watson’s teacher, and Tappan from the univer- Craig Watson, the observatory was an essential sity (Bru¨nnow resigned shortly after Tappan’s conduit in the transfer of German astronomical firing). The chapter on the physical renovations techniques to the United States. After Watson’s of the observatory and attempts to relocate it is departure in 1879, it was quickly eclipsed by a also out of place, preceding the chapter on Wat- new generation of observatories. In 1980 How- son. The chronology that Whitesell includes as ard Plotkin discussed the role of Bru¨nnow and an appendix is absolutely necessary to follow the Henry Philip Tappan, the first president of the history of the observatory. University of Michigan (1852–1863), in this All in all, despite some problems, this is a use- transfer in an article in Annals of Science. Patri- ful book. cia Whitesell, the director of the observatory and MARC ROTHENBERG a specialist in historic preservation, has written a celebratory volume that both expands upon Tom Standage. The Neptune File: A Story of Plotkin’s work by providing additional details Astronomical Rivalry and the Pioneers of Planet BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 131 pp., illus., figs., bibl., index. dozens of articles and in book-length studies by 240 ם Hunting. xiv New York: Walker & Company, 2000. $24. John Pringle Nichol, Albert Glodin, Morton Grosser, and Patrick Moore. Moreover, Standage In 1995 Walker & Company published a small presents the Neptune narrative as the centerpiece book authored by the professional writer Dava in a story that stretches from William Herschel’s Sobel entitled Longitude: The Story of a Lone discovery of Uranus to the discovery of Pluto in Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Prob- 1930 and even to the spectroscopic detection in lem of His Time. Not only did the book sell ex- the last few years of dozens of extra–solar sys- ceptionally well; it also spawned a three-hour tem planets. Standage’s clear and engaging prose film, Longitude, starring Jeremy Irons and Mi- is based on extensive reading in English and chael Gambon, and a new, lavishly illustrated French sources, some manuscript work, and in- work, The Illustrated Longitude, by Sobel and terviews with a number of the discoverers of Harvard’s William J. H. Andrewes. It is difficult extra–solar system planets. Although the book to think of another book in the history of science is bereft of footnotes, an annotated bibliography that has attained comparable success. Yet it at its end partially fulfills their function. Numer- seems that history of science journals have taken ous illustrations appear, but these tend to be scant notice of the book; my efforts to locate rather dark and small. reviews of Sobel’s volume in history of science Although the book is generally reliable, some journals have turned up only a single review, that significant errors appear. For example, whereas being in Italian. This is all the more distressing Standage reports (p. 6) that William Herschel because the book and film present a very contro- did not see Uranus alter in size, Herschel ob- versial view of Astronomer Royal Nevil Mas- served its diameter nearly double in the two kelyne. This is not the place to examine Sobel’s months after his first observation of it. It is John, recipe for success, but it seems relevant back- not William, Herschel (p. 171) who is buried in ground in reviewing a book also written by a Westminster Abbey. Benjamin Peirce’s last professional journalist, also published by name is misspelled (p. 157), as is Christiaan Walker, and fairly comparable in format to So- Huygens’s first name (p. 182), and it is incorrect bel’s. to say that Huygens “considered it was unlikely The history of science is rich in fascinating that there was life elsewhere in the solar system” stories that could delight a variety of readers. (p. 183). Also, because Lowell Observatory di- The story of the search for longitude in the eigh- rector Vesto Slipher played such a major (argu- teenth century is certainly one of these; the dra- ably the key) role in the discovery of the planet matic quest to discover Neptune in the mid nine- Pluto by creating and directing the research pro- teenth century is another. Put overly briefly, the gram that enabled a recent high school graduate, latter is the story of the frustrated efforts of a Clyde Tombaugh, to be the first to recognize the young, personally diffident but intellectually planet on a photographic plate, it seems inappro- bold Cambridge graduate, John Couch Adams, priate that Standage makes no mention of Slipher to convince either the director of the Cambridge in recounting (pp. 175–182) the discovery of Observatory or England’s Astronomer Royal to Pluto. look for a planet that Adams’s calculations had Overall this is a highly engaging story, well told him must be located at a specific position. told and based on good sources. One would hope It is also the story of the brilliant and arrogant that it may follow Longitude into film, at least a Urbain J. J. Leverrier, who had independently documentary, and that other authors and pub- completed comparable calculations and who lishers will recognize the market for such excit- beat Adams to the discovery by persuading not ing stories from the history of science. one of his French colleagues but an astronomer MICHAEL J. CROWE at the Berlin Observatory to launch a search, which within a few hours had located Neptune. John E. Lesch (Editor). The German Chemical It is also the story of the immense controversy Industry in the Twentieth Century. (Chemists ,.pp., illus., figs 472םthat followed and that has in the last few years and Chemistry, 18.) viii been given a new twist with the recovery of key tables, index. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub- documents carried off to Chile from the Royal lishers, 2000. $176, £109, NLG 30. Greenwich Observatory. Tom Standage, science correspondent for the “Farben Made Plans Prior to Sudeten Grab”; Economist and author of The Victorian Internet, “Farben Aid to Nazis Listed; 53 U.S. Associates has taken up the challenge of retelling the Nep- Named”; “Double-faced Men: Remarks on the tune story, which had previously been treated in Trial of I. G. Farben”; “Farben Forced Standard 132 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Oil to Help Nazis’ War Machine”; “Farben stead, they examine, often in great detail and tak- Called Vital Adjunct of World War”; “I. G. Far- ing advantage of recently available sources, ben Industrie: Dissolving the German Chemical some of the many complex issues connected Combine”—thus ran headlines in major British with the history of the chemical industry in Ger- and American newspapers during 1947 as the many. Among these issues are the relationships behemoth I. G. Farben stood accused of com- between leading academic and industrial chem- plicity in war crimes and of waging Hitler’s war. ists, industrial subsidies for academic chemistry, Yet only three decades earlier, in the midst of the place of “free scientific research” in industry, World War I, Farben’s principal constituents— synthetic fuels, the impact upon and within the AGFA, BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst—were the important U.S. and Japanese markets, the influ- foremost international exemplars of high-tech ence on the organization of British and other industry, held up by Allied scientists as models German industries, the decline in East Germany to be emulated in both war and peace. And from under Soviet domination, the technological gap the 1950s on, the reincarnated firms once again that had to be filled as a result of the slow occupied leading positions in the league of in- changeover from coal to oil, and the place of the ternational manufacturers of chemicals. present-day German chemical industry in the The modern German chemical industry world arena. Foremost, however, is the connec- emerged in the 1860s with the creation of com- tion between state and industry. Although two panies devoted to the production of coal-tar dye- chapters examine the relations between Jews and stuffs; by the 1880s these companies had estab- non-Jews, none of the papers discusses what the lished industrial research laboratories and expulsion of non-Aryans in the 1930s meant to international marketing organizations. This the chemical industry. In closing, Raymond much, at least, is known to generations of stu- Stokes suggests further topics for research, in- dents of history of science from John J. Beer’s cluding the effect of the industry on the environ- seminal study The Emergence of the German ment, and draws attention to the fact that, as Dye Industry (1959). Other scholars will be fa- shown elsewhere by Peter J. T. Morris, even dur- miliar with the industry through Joseph Borkin’s ing the Nazi era the German firms remained Crime and Punishment of I. G. Farben (1978). highly innovative. These studies, however, present just two of the ANTHONY S. TRAVIS many facets of one of the most remarkable of science-based industries. Since 1990 or so, new Christine Hertler. Morphologische Methoden material has become available: we now have a in der Evolutionsforschung. (Studien zur Theo- fairly complete history of nineteenth-century rie der Biologie, 5.) 364 pp., illus., figs., tables, events, as well as a number of fine studies deal- bibl., index. Berlin: Verlag fu¨r Wissenschaft und ing with the I. G. Farben era and the aftermath Bildung, 2001. DM 48. in Germany. The German Chemical Industry in the Twentieth Century, a collection of papers Christine Hertler has produced an extended work presented at a conference of the same name held on the role of morphology in evolutionary think- at the University of California, Berkeley, in ing. Her book was originally her dissertation at 1997, represents the first attempt to provide an the University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. overview of how the German chemical industry German dissertations have a tendency to be ex- operated throughout the twentieth century. The tremely detailed and systematized works, and contributions focus in particular on the connec- Hertler’s book is no exception. The whole book tions between academics and industrialists, Far- is divided into sections, subsections, and sub- ben’s influence in foreign, and especially non- subsections, thus cumulating letters and numbers European countries, and how the company came that are a little overwhelming, more confusing to terms with the Nazi era. The book is divided than helpful, and quite difficult to follow with all into three parts: the first deals with research and those B.4.2.1s, etc. technological innovation, the second with inter- Hertler starts with a lengthy introduction that national connections and comparative perspec- considers “the methods of morphology” and tives, and the third with the industry since 1945. “morphology and evolution.” Then we find a The two introductory chapters provide a context section dedicated to “materials and methods” for the thirteen essays by the scholars in science, (with several subsections). Then Hertler moves technology, and business who participated in the to “results of systematic and historical recon- conference. structions,” a very lengthy part with the custom- The essays do not in any way pretend to con- ary subdivisions that deals with all possible as- stitute a broad or comprehensive history. In- pects of morphology and evolutionary theories, BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 133 including such diverse elements as Archaeop- Franklin W. Stahl (Editor). We Can Sleep teryx, drosophila, and skeletal models. The next Later: Alfred D. Hershey and the Origins of Mo- -pp., illus., figs., ta 359 ם section, “Comparative Anatomy and Evolution,” lecular Biology. xii introduces Darwin and some of the major figures bles, indexes. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold in the history of morphology and evolution. Thus Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2000. we have first the contemporary developments of evolutionary morphology and then its historical We Can Sleep Later celebrates Alfred Hershey’s origins. personality, friendships, and scientific accom- This order of things is followed within this plishments. Hershey, a molecular biologist and very section, so that Darwin is discussed before ten-year director of the genetics research unit of Georges Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy St. Hi- the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, died in laire, something rather unsettling for historians. 1997; the essays in this book are adapted from a Luckily enough, Carl Gegenbaur, the key figure commemorative service held shortly after his in evolutionary morphology, and Anton Dohrn death. Twenty-two of Hershey’s scientific col- come after Darwin. Ernst Haeckel is there as well leagues, including Franklin Stahl (the editor), but is rather peripheral and mainly relevant for James D. Watson, Gunther Stent, John Cairns, his collaboration with Gegenbaur. The final sec- and Seymour Benzer, present their memories of tion, “Discussion,” restores historical order and Hershey as a collaborator, mentor, and editor. starts with Darwin and Darwinismus and ends The final third of the book reproduces several of with modern morphology leading to an interpre- Hershey’s articles on bacteriophage genetics, in- tation of evolutionary morphology. cluding his report on the “Waring blender” ex- Hertler is a biologist and it shows—her main periment (1952) that confirmed DNA’s role as concern is the status of today’s morphology, and the material substance of heredity. Readers will she approaches the morphologists of the past an- also find Hershey’s yearly reports from the ge- alytically rather than historically. The best result netics unit and a few philosophical essays on the of her professional approach is her constant use nature of viruses. of precise examples to illustrate the general Scientists remember Hershey for his role in problems treated in her book, as scientists are the “phage group,” a research community con- not content with general statements. sisting of Hershey, Salvador Luria, Max Del- Hertler’s knowledge of morphology is un- bru¨ck, and their followers and defined by their doubtedly phenomenal, to say the least, but it is shared interests in bacteriophage k as an exper- doubtful how profitable her book can be to his- imental tool. The three leaders (unfortunately re- torians of science except for the mass of details ferred to by the essayists as the “saint,” the and specific information. Rather than a book on “priest,” and the “pope”) shared the Nobel Prize the history of science, her work is an example of in 1969 for their insights into genetic replication “theoretical biology.” From a historical perspec- and the structure of viruses. Although the phage tive, one notices that she focuses on German group’s achievements have attracted much atten- morphology as if morphology were a uniquely tion among historians of biology, Hershey ini- German methodology; thus Richard Owen and tially received the least fanfare. Never a fan of T. H. Huxley are not there, but Owen was es- scientific conferences or self-promotion, Her- sential for Darwin’s view of morphology and shey found his “Hershey heaven” by establishing Huxley central in the debates around evolution- consistent, reproducible experimental systems. ary morphology. Also Edwin Ray Lankester is Bacteriophage k, once known among molecular overlooked. geneticists as “naked DNA,” became just such a The bibliography is good but far from being system in his capable hands. Hershey’s role in as exhaustive as one would expect of such a editing the first book-length guide to phage in work. William Coleman’s classic article on Ge- 1971 ensured the model’s continued usefulness genbaur’s evolutionary revision of the type con- and spread Hershey’s reputation as a talented ed- cept is not quoted, and Garland Allen’s and Jane itor. His guidelines to authors, reprinted in the Maienschein’s publications on the history of text, confirm his dedication to the clear, concise morphology are absent. Dietrich Starck, some- expression of ideas. how an intellectual heir of Gegenbaur, is duly The essays depict a quiet man, fascinated by cited but only for some of his scientific produc- experimental method, whose wide-ranging inter- tion, while there is no mention of his masterly ests seem to have escaped some of his well- papers in the history of morphology. There is a meaning friends. When Hershey retired in 1972 subject index but no name index. at the age of 63, his decision to focus on gar- MARIO A. DI GREGORIO dening, music, computers, and sailing baffled 134 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) some of his colleagues. Sadly, many of the es- and documentation. Even in graduate school, he sayists—whose recollections generally end in was dubbed “get a million Kinsey,” and his be- 1971, or worse, with unanswered invitations to lief in sheer quantity—as well as quantifica- discuss phage in the garden—still lack an ap- tion—was just as apparent when he turned his preciation for Hershey’s desire to live outside the attention to human sexuality. In 1938 Kinsey laboratory. Rather than a tribute to the complete taught a course on marriage at Indiana Univer- man, We Can Sleep Later is a testament to the sity, where he spent his entire working life. Lim- staying power of the “phage school” in practi- ited to married or engaged students and faculty, tioners’ origin stories of molecular biology. It is the course covered reproductive physiology, no coincidence that the book’s subtitle, Alfred contraception, and a host of other sexual topics D. Hershey and the Origins of Molecular Biol- in explicit detail. Kinsey also used the course to ogy, echoes that of the Festshrift for Max Del- gather data about his students’ sex lives. The bru¨ck, Phage and the Origins of Molecular Bi- thousands of sexual histories collected at the In- ology, edited by Cairns, Stent, and Watson (Cold stitute for Sex Research in later years—7,985 by Spring Harbor, 1966). Biochemists such as Ar- Kinsey alone—attest to his scientific commit- thur Kornberg have blamed their supposed de- ment to behavior as the only legitimate basis for clining status on that book’s portrayal of phage a science of sex. geneticists as the central figures of early molec- The behavioral unit of analysis chosen by Kin- ular biology. They will undoubtedly lodge simi- sey was the orgasm—or “outlet,” as Kinsey lar complaints against We Can Sleep Later. But called it. Because it was countable, the theory practitioners perhaps ask too much if they expect went, it was objective. Kinsey’s ethic of mea- good history to come from memorial works. We surement resulted in interviews involving at least Can Sleep Later is not good history, but histo- 350 standard questions, whose answers were re- rians will find it useful nonetheless for its first- corded in a custom code designed to fit on a sin- person accounts and as an illustration of com- gle sheet of paper divided into 287 squares. memorative practices. Molecular biologists will Among the ironies of Kinsey’s method was the enjoy the fond memories of one of their own. fact that his sex histories measured linguistic AUDRA J. WOLFE rather than sexual behavior. What Kinsey actu- ally compiled was a huge cache of stories, not Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. Sex the Measure of direct observations of sexual behavior. (Kinsey did try to approach sexual behavior directly ם All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey. xiv 513 pp., illus., apps., bibl., index. Bloomington: through film and photography, but self-reported Indiana University Press, 2000. $39.95. histories remained his primary data base.) Kin- sey, who gathered more sexual stories than any The role of Alfred Kinsey, America’s most in- other person alive, systematically aimed to erad- fluential sexologist, in the cultural revolution of icate all quirks and complexities in order to pro- sex and gender during the past fifty years re- duce a statistical portrait of population-wide mains as unquestionable as it has been contro- behavior. Meanings might be historically impor- versial. This admiring biography argues that tant, but numbers, not narratives, would yield Kinsey also qualifies as an authentic great man truth. The easy use of “human males” and “hu- of science in the tradition of Darwin. Kinsey’s man females” in the titles of Kinsey’s famous expert authority was recently challenged by reports suggests how universal his scientific James Jones, who claimed in his 1997 biography claims were—and also how devoid of temporal that Kinsey’s terrible personal secrets—homo- and cultural particularity. sexuality and masochism—plagued his life and The resulting conception of human sexual na- ruined his science. Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy ture is probably best represented in Kinsey’s six- sets out to repair Kinsey’s reputation by defend- point scale, where behavioral possibilities ing him against this “Kenneth Starr school of ranged from exclusively homosexual at one pole biography” (p. viii). The author seeks to rescue to exclusively heterosexual at the other. Diver- Kinsey’s achievement from the stigmatizing sity emerged as the premier fact about sexual charge that it was flawed because it subordinated behavior. While this placed men and women un- science to subjectivity. comfortably close to their primate cousins on an Gathorne-Hardy emphasizes Kinsey’s meth- evolutionary map, making human sexual excep- odological creativity and his interviewing ge- tionalism objectively unsustainable, it also pro- nius. During his early career, when he worked duced a reformist sensibility that rooted its de- on gall wasps, Kinsey’s science developed as a mand for toleration in the powerful evidence of practice of scrupulous collection, observation, natural facts. It is difficult to overstate how BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 135 shocking Kinsey’s picture of polymorphous sex- Kinsey’s revolution being reversed in either sci- uality was in a culture devoted to either/or bi- ence or society. naries and prone to harsh judgments about de- ELLEN HERMAN viation from norms. Kinsey’s contribution was to point out the gap between ideology (sexual Cathy Boeckmann. A Question of Character: culture) and behavior (sexual nature). That lots Scientific Racism and the Genres of American .pp., bibl., index 238 ם of people did lots of things at odds with pro- Fiction, 1892–1912. viii fessed sexual morality was, for some, a welcome Tuscaloosa/London: University of Alabama relief and call to revolution. For others, it was a Press, 2000. $39.95. reason to hate Kinsey and blame him for changes During the late nineteenth century, science and in the realm of gender and sexuality already well fiction intertwined in complex ways well beyond under way by midcentury. Jules Verne’s voyages and H. G. Wells’s tales No biographies can save scientific heroes from of time travel and a war between worlds. Devel- the fatal charge that their methods and findings oping in the United States after the Civil War, were bound up in their lives, or they would not literary realism directly reflected the scientific be biographies worth reading. This attests to the temperament of the times—the Enlightenment stubborn endurance of the psychoanalytic para- belief that science was leading the inevitable digm. Kinsey despised Freud for passing off phi- way to a secular millennium. Founded on ad- losophy (a term of derision in Kinsey’s vocabu- miration for science and scientific method, re- lary) as science. Yet because of the conventions alism was the artistic parallel to the careful ob- of post-Freudian biography, Gathorne-Hardy servation and recording of data that the new must explore exactly those dimensions of Kin- social scientists saw as the way to “Truth” about sey’s life and character that Freud embraced but human nature and behavior. In a famous essay that Kinsey himself would never have admitted entitled “The Experimental Novel” (1880), E´ m- into the precincts of science. His childhood ill- ile Zola argued that “the novelist is equally [with nesses and struggles with an overbearing father, the scientist] an observer and an experimentalist” his rage against religion, fondness for music, dedicated to uncovering the deterministic laws charismatic yet autocratic style, and his own an- governing human life. Focusing on this funda- guished sexuality are keys to puzzling out not mental interrelationship between nineteenth- only a life in science, but a life. century science and nineteenth-century fiction, A Gathorne-Hardy can hardly ignore evidence Question of Character explores in thoughtful that Kinsey’s own sexual appetites were di- and complex ways the interaction between late verse—“bisexual” is this author’s preferred des- nineteenth-century scientific theories of race and ignation—or that his enterprise in sex research American fiction of the time. involved experimentation: the mostly married In the first section of her book, Cathy Boeck- male members of Kinsey’s team were expected mann traces scientific theories about race from to engage in sexual activities with one another their emergence as part of the “American and one another’s wives. Kinsey’s wife Clara School” of physical anthropology based on Sam- (“Mac”) was a confidant and supporter from the uel G. Morton’s Crania Americana (1839), start. Their loving marriage was also an open which argued for polygenesis rather than mon- marriage. Mac was a participant-observer in the ogenesis of races, through Josiah Nott and G. R. world of sex research. She had a series of affairs Gliddon’s The Types of Mankind (1854), which with Kinsey’s colleagues and even changed the strongly supported the theory of a hierarchy of bedsheets during energetic sessions of sexual separate races, to the later, post-Darwinian ar- cinematography that took place in the attic of guments that racial inferiority corresponded to their home. Yet the Kinseys also shielded their different stages of evolution rather than to sepa- children from their own unorthodox sexual prac- rate origins. Especially influential was the neo- tices. Lamarckian concept of acquired cultural traits This biography concludes by suggesting that forming identified developmental stages along a Kinsey died tragically in 1957, convinced that continuum from “savagery” to “barbarism” to his enemies had the upper hand. Kinsey was “civilization,” as explained by Lewis Henry wrong. The diversity he championed has become Morgan in Ancient Society (1877). Philip A. a theoretical staple in the human and life sci- Bruce’s The Plantation Negro as a Freeman ences as well as a practical goal in social policies (1889), for example, insisted that under the up- related to gender, race, and sexuality. However lifting influences of slavery African Americans unfinished it may be, it is difficult to imagine had been experiencing a slow cultural evolution 136 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) but that in the postwar era of freedom they were at that time. Boeckmann’s analyses of these devolving rapidly back into savagery. As the ar- works are subtle and theoretically sophisticated guments over racial difference grew more com- and help us see the complex interaction between plex and the problem of the mixed-race character science, artistic expression, and social policy. loomed larger, there was an interesting shift JAMES KINNEY away from emphasis on simple physical markers of difference to essentialist markers that endure Goldie Morgentaler. Dickens and Heredity: .pp., index 221 ם despite any racial mixing that may blur physical When Like Begets Like. xvi differences. These essential markers are traits of New York: St. Martin’s Press/London: MacMil- character that differ from race to race, often with lan Press, 2000. each group of different national origin consid- ered to be a distinct “race.” Thus the individual The opening chapter of this work is a compre- Irishman’s or German’s—as well as the individ- hensive “Historical Overview of the Hereditary ual African’s—mental and moral character was Puzzle.” Goldie Morgentaler’s analysis of theo- seen simply as the manifestation of an inherent ries of heredity before Mendel will interest stu- and unchanging racial character. By the late dents of biological science. She admits that “res- nineteenth century, it was generally believed that urrecting such theories without contamination various racial characters had now been scientif- from subsequent knowledge often requires an ically established, thus providing “a positive ba- imaginative leap.” Very true. There have been sis for legislation, politics and education, as ap- such profound advances in the science of genet- plied to a given ethnic group,” according to ics since that time, with the avalanche of discov- Daniel Brinton in an 1895 article quoted by eries during the past half century, that much of Boeckmann. the previous thought now falls in the realm of In the second section of her book Boeckmann philosophical fantasy. examines six novels published between 1892 These early concepts were those to which and 1912 by Thomas Dixon, Jr., Mark Twain, Charles Dickens was exposed for most of his William Dean Howells, Charles Waddell Ches- life. His literary reaction to them is exhaustively nutt, and James Weldon Johnson. Dixon’s nov- analyzed in the subsequent two parts of the book. els The Leopard’s Spots (1902) and The Clans- The first of these is entitled “Heredity and the man (1905) are examples of sentimental Individual,” and the second is “The Public Face romantic fiction dominant in the first half of of Heredity.” The latter includes interesting dis- nineteenth-century America, a style of writing cussion of class and race, with analyses of the that uses the physical appearance of characters last three novels. These indicate that Dickens’s in a novel to represent their inner mental and views on heredity changed during his later life, moral worth—in short, appearance reveals perhaps influenced by Darwin, whose work he “character.” Dixon relies on the physical de- had read . . . and vice versa. scription of black characters to reveal their dan- The author is to be admired for her detailed gerous, bestial, inherently racial “character,” knowledge of Dickens’s works and his charac- thus embodying that basic scientific belief of the ters. For a reviewer who has been steeped in evi- time in his best-selling novels and projecting it dence-based medicine and science for most of into the American cultural consciousness, an ac- his career, it seems that much of the speculation complishment greatly enhanced by D. W. Grif- regarding heredity in the nineteenth century is fith’s The Birth of a Nation, the 1915 film version tenuous and far-fetched. While Dickens engaged of The Clansman. (The one factual error I noted the topic of heredity many times, he appears to in Boeckmann’s otherwise well-documented have followed the general trend of that era by work is her statement that Griffith’s film was showing little consistency in his views. This is based on The Leopard’s Spots). The other four not surprising in light of the paucity of scientific writers, following the conventions of the newer evidence at that time. realist fiction, complicate the simple equation of While the title implies a study of Dickens and outer appearance and inner character, especially heredity, the substance covers a much wider in the intricate representation of the emerging na- field, with ventures into ethics, morality, reli- ture/nurture argument in Twain’s Pudd’nhead gion, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and Wilson (1896). more. The appended notes tell of assiduous re- Given the belief in scientifically determined search and concentration. To the pragmatic racial “character” as a basis for political, legis- reader it sometimes appears that Morgentaler lative, and educational action, these novels can makes observations and draws conclusions that be seen as sites of struggle over the issue of race are more profound than Dickens himself might BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 137

The “Deformito-mania” from Punch, 1848 (from O’Connor, Raw Material, p. 149).

ם have achieved, or admitted. This is, of course, a ity, Text: Studies of Objectifying Practice.) xi common diversion in revisionist studies of well- 273 pp., illus., bibl., index. Durham, N.C./Lon- known authors and other celebrities. don: Duke University Press, 2000. $54.95 It is inevitable that the perennial question of (cloth); $18.95 (paper). the relative strength of nature and nurture must have prominence in this study. In his earlier nov- Readers expecting a history of nineteenth-cen- els Dickens implied support for the notion that tury pathology are in for a surprise. They will goodness and virtue were heritable traits allied find instead a self-conscious example of cultural to beauty and good physical appearance. Mor- studies, critical of some assumptions made in gentaler returns repeatedly to this question in this field and of some feminist writing, but con- many aspects. In her final chapter she points out taining some alarming sentences like “My goal that Dickens’s views changed, paradoxically, af- has been to give shape to the accidental palimp- ter The Origin of Species was published, toward sests of an inveterately verbal, and increasingly the end of his life. He then gave less weight to visual, culture; to assemble a particular series of the influence of heredity. She has, perhaps, hermeneutic loose ends into a coherent account missed an opportunity of recording that Dickens of how an extraordinarily bizarre system of sig- noticed hereditary factors in alcoholism and lon- nification came into being” (p. 18). With learned gevity. In the case of Jenny Wren’s family, Mr. English like that, who needs Latin? But once we Cleaver was “like his own father, a weak get into the main part of the book, things get wretched trembling creature, falling to pieces, much better. We are confronted with a study of never sober” (Our Mutual Friend). The Wardle the fringes of science, in popular writings, in lit- family in Pickwick Papers showed familial lon- erature, and in raree-shows, one working from gevity in that “only one member hasn’t lived to sources that the more austere scientifics of the eighty-five, and he was beheaded by one of the Victorian period despised and that historians of Henrys.” science are prone to ignore. Metaphor and anal- The relationship of some of the discussion to ogy are everywhere, and sensitive stomachs will heredity is profound, often remote, even cryptic. To those who are hybrids of a scientific historian be churned by vivid accounts of disease, defor- and an obsessive Dickens aficionado, this work mity, and surgery. will be absorbing. Unfortunately for the author The first chapter is concerned with the cholera and the publisher, such hybrids are probably morbus, the plague of the nineteenth century, rare—but I hope not extinct. To the pure scien- and with the way it could be perceived as an tist this work might be an uphill exercise. The indicator of social ills. John Ruskin’s word production of the book is faultless. “illth” as an opposite of health is revived, and J. E. COSNETT the terrible blackness of the shriveled and de- hydrated victims of this disease imported from Erin O’Connor. Raw Material: Producing Pa- the East is linked with colonial and racist no- thology in Victorian Culture. (Body, Commod- tions. The theme that a healthy body is like a 138 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) well-run state leads into the next chapter, on millan’s extraordinary book An Odd Kind of breast cancer. Surgery was not only agonizing Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage is the definitive but ineffective in the first half of the nineteenth word on this fascinating subject and a labor of century, but then the survival rate after three love. The book’s appearance is extraordinary, years rose gradually from 4.7 percent to 45 per- because on page 1 Macmillan quotes David Fer- cent by 1900. O’Connor asks whether this saga, rier writing to Henry Pickering Bowditch about with cancer seen as cellular overproduction, re- Gage (12 October 1877): “In investigating the veals close connections with gender construction reports on diseases and injuries of the brain I am and the symbolic importance of breasts, con- constantly being amazed at the inexactitude and cluding that it does not and that the language distortion to which they are subject by men who used really was neutral rather than sexual. have some pet theory to support.” Macmillan has She then looks at amputations and artificial been scathing over the years in his attacks on limbs, seeing amputation as a threat to the whole previous authors who have been imprecise in masculine body (there appear to be no women their treatment of the facts in relation to Phineas involved here) that could be countered by pros- Gage’s story. He has been vigilant in pointing theses almost undetectable to the observer. This out confabulatory accounts and has repeatedly allows reflection on illustration, where curiously steered the interested reader to the original re- disembodied hands are shown carrying out am- ports of Dr. John Martyn Harlow (Passage of an putations; on dissembling and artificiality; on Iron Rod Through the Head [1848] and Passage materialism; and on metaphors of wholeness and of an Iron Bar Through the Head [1868]). He replacement and of extending senses and capac- cites these reports as containing the only true ities. We see some extraordinary advertisements account of what happened on 13 September 1848 where men with artificial legs climb ladders and the consequences. As if to reinforce this (back into ordinary life) and skate, perhaps on message, he crucially reproduces a facsimile of thin ice. The final chapter examines deformity, these source papers in an appendix to the text. with monsters and freaks (a word that took on The reader has the story at first hand. It is also its current sense in this period). P. T. Barnum is interesting to note that on the very last page of prominent here, but interesting links are also his book Macmillan summarizes the importance made to the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Pal- of Phineas Gage one hundred fifty years on: “his ace (1851) and its successors and the numerous was the first case to point to a relation between museums that were such a feature of the Victo- brain and personality functions.” rian period. They are strikingly placed in a con- Having discharged his duty in relation to the tinuum, rather than opposed, in a discussion of sparse facts known about Phineas Gage and the chaos and order, capitalism and health, defor- lasting importance of the event, Macmillan could mity and degeneration. Wonder is presented as have left it there. We are fortunate that he didn’t. the key to modern sensibility, and there is a nice In what began as part of a set of historically quotation on page 152: “If Beauty and the Beast based lectures to introduce students to various should be brought into competition in London at problems in psychology, Macmillan has, from the present day, Beauty would stand no chance painstaking research, taken us on a fascinating against the Beast in the race for popularity.” journey through nearly two hundred years of Readers will have been led into a fascinating neuroscientific thinking on the functions of the world at the periphery of the respectable science frontal lobes of the brain. I would strongly rec- that most of us study and will rejoice in the ex- ommend this book to those interested in the his- traordinary sights they see. tory of medicine, to the clinical neuroscientist, DAVID KNIGHT and to the nonspecialist with an interest in the bizarre. Malcolm Macmillan. An Odd Kind of Fame: KIERAN O’DRISCOLL ,.pp., frontis 562 ם Stories of Phineas Gage. xiv illus., figs., apps., bibl., index. Cambridge, Julyan G. Peard. Race, Place, and Medicine: Mass./London: MIT Press, 2000. $39.95. The Idea of the Tropics in Nineteenth-Century .pp., bibl., index 315 םBrazilian Medicine.x In the neurosciences, and indeed beyond, Phi- Durham, N.C./London: Duke University Press, neas Gage is an icon. It is impossible to see re- 1999. $54.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). productions of his life mask, his skull, and above all the tamping iron driven into his head by an This timely, well-written book illuminates an as- explosion without wanting to know more about pect of Brazilian science that has long been ne- the man and his reason for fame. Malcolm Mac- glected, for two major reasons. The first is that BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 139 it is only in the past two decades that the scien- egies to build up an innovative scientific field, a tific past of Latin America, including Brazil, project that entailed issues of national identity seemed to merit systematic academic investiga- and the regional (Bahian) response to the cen- tion, and only with this change have scholars tralized imperial authority of Rio de Janeiro. Al- discovered, or rediscovered, several important, most half the volume is devoted to supplemen- but forgotten, developments, such as the one Ju- tary material: three useful appendixes, notes to lyan Peard analyzes in this study. The second all the chapters, a list of primary sources, the reason is that, although there is a substantial lit- bibliography, and a well-elaborated index—all erature on late nineteenth- to early twentieth- of which testify to the quality of both Peard’s century colonial science and medicine—which research and her book as a whole. is considered almost synonymous with tropical It is important to stress here that Peard relies medicine—none of it treats Brazil or any of the on what one could call the “new” Brazilian his- other Latin American countries because, even tory and sociology of science, particularly in the though they fall within the tropical zone, they fields of medicine and public health. Despite its were formally independent nations from the vigorous growth, both quantitatively and quali- early 1800s onward. tatively, this historiography still remains more or Peard rejects this adherence to the old crite- less confined to Latin America, its wider dissem- rion for defining “tropical.” Drawing on a re- ination impeded by language barriers. In using spectable collection of both primary and second- and commenting on the bibliography of this new ary sources, she tells the story of the Escola historiography, Peard respects the local intellec- Tropicalista Bahiana (the Tropical School of tual production while helping to enrich the tra- Bahia), which was founded before the revolu- ditional set of references. Nevertheless, and al- tion in bacteriological knowledge and the great though I warmly recommend the book, I regret European colonial expansion. The idea for the that she did not fully incorporate the conclusions school originated, Peard says, with “a group of reached by this recent historiography, preferring nineteenth-century doctors in Brazil who, in at- instead to present essentially the same picture tempting to adapt Western medicine to more drawn in previous works, a picture based on the fully engage with the problems of their tropical view that “in the few instances of research work country, sought novel answers to the age-old being carried out in Brazil before 1900 such question of whether diseases of warm climates work was sporadic, isolated . . . or incapable of were distinct from those of temperate Europe. In being self-sustaining.” their search, they used the tools of Western med- SILVIA FIGUEIROˆ A icine to confront European ideas about the fatal- ism of the tropics and its people, and to argue in Michael Dunnill. The Plato of Praed Street: The 269 ם favor of Brazilian expertise.” Life and Times of Almroth Wright. xiv The text is organized into five chapters, whose pp., illus., tables, index. London: Royal Society titles clearly describe both the structure of the of Medicine Press, 2001. £17.50. narrative and Peard’s main points, as well as part of her conclusions: “The Escola Tropicalista If ever a prize is to be given for the most can- Bahiana: A Creative Response in Adversity”; tankerous figure in the history of science and “The Politics of Disease”; “Race, Climate, Med- medicine, Almroth Wright will surely be on the icine: Framing Tropical Disorders”; “Physicians short list. With the exception of himself, Wright and Women in Bahia”; and “Moving into Main- was a man who did not tolerate fools lightly. stream.” In her introduction Peard presents a use- Even the author of this biography, who tries very ful discussion of the earlier literature on her hard to see Wright’s point of view, becomes ex- topic, pointing out her (original) contribution to asperated with him at times. More commonly several relevant fields. Throughout, the text is known today as Sir Colenso Ridgeon in George structured to highlight the tension between the Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma, Wright Tropicalistas and European science: “although was born of stern, fanatical Irish Protestant par- they [the Tropicalistas] resisted aspects of Eu- ents in 1861. Extremely gifted, Wright graduated ropean cultural authority that harped on Brazil- first in modern languages at Trinity College, ian, and Latin American, inferiority, they wanted Dublin. After switching to and qualifying in to gain the mantle of legitimacy that they be- medicine, a gadfly postgraduate career followed. lieved only European science, as the leader in His first permanent job was as pathologist at the universal science, could bestow on them.” Peard army’s medical headquarters at Netley near shows, chapter by chapter, the Tropicalistas’ Southampton, where Wright developed the agent sometimes conscious, sometimes intuitive strat- for which his name remains inscribed on the bac- 140 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) teriologists’ roll of honor: prophylactic typhoid biography offers no new insights into the science vaccine. Its passage into common use, however, of the period, but it does merit attention as a was far from easy. Statisticians, clinicians, and study of the relations of personality and empire military authorities lined up against him. building. Wright’s belief in the vaccine’s value was vin- CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE dicated in World War I. The controversy over its efficacy has been analyzed by J. Rosser Mat- Michael Worboys. Spreading Germs: Disease thews in his Quantification and the Quest for Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865– ם Medical Certainty (Princeton University Press, 1900. (Cambridge History of Medicine.) xvi 1995). Dunnill does not refer to this, but, there 327 pp., illus., tables, bibl., index. Cambridge/ again, scarcely any modern secondary source is New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. recognized in this book. This is not that sort of $59.95. a biography, which is not to decry its great mer- its. Dunnill is a pathologist who sticks very close While visiting relatives in northern England in to the primary sources, including large amounts October 1865 the London chemist William of hitherto-unpublished manuscript material. His Crookes witnessed firsthand the economic dev- approach is very evaluative of what Wright got astation of farming communities blighted by the scientifically right and wrong by today’s criteria, cattle plague (rinderpest) that had been sweeping but the judgments are made in a subdued and Britain since June. Crookes delayed his return to relatively unobtrusive way. This is a great virtue London for several months and obtained official in dealing with any aspect of the volatile Wright. permission to begin experimenting on eradicat- His views on woman’s place in the world and ing the disease with a new disinfectant, carbolic her claim for the right to vote would drive any acid. In his report to the British government in intolerant feminist historian to apoplexy. Dun- 1866, Crookes was explicit that his experiments nill, however, takes great pains to situate had been based on a germ or contagion theory Wright’s views in context. of the disease. Germs were considered to be air- A man like Wright was never going to be borne particles that might either be “living” ma- happy at Netley since the military hierarchy terial that “germinated” in the soil of animal weighed on him, crushing his individualism. flesh and blood or (as Justus von Liebig had Only the dictatorial control of an autonomous taught) chemical poisons that decomposed flesh empire would suit him, and this is what he even- and blood. tually got. Wright became the head of the pa- In the opening chapter of this fine study of the thology department at St. Mary’s Hospital, Lon- construction of British germ theories between don, and there he was effectively responsible to the 1860s and 1900, Michael Worboys makes it nobody. This was possible because he turned his clear that the cattle plague was a keystone in the laboratory into a vaccine-producing factory and long process of germ theory construction. Rin- used the drug company Parke Davies to market derpest was readily accepted by veterinary sur- his products. These included not only prophy- geons as a contagious disease to be controlled lactic agents but now-discredited ones for the by wholesale culling with the poleax. On the treatment of the then-common bacterial diseases other hand, they ignored or actively opposed the such as pneumonia. The Great War saw Wright practical implications of a germ theory—disin- in France struggling to introduce another inno- fection (as Crookes recommended), vaccination, vation that was finally accepted. “Listerian an- and laboratory research—because these proce- tisepsis” was a hallowed phrase among surgeons, dures posed a threat to the power and control of and the more infected war wounds became the the veterinary profession. Plus c¸a change? In more intense became their antiseptic applica- Britain, we are currently witnessing a similar ex- tions—sadly, to little effect. Wright campaigned ample of party interest as a powerful Farmers’ for simple saline washing of wounds, a practice Union culls millions of cattle and sheep but pre- eventually adopted with much better results. Af- vents the use of vaccination in fighting a foot ter the war, separated from his wife, at odds with (hoof) and mouth epidemic. the Medical Research Council, and estranged Although a number of studies have celebrated from some of his colleagues (although Alexan- the germ theory as the key development in pro- der Fleming stuck it out), Wright turned to the ducing scientific medicine in the late nineteenth consolations of philosophy—unfortunately writ- century, this is the first critical book-length study ing rather than just reading it. His otiose pro- of its diffusion. The separate professional com- ductions solving the riddle of the universe now munities of veterinary practitioners, surgeons, lie unread. This conventional but highly readable and sanitarians are disarmingly shown to have BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 141 developed different germ theories and differed be socially acceptable answers. Even so, Theu- over the practical consequences of their com- nissen asserts, the historian may infer from the mitments. The closed subcultures inhabited by answers what motivated the persons questioned. these groups meant that it took several decades Moreover, insights may be gleaned concerning before the germs of sanitarians were linked with science, society, and the relations between the those of surgeons and with the bacteria of mi- two in the period the scientists lived. crobiologists. Anyone who made a connection, In this book the author discusses the notions such as the physicist John Tyndall, was dis- of the objective of science endorsed, respec- missed as an inexpert interloper. Clearly, the sin- tively, by Jan Hendrik van Swinden (physics, gular specific disease germ theory (as it even- Utrecht University), Jan van der Hoeven (zool- tually became) was evolutionary in construction, ogy, Leiden University), Pieter Harting (zool- not revolutionary. ogy, Utrecht University), Gerrit Jan Moll (chem- Worboys’s ambitious monograph offers many istry, Utrecht University), Franciscus C. Donders fresh insights, including a finely tuned account (ophthalmology, Utrecht University), Hugo de of Joseph Lister’s vacillating ideas and practices Vries (botany, Amsterdam University), Martinus concerning wound management, and a splendid W. Beijerinck (microbiology, Delft Technical analysis of the problematic identification of spe- University), and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (phys- cific germs causing cholera, smallpox, tubercu- ics, Leiden University). losis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, and scarlet fever. From this list of names it appears that Theu- His meticulous survey of the contemporary lit- nissen has focused his study on the nineteenth erature (both periodicals and textbooks) unravels century. That period is especially interesting the deep uncertainty over whether “germs” were with respect to the changing images of science, living organisms or chemicals, spontaneously as the ideas of the main goal of the university generated or ancestral, causes or concomitants of altered completely during that period. At the be- disease. The fact that unpleasant wounds and the ginning of the century providing an academic sick sometimes recovered spontaneously made education was seen as the prime task. Research sense only if patients constitutionally differed as was not seen as part of the duties of a professor an appropriate or inappropriate “soil” for “germ at all. Those that did any experimentation chose seeds” to blossom or perish. In this way onto- to do so for their own sake, not because it was logical germ theories complemented the tradi- an element of the curriculum. That had changed tional medical concepts of constitutional completely by the end of the century. By then strength and weakness and the healing power of scientific investigation was considered a regu- nature. This insight underlines one of the lar—in fact the most important—task of the uni- strengths of the book, namely, its recognition of versity. This change in focus went hand in hand continuities in the construction of disease con- with the establishment of a number of new lab- cepts and practices. oratories for most Dutch universities. Worboys successfully challenges the view In the accounts of the above-mentioned men that the British medical communities (who were the content and development of their ideas about often “part-timers”) acted largely as onlookers the pursuit of science are examined. From this while French and German practitioners honed a analysis the common element that emerges in laboratory-based medicine for the twentieth cen- their images of science is gain for society, as tury. Overall, Worboys’s monograph is a chal- expressed in the title, which translates into En- lenging and extremely readable medical history glish as something like “Profit and more profit.” of germs. It will be essential reading for students In the view of these men the pursuit of science taking history of medicine programs. is profitable for society; it is not pursued just for WILLIAM H. BROCK its own sake, let alone for the pleasure of the pursuer. In the beginning of the century the well- Bert Theunissen. “Nut en nog eens nut”: We- trained minds of an intellectual elite that had tenschapsbeelden van Nederlandse natuuron- completed academic training was regarded as the derzoekers, 1800–1900. 220 pp., illus., bibl., in- prime benefit for society. By the end of the cen- dex. Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2000. Dfl tury the profit was understood to come from sci- 49.70. entific investigation of nature: science was seen as an instrument to further human welfare. The central theme of this book is the question, Initially, I found it surprising that each and Why do scientists pursue scientific investiga- every one of the leading persons confidently as- tion? Of course, Bert Theunissen begins by serts that the pursuit of science is for the benefit pointing out that the answers scientists offer will of society at large. Yet, on closer inspection, that 142 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) was not so surprising, as Theunissen has studied terialist, antiteleological philosophy of Epicurus and quotes almost exclusively from published (the subject of Marx’s doctoral thesis) the partial sources, from treatises written for fellow schol- origins of an ecological perspective. Other ele- ars, for administrators, and for the lay public. ments of Marx’s ecology emerged from his cri- The author seems not to have studied correspon- tique of Thomas Malthus’s view that population dence or other private papers in which a man would inevitably outstrip agricultural produc- may have voiced less elevated purposes for the tion—a conclusion that could justify social in- pursuit of science. equality. From this subject, Marx turned to a One thing amazed me: in the whole of this study of the agricultural chemist Justus von Lie- work, covering over a hundred years of discus- big, drawing from him to formulate the notion sion and the ideas of some 300 Dutch scholars of a “metabolic rift” in the human relation with on the subject at hand, there is not one woman nature. Armed with such ideas, Marx contributed (apart from present-day scholars) mentioned. to debates over soil “exhaustion,” the problems Admittedly, by the time the present story fin- of agriculture, and the division between town ishes, in the early twentieth century, only a few and country. Ultimately, under Liebig’s influ- women had been appointed to academic posi- ence, Marx arrived at an ecological critique of tions in Dutch universities, so there is presum- capitalist agriculture and what he saw as its in- ably not much material to draw on. However, evitable depletion of the natural fertility of the one argument in the debate raging in the last soil. Both he and Friedrich Engels would argue quarter of the nineteenth century about the ad- that ecological problems could be addressed mission of women to the universities was the only if human beings regarded nature rationally, view that women, like men, should have the ben- through an understanding of nature’s laws, and efit of a higher education so as to fully develop then organized production accordingly. their minds. Thus, engaged in nineteenth-century discus- Most of the contents of this book have ap- sions about science and nature, including those peared in print already in the form of separate relating to Darwinism, Marx linked social trans- articles in various journals, some in English but formation with the transformation of the human mostly in the Dutch language. Presumably that relation with nature: the alienation of human la- explains why the author has chosen to publish bor paralleled the alienation of human beings his treatise in Dutch rather than English. Even from nature. In other words, the domination of though the author has stressed the national char- nature resulting from unequal ownership of land acter of his expose´ by discussing at length some paralleled the domination of humans through controversies among Dutch historians of science economic power. Foster traces these ideas across on points he addresses, the issues considered in each stage in the development of Marx’s this book and the scope of the inquiry warrant thought: in relation to agriculture, Darwinism, international notice and discussion. and, in his last years, ethnology, geology, and This book has a pleasantly unpretentious lay- paleontology. Foster follows the course of out and typography and is, moreover, very care- Marx’s ecological views even after Marx’s fully produced: I have seen but one printing er- death. For a time, Marx and Engel’s ecological ror—which I leave it to you to discover. critiques influenced Marxist thought in the So- MARIAN FOURNIER viet Union. Nikolai Bukharin, August Bebel, and other Marxist scholars built on the original foun- John Bellamy Foster. Marx’s Ecology: Mate- dation, and by the 1920s Soviet ecology was pp., index. New highly advanced—only to be crushed, in the 310 םrialism and Nature.x York: Monthly Review Press, 2000. $48 (cloth); 1930s, by Stalin. $18 (paper). Seeking to place Marx within his context, Fos- ter ranges widely, from Epicurus to the influence Karl Marx has often been described as anti-eco- of Epicureanism in the seventeenth and eigh- logical, concerned about the exploitation of hu- teenth centuries to Julien Offray de La Mettrie, manity, not of nature. But, conducting a careful Baron d’Holbach, Denis Diderot, and Darwin, review of Marx’s writings and a survey of the and on to Hegel, political economy, and French intellectual context in which Marx lived and socialism. He covers thinkers who influenced worked, John Bellamy Foster argues that, in fact, Marx as well as those whom Marx reacted Marx had a deeply and systematically ecological against, including William Paley and, especially, view of the world. Malthus, who represented for Marx the intrusion To make this argument, Foster traces the de- of natural theology into political economy. In velopment of Marx’s ideas. He finds in the ma- attempting to reconstruct Marx’s world, Foster BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 143 largely follows the methods of traditional intel- that forced him to find different ways of making lectual history, often interpreting ideas apart a living—finding and identifying his publica- from their contexts. In his analysis of Darwin’s tions is a bibliographer’s nightmare. Even now, ideas, for example, he considers Marx’s debts to more than 160 years after his death and with the other scholars but not Marx’s own research and benefit of serious studies by Fitzpatrick and observations of nature. Foster, however, does re- Boewe, as well as by Richard E. Call and Elmer view in some detail society and politics in D. Merrill, among others, we can only approxi- Marx’s day, remarking on the social discontent mate the number of his publications, including and the perception of materialism as a threat to both original titles and republications. Probably the established order, associated with both athe- we will never have a complete list of Rafin- ism and revolutionary France. esque’s publications because he published reg- Foster’s ambition goes beyond illuminating ularly in newspapers, broadsides, sales cata- Marx’s thought to situating ecology within ma- logues, privately printed journals, and other terialism and science. Foster thus takes issue, ephemera that are infrequently archived. Even persuasively, with the idea, often encountered in his own references to “published” works cannot Green thought, that modern science justifies ex- be trusted as, to him, this term included papers ploitative attitudes toward nature. This view, ac- that he sent to journals but were never published. cording to Foster, is a misinterpretation of mod- On the other hand, Rafinesque complained to ern science and reflects a reduction of ecological one correspondent that he never knew whether questions to questions of values, obscuring the some of these manuscripts were ever published material interrelations (Marx’s “metabolic rela- or he learned only years later that they had been. tions”) between humans and nature. In fact, he The total number has been estimated at about a finds no necessary contradiction between sus- thousand, but, as Boewe points out, this number tainability and the mastery of nature, noting that is based on Fitzpatrick’s faulty numbering sys- in the seventeenth century John Evelyn, among tem in which each version of a paper or volume others, remained an advocate of modern science of a multivolume work was given a number. even as he defended trees and criticized Lon- Thus Fitzpatrick’s system, continued by Boewe, don’s air pollution. And he notes that in the nine- represents serial numbers, not individual titles. teenth century ecological thought, in the work of Rafinesque’s own estimate was 220, a number Darwin and others, was grounded in materialist Boewe now thinks is a reasonable guess. conceptions of nature. The Mantissa is an important addition to Raf- Foster’s analysis is valuable both as a critique inesquiana. It lists twenty hitherto-unrecorded of the conventional wisdom about Marx’s views publications by Rafinesque, thirty-three new of nature and as a thorough effort to place Marx translations or reprints, and more than two hun- within the context of his time. Scholars and read- dred newly listed secondary references. For the ers interested in nineteenth-century intellectual first time we have a list of every manuscript letter history will find Foster’s acccount of an ecolog- written by Rafinesque that is known to exist, and ical revolutionary worth the study. Boewe provides a documented discussion of Raf- STEPHEN BOCKING inesque publications still remaining to be dis- covered. Several titles known to me, however, Charles Boewe. Mantissa: A Supplement to are missing from Mantissa, but Boewe’s book pp., bibls. represents a learned guide for the next scholar 105 ם Fitzpatrick’s Rafinesque. xii Providence, R.I.: M&S Press, 2001. $15 (paper). willing to take up the challenge and carry on the search. The newly listed manuscript letters will This addition—hence the title Mantissa—to the doubtless be particularly helpful in providing rich vein of information about Constantine Sam- leads to undiscovered publications and other fac- uel Rafinesque (1783–1840) is in fact a supple- ets of Rafinesque’s still not completely under- ment to Charles Boewe’s own revised and en- stood life. Among his correspondents were fel- larged edition (1982) of Thomas J. Fitzpatrick’s low naturalists such as John James Audubon, book Rafinesque (1911). Joseph Banks, Benjamin Barton, Charles Bona- The details of the peripatetic life of Rafin- parte, Alexandre Brongniart, Augustin de Can- esque, one of America’s most original yet un- dolle, Georges Cuvier, Amos Eaton, Asa Gray, disciplined naturalists, are too well known to William Jackson Hooker, Muhlenberg, Ord, Pa- bear repeating here. Suffice it to say that because olo Savi, James Edward Smith, William Swain- of the vicissitudes of his life—his perpetual son, and John Torrey, as well as prominent lead- wandering between and within Europe and fron- ers of the day, including John Adams, De Witt tier America, his impecunious circumstances Clinton, Eleuthe`re Ire´ne´e du Pont, George IV, 144 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Thomas Jefferson, and Joel Roberts Poinsett. A artifacts, including the total number of objects total of 346 letters are listed. entering the museum, the proportion that were More important, Boewe has given us the ben- gifts, and the proportion that were purchased. efit of his many years of scholarly searching and Perhaps the most significant statistics are those thinking about Rafinesque in his discussions en- relating to the profession of the donor: whether titled “Hints about Unlisted Titles,” “Letters as colonial military personnel, professional scien- a Source of Leads,” and “Hints in Publications.” tists, colonial merchants, or missionaries. Bris- We learn, for example, that Rafinesque signed korn suggests that the predilections and range of some of his papers simply as “Constantine” or expertise of these various groups affected the “Linneus.” The Mantissa makes it abundantly quality and reliability of their collections. Given clear why arriving at a complete account of Raf- the painstaking work of processing this infor- inesque’s writings is an elusive goal, but Boewe mation for a statistical database program, I shows us that the attempt still offers an exciting would have liked to see further interpretation of trail to follow. the statistics, which are surely a rich source of KRAIG ADLER wider historical correlations. Briskorn illustrates suggestively the practical Bettina von Briskorn. Zur Sammlungsgeschi- role played by colonialism in the Bremen mu- chte afrikanischer Ethnographica im U¨ bersee- seum. She finds that 33 percent of the museum’s Museum Bremen 1841–1945.(Tendenzen, pre-1945 holdings—and 20 percent of its current Suppl. 2000.) 336 pp., illus., figs. Bremen: U¨ ber- holdings—were acquired directly in the course see-Museum Bremen, 2000. (Paper.) of colonial rule and that colonial interests shaped ¨ the museum’s presentations, especially its inter- Bettina von Briskorn’s book on Bremen’s Uber- est in the Herero during Germany’s genocidal see-Museum (or overseas museum) takes on the war against that group. Briskorn hauntingly jux- fascinating topic of the history of ethnographic taposes two 1905 photographs: one of a group collections. Briskorn follows recent scholarship of starving and emaciated Herero taken during on the topic in regarding the museum’s collec- the war and a second depicting an idyllic mu- tions as artifacts not only of the societies from seum diorama of Herero. Ironically, the very which they were gathered but also of the socie- genocidal war that stimulated Bremen’s interest ties that gathered them. Briskorn thus proposes in the Herero also severely reduced the avail- using the ethnographic collections of the Bremen ¨ ability of artifacts that might satisfy this interest. Ubersee-Museum to shed light on the history of The topic of anthropological collecting is of ethnology itself. utmost interest to the history of anthropology Briskorn finds that the directors of the Bremen and to the history of science generally. I would museum pursued a “mimetic” exhibition style in have been delighted had Briskorn more thor- their African sections, in which they sought to oughly assisted the reader in drawing connec- reproduce the scenes of daily life in Africa. tions between her very detailed account and the Many displays included groups of life-sized fig- wider intellectual and political world in which ures to show the artifacts as they were used, be- the Bremen U¨ bersee-Museum accumulated its cause the curators believed such a display would collections. As it is, the book will be primarily better instruct the general public. Briskorn points of interest to scholars interested in the history of out that this sort of display differed sharply from anthropological collecting in the Bremen mu- that of the larger Berlin museum of ethnology seum and, indeed, to those scholars using the and had more in common with popular ethno- collections themselves. graphic displays of the period. While this mi- ANDREW ZIMMERMAN metic strategy in the museum gave directors a preference for groups of objects that would give Lynda Nead. Victorian Babylon: People, a sense of the daily life of a group, it is unclear, Streets, and Images in Nineteenth-Century Lon- .pp., frontis., illus., bibl., index 251 םBriskorn asserts, to what extent this preference don.x shaped the actual collections. More than a third New Haven, Conn./London: Yale University of the book is devoted to short entries on the Press, 2000. $35. individuals and institutions who donated or sold ethnographic objects to the Bremen museum. In examining the visual culture of Victorian Lon- The entries also include serial numbers of each don during the years 1855–1870, Lynda Nead object given by an individual or institution. Bris- in her book Victorian Babylon explores the dif- korn has used these data to provide statistical ficult and restless narrative of modernization that tables related to the collection of ethnographic any of us who have read D. G. Rossetti’s “The BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 145

“Effects of the Gas Strike in London,” Illustrated London News, 1872 (from Nead, Victorian Babylon, p. 91). 146 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Burden of Nineveh” will recognize as crucial to ment of the “metropolitan picturesque” and how the Victorian imagination. As Nead promptly es- this aesthetic category relates—or not—to the tablishes, Babylon for the Victorians was a trope other psycho-aesthetic touchstones for her work, evoking gain and loss, triumph and hubris, future which are the sublime and the urban uncanny. and past ruination. Taking this ancient city as her One might also rue the absence of an extended titular image, then, Nead aims to rearticulate ur- treatment of the relic versus the ruin at the banism and modernity, indeed challenging us to book’s close. reconceive what we mean by “modernity.” Po- The analysis of the book does grow stronger sitioning her own arguments against the influ- as it unfolds. The Cremorne Gardens in the sec- ential architectonics of Marshall Berman’s All ond section make for interesting reading, and That Is Solid Melts into Air (London: Verso, Nead is best at discussing London at night, the 1983) and favoring instead the writings of uncanny, and what she calls a poetics of gas. The Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, and Michel final section on obscenity is most promising, for de Certeau, Nead recasts modernity as an “untidy here the Babylonic polyphony of Victorian Lon- experience,” a “constant struggle with history” don—what Nead calls the twin mission, to build (p. 10). Near her book’s end, Nead provocatively and destroy—hits the reader with full force. One claims: “Ruin is the resolution of the contradic- might wish that Nead had spent a bit more time tory impulses of modernity” (p. 214). on obscenity (Where is Soho? Or Henry May- Victorian Babylon explores the spaces of mid- hew’s prostitutes?) before extending her treat- Victorian London and, more important, the ex- ment to the more symbolic, architectural expres- perience of inhabiting those very spaces. This sion of obscenity-cum-obsolescence, the Temple textual tour is divided tidily into three sections: Bar. However, the fate of the Temple Bar is a first on mapping and water, a second devoted nicely evocative of the ruin and, thus, takes the to gas and light, and a third on obscenity, which reader full circle back to the ambiguities of mo- Nead calls “improvement’s other” (p. 8). As dernity. Nead herself claims about the metropolitan BARBARA J. BLACK travel literature she examines, her book speaks well to the eye. Victorian Babylon is a vicarious Cherry Lewis. The Dating Game: One Man’s ,.pp 253 ם tour of London thanks to Nead’s deft and abun- Search for the Age of the Earth. x dant use of fresh images, which she has culled illus., figs., bibl. Cambridge/New York: Cam- assiduously from private collections, archives, bridge University Press, 2000. $24.95. and especially illustrated nineteenth-century pe- riodicals. Her study thus takes us to fascinating Arthur Holmes was the founder of the modern places: readers travel along with John Hollings- geological timescale. His slim book, The Age of head on his journey down to London’s sewers; the Earth, first published in 1913 when he was we are invited into Joseph Paxton’s dreamscape twenty-three, is a minor classic in the history of of the Great Victorian Way; and we play for a geology. In it Holmes succinctly summed up the night at Cremorne Pleasure Gardens, witnessing state of geochronological knowledge at the be- Madame Poitevin’s balloon ride. We hesitantly ginning of the twentieth century, the problems enter the haunted and obscene Holywell Street. involved in the various methods previously pro- The catalogic abundance of Victorian Babylon posed for quantitatively measuring geological works both to Nead’s advantage and disadvan- time, and the promise of the newly developed tage. Surely the sheer range of Nead’s material methods of radioactive dating. For the next three proves her points about the frenzy and incom- decades, he was the foremost advocate for de- prehensibility of modernity and the promiscuity veloping the techniques for radioactive dating of Victorian commercial culture. But invariably and using them to determine the age of the earth the variety of topics results in too much cursory and to establish an accurate quantitative geolog- analysis—a paragraph on photography followed ical timescale. He was also an early proponent by a paragraph on the International Health Ex- of Wegener’s theory of continental drift, and his hibition; brief excursions into the realms of ad- text Principles of Physical Geology, published vertising, illustrated sheet music, and music in 1944, set a new standard for geological text- halls. Subsequently, a reader might grow eager books. But for much of his life Holmes was instead for book-length studies of these issues. something of an outsider in the British geologi- Yet the most egregious omission of an adequate cal establishment, not from choice but from cir- treatment is the two-page cursory overview of cumstance. the picturesque. Here, Nead misses an opportu- Cherry Lewis’s book is an episodic account of nity to offer a more extended, theoretical treat- Holmes’s life and contribution to geochronology BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 147 intended more for the general reader than for his- historian Paula Rebert relates the progress of the torians or geologists. Her approach alternates survey of this boundary in meticulous detail, biographical narrative with nontechnical ac- covering the field work between 1849 and 1855 counts of scientific issues, but at times her and the office work from 1850 to completion in stream-of-consciousness presentation leaves the 1857. connection between the two unclear—at least to The need for the survey originated with the me. Nearly one-fourth of the book, for example, war between Mexico and the United States in is devoted to accounts of Holmes’s ill-fated ex- 1846–1848 and the subsequent treaty of Gua- cursions to Mozambique in 1911–1912 and dalupe-Hidalgo. Mexico ceded huge parcels of Burma in 1920–1923. While these and other territory to the United States, and the boundary biographical episodes illustrate the financial cir- survey defined the extent of the transfer. The sur- cumstances and personal decisions that kept vey was designed to be carried out independently Holmes on the fringe of the geological commu- by two national commissions in ways that were nity, they are rarely balanced by biographical in- agreeable to both. Generally, the two sides met formation that might illuminate his development to compare data, consult, and form agreements. as a scientist or explain what drove his passion- They usually managed to cooperate, with each ate and, at times, almost solitary commitment to side showing enough flexibility to reach consen- formulating a quantitative geochronology based sus. on radioactive dating. Lewis’s discussion of the The commissions used different methodolo- scientific issues involved in geochronology are gies. The Mexicans tended to favor triangulation generally as clear and accurate as the constraints while the Americans emphasized actual mea- of simplification permit, but her choice of the surement. There were other differences. Ameri- contexts in which these problems are discussed can instruments were better and more plentiful, strikes me as again highly selective. We are and the map-drawing techniques of the commis- given little indication, for example, as to why the sions diverged. Other problems included the po- majority of geologists were so unreceptive to ra- litical pressures under which both worked, fre- dioactive dating even as late as 1930. Even more quent turnover of commissioners, harsh field to the point, we are given only brief glimpses of conditions along the borderlands, and changes in Holmes’s own researches. the course of the Rio Grande. The main point of Lewis writes fluently and with great enthusi- contention involved the location of the point at asm for her subject. General readers will find this which the boundary went west from the river enthusiasm appealing and the book a quick and above El Paso, an issue that soured overall re- pleasant introduction to a fascinating geological lations between members of the commissions. problem and to an important twentieth-century Given these difficulties, precise agreement was geologist. Historians interested in a more so- impossible. phisticated analysis of this important episode in Despite the many problems, the resultant the history of geology and the complex scientist maps, consisting of two separate series of fifty- who was its major protagonist will have to wait four sheets, were very similar in content. They a while longer. each showed part of the boundary and the sur- The book contains a short selective bibliog- rounding country, physical and cultural features raphy but neither notes nor an index. of the area, boundary monuments, and annota- JOE D. BURCHFIELD tions. Rebert’s book includes photographs of many of these maps. As she notes, “The final Paula Rebert. La Gran Linea: Mapping the maps were a great accomplishment” (p. 58). United States–Mexico Boundary, 1849–1857. Nevertheless, imperfections remained. The pp., illus., figs., bibl., index. Austin: shifting of the Rio Grande, unaddressed in the 259 ם xx University of Texas Press, 2001. $45 (cloth); treaty and impossible to anticipate, forced a re- $22.95 (paper). survey in 1891–1896. The issue was not com- pletely resolved until the treaty of 1970, which The boundary between the United States and codified the reality of the fluid boundary and Mexico extends over almost two thousand miles placed it in the middle of the channel that in of challenging terrain between the Gulf of Mex- normal flow had the greatest average width. De- ico and the Pacific Ocean. About 1,300 miles of spite the lingering problems that took more than the border follow the Rio Grande and nearly a century to resolve, Rebert views the survey, seven hundred miles run overland from the river which set a good precedent of engineers working near El Paso westward across New Mexico, Ar- together in an environment of mutual respect, to izona, and California to the sea. The cartographic have been a success. 148 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

The boundary survey was a complex enter- gained momentum with the crises of the Great prise. The commissioners, surveyors, and assis- Depression and Dust Bowl. It promoted soil con- tants included fascinating and distinguished fig- servation and planning as an alternative to tra- ures, most notably, on the American side, ditional farming practices. Similarly, the sustain- William H. Emory, a seasoned officer of the able agriculture movement today, though Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineerswhom subdivided into agroecology, organic farming, Rebert identifies as the dominant personality on permaculture, and polyculture, can share under- the survey. In addition to making maps, Emory lying ethical principles that recognize the fragil- and his colleagues collected data on natural re- ity and interconnectedness of living systems. It sources, made many drawings, amassed valuable was spurred in part by rapidly expanding pesti- collections of plants and animals for the Smith- cide use and economic upheaval. Agrarian re- sonian Institution, and studied the lives of bor- form, promoted by charismatic individuals such derlands peoples. His fellow Army topographer as Edward Faulkner, Hugh Bennett, Louis Amiel W. Whipple even compiled a vocabulary Bromfield, Paul Sears, and Wes Jackson, called of the Yuma Indian language while surveying for nothing short of revolution in farming. Pro- the mouth of the Gila River. Rebert does not ponents were just as much concerned with pre- devote much attention to these aspects of the en- serving social resources as with natural resources terprise. Her primary contribution is in her de- because a crisis of human spirit mirrored the cri- tailed narration of the surveys and the cartogra- sis of the soil. The authors argue that both per- phy, a story she covers well. This book will manent and sustainable agriculture were founded interest all who specialize in the history of car- on ecological principles and a reaction to what tography and the boundary between the United was perceived as a failure of traditional farming States and Mexico. practices to provide quality farm products, FRANK N. SCHUBERT healthy soils, and desirable livelihoods. Beeman and Pritchard subtitle their book Randal S. Beeman; James A. Pritchard. A “Ecology and Agriculture” in part because for Green and Permanent Land: Ecology and Ag- Sears and Faulkner “permanent agriculture was riculture in the Twentieth Century. (Develop- far more than conservation, requiring an ecolog- pp., ical worldview that required reverence for life 219 ם ment of Western Resources.) x bibls., index. Lawrence: University Press of and respect for nature” (p. 75). Nevertheless, this Kansas, 2001. $29.95. book would be better subtitled “Conservation and Agriculture” because little of the intellectual Randal Beeman and James Pritchard offer us content of the science of ecology appears in it three reasons why we should care deeply about and even less of its application to agriculture. agriculture: we all require food and even in the The work of Alfred Lotka, Vito Volterra, Geor- seeming cornucopia of American farmland we gii Gause, G. Evelyn Hutchinson, Robert Mac- have the ever-present danger of food shortages, Arthur, and Carl Huffaker certainly influenced the health of our families is intimately tied to the traditional agriculture, but their connection to al- quality of our food supply, and farming and farm ternative agriculture is unclear. Although Bee- families are an important and inspirational part man and Pritchard describe some early ecologi- of American society. This book attempts to “fos- cal models of vegetation change in both ter a better understanding of the centrality of theoretical and philosophical terms, they provide food production in the history of American civ- little evidence of farmers actually using the sci- ilization” (p. 6) by exploring the intersection of ence of ecology as it was used in range science. ecology and agriculture. The premise of this They write of agrarian reformers using ecologi- book is that ecological ideas have provided the cal holism and techniques to create a new envi- scientific guidelines and philosophical animus ronmental ethics and a “new devotion to ecolog- for a different kind of farming that is gentler on ical stewardship and responsibility” (p. 101). In the land and people than is traditional agricul- effect they conflate environmental and ecologi- ture. Accounts of the intersection of ecology and cal tenets, equating ecology with ethical and agriculture have been scarce, and so the premise spiritual outlooks on nature because “ecology is appealing. based itself on then-prevailing currents such as Beeman and Pritchard support their thesis by interdependence, balance, and harmony” (p. 35). exploring the development of two extraordinary They suggest that the eclipse of permanent ag- agrarian reform movements in American history. riculture was due in part to “divisions within the The short-lived permanent agriculture move- guiding force of ecology” (p. 77), though they ment starting in the late nineteenth century do not say what that guiding force was or who BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 149 represented it. Because they never clearly lay out when they are using “ecology” to refer to a bud- ding science or when they are borrowing a lay- man’s use of “ecology” that refers to the inter- connectedness of all organisms and a sense of holism, they obscure their very important treat- ment of agrarian reform movements. This book is less a history of the impact of ecological science on agriculture and agrarian re- form than it is an analysis of the role of environ- mental philosophy in spurring changes in farm- ing practices. Nevertheless, it is a valuable account of extraordinary events in the history of American farming. Beeman and Pritchard pre- sent fascinating stories of agricultural visionaries striving to better the world around them. This combination of environmental history and pre- scriptive remedy for our agricultural ills provides thought-provoking reading. SARA TJOSSEM

Donald MacMillan. Smoke Wars: Anaconda Copper, Montana Air Pollution, and the Courts, L. O. Evans, counsel for the Amalgamated pp., illus., index. He- Copper Company in the Bliss case (from 296 ם xviii .1924–1890 lena: Montana Historical Press, 2000. $40 MacMillan, Smoke Wars, p. 121). (cloth); $18.95 (paper).

Butte, Montana, lies at the headwaters of the na- Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) did tion’s largest Superfund site. Donald MacMil- end the problem—at least for Butte residents. By lan’s book is a morality tale about this environ- 1906 nearly all of Butte’s ore was shipped mental travesty—a story of damaged health and twenty-six miles down the valley to ACM’s An- environment, futile efforts by citizens and gov- aconda smelter. Each day it belched thirty tons ernment to halt that damage, and demoralization of arsenic and 2,500 tons of sulfur into the air. resulting from those failed efforts. Whole herds of horses, cattle, and sheep lay MacMillan’s story covers the period from the wasted in the fields. ACM paid $330,000 for 1880s to the 1930s. In the first phase, he de- damages within five miles of the Washoe but scribes the struggle between the young city of refused compensation to more distant farmers. Butte and negligent smelter owners. In the sec- Afflicted farmers filed a lawsuit, offering to ond, the smelter owners shifted the problem to a settle for a $1,175,000 buyout of their 60,525 nearby town and surrounding farmers. In the acres. ACM declared their land not worth third, the federal government attempted to en- $500,000 and then spent nearly $1 million to force conservation policy. prove it. Farmers lost when the judge—who so- When miners first settled Butte in the 1860s, cialized with ACM executives—found against they found a lush valley high amid the peaks of the farmers in 1909. ACM had utilized “best the Continental Divide. By 1890 Butte was a ma- known methods” and therefore should not be li- jor source of copper for a growing nation. Ore able for any damages. was roasted in open heaps a city block long. Sul- Smoke poisoned national forest lands as well fur and arsenic fumes killed vegetation for miles as farmers’ fields. Trees within twenty-five miles around. When winter inversions trapped smoke, of Anaconda were dead or damaged. President residents suffered nosebleeds and vomited in the Theodore Roosevelt and Chief Forester Gifford streets. Up to eighty people a month died in this Pinchot initiated an investigation through the town of just 40,000. U.S. attorney general’s office that eventually The city sent abatement notices. Mine owners sought $4 million in damages from ACM. The ignored them, arguing, “No smoke, no wages for company stalled, hoping for a more tolerant ad- workingmen.” Though open heap roasting ended ministration following the elections of 1908. In because it was inefficient, new roasting furnaces 1911 President William Howard Taft, trusting did little to ease the problem. The growth of the industry to do the right thing, created the “An- 150 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) aconda smoke commission”—a group of indus- holds that scientific theories are merely forms of try and government advisors—to oversee the description of one’s sensations. He was a ACM’s implementation of pollution controls. In phenomenalist and a positivist. However, his no- 1916 ACM’s smelter still emitted sixty-two tons tion of the noosphere was metaphysical and not of arsenic and 1,700 tons of sulfur each day. empirical. In 1924 ACM finally took effective steps to Most significantly, Vernadsky claimed that remove most of the arsenic from its emissions. the biosphere is a geological envelope that has Because of high demand for arsenic insecticides determined the geochemical history of almost all to fight boll weevils, ACM made considerable of the elements of the earth’s crust. Levit shows profit on arsenic recovery. Problems with farm- that Vernadsky viewed life as one of the general ers ended when the farmers, financially bankrupt manifestations of reality alongside matter, en- from their lawsuit, sold “smoke rights” or ease- ergy, space, and time. Its properties are deter- ments to ACM. Problems with the federal mined by such cosmic phenomena as gravitation government ended after 1928 when President and solar radiation. And so, Vernadsky believed, Herbert Hoover, who promoted government- it must be cosmic in its scope. Once it comes industrial partnership, approved the swap of into existence, it cannot die out. healthy ACM timberlands for damaged national In the 1920s Vernadsky became convinced forest. that the development of thought similarly was a As a resident of Butte, it is hard for me to keep natural phenomenon rooted in the very structure in mind that this is a historical account. Although of the biosphere. He developed the notion of the ACM’s smelting operations ended in 1974, the noosphere in Paris in the company of Henri legacy of cultural and environmental damage Bergson, Edouard Le Roy, and Teilhard de Char- lingers on. The morning newspaper reported din. Since the seventeenth century, he argued, forty-six homes in Butte contaminated with lead the growth of scientific knowledge has been the and arsenic: “The federal Agency for Toxic Sub- main force influencing the geochemistry of the stances and Disease Registry is conducting an earth. investigation, and encourages all children to be In the latter third of his book, Levit compares tested.” Vernadsky’s theoretical system to three related PAT MUNDAY ones. With Teilhard, Vernadsky shared a basic terminology, methodological principles, and an George S. Levit. Biogeochemistry–Biosphere– implicit teleology. Unlike Vernadsky, however, Noosphere: The Growth of the Theoretical Sys- Teilhard believed that eventually the noosphere tem of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky. (Studien would be replaced by a super-mind that would zur Theorie der Biologie, 4.) 116 pp., bibl. Ber- release thought from its material matrix. In the lin: Verlag fu¨r Wissenschaft und Bildung, 2001. 1960s James Lovelock introduced the Gaia hy- DM 28. pothesis, which holds that the earth itself is a V. I. Vernadsky (1863–1945) was a star of So- kind of homeostatic self-regulating organism. viet science. Applying a mineralogist’s perspec- Although Vernadsky would likely have been du- tive to the phenomena of life, he founded the bious, Levit discerns no fundamental differences sciences of geochemistry and biogeochemistry between his biosphere and Gaia. and developed the concepts of “living matter,” Finally, V. N. Beklemishev, a Russian zool- “biosphere,” and “noosphere.” George Levit ogist, also concluded that life controls the pro- claims that Vernadsky’s work has not been thor- cessing of matter in the biosphere. However, oughly organized or interpreted even by Rus- while Vernadsky interpreted the phenomena bio- sians. Accordingly, he devotes over half of this geochemically, as a flow of chemical elements, book to a “reconstruction and analysis” of Ver- Beklemishev viewed it morphologically. There nadsky’s theoretical system, beginning with his is, he argued, neither life nor death, simply more notions of space and time as they apply to or- or less material organization. Most approaches to ganisms. Vernadsky observed that living bodies the biosphere, writes Levit, are located within the escape entropy, that they are “dissymmetrical,” Beklemishev–Vernadsky spectrum of opinion. and that all their processes, including evolution, Levit admires Vernadsky’s attempt to include are irreversible. biological, geological, social, and cultural pro- Levit contends that Vernadsky’s views on the cesses as parts of a single planetary process. logic and methodology of science are vague and Nevertheless, he concludes that Vernadsky sporadic. He declares his philosophy of science failed to show convincingly that the empirical to be a version of “radical empiricism,” which basis of his biosphere theory supports his claims BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 151 about the inevitable transition from biosphere to All this is grist for Black’s ethical mill, and noosphere. he grinds it well, perhaps too relentlessly. There This terse and dense book reads like a re- is no doubt that looking at the exploitation of oil worked thesis. It badly needs editing by someone from the obliteration of the wooded valleys, or whose first language is English. There is a sub- the filth of boomtown streets, or the emptiness stantial bibliography but no index. Instead of of ghost towns (as Black does with startling ef- endnotes or footnotes, there are maddening ref- fect when studying contemporary photographs erences in parentheses. At least twice, I found of Petrolia) reveals a sacrificial landscape—an that a reference had no corresponding biblio- environment abused, wasted, ruined, and de- graphic entry. It all makes for an ineffably tedi- spoiled in pursuit of profit. Certainly Black is on ous treatment of what is potentially a truly in- firm ground when he ties what happened in Pe- triguing subject. trolia to what happened in Gilded Age America ELIZABETH HAIGH as a whole, but he may overstate the case when he argues that “industrial rationalization would Brian Black. Petrolia: The Landscape of Amer- never allow . . . humanitarianism to penetrate the .(pp., illus., ta- utilitarian logic of Petrolia” (p. 167 236 ם ica’s First Oil Boom. xiv bles, app., index. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni- Was the logic of oil so ruthless and the mo- versity Press, 2000. $42.50. tives of the Petrolians so shortsighted as to miss The history of the modern oil industry begins what was happening around them and what they along Oil Creek in August 1859 when Edwin were doing to themselves? They took photo- Drake and Billy Smith found petroleum at the graphs, after all. They criticized and complained bottom of their well. Over the next decade and endlessly about the mud, the floods, and the fires. a half, Petrolia, the name given to this region in Certain towns curbed land speculation, restricted northwest Pennsylvania, produced more oil than development, and preserved a sense of commu- anywhere else on earth. In the process, Petrolia nity. And capitalists, by definition investors who became a massive industrial site and a vivid cul- try to reduce risk, worked to bring stability to tural image. Understanding this profound dual petroleum production and prices. Black de- transformation is the object of Brian Black’s sen- scribes (but nevertheless discounts) these valiant sitively drawn portrait of the landscape of Amer- if sometimes vain efforts to restrain the oil rush. ica’s first oil boom. A landscape, according to Black, is a place where culture and nature meet, and in the 1860s a devastating crash occurred when the natural oil of Oil Creek met the commercial demand for lamp and machine oil. Oil Creek had been a quiet, lightly populated agricultural region whose sense of place was entirely self-con- structed by the local farmers. After Drake’s dis- covery, the area became a place of unprece- dented exploitation whose identity was hastily assembled by the thousands of outsiders that flooded the area looking for work, riches, or an exciting newspaper story. Petrolia soon became a mythic boom, a mania, a craze. Distant capi- talists and recently arrived entrepreneurs painted fantastic pictures of endless and easy wealth. Oil became a prized commodity, and everything else—animals, plants, people, and even the creek itself—became expendable in a single- minded market designed to pump as much oil as fast as possible. There seemed no legal, eco- nomic, or natural limitation to the exploitation— or to the boom mentality. Petrolia became the very embodiment of greed and speculation, in- stantaneous wealth and sudden failure. Its mores Landscape of Petrolia (from Black, Petrolia, were as ephemeral as its transient population. p. 177). 152 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

But taken together, they seem to suggest more World War II. Along with the technical detail, of a struggle—communities versus companies, this case study is valuable because of the light it humanitarianism versus utilitarianism—than shines on the ambivalent relationships between Black acknowledges. armament contractors and the various branches of Many of those involved in the seeming chaos the German armed forces, the difficulties inherent that was Petrolia wanted the oil industry to be- in developing, testing, and manufacturing new come a permanent, predictable branch of mining. technology in Germany during World War II, and This was especially true for the engineers, sci- the cooperation and competition between differ- entists, and other petroleum experts. To this end, ent firms. Black provides a useful sketch of the technology This book has limitations for the historian. of oil production (how to sink a well) along with References to sources are minimal and some- a brief explanation of petroleum geology. He times incomplete—no location for the docu- concludes, however, that none of these experts ments is given. No attempt is made to compare had much effect on the problems. “Science and the German work with its Allied counterpart, technology were clearly tools of industry in Pe- with the result that the reader cannot really judge trolia” (p. 72). Gema’s achievement. Finally, with very few ex- To an extent. In Black’s account, the oil “in- ceptions, this book reads as if national socialism dustry” was a collective evil. Equal parts cultural did not exist and Gema was merely a firm located and economic, it acts like a numberless, faceless in a country at war. mob, gripped by “oil on the brain” and motivated MARK WALKER by an all-pervasive ethic of progress and an in- satiable drive to make money. It reduces to the Hugh R. Slotten. Radio and Television Regu- sharp end of a rod used to bore through the earth lation: Broadcast Technology in the United ,.pp., illus., bibl 308 ם for oil—environmentally insensitive and de- States, 1920–1960. xviii structive. As an analytical device, however, “in- index. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins Uni- dustry” is a blunt tool. Not all wells struck oil, versity Press, 2000. $45. not all companies manipulated knowledge and technique to their own purpose. Experts (inde- This well-researched book will be of immense pendent and trustworthy) learned quite a bit and value to the person who will someday write the quite quickly about the habits of oil. The divin- full story of broadcast regulation in the United ing rod was not the most acceptable method of States. That story still needs to be written; al- exploration (cf. p. 46). Again, there was more of though in this book the facts are all presented, a struggle—sci-tech versus random wildcat- the story behind the facts is not. ting—than Black allows. Well, actually, not quite all the facts are here The suggestion of situated struggles, however, either. For example, similar problems tackled in does not detract from Black’s larger theme. Pe- other countries such as Canada, even before the trolia was environmental hell. Black has ren- United States began looking into them, aren’t dered this nightmarish landscape into a powerful even mentioned. (The Canadian government be- and at times passionate story about the physical gan regulating radio in 1905, fifteen years before changes to the land and its meaning (how Amer- the U.S. regulations considered here.) True, the icans then and now view, value, and understand title of the book specifies that it is limited to the the place). If there is a lesson to be found in United States, but to understand the regulations Petrolia, it is that the modern oil industry is truly presented we should certainly have some knowl- an American creation. edge of how others had attacked the same prob- lem. PAUL LUCIER More important, Hugh Slotten totally ignores Harry Von Kroge. Gema: Birthplace of Ger- the personalities of the people involved. This is man Radar and Sonar. Translated by Louis a tremendously important consideration, for to -understand what happened we must know some 206 ם Brown. Foreword by Louis Brown. x pp., illus., bibl., index. Bristol/Philadelphia: thing about the motives of the people who made Institute of Physics Publishing, 2000. $73, the decisions, and since many of the motives £45. were hidden under layers of varying complexity and political beliefs we would like to know This book by Harry Von Kroge provides a short something about the personalities of the players. yet detailed technical and business history of (This would also make the book easier to read, Gema, the firm most prominent in the develop- which was clearly not the main concern of the ment of radar and sonar in Germany during author, but it couldn’t hurt.) Someone at the BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 153

Johns Hopkins Press evidently noticed the prob- don: Rutgers University Press, 2000. $52 (cloth); lem, but the only attempt at fixing it was to lie $20 (paper). blatantly on the bookjacket: “His [Slotten’s] dis- cussion of the early years of radio examines Recent energy problems in California, combined powerful personalities—including navy secre- with gyrating U.S. gasoline prices, have brought tary Josephus Daniels and commerce secretary renewed attention to the energy efficiency of Herbert Hoover.” But there is no discussion at American automobiles. But this timely study by all of the personalities of these men. Daniels is David Kirsch examines a set of historical ques- mentioned in only two sentences, neither of tions related to electric vehicles. A century ago which touches on him as a person, and although electric-powered vehicles seriously contended in Hoover occurs in several more, nothing of his the emerging market for automobiles. The inter- “personality” is thrown in. nal combustion engine soon won out, but Kirsch Lee De Forest is another example. On page 4 shows that the explanation does not lie in com- he is identified as the inventor of the audion (or mon assumptions about a supposed technical su- triode vacuum tube). On page 61 we read of his periority of gasoline engines. In line with the “invention” [sic] of that device. Why the quo- best recent scholarship in the history of technol- tation marks around “invention”? Did he or ogy, this volume demonstrates the complicated didn’t he invent it? Actually, there is a good web of social, business, and environmental is- story to be told about that, but you won’t read it sues that, interwoven with technical factors, pro- here. De Forest played an active role in the regu- duce a more nuanced story of technical change, lation controversies, and this role is made clear namely, the market failure of the electric vehicle. in the book. But precisely because of this, Specifically, Kirsch demolishes as simplistic the wouldn’t it be interesting to know that De Forest efforts to pin the failure of the electric car on its was arrested and went to trial for crooked stock battery. manipulation in connection with the audion? The Kirsch’s history begins with the formation and only hint at such activities is Slotten’s statement activities of the Electric Vehicle Company that De Forest was a “maverick.” Wouldn’t that (EVC), the leading maker of electric cars. In one word make you want to know more about 1897, EVC emerged in the context of early ex- him, if only to evaluate his quoted remarks on periments with electric cars and grew into a large governmental interference and regulations? enterprise pursuing a marketing strategy of pro- Other matters of interest are passed by, as viding taxi services in large cities. Most auto- when on page 48 we read: “Decisions about who mobile pioneers assumed that each power plant should receive licenses . . . could . . . be based would prove best suited for certain activities. on such qualitative issues as the character of Electric-vehicle promoters embraced this logic broadcasts . . . and the educational benefits.” of separate spheres, envisioning electric cars as What a can of worms this opens up! Or should best suited for short urban trips (taxis and elec- open up. Is the government going to censor tric delivery trucks) and for women drivers. Un- broadcasting by denying licenses to stations that fortunately, drivers of gasoline cars did not re- publicize alternative methods of government, spect these boundaries. So even as EVC such as communism? How about religious or pioneered ideas such as interchangeable battery ethnic controversies: will these be deemed “edu- racks for cabs, their vehicles slowly lost in the cational” or subversive? Is the government, competition. The demise of the company in 1912 through its licensing powers, going to let the was as much organizational as technical, how- public hear only what it wants it to hear, a`la ever, for the various branches of the company’s Goebbels and Germany? Well, we’ll never operations failed to follow standard practices de- know, for this particular can is not opened by the signed to produce good service, not to mention author; after this one mention, the subject is profits. never broached again. Kirsch tells similar stories about other efforts In summary, if you are actively researching to promote and sell electric vehicles. Thus at- this field, Slotten’s book is a must for you. But tempts to link electric cars and central power the full story of radio and television regulation generating stations went nowhere, despite a in the United States is still to be written. seemingly obvious fit. Utilities were attempting DAVID E. FISHER to build load, and battery charging at night prom- ised to smooth load curves. Once again, how- David A. Kirsch. The Electric Vehicle and the ever, Kirsch traces a pattern of missed business pp., illus., figs., opportunities and organizational failures that 291 ם Burden of History. xiv tables, bibl., index. New Brunswick, N.J./Lon- amplified the technical challenges posed by bat- 154 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) tery power. In the end, utilities and electric ve- documented and judiciously analyzed portrayal hicles never developed a suitable working rela- of the widening scope of Russian women’s ac- tionship. A similar fate befell electric delivery tive participation in the professional life of the trucks, even though they survived in a few East nation. The book’s analysis operates on two lev- Coast cities for a longer time. Finally, efforts to els: the general dynamics of the rising social develop an infrastructural base analogous to gas- pressure to expand the range of professions open oline filling stations also went nowhere. Taken to women, and the personal experiences of in- together, these sections of Kirsch’s book are de- dividual women selected for special analysis. signed to show “might have been” elements to Koblitz is fully aware that the process of the this complicated story. emancipation and professional advancement of Kirsch offers a number of original ideas as women was occasionally disrupted by adverse he follows this story along the path of history. shifts in government policies. Concentrating pri- He devotes a chapter to the idea, for example, marily on the 1860s, this book makes many ref- that the electric vehicle actually survives within erences to subsequent developments and pro- the internal combustion car, which he sees as a vides enough documented information to create gasoline-electric hybrid. Beginning with the an adequate picture of the state of women’s adoption of the electric starter as a standard ele- emancipation and professional employment dur- ment of the “normal” automobile, this hybrid na- ing the waning decades of the nineteenth cen- ture was reinforced by the introduction of electric tury. lighting, radios, and other electrically powered ac- As might have been expected, Koblitz devotes cessories. Kirsch also discusses the environmental the most interesting and penetrating analysis to impact of automobiles and closes with a chapter the life and work of the mathematician Sofia Ko- suggesting that the approaches of industrial ecol- valevskaia, the brightest star in the emancipation ogy offer a promising way of thinking about the movement and a most respected model of high technology/environment interface. Overall, he professional aspiration and achievement. In- makes an important contribution to the scholarly spired by the philosophy and ideology of the Ni- literature on technical failures, a topic that several hilist movement of the 1860s, Kovalevskaia de- historians have recently examined in order to cided to enter the challenging world of science, highlight the importance of attention to alternative specializing in mathematics, the queen in the pathways—successful and otherwise. As has world of scientific thought. The Nihilists made been the case in other such studies, the result is a the idea of close interdependence of science and much more complex, but also much more com- democracy a pivotal point of their ideology. En- pelling and plausible, historical account. Kirsch’s couraged and guided by the well-known German study is a model of the current work in the history mathematician Karl Weierstrass of Go¨ttingen of technology. University, Kovalevskaia published a series of BRUCE E. SEELY mathematical papers that attracted wide profes- sional attention. Henri Poincare´, a leading math- Ann Hibner Koblitz. Science, Women, and Rev- ematical physicist, referred to the paper that -pp., glossary, bibl., brought her the Prix Bordin from the Paris Acad 211 םolution in Russia.xv index. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publish- emy of Sciences as a “celebrated memoir.” The ers, 2000. $45. Petersburg Academy of Sciences elected Koval- evskaia an honorary member, the first woman to The 1860s—the epoch of great reforms— receive such a high honor—she was not, how- brought to Russia a remarkable assortment of ever, allowed to work for a magisterial degree in official actions that emancipated the serfs, lib- Russia, a requirement for university employ- eralized the judicial system, created zemstva as ment. experiments in limited local self-government, Koblitz shows that despite compounded ob- granted universities an unprecedented scope of structions on the path to professional achieve- academic autonomy, and dramatically enlarged ment, women’s gains in Russia were equal to the number of young Russians enrolled in the those in the West. Her study provides solid in- leading Western universities in search of higher formation and cogent comments on the historical degrees in the sciences. These and similar re- background and the educational role of the forms created an atmosphere favoring women’s higher courses for women established in all ma- access to professional positions and contributing jor cities. Women, however, had less difficulty to the removal of the harshest aspects of the lin- in acquiring higher education than in finding em- gering patriarchal system. ployment commensurate with their professional Ann Hibner Koblitz’s book offers a richly qualifications. Their employment by institutions BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 155 devoted to scientific research was almost always nership with Gerth, although less harshly than in at the level of auxiliary personnel. I. P. Pavlov’s Guy Oakes and Arthur Vidich’s Collaboration, main laboratory showed that even at this level Reputation, and Ethics in American Academic there were women who not only manifested orig- Life: Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Uni- inality in experimental work but also published versity of Illinois Press, 1999). Useful editorial advanced scientific papers. In his classic volume notes describe Mills’s habit of breaking with for- on the development of the theory of conditioned mer allies, notably Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, reflexes, Pavlov referred to the publications of and Dwight MacDonald. But the letters shed lit- eleven women. tle additional light on these relationships. No let- This book is welcome as the first solid effort ters represent his colleague Robert Lynd, one of to draw a general picture of the multiple rami- several Columbia influences on the anti-Colum- fications of the ascent of Russian women to pro- bia manifesto The Sociological Imagination fessional positions in science. It also contributes (1959). All in all, Mills appears to have suffered to a better understanding of the growing move- little from the 1950s Red Scare. He condemns ment in favor of broader participation by women McCarthyism retrospectively but dismisses early in the full spectrum of professional activities. reports that the FBI is watching him (a story de- This book is a rich source of topics for special tailed in Mike Forrest Keen’s Stalking the So- studies. ciological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI ALEXANDER VUCINICH Surveillance of American Sociology [Greenwood Press, 1999]). A product of his time, Mills ig- C. Wright Mills. Letters and Autobiographical nored issues of gender and race. “A woman, any Writings. Edited by Kathryn Mills and Pamela woman, looks best at her prayers,” he noted dur- -ing his first trip to Europe in 1956 (p. 211). Al ם Mills. Introduction by Dan Wakefield. xxviii 378 pp., illus., apps., bibl., index. Berkeley/Los though women figure in the letters as wives Angeles/London: University of California Press, (three), lovers (two), and sociological collabo- 2000. $34.95. rators, the correspondence is essentially silent re- garding what he termed “my women and all of C. Wright Mills’s daughters have selected 150 that . . . a tale of monstrous tragedies” (p. 254). of 600 of their father’s letters to family, friends, He also was not much interested in the “Negro and colleagues covering successive phases of his problem,” even though he personally con- career: student rebellion in the Texas years, col- demned racism. laboration with the Wisconsin sociologist Hans On balance, these letters present a more com- Gerth on the translations in From Max Weber plex and conflicted figure than the Mills of leg- (1946), his major sociological works, foreign end, New Left or otherwise. An academic bad travel, and the antinuclear and pro-Castro ad- boy, he nonetheless played the professor game vocacy that made him a New Left icon even be- with consummate skill, creating alliances, out- fore his death from a heart attack in 1962. The flanking rivals, and cultivating references for editors delete references to “purely private” (p. foundation grants and visiting lectureships. Al- xiv) matters, omit comments that might offend though a critic of capitalism, he was increasingly the living, and note that the record is less than both creature and captive of the literary market- complete since much of Mills’s correspondence place, measuring success in terms of sales and did not survive. The result is nonetheless an in- publishers’ advances. Denouncing the rich, he teresting if skewed portrait of America’s most talked constantly of money and things, planned famous academic radical, supplementing but not his country homes and their furnishings down to replacing Irving Louis Horowitz’s masterful C. the smallest detail, loved foreign travel, and wor- Wright Mills: An American Utopian (Free Press, shiped his BMW motorcycle (the “roar of an 1983). R-69 being bench-tested,” he wrote, was pref- Silences and omissions, although sometimes erable to the world’s “finest cathedral” [p. 197]). revealing, leave many questions unanswered. The Despite a surface bravado, he was also deeply letters tell more about professional quarrels and sensitive to criticism. the politics of publishing than cross-fertilization As “Charlie” of Texas becomes “C. Wright” within Mills’s intellectual circle. Only one letter of New York, it is tempting to view Mills as a represents his longtime friendship with the his- self-invented, self-promoting outsider in the tra- torian Richard Hofstadter—already soured by dition of the Great Gatsby, a likeness noted by the time Mills commented on a draft of the Age friends and critics. But the deeper truth is that of Reform (1955): “god it is thin stuff” (p. 189). Mills apparently saw the tragedy of this role Numerous letters chronicle Mills’s troubled part- even as he played it. “[It] saddened me horribly,” 156 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) he wrote Gerth after reading Fitzgerald’s novel, tographed. A major part of the book is a selection adding that his “personal reaction” made it im- of sixty-two photographs from the total of three possible to discuss the book in a letter (p. 64). thousand made by the author. He asked ques- Mills’s turbulent, too-short life deserves atten- tions of Wiles and others and recorded both for- tion not only for what he taught about society mal and informal reactions that he observed and sociology but what he teaches about our- around him during the many public and non- selves. public presentations that were made. Also, in ROBERT C. BANNISTER keeping with the journal nature of his work, he has recorded his own reactions. Appendixes in- Ⅲ Recent (1950– ) clude an excerpt from Wiles’s 1995 Annals of Mathematics publication and a synopsis by Ram -Murty of the key results by Gerhard Frey, Jean 196 ם C. J. Mozzochi. The Fermat Diary. xii pp., frontis., illus., apps., bibl., index. Provi- Pierre Serre, and Kenneth Ribet that formed a dence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, basis for Wiles’s work. 2000. $29. It may interest historians and archivists to learn of the extent to which the primary sources This is the diary of an observant mathematician for this story include e-mail, web pages, photo- who documented the drama of the resolution of graphs, and newspaper and television interviews. Fermat’s Last Theorem (FLT) as it unfolded Though we recognize this reality of contempo- around him from 1993 to 1995. Pierre Fermat rary science, a diary account probably brings the claimed around 1637, in the most famous mar- issue home more directly than would studies by ginalia in the history of mathematics, to have a professional historians, who might feel obligated n ס n ם n proof of the theorem that x y z has no to do more of their own interviews, for example, whole number solutions for n greater than 2. The rather than rely on the media. Mathematics has other principal figure is the British mathemati- rarely had such a public spotlight turned on it— cian Andrew Wiles, who emigrated to Princeton the proof of the four-color theorem in 1976 is University in the 1980s and who in 1993, at what the only comparable event that comes to mind. for mathematicians is the relatively advanced Consequently, it has opened an unusual window age of forty, announced a proof of FLT. In the into how mathematicians do mathematics. course of Wiles’s initial exposition to mathe- ALBERT C. LEWIS maticians, before a full-fledged proof could be published, a gap was discovered. This was too David H. Levy. Shoemaker by Levy: The Man -pp., illus., ta 303 ם late to forestall announcements in the world Who Made an Impact. xvi press of an imminent proof. What had been an bles, bibl., index. Princeton, N.J./Oxford: almost secretive devotion to the task by Wiles Princeton University Press, 2000. $27.50, now became a rather more public and pressur- £15.95. ized effort over the course of nearly a year. Wiles wondered at times if success could be achieved, This book, written by a close friend, recounts but with the help of other mathematicians the episodes in the life and career of Eugene M. gap was filled in and the full formal proof pub- Shoemaker (1928–1997), an ever-youthful ge- lished in 1995. ologist with a passionate interest in applying The statement of the theorem is likely to be geological principles to the moon and planets. In the only part of the 1990s story that a nonspe- the early 1960s Shoemaker persuaded the U.S. cialist can immediately appreciate, and the au- Geological Survey to found an Astrogeology thor has not especially addressed his book to the Branch, of which he served as the first director, nonspecialist. Rather, this account is analogous to search for impact scars on the earth and to to a well-illustrated exhibition guidebook that map the moon and other planetary bodies. He serves as a memento and record to those who also played a leadership role in persuading visited in person but that is not intended fully to NASA to include scientific investigations in its inform those who did not experience it. For a plans for the Apollo missions. In the 1970s, broader account of the historical and mathemat- when images from spacecraft revealed the pres- ical background a reader can consult the three ence of impact craters on all the rocky planets principal books published previously on the and satellites, he declared that the impact of solid same topic by Amir Aczel, Simon Singh, and bodies was the most fundamental process to have Alfred J. van der Poorten. The author knew taken place on the terrestrial planets. Acting on many of the main players, attended most of the this insight, he helped to transform geology from key talks, took notes, made recordings, and pho- an earth-centered to a planetary science. Eugene BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 157

