Sympathetic Attractions: Magnetic Practices, Beliefs, and Symbolism in Eighteenth-Century England (Princeton Legacy Library) - Hardcover

Fara, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691010994 ISBN 13: 9780691010991

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 1996

Inhaltsangabe

In this interdisciplinary study of eighteenth-century England, Patricia Fara explores how natural philosophers constructed magnetism as a science, appropriating the skills and knowledge of experienced navigators. For people of this period, magnetic phenomena reverberated with the symbolism of occult mystery, sexual attraction, and universal sympathies; in this maritime nation, magnetic instruments such as navigational compasses heralded imperial expansion, commercial gain, and scientific progress. By analyzing such multiple associations, Fara reconstructs cultural interactions in the days just prior to the creation of disciplinary science. Not only does this illustrated book provide a kaleidoscopic view of a changing society, but it also portrays the emergence of public science.

Linking this rise in interest to the utility and mysteriousness of magnetism, Fara organizes her discussion into themes, including commercialization, imperialism, instruments and invention, the role of language, attitudes toward the past, and the relationship between religion and natural philosophy. Fara shows that natural philosophers, proclaiming themselves as the only true experts on magnetism, actively participated in massive transformations of English life. In their bids for public recognition as elite specialists, they engaged in controversies that resonated with religious, economic, moral, gender, and political implications. These struggles for social and scientific authority in the eighteenth century provide the background for better understanding the cultural topography of modern society.

Originally published in 1996.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Patricia Fara is a Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, and lectures in the History and Philosophy of Science Department at Cambridge University.

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Sympathetic Attractions

Magnetic Practices, Beliefs, and Symbolism in Eighteenth-Century England

By Patricia Fara

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1996 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-01099-1

Contents

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES, ix, 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, xi, 
ABBREVIATIONS, xiii, 
INTRODUCTION, 3, 
CHAPTER ONE Mapping Enlightenment England: Practitioners and Philosophers, 11, 
CHAPTER TWO "A Treasure of Hidden Vertues": Marketing Natural Philosophy, 31, 
CHAPTER THREE The Direction of Invention: Setting a New Course for Compasses, 66, 
CHAPTER FOUR An Attractive Empire: Mapping Terrestrial Magnetism, 91, 
CHAPTER FIVE Measuring Power: Patterns in Experimental Natural Philosophy, 118, 
CHAPTER SIX God's Mysterious Creation: The Divine Attraction of Natural Knowledge, 146, 
CHAPTER SEVEN A Powerful Language: Images of Nature and the Nature of Science, 171, 
CONCLUSION, 208, 
APPENDIX Magnetic Longitude Schemes, 215, 
NOTES, 219, 
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 269, 
INDEX, 319, 

CHAPTER 1

Mapping Enlightenment England: Practitioners and Philosophers

Ephraim Chambers has won renown as the English initiator of Enlightenment projects to systematize rational learning in comprehensive encyclopedias. He followed earlier classifiers by visualizing the organizational scheme of his Cyclopædia as a map of knowledge. Employing geographical metaphors, he claimed to guide his readers through the wilderness of knowledge, indicating the flourishing growth of well-tilled areas of expertise and marking where the limits of the terra cognita could be extended. Like the French encyclopedists who imitated his enterprise, Chambers expressly articulated the arbitrariness with which he had divided his two largest territories, the arts and the sciences, into their subordinate provinces. It was time, he argued, to demolish the partitions established by earlier discoverers and explore those rich tracts which had for too long lain neglected beyond the pale.