Shoemaker was, indeed, a man who made an im- the entire earth. No doubt remained that impacts pact. could cause global damage to earth’s lithosphere Details of Shoemaker’s career and his many and biosphere were such impactors to strike our accomplishments have been documented else- own planet. Levy tells us that as the last few where, including the numerous citations for hon- pieces disappeared Carolyn lamented the loss of ors bestowed upon him and, sadly, his recent “her string of pearls”; as a consolation, Gene sur- obituaries. In this book David Levy, an amateur prised her with the gift of a string of pearls. astronomer and a collaborator with Gene Shoe- This book is not, nor was it intended to be, a maker and his wife, Carolyn, gives us personal serious biography based on extensive interviews reminiscences that are available nowhere else. and archival research. Regrettably, its excellence Levy writes in a relaxed, anecdotal style that as a personal account is somewhat marred by the adds new information and a great sense of fun lack of attention from a good fact checker and to this story. editor, who would have fixed the slips that ap- Levy tells us, for example, that as a young pear here and there. For example, on page 41 member of the U.S. Geological Survey, Gene Levy describes Meteor Crater as being 1.2 ki- broke with a stern tradition by bringing his wife lometers across, and on page 43 as being 1.3 and children to live with him in his field camps, kilometers across—a small but needless discrep- arguing that their presence made him more rather ancy (the “official” diameter is 1.18 km). On than less efficient in conducting his work. It was page 144 we read that when Gene brought a car- perfectly natural, then, for Gene and Carolyn, load of students to the Grand Canyon, “a steady decades later, to work together in the Australian snow was falling as they made their way into the outback, where they discovered ten previously canyon. Gene showed a lot of enthusiasm—after unknown impact scars and confirmed several all it was his crater!” Clearly, several sentences more suspected ones. are missing from between these two sentences. From 1948 onward Gene harbored a fervent Such lapses are minor, but they are sufficiently desire to go to the moon, a wish Levy ascribes common to make the book unreliable as a source to his view of a spectacular moonrise over the of facts. Nevertheless, it is a delightful book that Colorado Plateau. Back then, such ideas were can be strongly recommended to general readers pure science fiction; but years later, when a real and also to specialists, both for their enjoyment possibility arose, Gene was overcome by a mys- and for the personal details it will add to their tifying loss of energy. When his doctor found knowledge of Eugene Shoemaker’s contribu- nothing wrong, Gene and Carolyn took a river tions to science. trip, hoping to restore his strength and spirits. URSULA B. MARVIN But his condition worsened until he found a doc- tor who recognized, on sight, that Gene was a Tony Jones. Splitting the Second: The Story of ,pp., illus., figs., tables 199 םvictim of Addison’s disease, a formerly fatal ill- Atomic Time.x ness that could be controlled by cortisone. On app., index. Bristol/Philadelphia: Institute of taking his second dose, Gene felt his energy re- Physics Publishing, 2000. $19.99, £14.99 (pa- turning, but he—like his contemporary Presi- per). dent John Kennedy—was obliged to take corti- sone every day for the rest of his life. This Science writer Tony Jones, a research astrono- dashed Gene’s hopes of going to the moon him- mer by training, has given us a lucid history of self, but he redoubled his efforts to provide geo- timekeeping and time distribution, one that em- logical training to the fighter-pilot astronauts phasizes the last fifty years of developments. who did go there. These five decades are among the most signifi- Beginning in the 1970s, Gene and Carolyn cant in the long history of advances in the ac- performed systematic searches of the night skies curacy of time measurement. Indeed, during the for comets and Near Earth Objects—bodies in period our fundamental unit of time—the sec- orbits that might cause collisions with the earth. ond—was redefined in terms of an invariant Levy joined in many of their searches, and the property of the cesium atom, thereby abandoning three of them shared the ultimate triumph of dis- its longtime astronomical basis. covering their ninth comet together—Shoe- Writing in a popular style, Jones begins at an maker-Levy 9—and watching more than twenty elementary level, describing how time was based luminous fragments of it plunge one by one into on the rotation of the Earth. He details the nature the atmosphere of Jupiter. Several of the pieces of the corrections that were applied to the pas- sent up dark plumes that lasted more than a year sage of the Sun’s center over the observer’s me- and would have been large enough to envelope ridian in order to produce a uniform time system, 158 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) one in which all days had the same duration, whose appearance will serve to document further within small fractions of a second. He highlights advances in the science and technology of time. improvements in the precision of timekeepers Considering that standards working groups areal- and how they led to a better understanding of the ready studying the ramifications of dropping the Earth’s motion and, eventually, to the need for Leap Second, another correction that Jones de- a more uniform time scale. Jones provides easy- scribes, we will not have long to wait. to-understand examples of various phenomena IAN R. BARTKY affecting modern timekeeping, giving readers an appreciation of the technologies as well as the Alfred K. Mann. For Better or for Worse: The exciting physics associated with the myriad ad- Marriage of Science and Government in the -pp., illus., bibl., in 240 ם vances. In addition, he describes a number of United States. xviii uses of precise time to demonstrate the linkage dex. New York/Chichester: Columbia Univer- between laboratory devices and the complemen- sity Press, 2000. tary distribution of very precise time signals. The most important application today is probably the In the preface to For Better or for Worse, Alfred global positioning system (GPS) of satellites, Mann cautions, “This book is not a scholarly his- whose onboard atomic clocks have revolution- tory with any claim to completeness.” This is fair ized air and sea navigation and which give us the warning. The book is a somewhat idiosyncratic means to know time accurately anywhere in the discussion of the development of what Mann world. terms “the science establishment” in the United An author writing a summary history neces- States from World War II to the present. The sarily draws upon the works of others, and ap- establishment is defined rather loosely as the parently Jones used the late Derek Howse’s his- complex of federal agencies, universities, indus- tory of nineteenth-century timekeeping as given trial firms, and researchers that support and con- in Greenwich Time and the Discovery of the duct the nation’s basic and applied research. Longitude, published in 1980 and revised in Within this “establishment,” the book’s focus 1997. The later edition is more properly a reis- is almost exclusively on the four agencies that sue, for its text does not reflect current under- fund most of federal research: the National Sci- standing of the history of timekeeping and as- ence Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes tronomy—despite the fact that the sources are of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy listed in Howse’s bibliography and notes. Thus (DOE) and its organizational antecedents, we have Jones repeating Howse’s erroneous mainly the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), statement that the Greenwich time ball was the and the National Aeronautics and Space Admin- “world’s first regular public time signal” and istration (NASA). Defense is treated very briefly. writing that “in 1884 an international conference Industry (except the nuclear industry) is virtually in Washington set up a system of time zones for absent. The universities are seen mainly in re- the whole world”—common misstatements, but lation to the funding agencies. And Congress, a bit disheartening to see them once more. More- with only a couple of exceptions, is a black box. over, because of the focus on astronomy at Mann, an emeritus professor of physics at the Greenwich, studies of timekeeping and time dis- University of Pennsylvania, has had a distin- tribution by the Astronomer Royal for Scotland guished research career in elementary particle Robert A. Sampson have been slighted: Samp- physics and astrophysics. He was associate di- son’s results were critical in the subsequent se- rector of the Princeton-Penn Accelerator in the lection of technical work undertaken by the time 1960s, served on the boards of trustees of two committees of the International Astronomical university consortia that manage major scientific Union after World War I. Of course, the histori- facilities, and was a member of the Department cal errors do not detract from the central thrust of Energy’s High Energy Physics Advisory of the work. Panel (HEPAP). Jones’s book is a most welcome addition to the His treatment of government-science relations literature. With the exception of James Jesperson reflects this background. Physics and atomic en- and Jane Fitz-Randolph’s From Sundials to ergy and their patron agencies (first AEC, more Atomic Clocks, now in its second edition, there is recently DOE) receive the most attention. Events nothing available for technically oriented non- and personalities in the nuclear power industry, specialists who need an introduction to current for example, are discussed in detail, while NSF, practices in timekeeping. Specialists also will NIH, and NASA affairs are painted with a find Splitting the Second a useful resource. Both broader brush. The White House Office of Sci- groups will look forward to the next edition, ence and Technology Policy and other presiden- BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 159 tial advisory bodies appear only at the periphery. activities in which the United States government Chapter 7 does include a table listing presidential has misled the American public. The failed science advisors from 1939 to 1999, but, oddly, promise of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense it is not cited in the text. Indeed, the chapter Initiative, or “Star Wars,” has lured countless in- makes no reference at all to presidential science dustry representatives and government officials advice. into rigging tests, falsifying results, and with- There are many errors in the book, some se- holding information. The government used se- rious: NIH is said to have grown to seven insti- crecy and intimidation, trying to suppress the as- tutes by 1995 (p. 198). In fact, it had seventen sertion of MIT professor Ted Postol that claims (twenty-one if one counts the National Library for the Patriot missile’s success rate in the Gulf of Medicine, the Fogarty International Center, War vastly exceeded the evidence. Similar tech- and similar bodies). Discretionary funding niques were employed in the mid 1990s to dis- makes up about 34 percent of the federal budget, credit a study done by Postol and other col- not 16 percent as stated on page 206. The Su- leagues suggesting that the government’s personic Transport (SST) program did not pro- proposed Theater High Altitude Air Defense duce a Mach 3 airliner (p. 148). It was killed by (THAAD) might violate the Anti-Ballistic Mis- Congress in 1971. NASA’s aeronautics program sile Treaty. Mitchell relies primarily on second- did produce the XB-70, an experimental bomber ary sources to document these accounts; readers that flew at Mach 3. The book’s most significant familiar with the issues will find little that is new shortcoming, however, from the standpoint of in his treatment. history of science, is its lack of documentation. The second level at which his book operates Mann provides only forty-four footnotes, citing is more original. He subjects statements by gov- a total of ten sources. A more extensive set of ernment officials to rhetorical analysis. He references is included, but without specific ci- hopes, thereby, both to reveal the misinforma- tations. tion and to create something of a taxonomy of Despite these limitations, patient readers will dissimulation. He notes, for example, that Pres- find some reward in the book. Researchers who ident Reagan’s rhetoric in proposing strategic have heard NIH described as “the crown jewel of defense was to equate it with disarmament. Vol- the federal research enterprise” and seen it ume 7 of the so-called Fletcher report on ballistic granted huge budget increases in recent years will missile defense revealed the system’s vulnera- find it sobering to read about how the agency bility to countermeasures; the volume was with- struggled through bureaucratic battles over its held from publication. The Rumsfeld report, management and peer review procedures as well which purported to establish that rogue states as the political hostility of the Nixon administra- posed a ballistic-missile threat to the United tion in the 1960s and 1970s. And Mann’s descrip- States, was used instead to validate the claim that tions of NSF’s travails over Project Mohole and existing missile defense technology could work. its social science curriculum project, “Man: A When Ted Postol succeeded in demonstrating Course of Study” (MACOS), though well- that a government-sponsored rebuttal of the documented elsewhere, are useful reminders that study he coauthored on THAAD was fatally NSF’s congressional honeymoon is also a rela- flawed, the head of Ballistic Missile Defense, tively recent phenomenon. In all, however, the who sponsored the study, chose to represent the book’s contributions to the literature on postwar difference as a “healthy scholarly debate.” When science-government relations are modest. the government is on the rhetorical offensive, it ALBERT H. TEICH polarizes debate: to oppose Star Wars was to op- pose disarmament. When the government is on Gordon R. Mitchell. Strategic Deception: the rhetorical defensive, it obfuscates: refutation Rhetoric, Science, and Politics in Missile De- of evidence is simply scholarly disagreement. In fense Advocacy. (Rhetoric and Public Affairs Se- the end, Mitchell’s exploration of rhetorical ,pp., illus., fig., bibl., in- techniques provides some illuminating insights [9] ם 390 ם ries.) xx dex. East Lansing: Michigan State University though it does not seem to add up to a model Press, 2000. $55. that one might apply in other cases. Nor is it clear that these rhetorical strategies are anything Gordon Mitchell mixes scholarship and polem- more than ad hoc responses to the politics of the ics in a deliberate attempt to intevene “in pres- issue at hand. ent-day missile defense controversies” (p. 21). On the third level, epistemology, the inherent His book operates on three levels. First, he pre- conflict between scholarship and polemics be- sents three case studies of recent missile defense comes manifest. Though Mitchell promises to fo- 160 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) cus on “the interpretation of controversy” (p. 22), Originally the economy in East Germany was in practice he places “strategic deception at the very industrialized and technologically highly center of attention” (p. 11). He is less interested developed in crucial areas such as mechanical in locating “the stages of the dispute” than in engineering, machine tools, office machinery, demonstrating that the critics were right and the chemistry, optics, and precision mechanics, government was lying. Even his title, Strategic along with the camera industry and motor in- Deception, confuses his focus. This term usu- dustry. Immediately after the war, this capacity ally refers to counterintelligence designed to was weakened by dismantling, reparations, and deceive the enemy, not polemics designed to the evacuation or internment of experts by the persuade the public. Most of the deceit he de- victorious powers. In the 1950s, every effort was scribes is ad hoc and banal; only the special made to develop modern technologies in the claims of secrecy and national security distin- GDR. This is verified in full detail by the anal- guish it from the practices of other government ysis of the transition from coal-based to petro- agencies and programs. One can see most of leum-based technology for production of organic them, for example, in the controversy surround- chemicals (pp. 80–93) and the evolution of ing the creation of energy policy within the cur- semiconductor technology (pp. 93–109). rent Bush administration. Although the GDR with its efforts wasn’t far Those who do not know the details of his case behind other industrialized countries at that time, studies will find this a useful, if somewhat wordy the East German evolution of technology fell and redundant, introduction. Those who want to back in the early years of the GDR’s existence. understand how government officials and con- The causes were the weak research and devel- tractors cross over the line from rhetorical flour- opment work in the GDR, the limited support of ish to abuse of power and blatant misrepresen- Soviet help, especially on semiconductor tech- tation will be disappointed. The value that might nology, the chronic lack of foreign currency re- have been added to this familiar material by a serves, the COCOM restrictions, and the migra- scholarly analysis is compromised by the polem- tion of scientists and engineers to the West. ics. Despite these serious defects, work on a digital ALEX ROLAND computer began at the Technical University of Dresden under the direction of Nicolaus Joachim Raymond G. Stokes. Constructing Socialism: Lehmann in 1950. In 1953–1954 Herbert Kor- Technology and Change in East Germany, tum and Wilhelm Ka¨mmerer in the VEB Carl 1945–1990. (John Hopkins Studies in the His- Zeiss began work on an optical calculating ma- pp., illus., bibl., chine, a working model of which was available 260 ם tory of Technology.) xii index. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University in December 1954. Press, 2000. $42.50. From the viewpoint of technology develop- ment in the GDR, different elements of socialism This book outlines the evolution of some fields are introduced and analyzed, such as the role of of technology and science in East Germany that group technology developed by the Soviet in- were significant for industrial production during ventor Sergei Mitrafanow, the problem of stan- the existence of the German Democratic Repub- dards in industrial production, and the new eco- lic (GDR). A description of political and eco- nomic system. In 1961 the construction of the nomic conditions creates a lively picture of ef- Berlin Wall was a deep break in the realization forts, achievements, and misadventures on the of all these political, economic, and technologi- basis of a particularly large number of newly ex- cal initiatives and plans. Actually there was a ploited sources. relative stabilization of conditions in the GDR, During the last decade numerous papers on the but relations with the West became more com- history of the GDR have appeared in print. Con- plicated and the Sovietization increased percep- structing Socialism has distinctive features, tibly. however. Giving some examples of high tech- For the 1970s and 1980s the author introduces nology, Raymond Stokes follows up docu- the program of secondary raw materials system mented successes, their causes and their fates, as (Sero) and the Stasi’s (governmental security) well their dependency on the entire political and role in GDR technological development. During economic milieu. There are no glorifications or these two decades the GDR was incapable of nostalgic excuses for the social system of the producing world-class technology without the GDR, but there is a remarkable approximation Stasi and outside the area of the recycling sys- of realistically historical conditions in the coun- tem. With supreme effort, the government tried try. to develop the electronics and computing indus- BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 161 try, in terms of both research and development ronment (Berkeley: University of California and production. Notably, the efforts for the de- Press, 1992) contain a wealth of information velopment and production of the one-mega chip about policies of the Atomic Energy Commis- as well as the ambitious project of the 32-bit mi- sion and its successor agencies the Department croprocessor are described in this section. Al- of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commis- though huge sums were invested in these fields, sion. Walker, although a federal employee, al- leading to distortion in the entire development ways has been evenhanded in his treatment of of the country, the results remained unsatisfac- radiation controversies, and no one writing in the tory and the gap relative to other industrialized field would be without his works as a reference. countries increased (pp. 177–194). Even gran- Walker’s new book is billed in the introduc- diose targets weren’t able to hide the fact that by tion as more than simply the final volume of the the end of the 1980s the system of the GDR was Controlling and Containing trilogy. Instead, its in the throes of political death and the GDR title and subtitle point to a larger story of radi- lacked the economic power to carry out such ation in the twentieth century, rather than just technical peak performance. picking up in the 1970s where Containing left Unfortunately, the author takes less notice of off. The book, however, falls short of that goal. the developments and products that were effec- The first sixty years of the century are summa- tive in the GDR, such as Mikroelektronik Erfurt, rized in the first 28 pages, with the remaining Carl Zeiss Jena, or Robotron Dresden Computers 128 pages covering the period from 1960 to the from the ROBOTRON 300 (circa 325 were built present. This editorial decision does not serve by 1972) to the EC 1056 (1985–1989) or the the book well, as Walker’s descriptions of policy personal computer PC 1715. These devices did debates of the 1960s and 1970s are simply not play a noticeable part in the economy and sci- gripping enough to justify the space allotted, ence of the country and expressed a high com- while his sections on earlier history are so com- petitiveness of the GDR in the framework of pact as to be lifeless. COMECON as well. What this book does well is summarize the The book presents a convincing outline of the major policy debates surrounding the “permis- development of some fields of high technology sible” dose for radiation in the twentieth century, in the GDR based on essential and numerous re- mostly from the perspective of federal agencies searches; it is clearly laid out and will stimulate and scientists in charge of setting those stan- further studies. The explanatory statements are dards. Walker takes pains to point out the prob- founded on fact and convincing, especially be- lems surrounding the setting of radiation stan- cause of the close integration of technological, dards, including lack of knowledge of long-term economic, and political arguments. Moreover, and genetic effects, the difficulty of creating the bibliographic essay on the evolution of tech- standards for medical personnel, workers, pa- nology in the GDR (pp. 243–251) is of great tients and the general public, and the difficulties value. Taken as a whole, this book is a benefit, of reconciling the American environmental and everybody who deals with the history of movement and the need for nuclear power. technology in East Germany during the second Despite its strengths, however, Permissible part of the twentieth century will gain a great Dose sometimes reads more like an executive deal from it. summary than a book. Controversies and politi- MARTIN GUNTAU cal conflicts are disposed of in a paragraph or two, with little in-depth description of why nu- J. Samuel Walker. Permissible Dose: A History clear issues received so much attention in the of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Cen- 1970s–1990s. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, pp., illus., index. Berkeley/Los and the human radiation experiments scandal are 168 ם tury. xii Angeles/London: University of California Press, all summarized in a few pages, if not paragraphs, 2000. $35, £22. without tying them to a larger argument or nar- rative. Significant events are decontextualized or J. Samuel Walker, in his first two volumes on simply left out. For example, the “Green run,” the setting of radiation limits, set the standard Hanford’s 1949 radiation releases, is mentioned for writing about federal radiation protection in the section on the federal government’s pub- policies. His Controlling the Atom: The Begin- licity problems in the 1980s, not in its proper nings of Nuclear Regulation, 1946–62 (Berke- cold war context. Another problem with the ley: University of California Press, 1985), writ- book is the lack of attention to occupational ex- ten with George Mazuzan, and Containing the posure to radiation—Karen Silkwood goes un- Atom: Nuclear Regulation in a Changing Envi- mentioned, as does treatment of controversies 162 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) over radiation standards for workers in the Oak Through it all, she maintains a fascination with Ridge, Hanford, and Paducah atomic production gender and with language as shapers of scientific facilities. Readers looking for historical back- thought. ground on the federal program to compensate Here Keller explores what she sees as the di- workers at these facilities for their occupational vergent histories of studies of genes and use of diseases will find next to nothing of relevance. the term “gene.” While scientists continue to talk While this book will prove a handy one-vol- of genes much as they have done for a century ume reference on complex debates involving the now—as stable, discrete units directing the ac- number of rems per year that were considered tivities of the cell and the development of the the permissible dose for radiation exposure, it organism—the molecular biology of the last does little to shed light on the human lives be- forty years has seen a breaking down of the hind that number—either the lives of those who boundaries of the gene, physically, chemically, set radiation exposure standards or those who and physiologically. Keller begins by attacking suffered the consequences of working under the notion of genetic stability—whence the in- those standards. troductory quotation about evolvability. Next RUSSELL OLWELL she explores the idea of genetic regulation, the fact that genes do not make anything, nor do they Evelyn Fox Keller. The Century of the Gene.ii literally control anything. The molecular biolo- :pp., illus., figs., bibl., index. Cambridge, gist’s version of the chicken-and-egg problem is 186 ם Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 2000. Which comes first—proteins or genes? Proteins $22.95. read the DNA that provides the instructions to make more proteins. Keller argues for chickens. “Evolvability,” writes Evelyn Fox Keller, “refers The most important idea in the book is Kel- to the capacity to generate any kind of heritable ler’s distinction between a developmental pro- phenotypic variation upon which selection can gram and a genetic program. The former is a act” (p. 39). Whether one considers genes or or- sequence of ontological steps in the life of an ganisms, the potential to adapt and evolve, to organism; it does not presuppose that all steps in respond flexibly to a changing environment, is the program are encoded in genes or that all steps now recognized by many biologists as itself a are determined prior to the beginning of devel- trait actively favored by natural selection. Keller opment. Developmental programs may be de- correctly presents this idea as an antidote to an rived empirically, independently of genetic anal- old notion of genetic stability. She seems not to ysis. In contrast, the genetic program is a more appreciate how well it applies to her own subject. recent idea that does locate the program instruc- The Century of the Gene is Keller’s latest col- tions in the nucleus in the fertilized egg. For Kel- lection of linked essays, six tidy, intelligent ler, genetic programs carry implications of de- shovelfuls from her ongoing effort to undermine terminism, a restriction of vision in our attempts the claims of mainstream molecular biology and to understand nature. to substitute from the scientific margins an al- The term “gene,” Keller concludes, has out- ternative interpretation. This project stems from lived its utility. Molecular biologists no longer her philosophical biography of the geneticist work with anything so discrete as genes. Their Barbara McClintock, published in 1983. In her own data, she argues, show that genes and ge- Nobel speech, also from 1983, McClintock nomes are flexible, modular, and interactive. wrote of the genome as a dynamic “sensitive or- Keller wishes for, but does not offer, a new term gan of the cell,” responsive, flexible, and inter- or set of terms that would better reflect current acting with the environment. For half a century, understanding of genetics and development. McClintock had railed at biologists that genes If biologists have shown that the gene concept must be studied not as autonomous, indepen- is outmoded, why don’t they know it? Keller’s dently acting units but rather as parts of an ex- answer is that the biologists have not yet rec- quisite whole, acting in concert. Keller cele- ognized the implications of their own results; brated this in McClintock’s work, though many their language lags behind their knowledge. have read Keller as applying to this view of na- Eventually, she believes, either they will drop ture a gloss of feminism that McClintock re- the term “gene” or biology must suffocate in its jected. More recently, among other projects, shell. Yet the changes she describes have been Keller has criticized the “master molecule” con- under way for decades and biology shows no cept in biology, examined the use of metaphor signs of slowing. Keller recognizes this, and in in science, and celebrated Christiane Nu¨sslein- the conclusion she briefly acknowledges the ob- Vollhard’s studies in developmental biology. vious solution to the conundrum: that biology BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 163 continues to grow because of, not despite, this on proteinoid microspheres (though Fox did). linguistic flexibility. This important idea de- And Fox’s ability to carry on research at all is serves fuller treatment. attributed to his character as “an excellent self- As with the gene in nature, so with the word promoter,” with the veiled implication that he “gene” in the scientific lexicon: its very evolv- was thus able to dupe early NASA Life Sciences ability is selected for, a crucial trait that ensures administrators into giving him funding. Whether its survival. one thinks that Fox’s research program actually NATHANIEL C. COMFORT brought out any useful, important insights or not (and some think so), this is surely an oversim- Christopher Wills; Jeffrey Bada. The Spark of plification of a complex story of the institutional environment that exobiology operated in during 291 םLife: Darwin and the Primeval Soup.xx pp., illus., figs., index. Cambridge, Mass.: Per- its early years. NASA administrators saw genu- seus Publishing, 2000. $17 (paper). inely promising things in Fox’s work, and even if most of those have not panned out, there is Where is the line between successful popular sci- surely a story here worth telling about changing ence writing informed by scientists’ own recol- ideas within the research community and within lections and truly reliable history? This is a book the NASA patronage system. The competition of the first kind that dallies with history but from the mid 1950s until at least the late 1970s clearly remains a problematic source. As popular between Fox’s “school” and the opponents, in- science writing about work since 1953 The Spark cluding Miller and Norman Horowitz, is a story of Life is very successful and conveys a great full of historical interest, both in research jour- deal of information about origin of life research nals and behind the scenes. and exobiology in highly readable form. Chris- Regarding historical material before 1953, the topher Wills and Jeffrey Bada are, respectively, first forty pages of the book, this work is whig- an evolutionary biologist and an organic chem- gish to the point of being completely unreliable. ist/biochemist oriented toward origin of life Again, a single example will have to suffice. studies. Their strength lies in clear, simple writ- John Tyndall is credited with coining the term ing about sometimes complex research. Their “panspermia.” Then William Thomson is touted chief weakness as historians is that they have as a proponent in 1871 of the altered meaning, strong opinions about the field of research they that life could be present throughout space—for are describing. They are friends and admirers of example, carried on meteors yet still remaining Stanley Miller (Miller was Bada’s Ph.D. advi- viable. We are left with a sense that both Tyndall sor), and they fundamentally share his research and Thomson, being “scientific giants” of the orientation. They thus also share his enemies. time (i.e., heroes of the authors and “forerun- Approached with this in view, the book can be ners” of views they advocate), both basically a very useful source about the Miller “school” agreed on this subject and that only the popular and its point of view in origin of life debates press ridiculed Thomson for this idea. But Tyn- since 1953. But it certainly should not be mis- dall and the Darwinians all ridiculed Thomson’s taken for a neutral source just because it appears idea at the time. And Thomson himself proposed to be an introductory text. the idea as part of a unified campaign against Let us choose a single example to see how this Darwinian evolution and against modern ideas plays out: the case of Sidney Fox, the protein on the origin of life supported by Tyndall and chemist and longstanding Miller antagonist. Huxley, a covert way of holding out against the While the development of Miller’s ideas is laid banishing of a divine Creator by abiogenesis. out in much fascinating detail and sympatheti- But we learn none of this: the ideas are bereft of cally given many pages of text, Fox’s equally their historical context, and even their scientific long career is summed up in less than five pages context, in the same old way that the simplistic as a “false start” in understanding evolution of “historical sections” of science textbooks have the first organic molecules into more complex long distorted the stories they tell. Wills and proto–living systems. Fox’s career did indeed Bada’s treatment of Pasteur, Pouchet, and Bas- take some odd turns, and his publicity seeking tian similarly repeat many misstatements from became something quite out of the norm after he past internalist histories. This is the case despite was marginalized in the research community. the fact that the authors show in their footnotes But the initial differences in approach between that they are aware of much of the recent work Fox and Miller are here passed over quickly, of professional historians on these subjects. leaving the impression that Fox never really had This book, then, is a source to be handled with any answers to Miller’s criticisms of his work some caution but useful on the period from 1953 164 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

-pp., index. New York/Lon 197 םto the present. On the period before 1953 it Haraway.x should not be considered useful history. don: Routledge, 1999. $17.95, Can $26.95 (pa- JAMES STRICK per).

Brian J. Ford (Editor). Institute of Biology: The Donna Haraway, one of the premier feminist sci- -pp., illus., apps. Lon- ence theorists of our generation, is a trained bi 135 םFirst Fifty Years.iv don: Institute of Biology, 2000. £10. ologist who has used a menagerie of creatures— the cyborg, the vampire, OncoMouse௢, and pri- After five years of consultation, the Institute of mates—as markers to analyze the intersections Biology formally organized in early 1950. Its among nature, culture, gender, and science. Her goals were twofold: first, to watch relevant leg- writing about these creatures is unique: dense, islation and provide the voice of British biolo- circling around, doubling back to move forward. gists on international issues; second, to serve the This book, a conversation with Thyrza Nichols labor and community needs of British biology in Goodeve, uses a more informal voice to discuss both academic and industrial sectors. Years later the intellectual, professional, geographical, and the institute expanded to incorporate other roles: personal influences that shaped Haraway’s sin- consultant accreditation, biology education, de- gular vision. gree regulation, and history of biology. A most surprising influence is the Catholicism This anthology celebrates the institute’s fiftieth of her upbringing—she was schooled by nuns anniversary. Short papers written by members of and considered becoming a medical missionary. the institute’s history of biology network focus on Although she no longer adheres to the tenets of particular decades. These are interspersed with the religion, Haraway attributes her linking of brief recollections from select participants in in- the figurative and the material to an indelible im- stitute activities. Appendixes list institute officers, pression of the Eucharist. Place has also been symposia titles, publications, and details on the defining: Denver, where she grew up, as a bor- organization and events of institute branches. derland; California, as a blend of agriculture and These authors practice history as chronology technology, populated by “Californios” (p. 42), and fact-collecting. They ask limited questions as the location of the history of consciousness of past events. No effort is made to connect in- program of the University of California at Santa stitute activities to larger issues. No effort is Cruz, where she was appointed to the first po- made to understand why these events took place, sition in feminist theory in the United States and what enabled them, or how their character came where she has trained multitudes of students, to be defined. No effort is made to compare what both graduates and undergraduates. happened here with what happened along similar Haraway’s background in the life sciences lines elsewhere in British science, British labor, permeates this conversation. Architecture and its or the life sciences abroad. No effort is made to emergence in embryonic development stimu- justify claims of impact and influence. This book lated her initial interest in biology, and the title is simply a celebration of activity written for in- How Like a Leaf stems from Haraway’s attempt siders who are celebrating their own achieve- to compare her own structure to that of a leaf. ments. Although they can be proud of their ac- Biology, with all of its subdisciplines, is the complishments, this book fails to offer much foundation for her analysis of nature-culture, us- meaningful explanation. ing one to inform the other. “We live intimately Edited by Brian J. Ford, this book has two ‘as’ and ‘in’ a biological world” (p. 25, italics in values for analytical historians. First, some rem- original), but it is a world that is historically con- iniscences offer interesting suggestions for fu- tingent on and tied to culture. Her theory is re- ture study, such as Sam Berry’s tale about pro- lational, seeking to challenge boundaries, re- posing a Royal Society of Biology. Second, the quiring responsibility for their construction, and simple collecting of facts makes this book useful taking in all views, simultaneously. The multiple for reference, though an index would have been perspectives occur horizontally and vertically, helpful. For more than this, historians must look from miniatures to aggregates, zooming between elsewhere. them. JOE CAIN A large portion of this slim book discusses Haraway’s adult personal ties, which, like her Ⅲ Sociology & Philosophy of Science writing, also are unique. Goodeve claims that these relationships show how Haraway “lives the Donna J. Haraway; Thyrza Nichols Goodeve. theory she writes and teaches” (p. 63), but Har- How Like a Leaf: An Interview with Donna J. away does not explicitly endorse this idea, say- BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 165 ing that the relationships were only possible at a tonomous, and objective. Knowledge is perfor- particular point in time. Without linking them to mative and historically contingent. It is both the body of work, the assertions run the risk of various and able to be compared across diverse resembling gossip. The conversation is stilted at cultures. Against the claim of science to repre- times, the flow interrupted when Goodeve quotes sent universal, objective knowledge, Turnbull material from other writers (e.g., Martin Heideg- points to the conclusions of philosophers such as ger) whom Haraway does not immediately ac- Richard Rorty who have examined the indeter- knowledge as influential. A complete bibliogra- minacies of modern scientific and technical ways phy of Haraway’s writings, easily accessible of knowing. Using an eclectic variety of studies citations for works discussed during the talks, in philosophy and the sociology of knowledge, and more careful copyediting (e.g., Wenner- Turnbull reiterates Wittgenstein’s point that Gren Institute, not Wenner Grey Institute) would meaning consists of embodied performance and have been helpful. Readers of this book will also usage. find worthwhile dialogue between Haraway and For me the most illuminating part of this book Constance Penley and Andrew Ross (Constance is its comparison of the development of Western Penley and Andrew Ross, “Cyborgs at Large: cartographic techniques in the “age of discov- Interview with Donna Haraway,” in Technocul- ery” with the profoundly different navigational ture, ed. Penley and Ross. [Minneapolis: Uni- system that was developed in the Pacific by versity of Minnesota Press, 1991]). Polynesians. Turnbull shows the difficulties that Those who come to this book looking for the early Europeans had in assembling the multitude canvas on which Haraway has painted an un- of local knowledges about place and distance common picture of our world will be enlight- into a systematic cartographic knowledge in the ened. Those who come looking for clues to un- interest of the state. He then discusses the pro- ravel the density of the words in her texts may foundly different but also highly sophisticated be disappointed. But who would want directions navigational system of the Polynesians. They de- for reading Haraway? Part of the joy is finding veloped what he calls “a dynamic cognitive something new each time we read an essay “with map,” a map based on a star compass and etak, passion and irony, where passion is as important as irony” (p. 172). a system of mental representation in which the canoe was conceived as stationary and a refer- MURIEL LEDERMAN ence island as moving backward against the ris- David Turnbull. Masons, Tricksters, and Car- ing and setting points of the stars. It was a com- tographers: Comparative Studies in the Soci- plex system of navigation that Polynesian ology of Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge. navigators learned by long years of study from pp., illus., bibl., index. Amsterdam: childhood; it allowed an accurate estimation of 263 ם x Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000. $24, the distance traveled. Pacific oceanic navigation £14.99. was based on this system of mapping and on a key, highly sophisticated technology, the sea- Although these essays derive from much previ- ously published material, the whole is greater than its parts. The collection allows a compara- tive view of a variety of local knowledge sys- tems, from that of the medieval masons who built the cathedral of Chartres to early modern cartography, and from the complex navigation system of Micronesia to present-day research on malaria and on turbulence. David Turnbull mar- shals local systems of knowledge to substantiate his thesis that “there is not just one universal form of knowledge (Western science) but a va- riety of knowledge” (p. 1). Turnbull aims to show that knowledge is mot- ley—that it is assembled out of heterogeneous components. It is a product of social labor. Its contents are pertinent to the locality in which it Late fifteenth-century local estate map, Yorkshire was produced. As such, contrary to the claims of (from Turnball, Masons, Tricksters, and modernist Western science, it is not rational, au- Cartographers, p. 102). 166 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) worthy canoe. Turnbull here undermines the and concrete human progress. This book is a “great divide” between so-called traditional valuable contribution toward such a goal. knowledge systems and modern scientific ones. PAMELA O. LONG He effectively questions assumptions such as the one that contrasts deliberate European discov- Fritz Ringer. Toward a Social History of eries of the Americas with accidental Polynesian Knowledge: Collected Essays. 239 pp., frontis., discoveries of the Pacific islands. figs., tables, index. New York/Oxford: Berghahn He takes a similar approach in his discussion Books, 2001. $49.95. of the building of Gothic cathedrals, which he Fritz Ringer is best known to historians of sci- conceives as sites of experimental practice, as ence for his book The Decline of the German “laboratories.” He describes the cathedrals as Mandarins: The German Academic Community, sites of local knowledge, built with talk, tradi- 1890–1933 (Harvard, 1969), a work that has in- tion, and templates (patterns that the stonemason formed so much scholarship on the history of uses to cut the stone). Pointing to the evolution German science. But Ringer has also written ma- of the master mason into the architect in the fif- jor books on the social history of European edu- teenth and sixteenth centuries, he suggests that cation systems in the nineteenth and twentieth thereby “theory became divorced from practice centuries, as well as on French academic culture and skill became expertise” (p. 79). Here Turn- in the decades around 1900. This volume of col- bull oversimplifies the later development. His- lected essays makes available in English a num- tory itself becomes a template cut for the pur- ber of pieces he published during the 1980s and poses of his own theoretical structure, rather than 1990s, often in journals or volumes unfamiliar the complex, locally contingent, messy, and in- to most historians of science. herently interpretive entity that it is. Calling ca- The essays fall into three categories. Some il- thedrals “laboratories” and the process of their lustrate Ringer’s long-standing interest in the construction “technoscience” places modern historical sociology of the German academic categories onto the past in a procedure that can community. One of them locates the origins of only create a distorting lens. Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge in the This criticism can be directed at many social context of the social crisis of 1920s Germany. studies of science that use historical examples “Bildung and Its Implications in the German and is not meant to detract from the great value Tradition, 1890–1930” traces the impact of this of this collection of interrelated studies. For educational concept on the political behavior modern science, Turnbull emphasizes both the (and to some extent the scholarly predilections) motley assemblage and indeterminacy of scien- of academics. And “A Sociography of German tific practices (his case studies of malaria re- Academics, 1863–1938” is a preliminary anal- search and turbulence provide concrete evi- ysis of what can be learned from survey data dence). Rather than modern science being collected in the 1950s by Helmut Plessner and superior to other knowledge systems, both are his colleagues at Go¨ttingen (now available, based on local practices. The question then be- thanks to Ringer and collaborators, as an elec- comes not how scientific methodology achieves tronic database). universal, objective truth, but how technoscien- A second group of essays is concerned with tific knowledge spaces achieves apparent uni- the social history of European secondary and versality and connectedness. Turnbull’s answer higher education systems. “Education, Econ- includes technical devices and social strategies omy, and Society in Germany, 1800–1960” that treat various instances of knowledge/prac- summarizes parts of Ringer’s Education and So- tice as equivalent and that make connections ciety in Modern Europe (Indiana, 1979). For his- through ordering. He also shows the legitimacy torians of science its most important finding is and sophistication of knowledge systems that de- probably the “segmentation” of secondary edu- veloped before or outside of modern techno- cation from the late nineteenth century on: that scientific knowledge, and he creates a legitimiz- is, pupils from different class backgrounds and ing space for both kinds, emphasizing the value social statuses tended to go to schools with dif- of comparison and reciprocity. Rejecting the ex- ferent curricula (“classical” versus “modern”). tremes of both the modern and the postmodern, Having internalized different kinds of educa- he aims to create a middle ground that he calls tional, and more generally cognitive, values, the the transmodern, a ground in that reciprocal di- different “segments” then tended to opt for dif- alogue between scientific and other kinds of ferent kinds of higher education and even to knowledge systems can create both new insights study different disciplines. “Education and the BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 167

Middle Classes in Modern France” is actually a most certainly is. Can a Darwinian Be a Chris- comparative analysis of French and German sys- tian? provides an energetic, balanced, and tems of secondary and higher education, ca. thoughtful consideration of the issues populating 1800 to the 1960s. In neither France nor Ger- contemporary discussion about Darwinian evo- many, Ringer argues, was the structure of the lution and the Christian religion. Historians of educational system primarily driven by the needs “The Evolution Wars”—the title, by the way, of of the economy. Moreover, throughout this pe- Ruse’s second-most-recent book (ABC-CLIO, riod both national systems tended to reinforce 2000)—will remember Richard Dawkins’s 1986 existing hierarchies of social status rather than boast that “Darwin made it possible to be an in- to promote social mobility or open the doors of tellectually fulfilled atheist” (The Blind Watch- higher education to more people. maker [Norton, 1986], p. 6). Can a Darwinian Finally, two essays illustrate Ringer’s com- Be a Christian? stands as the most objective ob- parative and sociological approach to intellectual jection to Dawkins’s claim from one who, like history (and would be useful for teaching). “The Dawkins, insists that “Darwinism rules trium- Intellectual field, Intellectual History, and the phant” (p. ix). This is the first way in which the Sociology of Knowledge” draws on Pierre Bour- book is praiseworthy: Ruse takes both Darwin- dieu’s concepts of field, habitus, and capital and ism and Christianity seriously. While writing outlines the analytical framework that Ringer with zeal, good humor, and punch, Ruse, for the used in Fields of Knowledge: French Academic most part, eschews caricature, condescension, Culture in Comparative Perspective, 1890– and patronizing remarks about the Christianity 1920 (Cambridge, 1992). “Ideas of Education that he personally rejects. and of Systematic Knowledge” is a comparative The result is a very rewarding book, especially analysis of ideologies of secondary education in for those seeking a survey of the issues and points France and Germany that gave rise to particular for fruitful conversation. Following two very intellectual orientations and conceptual prefer- nicely done introductory chapters on “Darwin- ences. As such it provides a nice example of the ism” and “Christianity,” respectively, the book concept of habitus. ambitiously (but successfully) devotes a chapter Historians of French and German science to each of ten subjects—every one a fitting book around 1900 will obviously find these essays of topic in its own right—relevant to assessing the value, as will anyone interested in styles of sci- compatibility of Christianity with Darwinian ence (or medicine or technology), whether these evolution: “Origins,” “Humans,” “Naturalism,” are conceived as national traditions or much “Design,” “Pain,” “Extraterrestrials,” “Christian more local ones associated with particular insti- Ethics,” “Social Darwinism,” “Sociobiology,” tutions or schools. Ringer’s work demonstrates and “Freedom and Determinism.” Following how the basic cognitive predispositions that each focused investigation of the hurdles Chris- characterize such styles often originate in the tianity and Darwinism present to each other, Ruse structure of schooling and higher education. offers some variety of this conclusion: “There is JONATHAN HARWOOD no reason now to cast aside your Christian faith” (p. 156). In some cases his appreciation of Chris- Michael Ruse. Can a Darwinian Be a Chris- tianity is especially keen: “If you are a Darwinian tian? The Relationship between Science and Re- looking for religious meaning, then Christianity -pp., illus., figs., bibl., index. is a religion which speaks to you. Right at its cen 242 ם ligion. xii Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University ter there is a suffering god, Jesus on the Cross. Press, 2001. $24.95. This is not some contingent part of the faith, but the very core of everything. . . . Darwinism, a sci- Who was it, when asked whether or not he be- ence which so stresses physical suffering, looks lieved in infant baptism, that replied, “Believe in to Christianity, a religion which so stresses it? Hell, I’ve seen it done!”? One might antici- physical suffering and the divine urge to master pate a kindred reply to the question “Can a Dar- it” (p. 134). winian be a Christian?” from the irreverent pen Ruse’s unwillingness to cast Christianity and of the philosopher Michael Ruse: “Can one be Darwinism into the roles of embattled irrecon- both a Darwinian and Christian? Well, one ought cilable foes requires him to oppose both Chris- not be,” we might imagine his reply, “but I’ve tians and Darwinists who believe their views are actually encountered them . . . so evidently a mutually exclusive. By insisting that Darwinism Darwinian CAN be a Christian.” need not be embraced as “a secular religion for The rationale behind Ruse’s affirmative an- a new age” (p. 186), Ruse places himself in op- swer is not so simple, although affirmative it position to such Darwinists as E. O. Wilson, 168 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Julian Huxley, Richard Dawkins, and Richard lution. The nature of the primates and their stu- Lewontin, folks with whom he also shares much dents has insured that the field has enjoyed con- common ground. Of course Christian anti- siderable public exposure. Most people with Darwinians, from the philosopher Alvin Plan- access to a television have watched programs in tinga to the adherents of the new Intelligent De- which the lives of baboons, chimps, or gorillas sign movement, like Phillip Johnson, Michael have been interpreted by a primatologist, either Behe, and William Dembski, come in for a good on screen or behind the scenes. Shirley Strum thrashing. In short, by suggesting the compati- and Linda Fedigan’s marvelous edited volume bility of Christianity with Darwinism, Ruse will examines the totality of this phenomenon—the irritate his vigorous opponents who see such motivation behind the studies, the students, the peacemaking efforts as a mistaken compromise. media, and the practitioners of science studies Whether or not it is a mistaken compromise, who provide contemporary commentary on the Ruse’s conclusion still stands: “If there is a uni- whole mess. fying conclusion to this book it is that while the In the Wenner-Gren Foundation–sponsored comparison of Darwinism and Christianity may conference that led to their book, Strum and be challenging and difficult, it is also stimulating Fedigan’s goal was to investigate how and why and fruitful.... Time and again what might ideas about primate society have changed in the seem to be firm barriers to the Darwinian and the short lifespan of the discipline. The book does Christian existing in one and the same person this and more. It is an all-encompassing exami- prove, on examination, to be precisely the points nation of the adaptations and survival of a dis- where advances can be made and understandings cipline through fifty years of changing intellec- can be achieved” (p. 218). tual fashions, increasing publicity, and an This book would be very difficult for a young ever-changing backdrop of “general knowledge” scholar to write. It successfully covers much and public expectations about science. The ground quickly. This is a testimony to Ruse’s book’s four major sections deal, in turn, with the writing ability and his devotion of decades to perspectives of the pioneers of primatology, the studying and writing about the history and phi- diversity of national traditions involved in pri- losophy of evolution. Even so not all the details mate studies, intellectual currents in the related are on mark. For example, Ruse misidentifies the fields of cultural anthropology, archaeology, and Seventh-Day Adventist prophetess Ellen G. psychology, and models of science and society White as “Mary Ellen White” (p. 57) and over- through the lens of primate studies. Thanks to states the case for hopefulness in origin-of-life this well-conceived framework, the reader steps studies (pp. 62–64). These problems and others through an experiential history of primate stud- of Ruse’s debatable contentions, however, do ies that is vivid, lively, and filled with significant not detract from the book’s value within its most scientific and social insights. Each section is promising venue: the college classroom. It suc- concluded with a printed exchange of e-mails ceeded most admirably for a course I taught in among the contributors, modern versions of the science and Christianity this past academic year. texts of discussions featured in symposium vol- Students read it, engaged with it, even claimed umes from decades past. These exchanges are that it challenged them as they enjoyed it. For the soul of the book, for it is in these that the anyone seeking a guide to the issues upon which personal motivations, grudges, and agendas of further study and conversation can be fruitfully the participants emerge. built, Ruse has provided a valuable source. One of the most important themes explored in MARK A. KALTHOFF the book is that of gender and, specifically, to what extent the gender of primatologists has in- Shirley C. Strum; Linda M. Fedigan (Editors). fluenced their science and the way it is portrayed. Primate Encounters: Models of Science, Gender, Not only does this involve a complete explora- -pp., figs., tables, apps., tion of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey hagiog 635 ם and Society. xvi bibl., index. Chicago/London: University of Chi- raphy but also examinations of the impact that cago Press, 2000. $35. women have had in elucidating the roles of fe- male primates in their societies and, thereby, in Primates have been studied by more people, achieving comprehensive views of primate so- from more angles, for longer periods of time than cial dynamics. This theme, in turn, is closely tied any other vertebrates. Primate studies have ex- to the most interesting set of interactions played isted for over fifty years and have attracted out in the book, between the primatologists and leagues of students from diverse backgrounds to the practitioners of science studies. One doesn’t studies of primate behavior, ecology, and evo- quite know here who is watching whom, but the BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 169 result is a balanced examination of what science vented and reinvented over time, and within the in general means to people who don’t identify ever-changing relationship between the depart- themselves as scientists and how scientific ment and the broader discipline over the first half knowledge is translated into public knowledge. of the twentieth century. With this as his central In this age of growing “antiscience” sensibilities theme, Abbott contemplates the—highly con- in the humanities and the public sphere, this con- tested—meaning of the Chicago school in his- tribution alone makes the book essential reading. toriography and departmental history; the his- The shortcomings of the book are few: the torical transformation of the Chicago-based chapters providing commentary on related dis- American Journal of Sociology (AJS) from early, ciplines do not make consistent comparisons shaping influence to a mere organ of an increas- with primatology, and at least a few of the au- ingly narrow, professionalized discipline; and thors don’t seem to know or care about the entire the capacity of the discipline to transcend what premise of the book. But this is a very small Abbott believes to be its contemporary state of problem in a book that is otherwise outstanding. professional and intellectual exhaustion. The editors have produced a multifaceted, ret- Even within sociology, “Chicago school” has rospective volume that is neither self-congratu- had varying connotations over the years. Some latory nor self-pitying. It is an insightful treat- associate it with Robert Park and his cyclical, ment of how science really works, how it is assimilationist vision of race relations; others portrayed, and how it becomes the fodder for its with the organic, ecological view of urban own science. I don’t know any biologist or his- growth and mobility patterns captured in such torian of science who would not benefit im- still-ubiquitous concepts as ethnic “succession”; mensely from reading this book. still others with symbolic interactionism, the so- NINA JABLONSKI cial psychological study of how people engage with, give meaning to, and ultimately act within Andrew Abbott. Department and Discipline: the object world around them. More recently there has been talk of a “second Chicago 249 ם Chicago Sociology at One Hundred. xii pp., tables, apps., bibl., index. Chicago: Univer- school,” a post–World War II generation of sity of Chicago Press, 1999. $45, £31.50 (cloth); qualitative and interactionist scholars who kept $17, £12 (paper). those traditions alive even as the discipline was headed in more quantitative, grand theoretical Andrew Abbott’s Department and Discipline directions. Complicating matters still further, calls to mind an exchange I once had with an members of the initial, now-legendary founding economist—prompted by my characterization of generation did not think of themselves as en- a recent work of urban sociology as part of the gaged in a single intellectual project or “school” “Chicago-school tradition”—who reminded me of thought. Indeed, Abbott tells us that it was not that in his profession “Chicago school” was as- until the 1970s, decades after Chicago lost its sociated with Milton Friedman, free market ide- dominance in the discipline, that “the loose ology, and a world made up of rational, self- tangle of maxims and practices that had sus- interest-maximizing actors. What I had in mind tained the department in its glory years” was ac- could hardly be further from that: the highly con- tually presented as “the Chicago school” (pp. 63, textual, neighborhood-based mode of analysis 18, emphasis in original). that became a hallmark of the University of Chi- So does it make sense to talk about a or the cago Department of Sociology from the late Chicago school of sociology? Abbott argues that 1910s through the 1930s and that explained such it does, albeit not as something that exists in the phenomena as juvenile delinquency, race rela- ideas, the body of research, or the considerable tions, poverty, and urban ennui as the products institutional apparatus that characterized the de- of complex, historically rooted social processes, partment during its interwar “glory years.” ecologies, and group interactions. Rather, it existed in the interactions among a The essays that make up Department and Dis- methodologically diverse, often deeply con- cipline ask that we rethink “conventional” no- flicted department faculty, out of which emerged tions of “Chicago-school” sociology as a body an eclectic tradition of inquiry dedicated to un- of work produced by a particular group of fac- derstanding social processes in the context of ulty and students in a bygone era. Instead, in an time and place. Ironically, it took a moment of engaging, unapologetically polemical, and ulti- crisis—a year-long self-study in 1951–1952 mately prescriptive blend of historical analysis prompted by administrative pressure and foun- and disciplinary critique, Abbott conceptualizes dation efforts to define sociology as a bona fide the Chicago school as a tradition that was in- science—to bring this vision of the Chicago- 170 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) school tradition into full view. By then, the tra- Marilyn Ogilvie and Joy Harvey, with the aid dition was on the way out: its practitioners retir- of over twenty contributors, have amassed a two- ing or moving elsewhere; its sensibilities volume collection of essays on women who have displaced by a type of analysis C. Wright Mills worked in the sciences. No other work of such would scornfully refer to as abstracted empiri- massive scope has been published; it contains cism, dedicated to the construction and manip- information on the works and lives of approxi- ulation of variables outside of time and place. mately 2,500 women scientists culled from many Though not a book for the uninitiated—Ab- sources. The fields of science covered include bott’s detailed rendering of behind-the-scenes astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, personalities and squabbles requires some mathematics, medicine, and psychology. The knowledge of the department and its landmark women cited are from around the world and are works—Department and Discipline makes an either deceased or were born before 1910. important contribution to social science history Individual entries vary in length, not neces- as well as to the literature on the Chicago school. sarily reflecting the importance of the individ- Informed by extensive archival research, the ual’s achievements. In cases where sources and book is animated by a powerful argument that is detailed biographies are readily available, the en- likely to resonate with historians, if not with the try included may be briefer. Each entry consists AJS editors who declined to publish the essay of a data section summarizing personal infor- they had commissioned from Abbott for the mation, a biographical essay, and a bibliography journal’s centenary: that sociology must recon- containing selected works by and works about nect with and reinvigorate the tradition of con- each woman. textual analysis. While intriguing, Abbott’s ar- Also included are various summary lists. Us- gument that the Chicago (or any) “school” exists ing these, the reader can derive perspectives on in departmental processes and faculty relation- such questions as: What disciplines have at- ships is less fully realized—occasional refer- tracted women through the ages? What time pe- ences to the Chicago-school tradition in its riods were most conducive to women’s work? 1920–1930s “heyday” sound awfully like the What countries and cultures encouraged women conventional view. It also makes for a book that achievers? gives short shrift to the actual ideas and body of Greater care could have been taken in proof- research associated with Chicago sociology— reading and editing the manuscript to minimize and to their extraordinarily enduring influence various technical flaws in the presentation. For among social practitioners and analysts alike. instance, the ordering of entries in the “Alpha- Still, when Abbott does turn to the work, the betical List of Entries” in the main body of en- discussion is, like the rest of the book, original, tries and in the subject index is not always con- thought provoking, and rewarding to read. sistent. ALICE O’CONNOR With any work of this nature and magnitude, questions can always be raised as to omissions. Ⅲ Reference Tools There is no entry, for instance, for the mathema- tician and computer scientist Gertrude Blanch Marilyn Ogilvie; Joy Harvey (Editors). The (1897–1996), who received the Federal Woman’s Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Award from President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid- Given today’s widespread use of the computer, Twentieth Century. Foreword by Margaret W. it is also surprising that no mention is given to -pertinent reference sources available on the In 1,499 ם xxvii ם Rossiter. 2 volumes. xxxviii pp., indexes. New York/London: Routledge, ternet. 2000. $250, Can $375. This work is extremely valuable as a reference tool. It provides a springboard for further study Throughout the years, books on the history of on specific women as well as on the past, present, science have featured only scattered references and future role of women in the sciences. It can to the contributions of women in scientific fields. also serve as a source of inspiration and encour- Published biographical dictionaries of scientists agement to young women to seek careers in the have contained relatively few entries devoted to sciences. women. Within the last century, sparked by the LOUISE S. GRINSTEIN emerging interest in the feminist movement, iso- lated volumes have appeared dealing with Sophie Riche´; Sylvain Riquier. Des hoˆpitaux a` women in medicine, in mathematics, in chem- Paris: Etat des fonds des Archives de I’AP-HP istry and physics, and in the biological sciences. XIIe`me–XXe`me sie`cles. 864 pp., illus., tables. BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 171

Paris: Assistance Publique-Hoˆpitaux de Paris, The other epoch that falls victim to this in- 2000. ventory’s present-mindedness is the Revolution and Empire, when the French government at- Sophie Riche´, directed by Sylvain Riquier, the tempted to transform Christian charity into sec- former conservateur, has inventoried every doc- ular welfare (bienfaisance), the citizen-patient’s ument in the Public Health Archives of Paris at entitlement. Three reports document this mo- 7 rue des Minimes to create an impressive, com- mentous effort: those of the Duc de la Roche- prehensive guidebook. This volume of almost foucauld-Liancourt to the Poverty Committee of 900 pages now takes its place among the Etats the Constituent Assembly in 1791 and those of des fonds that have long guided researchers the Hospital and Public Health Councils of the through the thousands of boxes and bundles de- Seine Department in 1803 and 1816. These re- posited in the Archives de France. ports appear only as bibliographic snippets for The authors confronted five idiosyncratic ref- each concerned institution. This approach con- erence systems that, in the end, they decided to travenes the spirit in which the treasures of this maintain. These inventory Le´on Brie`le’s lists of conservateurs old regime documents; hospital registers cover- archive were collected by past ing hundreds of years; the archives’ library and such as Marcel Fosseyeux (1903–1919) and rich card catalogues; recent acquisitions; and, Marcel Candille (1950–1973). A future inven- most important, the so-called Fosseyeux cata- tory of the Assistance Publique before 1849 logue, a “marvellous grab bag” according to a should also heed the legacy of that great scholar former conservateur, Vale´rie Poinsotte. It lists and friend of our field, the late dean Jean Imbert, 136 items, many of them bundles held together whose work underlines the interrelationships of by a piece of string (liasses). Untying a liasse past, present, and future. initiates a treasure hunt—the researcher’s de- The authors freely acknowledge the lacunae light, the bibliographer’s nightmare. with a list of “topics not dealt with” (pp. 861– To use this guide, one must understand the 862). Here we find groups such as the mentally editorial decisions fundamental to its layout. The ill and the blind, but also topics such as seculari- Assistance Publique de Paris was created in zation. One looks in vain for information about 1849. This leads the editors to focus on the past the Sisters of Charity, the Brothers of Charity, or 150 years. A “policy of collecting and publish- the Augustinians of the Hoˆtel-Dieu. Only one ing” has replaced a “policy of documentation” page deals with modern nursing (p. 106). “Phar- (p. 3). The editors created an alphabetic list of macy” is more explicit (pp. 146–151). A general 144 “hospital structures” (two-thirds of the index would be helpful. The main desideratum, book) since they wish to “privilege the producer” in my opinion, is a complementary guide to pub- (p. 7). Each entry consists of most of the follow- lic assistance from the perspective of the old re- ing (Biceˆtre is here used as an example): a brief gime and the Revolution and Empire. It is re- historic description, a bibliography, and a guide grettable that an editorial decision appears to to archival documents with sections on admin- have excluded foreign-language works (that the istration, personnel, finances, architecture, gifts, archives own) from the secondary literature of inmates, inquiries, medical archives, plans, and this inventory. images. An up-to-date supplement (Suivi des These archives are open Monday to Friday hoˆpitaux) is forthcoming. Footnotes act as links from 9:00 to 5:30 without the usual annual clos- and dispense good advice. Researchers who are ing. Photocopying is by permission, and some curious about a contemporary institution will be documents must be requested 48 hours before well served. they can be viewed. Researchers have long been Less favored are scholars interested in historic welcomed and guided here in an exceptionally developments. Events corresponding to the old friendly and helpful manner, and the new con- regime are inserted into the alphabetical list of servateur, Agne`s Masson, and her staff continue contemporary institutions. A glance backward this tradition. reveals their past activities. Thus under Charite´- DORA B. WEINER Gifts we find “List of donors, 1601–1797” and under Charite´-Inmates (administre´s), “Register Paul Dijstelberge; Leo Noordegraaf (Compil- of admissions, 1702–1935”—two of the rare ers). Plague and Print in the Netherlands: A lists that extend far into the past. As for tables Short-Title Catalogue of Publications in the Uni- of information regarding patients at Biceˆtre, the versity Library of Amsterdam. 360 pp., illus., Hoˆtel-Dieu, or Salpeˆtrie`re, they begin in 1810 bibl., indexes. Rotterdam: Erasmus, 1997. Dfl (pp. 318, 543, 776)! 120 (cloth). 172 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

This catalogue arose from a project to document effort to educate readers in this area. The vol- material concerning the plague and the history ume’s format is identified, as is its collational of disease in the Netherlands. Rather than serv- formula, which details the number of gatherings ing as a comprehensive bibliography, it is lim- within the work and the presence or absence of ited to texts held by the University of Amster- introductory material. The STCN fingerprint fur- dam Library and published from 1512 through ther describes each entry and gives readers a 1796. It contains over eight hundred entries and chance to compare their holdings to this stan- is augmented by twenty-two plates of illustra- dard. The editors take readers step-by-step tions. The catalogue itself also contains two in- through the production of the fingerprint, which dexes. The first links the entries to the authors’ is based on the positioning of letters over the last names, and the second ties them to printers, signature and is intended to distinguish between publishers, and places. different editions of a text. As the editors con- The preface outlines the intended scope of the clude, “the usefulness of the STCN fingerprint catalogue—a partial listing of the primary lies in the unambiguous identification of any source material from the compilers’ research into given edition.” the plague in the Netherlands. This outline is The supplemental bibliography covers the pe- complicated by the restrictions they place on riod from 1800 to 1993 (but is not limited to the what is entered into the catalogue. It “is confined University of Amsterdam Collection). It is not to the works held in the Library of the University comprehensive, containing only those items in- of Amsterdam, in particular to works in the col- cluded at the compilers’ discretion. They have lection of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Maat- chosen to omit modern publications unless they schappij tot Bevordering der Geneeskunst deal exclusively with the plague. (KNMG).” The intent in assembling the cata- In general, the editors met their goal of cre- logue was not to prepare a list of every work ating a bibliography that would be useful and of containing a passing mention of or paragraph re- interest to medical historians, bibliographers, ferring to the plague; rather, it is limited to works and historians of the book. One can look forward that devote a substantial amount of attention to to the next phase of this project with confident the plague. It is further restricted to authors and expectation. printers from the Low Countries, as well as LOIS FISCHER BLACK works written by Dutch authors but produced in other countries. Robert E. Krebs. Scientific Laws, Principles, 403 ם [This unfortunately prevents the catalogue and Theories: A Reference Guide. [viii from serving as a complete listing of the perti- pp., illus., figs., bibl., index. Westport, Conn./ nent subject work contained in the KNMG col- London: Greenwood Press, 2001. $65. lection. One looks forward to what the editors describe as their intention to expand the cata- This book is intended as a reference source of logue into a full-fledged bibliography without “universal scientific laws, physical principles, geographic restrictions—an effort that will po- viable theories, and testable hypotheses” from tentially render this work obsolete. ancient times to the present. Robert Krebs states Following the introduction is a detailed expla- that he includes only the physical and biological nation of the structure and contents of each bib- sciences, including geology, but in fact there are liographic entry. The entries are arranged in also several mathematical and logical entries chronological order, then alphabetically by the ranging from the Greeks to Go¨del. The book author’s last name within each year. When avail- contains over four hundred entries, in alphabet- able, the main heading includes the author’s ical order, averaging less than a page each, plus birth and death dates. The elements of descrip- a glossary of nearly four hundred technical tion contained in each entry include a short title terms. Evidently, it is intended as a library ref- (which adheres to the rules of the Short-title Cat- erence for a general audience. It does not seem alogue—Netherlands [STCN] and uses modern to be directed toward professional historians of Dutch spelling); the bibliographical format and science. The author is a retired university science collational formula; the STCN fingerprint; a administrator in the health sciences field. brief statement of contents; the shelf mark; ref- Opening the book at random, I find four en- erences, which correspond to the catalogues and tries on the facing pages: “Carnot’s Theories of bibliographies listed; and a list of all of the edi- Thermodynamics,” “Caspersson’s Theory of tions of the same text contained in the catalogue. Protein Synthesis,” “Cassini’s Hypothesis for The editors make allowances for those new to Size of the Solar System,” and “Cavendish’s the study of analytical bibliography and make an Theories and Hypothesis.” It is hard to know BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 173 what the principle of selection is, other than solved, yet Krebs obviously prides himself on comprehensive coverage. But although it is im- being up to date. The entry on Planck is histori- pressive, the coverage is spotty. The famous cally inaccurate and physically misleading. And story of Adams, Leverrier, and Neptune is not so on. included, for example—perhaps because no new For all that, I found the book rather interesting law is involved. and useful. No reader leafing through it will fail To a historical scholar, such a project has ob- to find this entry or that intriguing. (“Ah. I al- vious pitfalls; I will list some of them. First, it ways wondered what that was!”) Since the en- is whiggish in selecting and evaluating the en- tries are short and discrete, the book makes good tries from our standpoint and in often omitting bedtime reading. And, given that the laws, prin- now-discredited content. For example, the entry ciples, and effects are commonly called by these on Carnot does not mention caloric, although it names, the book can serve as a source of general does mention the model of water flowing over a knowledge—but only as a starting point. Given waterwheel. The book encourages the idea that the uneven quality, caveat lector! discoveries and other major results are more or THOMAS NICKLES less punctiform, the achievements of particular individuals at particular times. To be fair, in his Ⅲ Collections introduction Krebs does describe science as an ongoing, self-correcting process in which “laws” Peter Becker; William Clark (Editors). Little sometimes turn out to be false or to need correc- Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Aca- tion. The book is historically uncritical, since it demic and Bureaucratic Practices. Ann Arbor: accepts at face value that eponymous results (a University of Michigan Press, 2001. category that includes most of the entries) were actually achieved by the person celebrated in the Peter Becker and William Clark: Introduction. Mar- name. The entries are necessarily too brief to in- tin Gierl: “The Triumph of Truth and Innocence”: The dicate much of the wider historical context, or Rules & Practice of Theological Polemics. David even the technical context, in which the law or Warren Sabean: Peasant Voices and Bureaucratic theory under discussion was developed. Krebs’s Texts: Narrative Structure in Early Modern German statement of his intent, in the introduction to the Protocols. William Clark: On the Ministerial Regis- volume, is theory centered and seems to take ters of Academic Visitations. Wolf Feuerhahn: A Theologian’s List and an Anthropologist’s Prose: Mi- physics (indeed, Stephen Weinberg’s conception chaelis, Niebuhr, and the Expedition to Flex Arabia. of physics) as a model, although in fact there are Hans Erich Bo¨deker: On the Origins of the “Statis- many entries from the biomedical sciences that tical Gaze”: Modes of Perception, Forms of Knowl- do not neatly fit this model. The author’s attempt edge, and Ways of Writing in the Early Social Sci- to characterize his subject matter—scientific ences. Peter Becker: Objective Distance and Intimate laws—is philosophically naı¨ve. Finally, even if Knowledge: On the Structure of Criminalistic Obser- we leave aside the difficulty of making complex vation and Description. Martin Schaffner: The Figure technical results accessible to a general audience of the Questions versus the Prose of the Answers: Lord in a very limited space, no single author can be Devon’s Inquiry in Skibbereen, 10 September 1844. expert enough to maintain a high standard Lorraine Daston: Scientific Objectivity with and throughout a volume of such scope. Krebs iden- without Words. Heidrum Friese: Thresholds in the tifies no panel of expert consultants enlisted to Ambit of Discourse: On the Establishment of Author- ity at Academic Conferences. Rudolf Vierhaus: In- check his entries. stead of an Epilogue: On the Production of Knowledge The entries that I sampled sometimes con- in History. tained less-than-sharp formulations, inaccura- cies, and even contradictions. For example, Krebs describes Aristotle, in cliche´ fashion, as a John M. Logsdon (Editor). Exploring the Un- “philosopher” rather than as a “scientist con- known: Selected Documents in the History of the cerned with observations and evidence” (p. 23), U.S. Civil Space Program. Volume 5. Washing- but two paragraphs later it turns out that Aristotle based his account of spontaneous generation on ton, D.C.: NASA History Series, 2001. observations! Krebs says that motion was self- John E. Naugle and John M. Logsdon: Space Sci- explanatory for Aristotle because things strive to ence: Origins, Evolution, and Organization. Amy reach their natural places. The entry on Euler Paige Snyder: NASA and Planetary Exploration. mislabels his work on bodies moving with mul- Nancy Grace Roman: Exploring the Universe: Space- tiple degrees of freedom as the three-body prob- Based Astronomy and Astrophysics. lem. Fermat’s last theorem is said to remain un- 174 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002)

Wolfgang Lefe`vre (Editor). Between Leibniz, Post-war France and Britain. Dagmar Ellerbrock: Newton, and Kant: Philosophy and Science in Between Fear, National Pride and Democracy: Images the Eighteenth Century. Dordrecht/Boston/Lon- of Tuberculosis in the American Zone of Occupation, don: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. 1945–1949. Jorge Molero-Mesa: Health and Public Policy in Spain During the Early Francoist Regime Alan Gabbey: Disciplinary transformations in the Age (1936–1951): the Tuberculosis Problem. Jospe of Newton: The Case of Metaphysics. Hartmut Bernabeu-Mestre and Enrigue Perdiguero-Gil: At Hecht: Leibniz’ Concept of Possible Worlds and the the Service of Spain and Spanish Children: Mother- Analysis of Motion in Eighteenth-Century Physics. and-Child Healthcare in Spain During the First two Franc¸ois De Gandt: The Limits of Intelligibility: The Decades of Franco’s Regime (1939–1963). Esteban Status of Physical Sciences in d’Alemberts Philoso- Rodrı´guez-Ocan˜a: The Politics of Public Health in phy. Helmut Pulte: Order of Nature and Orders of the State-managed Scheme of Healthcare in Spain Science. Volkmar Schu¨ller: Samuel Clarke’s Anno- (1940–1990). Nikalai Kermentsov: The War on Can- tations in Jacques Rohault’s Traite´ de Physique, and cer and the Cold War: A Soviet Case. Lyubov G. Gur- How They Contributed to Popularising Newton’s jeva: The Organisation of Public Health in Russia Physics. Eric Watkins: Kant on Extension and Force: Since 1945: a Survey of Archival Resources. Barbara Critical Appropriations of Leibniz and Newton. David Markiewicz: Tuberculosis in Poland, 1945–1995: Im- B. Wilson: Enlightenment Scotland’s Philosophico- ages of a Disease. Danuta Duch-Krzystoszek and Chemical Physics. Ann Thomson: Materialistic The- Anna Firkowsk-Mankiewicz: Healthy or Happy ories of Mind and Brain. Falk Wunderlich: Kant’s Child: An Interplay of Politics, Health and Values. Second Paralogism in Context: The Critique of Pure Olga Amsterdamska: Drinking as a Political Act: Im- Reason on Whether Matter Can Think. Wolfgang ages of Alcoholism in Polish Literature, 1956–89. Lefe`vre: Natural or Artificial Systems?: The Eigh- Justyna Laskowska-Otinowska: Community and In- teenth-Century Controversy on Classification of Ani- dividual Changes in Propaganda against Alcoholism mals and Plants and its Philosophical Contexts. in Poland from 1945 to the 1990s. Sergei Orlov: The Medicalised Sobering Stations: A History of a Unique Soviet Practice. Gigliola Fragnito (Editor). Church, Censorship, and Culture in Early Modern Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Carl Mitcham (Editor). Metaphysics, Episte- mology, and Technology. Amsterdam/London: Gigliola Fragnito: Introduction. Gigliola Fragnito: JAI, 2000. The Central and Peripheral Organization of Censor- ship. Luigi Balsamo: How to Doctor a Bibliography: Agustin A. Araya: Changed Encounters with Things Antonio Possevino’s Practice. Ugo Baldini: The Ro- and Ontological Transformations: The Case of man Inquisition’s Condemnation of Astrology: Ante- Ubiquitous Computing. Mary Bloodsworth: The Im- cedents, Reasons and Consequences. Edoardo Bar- plications of Consistency: Plato’s Protagoras and Hei- bieri: Tradition and Changes in the Spiritual Literature degger’s ‘The Question Concerning Technology’. Phil- of the Cinquecento. Claudio Donati: A Project of ‘ex- lip Brey: Technology and Embodiment in Ihde and purgation’ by the Congregation of the Index: Treaties Merleau-Ponty. Phillip Brey: Theories of Technology and Dueling. Fausto Parente: The Index, the Holy as Extension of Human Faculties. Rafael Capurro: Office, the Condemnation of the Talmud and publi- Hermeneutics and the Phenomenon of Information. cation of Clement VIII’s index. Ugo Rozzo: Italian Jose´ Manuel de Co´zar: Toward a Philosophical Anal- literature on the index. Rodolfo Savelli: The Censor- ysis of Efficiency. Bill Hook: The Fate of Skills in the ing of Law Books. Information Age. Andrew Light and David Roberts: Toward new Foundations in Philosophy of Technol- ogy: Mitcham and Wirrgenstein on Descriptions. Craig Murray: Toward a Phenomenology of the Ilana Lo¨wy; John Krige (Editors). Images of Body in Virtual Reality. Yannis A. Niadas: On the Disease: Science, Public Policy, and Health in Cognitive Demarcation Between Technologies and Post-war Europe. Luxembourg: Office of the Science: An Attempt at Epistemological Clarification. Official Publications of the European Commu- Theodore John Rivers: The Concept of Time and its nities, 2001. Relationship to Technology. Karina Stokes: Bakh- tin’s Concept of Individualistic Ideolects as a Propi- Ilana Lo¨wy: Introduction: Images of Disease between tious Model of Communication Among Humans and Biomedicine and Politics. Barbara Gutmann Rosen- Between Humans and Computers. Ton van der Valk: krantz: Wars of State and the Disease of the Masses. The Negative Teleological Metaphysics of Hans Jonas. Virginia Berridge: Disease, Risk, Harm and Safety: Peter-Paul Verbeck: The Thing About Technology: Trends in Post-war British Alcohol Policy. Paolo Pal- Toward a Phenomenology of Technological Artifacts. ladino: On Smoking, Socialism and the Health of the Brian Roamaita: Review of Albert Borgmann, Hold- British Nation. Ilana Lo¨wy: Images of New Cancer ing On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Therapies. Jean-Paul Gaudillie`re: Bettering Babies: Turn of the Millennium and Dan Schiller, Digital Capi- Down’s Syndrome, Heredity and Public Health in talism: Networking the Global Market System. Rod- BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) 175 erick Nicholls: Review of Terrell Ward Bynum and Smits: Langdon Winner: Technology as a Shadow James H. Moor, eds., The Digital Phoenix: How Com- Constitution. puters are Changing Philosophy. Richard Lieben- dorfer: Review of David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, and Daniel Social Learning Group. (Editors). Learning to Dennett, Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds. Manage Global Environmental Risks. Volume 1. Sergio Sismondo: Reviewer of Harry Collins and Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press, 2000. Martin Kusch, The Shape of Actions: What Humans and Machines Can Do, Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki L. William C. Clark, Jill Ja¨ger, and Josee van Eijnd- O’Day, Information Ecologies: Using Technology with hoven: Managing Global Environmental Change: An Heart. Stuart Dalton: Review of Mark C. Taylor, Introduction to the Volume. William C. Clark, Jill Hiding. Sergio Sismondo: Review of Peter Galison, Ja¨ger, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, and Nancy M. Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics. Dickson: Acid Rain, Ozone Depletion, and Climate Stephen Crowley: Reviewer of David Park, The Fire Change: An Historical Overview. Jeannine Caven- with the Eye: A Historical Essay on the Nature and der-Bares and Jill Ja¨ger with Renate Ell: Develop- Meaning of Light. Raphael Sassower: Reviewer of ing a Precautionary Approach: Global Environmental Joseph C. Pitt, Thinking About Technology: Founda- Risk Management in Germany. Brian Wynne and Pe- tions of the Philosophy of Technology. John Collier: ter Simmons with Claire Waterton, Peter Hughes, Review of Robert F. Port and Timothy van Gelder, and Simon Shackley: Institutional Cultures and the Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cog- Management of Global Environmental Risks in the nition. Drew Christie: Review of Brian Cantwell United Kingdom. Josee van Eijndhoven with Gerda Smith, On the Origin of Objects. Albert Borgmann: Dinkelman, Jeoen van der Sluijs, Ruud Pleune, and Review of Ronald C. Tobey, Technology as Freedom: Cor Worrell: Finding Your Place: A History of the The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the Management of Global Environmental Risks in the American Home. Karen B. Wiley: Review of Len Netherlands. Vassily Sokolov and Jill Ja¨ger with Ackland, Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Vladimir Pisarev, Elena Nikitina, Alexandre Ginz- Nuclear West. Cornelis de Waal: Review of Michele burg, Elena Goncharova, Jeannine Cavender- Stenhjem Gerber, On the Home Front: The Cold War Bares, and Edward A. Parson: Turning Points: The Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site, and Hal K. Roth- Management of Global Environmental Risks in the ´ man, On Rims and Ridges: The Los Alamos Area Since former Soviet Union. Ference L. To´th with Eva Hiz- 1880. Jessica Sewell: Review of Miles Ogborn, snyik: Catching up with the International Bandwagon: Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies 1680– The Management of Global Environmental Risks in 1780. Jean-Yves Beziau: Review of Charles Sanders Hungary. Miranda A. Schreuers: Shifting Priorities Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic: Philosophical Es- and the Internationalization of Environmental Risk says. Michael Neumann: Review of Michael Perel- Management in Japan. Diane Leverman and Karen man, Class Warfare in the Information Age. James O’Brien: Southern Skies; The Perception and Man- Gerrie: Reviewer of Tarla Rai Peterson, Sharing the agement of Global Environmental Risks in Mexico. Earth: The Rhetoric of Sustainable Development. Ka- Edward A. Parson with Rodney Dobell, Adam Fe- tya Mandoki: Reviewer of Eric Ramsey, The Long nech, Donald Munton, and Heather Smith: Leading Path to Nearness: a Contribution to a Corporeal Phi- While Keeping in Step: Management of Global At- mospheric Issues in Canada. William C. Clark and losophy of Communication and the Groundwork for Nancy M. Dickson: Civic Science: America’s En- an Ethics of Relief. David Clowney: Reviewer of Car- counter with Global Environmental Risks. Michael oline Whitbeck, Ethics in Engineering Practice and Huber and Angela Liberatore: A Regional Approach Research. John Caruana: Reviewer of Edith Wys- to the Management of Global Environmental Risks: chogrod, An Ethic of Remembering: History, Heter- The Case of the European Community. Peter M. Haas ology, and the Nameless Others. and David McCabe: Amplifiers and Dampeners: In- ternational Institutions and Social Learning in the Management of Global Environmental Risks. Mi- Hans Achterhuis (Editor). American Philoso- randa A. Schreurs, William C. Clark, Nancy M. phy of Technology: The Empirical Turn. Trans- Dickson, and Jill Ja¨ger: Issue Attention, Framing, lated by Robert P. Crease. Bloomington/ and Actors: An Analysis of Patterns Across Arenas. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Hans Achterhuis: Introduction: American Philoso- Social Learning Group. (Editors). Learning to phers of Technology. Pieter Tijmes: Albert Borg- Manage Global Environmental Risks. Volume 2. mann: Technology and the Character of Everyday Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press, 2001. Life. Philip Brey: Hubert Dreyfus: Humans versus Computers. Hans Achterhuis: Andrew Feenberg: Jill Ja¨ger with Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Nancy M. Farewell to Dystopia. Rene´ Munnik: Donna Haraway: Dickson, Adam Fenech, Edward A. Parson, Vassuly Cyborgs do Earthly Survival? Peter-Paul Verbeek: Sokolov, Ferenc L. To´th, Claire Waterton, Jeroen Don Ihde: The Technological Lifeworld. Martijntje van der Sluijs, and Josee Van Eijndhoven: Risk As- 176 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 93 : 1 (2002) sessment in the Management of Global Environmental Schreurs, Vassily Sokolov, and Ferenc L. To´th: Risks. Jill Ja¨ger with Nancy M. Dickson, Adam Fe- Evaluation in the Management of Global Environmen- nech, Peter M. Haas, Edward A. Parson, Vassuly tal Risks. Jill Ja¨ger, Josee van Eijndhoven, and Wil- Sokolov, Ferenc L. To´th, Jeroen van der Sluijs, and liam C. Clark: Knowledge and Action: An Analysis Claire Waterton: Monitoring in the Management of of Linkages Among Management Functions for Global Global Environmental Risks. William C. Clark, Josee Environmental Risks. Josee van Eijndhoven, Wil- van Eijndhoven, and Nancy M. Dickson with Gerda liam C. Clark, and Jill Ja¨ger: The Long-term De- Dinkelman, Peter M. Haas, Michael Huber, Angela velopment of Global Environmental Risk Manage- Liberatore, Diana Liverman, Edward A. Parson, ment: Conclusions and Implications for the Future. Miranda A. Schreurs, Heather Smith, Vassily So- kolov, Ferenc L. To´th, and Brian Wynne: OPTION Assessment in the Management of Global Environ- Lewis Pyenson (Editor). Elegance, Beauty, and mental Risks. Marc A. Levy, Jeannine Cavender- Truth. Lafayette: University of Louisiana at La- Bares, and William C. Clark with Gerda Dinkel- fayette, 2001. man, Elena Nikitina, Ruud Pleune, and Heather Smith: Goal and Strategy Formulation in the Manage- C. Eddie Palmer: Elegance from the Rough, Lewis ment of Global Environmental Risks. Rodney Dobell Pyenson: Elegant Sartons: Platonic Scholarship, Pla- with Justin Longo, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Wil- tonic Letters. Suzanne Fredericq: Elegance: A Brief, Perfectly Balanced Instant of Complete Possession of liam C. Clark, Nancy M. Dickson, Gerda Dinkel- Forms. Paul Klerks: Elegance in Scientific Research: man, Adam Fenech, Peter M. Haas, Jill Ja¨ger, A Biologist’s Perspective. John Laudun: The Elegant Ruud Pleune, Feenc L. To´th, Miranda A. and the Mundane. Robert Rhyme: A Theory of Ele- Schreursm and Josee van Eijndhoven: Implemen- gance in Paul Vale´ry’s Cahiers from 1894–1945. tation in the Management of Global Environmental Jerry White: Ordinary Elegance. C. Baker Kearfott: Risks. Josee van Eijndhoven, Brian Wynne, and When Simplicity, Practicality, and Significance Meet: Rodney Dobell with Ellis Cowling, Nancy M. Dick- Elegance in Scientific Computation. Jerome Argusa: son, Gerda Dinkelman, Peter M. Haas, Jill Ja¨ger, Is Elegance in the Hospitality Industry Still Alive? Angela Liberatore, Diana Lverman, Miranda A.