Examining eighteenth-century maps and trees of knowledge underlines the mutability of classification systems. Enlightenment plans differed not only from each other but also from modern layouts of disciplinary concerns. Following Chambers' map, an intellectual traveller would arrive at the domain of natural philosophy by following the signpost marked "Rational," which also led to religion, mathematics, and metaphysics. But—unexpectedly for readers today—the lands of optics, pneumatics, and astronomy did not lie along this road: they could only be reached by backtracking to a major fork and then heading off in the same direction as voyagers to falconry, alchemy, and sculpture. One tree of this period showed the fruit of "Physicks" dangling from a small branch next to "Thaumaturgicks," the science of conjuring and wonders. Another chart compiler equated natural philosophy with physics and geology, the study of "this Earth with its Furniture." But the French philosophes trimmed the tree to fit their rhetoric of the primacy of reason, shown in the Encyclopédie as the sturdy central trunk carrying two leafy limbs of mathematics and physics.

None of these mapmakers surveyed any territory labelled either electricity or magnetism. Most historians, reared in a world of electromagnetic fields, unthinkingly bracket together the study of electrical and magnetic forces. But throughout the eighteenth century, people viewed them as two distinct powers of nature. This ontological differentiation belonged to a constellation of features which distinguished electrical and magnetic practices. Another pervasive misperception is to view the eighteenth century as the progressive development of Newtonian ideas entailing the mathematization of philosophical pursuits. Generations of polemicists have rendered Newton's image into a powerful icon whose influence is hard to escape. Perpetuating their obliteration by Newtonian rhetoricians, modern writers too often ignore the voices of those eighteenth-century critics who opposed Newton's theories. Many of these regretted that natural philosophy was unwarrantedly invading moral domains or judged that mathematics was an inappropriate tool for investigating the natural world. As late as 1833, Whewell felt it necessary to invent the word "scientist" in order to legitimate his colleagues' activities. He wanted to accord status to men like Faraday, consolidating the bonds between electrical and magnetic phenomena. Studying the construction of magnetism as a scientific discipline—a demarcated cartographical entity—contributes to understanding how the foundation of professionalized science formed part of the cultural transformations reflected by the shifting territories of knowledge. Retrieving marginalized historical actors, and viewing the creation of disciplinary magnetism as a contested process, rectifies the glib reiteration of Newtonian rhetorics. Separating out the anachronistic fusion of electrical and magnetic interests exemplifies the historical rewards of using contemporary rather than modern criteria for envisaging terrains of the past.

Magnetic concerns were scattered across any geographical or cultural map of the eighteenth-century world. People living in different places and engaged in different activities held various types of magnetic knowledge. English natural philosophers were not engaged in the same types of magnetic projects as their Continental counterparts, while within England natural philosophers disagreed over the best approach to learning about God's magnetic creation. It was only towards the end of the century that magnetism became a coherent subject of scientific study. Until then, magnetic information was valued for its usefulness—by practical men such as navigators, surveyors, and miners, as well as by natural philosophers justifying their investigations of the natural world.

As the century opened, maritime practitioners displayed the greatest interest in magnetic behavior. Navigation manuals discussed the problems posed to international travel by the vagaries of terrestrial magnetism and described the types of compass appropriate for voyages overseas. Elsewhere, writers categorized magnetic information and devices in ways alien to modern opinions. So when he catalogued the Royal Society's Museum collection in 1681, Nehemiah Grew classified the magnetic equipment alongside scale models and canoes. For Chambers, magnets lay within mineralogy, the study of the earth's history forming part of descriptive natural history rather than rational natural philosophy. Books on natural philosophy gave magnetic attraction only a passing mention amongst forces such as cohesion, gravity, and electricity. If mentioned at all, magnetic phenomena belonged in mechanics. Benjamin Worster, for instance, included magnetic demonstrations in his lectures at Thomas Watts' Academy in London during the 1720s. Author of a text which remained influential for many years, he squeezed in "Experiments with the Load-Stone" amongst discussions of tides, phases of the moon, and bodies descending inclined planes. At a popular level, magnetic and sympathetic attraction were virtually synonymous, entering into accounts of weapon salves, religious enthusiasm, and medical therapy.

As people utilized magnetic powers in different ways, élite natural philosophers defined a boundary for the new scientific discipline of magnetism. Inside it they placed their own types of experiments and ideas, including the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1996
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691010994
• ISBN 13: 9780691010991
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 326
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar