Book Reviews

The Enlightenment of Cadawallader Colden: Empire, Science, and Intellectual Culture in British New York by John M. Dixon is a history of the American Enlightenment from the perspective of one man that is not usually focused on. When most people think of this time period they think of George Washington, Thomas Paine, etc. but Colden’s point of view is very unique take, but as Dixon tries to show, not an unimportant one.

John M. Dixon is an associate professor at the College of Staten Island in the City University of New York. He does work on intellectual history, the Enlightenment, and cultural history. He received his PhD in American history from the University of California in 2007, his M.A. from the University of East Anglia, and his B.A. from the University of Birmingham. He has had works published by Oxford, Cornell, William and Mary Quarterly, and Early American Studies. “His current research explores the history of the early modern Atlantic world through the experience of Jews, crypto-Jews, and conversos.” https://www.csi.cuny.edu/campus-directory/john-m-dixon

Chapter 1 starts the book out with the intellectual backdrop of the Enlightenment. This context better allows us to understand the world that Cadwallader Colden lived in. It describes how the intellectual traditions started to move away from Aristotelian thinking from the re-introduction of the pre-Socratic schools of thought such as the Hermetic, Platonic, and Stoic philosophies. It describes the changing intellectual climate following the Glorious Revolution. It concludes with information about Colden’s parents and early life.

Chapter 2 documents Colden’s medical education and his travels between Europe and America, including places like Philadelphia. It also documents the debates surrounding inoculation at the time. There were also many other medical debates happening at the time between different schools of medical thought. Colden was kept informed of all of these developments and ventured to development an impressive network of medical physicians.

Chapter 3 chronicles Colden’s continuing efforts to grow his network and the beginnings of his political career after his medical practices did not come to fruition. It also mentions that he still had an interest in the medical world, as it documents some experiments he did, including one with a bladder.

Chapter 4 shows Colden’s moving away from medical practices to his focus on economics, geography, and history of North America. It tells the story of how he governed and the troubles he ran into given the New York government’s many cases of corruption. It also describes Colden’s diplomacy with the local Native American populations and his writings on them.

Chapter 5 talks about how Colden moved to a rural farm that was representative of a quiet philosophical retirement advocated by the neo-stoics. It describes the friendship that formed between Franklin and Colden and how it furthered their intellectual developments.

Chapter 6 highlights Colden’s battles with Berkleyan philosophy and the different intellectuals who took each side. It talks about the many books Colden published in this debate, including his self-regarded masterpiece Explication.

Chapter 7 describes the politics of eighteenth century New York and Colden’s fights against partisanship. It focuses on what the author refers to as print culture.

Chapter 8 documents the entrance of a second generation in Enlightenment thinking and Colden’s time as head of the government. They represented a new cultural change and print culture that created the intellectual scene until Colden’s death in 1776 on the eve of the American Revolution.

Unlike books we have read previously in recent weeks, this book does not attempt to cover two hundred or three hundred years between its pages. Instead, it documents the life of one man who’s intellectual explorations made a difference in New York. It chronicles his life and political ambitions in a way that reveals the intellectual culture of New York at the time.

The sources Dixon used seem to be well targeted and focused. He spent most of his time discussing just one city and the time period spanned only a few decades. Far less ambitious that some of the books we have read previously. And this is suitable given the length of this monograph. As any good intellectual ought to do, he cites the intellectual works of each thinker he talks about in the book directly. He spends a good amount of time explaining the arguments of each side if there happened to be a debate.  Towards the end of the book he cites pamphlets that were published to illustrate the nature of printing culture and the political climate that existed. He also cites letter correspondents and other primary sources of that nature. There were other times where he cited secondary sources and made sure to explicitly state the names of the historians he was citing. He incorporated their arguments into his research and showed where his work fit into all of this. The only downside when it comes to sources is that the author never stated their limitations in their research. Where were the shortcomings of writing this book and what could it be missing?

I believe this book could be categorized as a history of science, political history, and an intellectual history. From my reading this book focuses the most on politics more so than any other book we have read in class so far. So, I think the intended audience would be intended for people who are interested in these two subjects or anyone who is interested in the history of New York and the Enlightenment.

Colden is an interesting figure as the author argues, because unlike other Scottish thinkers of the Enlightenment he did not believe that things were automatically getting better. Instead, he had a bit of cynicism in his thinking and warned of continuing corruption that he saw occurring in several governments.

I believe that the author was aiming for the reader and other historians to have a reconsideration about the American Enlightenment its relationship with Cadawallader Colden. He is not a very well known figure, let alone is he considered an important part of the Enlightenment. However, Dixon desires to push back against that. He certainly does do a formidable job. He successfully showed that Colden’s intellectual and political influence certainly had an effect on others. The phenomena of print culture is certainly one example. Dixon closes out the book with one of his arguments, “Colden was an important champion of colonial intellect who helped to define the social and ideological contours of moderate, transatlantic enlightenment.” (Page 167)

One question I would have for the class would be similar to what we ask about the Scientific Revolution. Was there an Enlightenment? I have heard it said that instead of there being an Enlightenment, that there were multiple Enlightenments. What does Colden’s story add to this and the Scientific Revolution?

John M Dixon is a historian of early America and the early modern Atlantic world. He currently works as an assistant professor at the College of Staten Island. His research interests include intellectual and cultural history, the enlightenment, New York history and Jewish history. His prize-winning 2016 work, The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden: Empire, Science, and Intellectual Culture in British New York, explores the intellectual, cultural, and social settings of 18^th century British New York. Dixon uses Cadwallader Colden, a conservative member of the intellectual elite in colonial New York, as the vehicle to drive his narrative. From issues concerning the use of print culture for science and politics, to discourse surrounding Newtonian or Berkleyian thoughts on active matter and gravity, Dixon shows that the Enlightenment in the American colonies was far from the radical hotbed popular narratives depict it as.

The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden is separated into three parts; the first two parts have three chapters, and the last has two. Dixon’s work, far from being a biography of Colden, approaches the intellectual and political milleu of transatlantic British imperialism chronologically, using the life of Colden to guide the reader through the changes to intellectual and political culture throughout Colden’s life. Dixon makes excellent use of epistolary evidence, as well as evidence from intellectuals publications, and pamphlets from popular political movements to present his arguments. In essence, Dixon asserts that the liberal enlightenment so often manifested in figures like Franklin and the Sons of Libery in historiography has overlooked a significant conservative and royalist element present in the colonies even at the eve of the American revolution.

Chapter 1 follows Colden during a period of rapid change in Scotland. During his formative years Colden witnessed a rabid theological politicization of British intellectual developments stemming from figures like Newton and Boyle. Colden’s father, a presbytarian minister, used connections with minor nobility to give Colden a minister’s education. It was here, in a university climate of rapid change and rabid discourse, that Colden became enamored with science, natural philosophy, and medicine, ultimately forgoing his father’s wishes and moving to London to practice as a physician despite no formal medical training. This shift from potential minister to failed physician is endemic in late 17^th and early 18^th British culture, as young men like Colden who endeavored to build wealth and fame, saw the enlightenment as a progression of humanity towards a more civil, intelligent, and moral state.

Chapter two follows Colden as he builds his transatlantic communication network before he ultimately decides to settle in Manhatten, an area he considered to be the locus of high-minded intellectualism in the colonies. Many of Colden’s contacts both in the colonies and in the British isles were fellow Scots, who took advantage of the benefits of the 1707 unification. Despite his failings as a physician in London (which Colden attributed to elitism and snobbery), Colden was able to perform quite well as a physician in the colonies, becoming quite renowned for his practice in Philadelphia. Colden’s success at medicine is indicative of the breadth of intellectual pursuits of both colonial and British gentlemen during the early 18^th century enlightenment. Medicine, botany, natural history, mathematics, and philosophy were all seen as intimately related, and discussions such as these frequently permeated into theology as well.

Chapter three concerns Colden’s time spent in New York as a young man. Colden’s efforts to establish himself as colonial gentlemen were far more successful than his efforts in London. This chapter concerns Colden’s successful attempt to integrate himself within the Colonial government of New York, an endeavor that ultimately succeeded after he was appointed surveyor general by Governor William Burnett, a protégé of Newton and a man engrossed in the transatlantic intellectual milieu of the early 18^th century. Burnett played a large part in invigorating the scholarly and intellectual pursuits past the colonial borders and throughout the transatlantic British world. New York politics and intellectualism blended during Burnett’s tenure as governor, and has a lasting impact on Colden, who would adhere to this style of conservative modernist enlightenment ideology for the rest of his life.

Chapter four discusses British concerns surrounding French expansionism, the importance of cartography to imperial success and colonial security, and the political relationship between the colonies and the Haudenosaunee. Colden’s history of the Haudenosaunee, History of the Five Indian Nations, became a work of great interest to London’s board of trade and the greater objectives of Britain’s expansionism in the early part of the 18th century. Despite being a work produced to critique the political situation in New York, Colden’s History was his most disseminated work and earned him a reputation as an authority on Indian affairs and policy. Though Dixon provides little textual evidence of Colden’s work, readers to get to see how information disseminated from the colonies to Europe through exchange networks, gifts, and a knowledge production system uniquely transatlantic. Though current readers might immediately see the issues with Colden’s History, it was so well regarded in Europe that it even was referenced in Diderot’s reference to the Iroquois in the Encylopedie.

Chapter five is one of the more interesting chapters in Dixon’s work. Titled “Otium” this chapter explores the philosophies behind the cultural image of the colonial intellectual elite. Inspired by neo-Stoic ideals of rural environments being the ideal laboratories for high intellectualism, colonial intellectuals self-fashioned themselves in the neo-Stoic fashion to give their intellectual publications more merit in the transatlantic scientific community. In addition, this chapter goes into great detail about the theological and philosophical implications of Newtonian thought, with Colden straddling materialist and immaterialist positions as he published polemic mathematical and philosophical musings against Berkleyianism and other anti-Newtonian schools of thought. Colden’s effort to secure prominence within the intellectual transatlantic community took the form of a work on theories of matter and gravity, The Principles of Action in Matter, though this was not well received by European intelligentsia. Colden complained bitterly in letters to his network that European snobbery was to blame for the lack of reception for his publication, but the earlier reception of his Indian history shows that European scholars were not hostile toward colonial knowledge production. This duality in Colden’s publications shows that transatlantic knowledge production was a collaborative effort between colonials and Europeans.

Chapter six concerns Colden’s efforts to secure prominence within the intellectual transatlantic community, which took the form of a work on theories of matter and gravity, The Principles of Action in Matter, though this was not well received by European intelligentsia. Colden complained bitterly in letters to his network that European snobbery was to blame for the lack of reception for his publication, but the earlier reception of his Indian history shows that European scholars were not hostile toward colonial knowledge production. This duality in Colden’s publications shows that transatlantic knowledge production was a collaborative effort between colonials and Europeans.

Chapter seven discusses the politics of New York in the two decades leading up to the American revolution. Partisanship was rife within New York during this time, and Colden was quick to defend the conservative, modern enlightenment principles he cherished against what he viewed as an upstart, illegitimate enlightenment championed by lawyers and pamphleteers. This chapter also details how colonial elite intellectual culture had widened political divisions in the mid-18th century, with crown appointed officials and agents being characterized as intrusive and obstructive by local colonial politics.

Chapter eight focuses on Colden during the end of his life, when he was the de facto governor of New York in the immediate years before the revolution. By this time New York has become a cultural center for the colonies, with Shakespeare being put on in local theaters and intellectual elites appraised of all transatlantic developments. The development of New York made it a essential locale for British imperialism in the Americas, but this had the effect of making it a hotbed of revolutionary fervor. Polemics and journals heaped criticism onto Colden and the governors that preceded him, with mobs burning effigies of Colden in the streets and threatening violence against the lt. governor. The radical enlightenment displayed in the activities of the Sons of Liberty was a far-cry from the conservative intellectualism Colden had tried to foster in the colonies.

Dixon’s work is an excellent history that quite rightly elucidates the discrepancy between narratives of colonial enlightenment and how it was perceived by colonial actors. The discussions of cultural development and intellectual history are well received, as are the several instances where Dixon points out the gender and socioeconomic issues surrounding colonial knowledge production. Far too often, narratives about American colonial enlightenment are presented as teleological, so it was refreshing to see a good history rebuke these arguments with such an important figure as Colden.

Of course, there is still much to be desired. While ostensibly a history of Science, The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden contains much more theorizing and scientia than historia and experimentation. In fact, the experimentation we do see in the work is merely directed by Colden, with his slaves and laborers actually performing the experiment. Colden’s lack of experimenting is contrasted with Benjamin Franklin, who is noted in the work as doing many hands on experiments himself, though no doubt the same gender and socioeconomic critiques levied here against Colden likely apply to Franklin as well, just at a lower level of intensity. Certainly, Dixon’s book can be read as a history of colonial scientific thought, but Colden’s lackluster theorizing and scant experimentation leave more to be desired for me to call this a history of science, though cultural and intellectual history definitions are much more appropriate.

John M. Dixon is an historian of early America and of the early modern Atlantic world who teaches at the College of Staten Island, CUNY. He received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2007 and regularly teaches courses on the history of America before 1865, the history of New York, and American thought and culture. In addition, his research interests include intellectual and cultural history, the Enlightenment, New York history, and American Jewish history. His current research explores the early modern Atlantic world through the Jewish experience and his forthcoming project is funded by the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish history at New York University. The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden, published in 2016, is his latest book which follows the political and intellectual life of eighteenth-century statesman Cadwallader Colden in British colonial New York.

The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden traces the larger picture of British America’s intellectual circles by following the social, political, and intellectual life and career of the aforementioned statesman and man of science. This book argues that colonial American intellectualism in the age of Enlightenment was not a revolutionary detachment from Europe, but a dynamic transatlantic exchange of ideas in which loyalist elites with “metropolitan connections,” like Colden, served as intermediaries between local colonial knowledge and that of European scientific institutions and patrons. It is unique in the historiography of intellectualism in pre-revolutionary colonial America because it focuses on the intellectuals that were imperialist, elitist, and royalist. The author argues that this side of pre-revolutionary American history is important because, even though it does not “fit comfortably into our standard historical narrative of early America,” it was an important piece of “early modern intellectual culture,” (8). The Enlightenment in British America, then, was shaped by the interaction of “European, African, native, scholarly and artisanal knowledge that occurred,” because of the imperialist concerns of elite men in the colonies (3).

The book is divided chronologically into three parts, detailing Colden’s life through his intellectual pursuits. Part one of this book describes Colden’s early life, education, and his first years in the American colonies. It begins with an overview of the tumultuous years of the Glorious Revolution which gave way to great intellectual and political change, that Dixon describes as never being far apart. In Scotland, despite sectarian religious violence that saw faculty expulsed from the University of Edinburgh, where Colden would study, reforms were made to modernize Scottish education which included the implementation of many new courses such as language, botany, natural philosophy, and public law. It was during these tumultuous years in which Colden was raised and studied. His pursuits at the University of Edinburgh were in line with Enlightenment thought and he developed an interest in natural science and philosophy, with exposure to Newtonianism, and began to cultivate a reputable position in society. The biography continues with Colden’s personal and intellectual pursuits by describing his early years in colonial America, establishing contacts and himself as a reputable doctor and gentleman. The author uses this portion of the book to emphasize the burgeoning transatlantic exchange of knowledge and intellectual pursuits of which Colden took part. This portion of the book concludes with Colden’s marriage, his solidification as a learned physician, and his move from Philadelphia to New York where he was appointed New York’s Surveyor General by Governor Hunter through their connection in the same intellectual circles.

Part two of The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden, follows Colden’s early political career in the colonies with an emphasis on his first major written work The History of the Five Indian Nations. After British America gained the rights to trade with Native American populations in the continental interior after the War of Spanish Succession, there was a push to expand and redirect economic efforts to the west. Political conflicts hindered this expansion and there was an increased effort to gain “credible geographic and historical knowledge of the continent,” (63). Colden saw this as a new opportunity to become an expert on the geography and history of North America. Dixon argues that cartography played a crucial role in the imperialist visions of North America that colonial leaders desired and which the British government in London was unconvinced of in the 1720s. The author argues here that New York’s proximity to the Iroquois, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca peoples gave the colony imperial significance. Colden’s “The History of the Five Indian Nations,” gave him scholarly credibility and standing as a leading expert on the geography of North America on both sides of the Atlantic. It was an outwardly political tract which asserted that Britain had economic dominance over these territories to trade and settle and was published internationally.

In addition, Dixon spends time with Colden’s retreat into being a “gentleman at leisure,” following the political turmoil of the 1730s and 40s in New York. He spent his time here pursuing scientific and philosophic endeavors for the benefit of the public and engaged the help of his family, servants, and enslaved persons. Colden also participated in transatlantic scientific correspondence networks and utilized an increasingly powerful print culture to distribute knowledge. It was during this time he penned, “The Principles of Action in Matter,” where he claimed that the universe was made of “self-moving material,” (104). The publication of this work did not catapult him to the success he wanted and was largely discredited. Colden blamed this failure on European prejudice against colonial intellectualism. Dixon argues that the failure was on a lack of clarity in Colden’s theory and the practical inability to quickly respond to criticisms in Europe across the Atlantic. Despite this failure, Dixon claims that Colden’s intellectual contributions helped propel the transatlantic culture of knowledge exchange between the colonies and Europe.

Part three tackles Colden’s later life as the lieutenant governor of New York amid the increasingly political (and revolutionary) backdrop of the British American colonies. His appointment coincided with George III’s succession to the throne and put him in a vulnerable position in a higher office amid an unstable political scene in New York. At the same time, younger educated professionals overshadowed his “intellectual authority,” and “decades of intellectual and political struggles,” had worn him down (7). Fractious parties and political alignments led to “social disunity” and “corruption, conspiracy, and anarchy,” in the 1750s and 1760s (129). At this point, Dixon argues, Cadwallader Colden became disillusioned, and his vision of an enlightened government was fading. By the time of the Stamp Act of 1765, Colden was a universally disliked lieutenant governor with defamatory tracts being distributed broadly. The author argues here that despite his “universal dislike,” and poor historical reputation, that Cadwallader Colden was an important figure in transatlantic Enlightenment thinking, who championed colonial intellectualism. In this manner, Dixon’s book is most similar in the historiography of transatlantic knowledge exchange to books like Delbourgo’s “Collecting the World,” or Woodward’s “Prospero’s America,” though Cadwallader Colden’s actual scientific achievements compared to the likes of Hans Sloane, for example, leave something to be desired.

The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden is written in an accessible manner, with the intent being that anyone with interest in British colonial intellectualism and the Enlightenment could understand the author’s argument. A caveat, however, is that Dixon writes on the assumption that the reader is familiar with broader scientific and historic concepts. Though overviews of major events and theories are given, these explanations fall short of being helpful to those who don’t have that background of knowledge. John Dixon’s research is thorough, with archival evidence from the University of Edinburgh, Harvard University, the National Records of Scotland, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Colby College Museum of Art to name a few. For readers, the book lacks pictorial evidence that could contribute to the author’s argument, and which would make it more accessible to a non-scholar audience. Dixon cites many pieces of correspondence and Colden’s own published work which survive in archives but does not include visual representations of the evidence that he uses in his argument. These issues, however, are small and may be a reflection of a personal preference on my part. Overall, this is a thoroughly well-researched and well-written book arguing the importance of British colonial intellectual achievement during the Enlightenment.

Thrifty Science: Making the Most of Materials in the History of Experiment by Simon Werrett describes the role of improvisation and sustainability in early modern science in England. He is particularly interested in the mundane, material conditions of science of that time, so his book chapters focus on the environment in which the English practiced science and on the instruments they used. Werrett’s readers, who, like any audience of readers today, are accustomed to highly specialized and complex scientific instruments, like the Hubble Telescope or the Hadron Collider at CERN, might be be surprised at the sophisticated way he describes early modern people using seemingly simple scientific tools and instruments.

Before discussing Werrett’s notion of thrifty science in more detail and summarizing his book, I would like to introduce his background. According to his faculty page, Simon Werrett is a Professor of the History of Science at University College London. He was educated in The University of Leeds and Cambridge in the UK and has had fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the Getty Research Center. His research interests include the connections between the arts and sciences in early modern Europe; empire, science, and technology; and Russian and Soviet science. Readers who are interested in watching him discuss Thrifty Science should check out a ten-part series of short videos of him on the YouTube page of The Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqDGBZHFcMlnaTbR1vS266tWaCnnCaCjK

Returning to Werrett’s book, in the first chapter, he argues that 17th century householders in England approached the creation of what he calls “natural science” with a “thrifty” attitude, according to which people doing experiments tried to make as much use as possible out of the objects they owned. While describing this attitude, Werrett introduces a key term, “oeconomy,” which refers to the proper management of the home and offers moral lessons about how a household should be kept in proper order. Thus, thrifty science is part of a wider moral or ethical ideology in early modern England.

The rest of Werrett’s book, except for chapter eight, focuses on various expressions of thrifty science. Chapter two discusses the home in early modern experimentation. He explains to his readers how early modern people generally viewed their homes as open, ambiguous places with rooms that were not as defined by purpose or function as they are in modern houses today, which have, for instance, kitchens designed for cooking and dining and living rooms for relaxing and socializing.

Werrett does, however, discuss a transition to a more modern style of architecture that historians have labeled the Great Rebuilding. During the Great Rebuilding, English homes began to expand with second stories with more rooms. As a result, occupants gained more privacy and they could move animals to buildings outside of homes. For early science, this meant a transition from homes that were, as Werrett puts it on page 45, “open-ended and capable of revision, reworking, and repair over time” towards homes with rooms that could be used specifically for experiments.

Chapters three through seven focus on the objects of early modern, thrifty science. In chapter three, Werrett describes the “playful, creative, and ingenious” ways people used objects in “scientific service,” as he puts it on page 65. He then gives examples of how ordinary objects of domestic life became scientific instruments and how early modern experimenters used improvisation, substitution, and bricolage to modify objects for new scientific purposes.

Chapter four discusses the cost, functionality, practical use, repair, and durability of scientific instruments. Chapter five focuses on the repair and maintenance of items, including the role of skilled artisans outside of the household and challenges servants faced while dealing with fragile instruments in the home. Chapter six discusses “secondhand science,” which refers to the practical and social aspects of trading scientific items. Chapter seven describes “dismantling science,” by which Werrett means the effect auctions had on the control over scientific instruments. Individuals in higher socioeconomic classes would loose collections of scientific instruments through auctions to enterprising lower class individuals, which, in turn, encouraged social mobility.

The final chapter describes the end of thrifty science with the transition to economic science, which celebrated objects that were intended for one-time use. To encourage profit under economic science, perishable items, like newspapers and cheap watches, were more available for consumers. As well, there was a gradual transition away from science in the home to science in laboratories, so that experimentation could take place in dedicated locations. Thrifty science, as Werrett explains in chapter two, took place in home settings, which were open and ambiguous locations and in which anyone in the family could take part in experimentation.

At the beginning of this essay, I wrote about how Thrifty Science will surprise its readers, who are accustomed to modern scientific instruments that are far more specialized and complex than the instruments Simon Werrett documents in his book. This is because, as I was reading his book, I kept remembering incidents with scientific tools and instruments that dominated the news over the last few decades, like a small imperfection in the Hubble Telescope’s mirror seriously damaging NASA’s reputation. Like probably all of us who read this book, I associate modern science with universities, research institutes, and billion dollar equipment.

The main argument of Simon Werrett’s book – that early modern science was “thrifty” and involved “playful, creative, and ingenious” ways people used objects for experimentation – reminded me that science can take place on a much smaller scale. As impressive as a billion dollar telescope in orbit is, the humble experiments I did in high school chemistry class with acids and bases or dissections in biology class were science, too. The main lesson I take from Simon Werrett’s book, then, is not to forget that science can be humble and take place on a small scale.

I have two additional comments about Thrifty Science before I end this review. The first has to do with his use of the word “science.” In several places in the book, I was surprised that he avoided using the word science, like in the following quote from page 88: “Maintaining philosophical material culture required the collaboration of servants, maids, relatives, and artisans, who no doubt performed much of the requisite labor.” (emphasis added) My immediate reaction to this passage was to ask myself why he’s referring to “philosophical material culture” instead of “scientific material culture.” Then, I realized that “philosophical material culture” might be a better choice given that he is discussing early modern so-called scientific activity. Given the number of times we have asked, “is this science,” in this class, I have learned to appreciate an author who can judiciously choose an alternative term at the right moment. I wonder if Werrett avoid the word “science” in certain cases so that he would not lead his audience to make assumptions about early modern “science” or natural philosophy.

My final comment was originally a complaint that came to mind while reading about the Great Rebuilding in chapter two. I disliked that Werrett was explaining the development of science or natural philosophy based on an architectural development in England. I immediately made the false assumption that he was privileging England over other parts of the world in the development of science. Last week, we read about indigenous people in South America having scientific or natural philosophical knowledge, so why is this week’s author so focused on England, I asked myself. Later, I read this line in the conclusion and realized I misunderstood Werrett: “The focus here has been on England and the home, but it might equally be asked what thrifty practices pertained in other places, among artisans, in the military, in churches and universities, and in the many other arenas that contributed to early modern science.”

The lesson I take from my short-lived complaint has to do with the general way authors write about science and how we discuss science in our class. When Simon Werrett writes on page 43 that, “[s]o this chapter explores how experimenters made use of their dwellings and exploited possessions and furniture to do experiments,” he is using general terms that suggest sweeping observations about how experimentation works. I was too willing to assume that he was making observations about science or natural philosophy as a whole, even outside of England and the UK. My lesson, then, is to pay attention to how I make general statements about history. I hope one day that I will have a chance to write about the history of science, so I will try to keep this lesson in mind and be as transparent for my readers regarding the language and concepts I use.

The members and associates of London’s Royal Society were experimentalists and letter writers. Simon Werrett, a history professor at the University College of London, uses their manuscripts, correspondence, and surviving material objects to explore their attitudes towards the objects in their lives. Werrett argues that for these early modern elites few objects had dedicated functions, but rather were valued for durability and adaptability. The practices surrounding objects and their use constituted an ethos he calls “thrift.” As experimentalists, Werrett’s protagonists conducted their investigations within this ethos, resulting in a kind of experimental investigation he calls “thrifty science.” The first part of his 2019 book, Thrifty Science, describes the values and practices of those early modern elite experimentalists. Two chapters are devoted to the practice of thrifty science in the early modern elite home, two more describe the care and repair of material objects, including those used in thrifty science, and two describe the markets for scientific apparatus and materials. Werrett includes an overview of the afterlife of thrifty science in the 19^th and early 20th centuries as large-scale, industrial, and specialized investigative practices largely replaced the earlier ethos. His conclusion argues that thrifty science still has a role to play, and that modern recycling and makerspaces should be seen as more than vestigial remnants of an earlier era.

Werrett frames his argument as a before and after. In the beginning was “oeconomy,” an early modern spelling of our modern word “economy” which was derived from Latin, middle French, and middle English. Economy has had many meanings over time; Werrett uses oeconomy to denote the sense of stewardship, prudence, and “well-functioning” associated with the management of a household.  By the middle, at least, of the 19C the most common senses of “economy” were technical and financial; the older sense of household management became known as home or domestic economy, and national financial affairs became political economy. Closely related to oeconomy are the practices, the ethos, that are consistent with it; thrifty practices are those that promote stewardship, prudence, and so forth. “Thrifty science” then is the kind of knowledge-seeking one gets in thrifty oeconomical world. This is Werrett’s, sometimes jarring, but mostly effective, way of reminding his readers that the early modern experimentalist may have had different values and objectives. Werrett’s first task is to orient his readers to the experience of his early modern subjects. As he develops his frame, Werrett also uses a modern concept from anthropology/sociology, the concept of “incomplete” or “unfinished” objects, i.e., objects without specific purposes, or “open-ended” objects. With these simple definitional frames established, Werrett uses them deftly to illustrate the world of thrifty science.

Beginning with the site of much early modern experimental philosophy, the house, Werrett argues that the new style houses with multiple rooms and hearths that were gradually replacing the older center-hall single-hearth houses of the Middle Ages were themselves open-ended objects. Rooms in these new houses did not yet have designated functions; for instance, with multiple hearths, multiple rooms could be used to prepare meals. Similarly, household utensils of the early modern period could be used for multiple purposes, including use in experimental investigations for testing recipes or chymical reactions. Werrett uses the notions of unfinished objects and the oeconomical ethos to illustrate the practice of early modern thrifty science. These elite practitioners “made use of” what was at hand. They “made do” with and “shifted” the uses of unfinished objects. Collectively, they practiced “thrifty science.”

Objects wear, break, and are no longer needed. Werrett describes the quotidian stewardship of objects – how they are maintained, repaired, and recycled. In the oeconomic ethos durability, maintainability, repairability were desirable qualities. It was good to have a well-made thing that could be used for multiple purposes, but only if it could be maintained and repaired. Much maintenance and repair were done in the household, but some repairs required skilled outsiders, e.g., compass pointers needed to have their tips remagnetized. Werrett shows by example how the worlds of elites and artisans intertwine. And by following the arc of an object’s life, he is able to show how thrifty science intersects with the world of scavengers, dustmen, and nightsoil collectors.

Some objects may be loaned, given, traded, or sold. Werrett describes a social economy of gift-giving and exchange for scientific objects that is like that for recipes and often involves the same households. Instrument makers and dealers commonly repaired and sold both new and second-hand objects; “second-hand” was not thought to mean inferior in the world of thrifty science. The number of second-hand markets and dealers for books and objects increased in the 18C. Scientific collections and equipment were included in estates and sold at auction. Werrett uses probate and auction records to trace this growing activity and to show how maintenance, repair and reuse practices were incorporated into the collective activity he calls thrifty science.

By the end of the 18C, the markets for scientific apparatus, books, material, collections, and related expertise had grown. The intense debates during the last part of the 18C between researchers arguing phlogiston and oxygen theories led to what has come to be called the “chemical revolution,” a productive way to explore the properties of matter that led to modern chemistry. Chemistry laboratories required increasingly specialized equipment and storage facilities. Other scientific equipment became more specialized, and sometimes became larger, e.g., larger lenses on telescopes. Ambiguities in experimental results led to searches for more precise measurements. Universities built special purpose facilities. The home, too, became specialized as rooms acquired designated purposes: kitchen, parlor, sitting room, storeroom, etc. As the scope and scale of experimental investigations increased and homes became less suitable, scientific activity moved out of the home, and, Werrett argues, the scientific enterprise became increasingly dominated by men. Werrett outlines the development of larger scale scientific investigation throughout the 19C and leading up World War I and notes that the increasing specialization of equipment gave “unfinished” objects a specific purpose. Such single-purpose objects were no longer part of the oeconomical ethos, but rather were part of “economic science.”

In the book Thrifty Science: Making the Most of Materials in the History of Experiment, Simon Werrett worked to show how scientists in the seventeenth end eighteenth centuries made use of places and items not currently considered scientific to conduct their experiments. To do this, Werrett presented how scientists would make use of everyday objects and places to conduct their experiments with the items they had. Early modern scientists also worked to repair and reuse the more specialized equipment and with other scientists to share their materials. This was done because an environment existed that supported the use and reuse of everyday materials to work as the base of knowledge production. This is then used to further research on the history of household science as well as the history of recycling and its relation to scientific history.

Werrett is currently a Professor of the History of Science at University College London who primarily works on the interaction between the arts and the sciences from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. Werrett achieved his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and previously worked for the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Werrett has previously worked on historical works focused on the oeconomic nature of science and its thrifty nature. Because of his current research focus on the interactions within science, he is well suited to a work on how science interacted with the economic perspectives at this time.

This book strived to show how the “oeconomy” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries created research that was far more resourceful than in their research than in later periods. To do this, Werrett used both the correspondence and works of early modern scientists to show the materials they used and their perspectives on their tools. This use of sources created the sense of how the scientists believe science should be done by presenting the tools they described and created the sense that this was a common practice by using messages between many different scientists. Using these methods, Werrett presents the histories of multiple prominent scientists and their use of common household materials equipment and its repair to conduct their science. This creates a well-defined sense of how scientists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries practiced what we might now call a thrifty science.

Chapter one shows how managing a household in the seventeenth century was inherently thrifty, as this was expected for proper household management. To do this, Werrett used the works of people like Francis Bacon and books on the oeconomy of a household to present the thrifty nature of life in this period. This focus sets up this information on the oeconomy of science during this period by presenting ideas that would now be considered thrifty as part of daily life. And by doing this, Werrett set up how repurposing household goods was a part of life during this period.

Chapters two through five describe where and how science was done in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and how this process did not include the waste of materials or space. These chapters use the works of scientists in this period to show how scientific discoveries were made using household equipment and showed how consideration was taken in scientific works so that they could be recreated using equipment that people would have. They also show how items were repurposed to continue their use with few exceptions. This section creates a sense of the thrifty practices used within the household to continue research with the equipment at hand.

Chapters six and seven present the extent to which second-hand materials were used and reused within science. In these chapters, Werrett presents both the resale of scientific equipment, the growth of auctions, and their place within early modern science. Chapter six interestingly used the trade cards of businesses to argue the resale of scientific equipment and the possible ubiquitousness of repairs to the use of scientific equipment. Where chapter seven showed the growth of auctions as a part of science and their growth in prominence, and the idea that an auction was not only used as a way to decrease the price of science. Together these chapters help support the argument of thrift inherent to the science of the time by showing that repair and second equipment were not considered inferior.

Chapter eight concludes by connecting the thrifty oeconomy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became the economy of the science of the nineteenth and future centuries. This chapter presents a different argument than the rest of the book by showing how science became specialized and moved away from its previous use of general household equipment. Although this section does not detract from the general argument of the book as it takes place outside of the period of the rest of the book, it felt as though it was unnecessary to prove the book’s central theme. This is because chapter eight presents the specialization of equipment and the decline of thrift in science, which supports the opposite of the rest of the book. For this reason, chapter 8 felt out of place with the rest of the book and its main argument.

Through this argument, Werrett worked to build on both histories of household science and the history of recycling. Because one of the book’s main arguments was that there was no concept of wasting in science during this period, Thrifty Science situates itself with the study of early modern recycling very well. It also worked to support and expand the history of household science, like Leong’s Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, by presenting how science during the early modern period worked mainly within the home and with its resources. The contents of Thrifty Science also worked to expand on the difficulties of conducting science in the colonies during this period, as seen in books like Prospero’s America. In all these areas, the book worked to expand on the historiography of the cultural aspects of early modern science.

This book’s goal was to “make the household visible in early modern science” (p. 5) it is aimed mainly toward a more scholarly audience. Although the book is written in a way that a popular audience could easily read it since it does not present any difficult concepts seen in some histories of science, it is primarily intended for the scholarly audience. This is because Werrett’s work focuses on a narrow topic and is mainly designed to engrain itself with larger arguments of the importance of recycling and the household within early modern science. But, for this reason, Thrifty Science is well suited for its intended audience.

Andres I Prieto is a associate professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder where he teaches Spanish and Portuguese advanced composition. He received his Phd in 2006 from the University of Connecticut. His recent works include include “Confessing to be an Indian: Penance and the Creation of a Native Self in José de Acosta’s Missiology,” and “From the Devil’s Herb to Saint Thomas’ Gift: The Christianization of Guarani Sacred Plants in the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay.” His 2011 work, Missionary Scientists: Jesuit Science in Spanish South America, 1570-1810, discusses the rise of the Society of Jesus in colonial South America. In particular, Prieto’s work concerns the unique mix between religion, missionary work, science, and colonial culture. An insightful work, Prieto has produced a substantially well-researched piece of scholarship that is much welcomed by history of science and colonial Latin America scholars.

Prieto’s work is surrounds examinations of case studies, these being the natural history publications produced by Jesuits during or immediately after their missionary work in Spanish South America. The book has eight chapters organized into three parts. These case studies proceed chronologically, beginning with the highly influential publication by Jose de Acosta shortly after the Jesuits arrived in Peru in 1568, and concluding with two Jesuit writers (Ovalle and Rosale) who wrote natural histories of Chile toward the end of the 17th century. In between, Prieto chronicles the change in Jesuit methodology, missionary practices, pedagogical focus, and indigenous-missionary relationships. For those readers more interested in the religious climate and influences that surrounded the Jesuits knowledge production, chapters 4,5, and 6 offer an incredibly detailed into the cosmology and pedagogical foundations of Jesuit practices in the New World. For those who are more interested in the production of colonial natural history in the early modern period, chapters 1,2,3 and 8 are where one can find discussions of the scientific enterprise more in-line with current historiography about the scientific revolution. The audience for this work is most likely those already familiar with colonial structure or the history of science in general, as the book does not go into great detail about scientific practice outside of the Jesuits religious methodology.

Chapter one explores the early tensions between the Jesuits and colonial governments in the second half of the 16th century. The Jesuits, preferring to fulfill a pedagogical rather than pastoral role in South America, had a contentious relationship with colonial administration, who preferred that the Jesuits take up spiritual curatorial duties in the doctrinas (read encomiendas). This push toward missionary responsibility was meet with initial refusal on the part of the Jesuits, who preferred to teach at their colleges in urban centers, until Jose de Acosta convinced the order that their mission would be better served if they took up the evangelization of indigenous peoples. The result of this was a Spanish empire spanning correspondence and collaboration network which aided the Jesuits in their research of the natural world, which in turn would bring greater glory to god.

In chapter two Pietro discusses the natural history research conducted by the Jesuits and how their scientific inquiries aided in their evangelization efforts. Many of the natural histories written by Jesuits during this time read like herbals, focusing on specific flora that had a medical or economic benefit to the reynos of South America. A more pragmatic reason for the Jesuits concern with indigenous medicine was their competition with  native shaman (machi) for influence over indigenous tribes, and to a greater extent, to police the religious practices of the indigenous communities that they oversaw. The Jesuits were exceedingly overbearing in their efforts to discredit the cosmology and healing practices of indigenous peoples, not only because serving as physicians gave the Jesuits a formidable position of power within indigenous society, but also because the lack of theorizing behind indigenous medicine made the Jesuits see indigenous healing practices as demonic.

Chapter three concerns this “demonic” healing practiced by indigenous peoples, and how the Jesuits deconstructed indigenous healing practices and pharmacopeia into a European framework, subsequently claiming the flora of South America for Christian purposes instead of indigenous purposes. The root of their disbelief and discrediting of indigenous healing lay in the cosmological origins of indigenous medical beliefs. By reframing indigenous knowledge (read extracting) into European medical theory, Jesuits could legitimize the use of indigenous flora and medicine and introduce indigenous pharmacopeia into European and Christian philosophical and theological frameworks.

Chapter four concerns the developing methodology of Jesuits in the New World. This chapter follows the Jesuit missionary Bernabe Cobo as he spends his life traveling around South America and Mexico compiling his natural history, Historia del Nuevo Mundo. Prieto uses the case of Cobo to argue that by the early decades of the 17th century the Jesuit presence in South America and Mexico had evolved into a collaborative enterprise, with figures such as Cobo conducting research in Jesuit archives and in the field as they evangelized the native population. The structure of the Jesuits in South America offered a uniquely collaborative opportunity for researches such as Cobo, who used the litany of archives, fellow Jesuits, and time spent in different locales to produce a truly collaborative natural history. The international dynamic of the Society of Jesus also allowed for collaboration not only with Jesuits of the new world, but also with the old, turning the scientific enterprise of New World Jesuits into a transoceanic endeavor.

Chapter five discusses the engagement New World Jesuits had in the knowledge production on the international and local levels. Following an Italian missionary (Nicolo Mascardi) as he evangelizes and corresponds with his superiors in Europe, Prieto shows that Jesuit natural history research not only informed local knowledge, but also informed European knowledge, as the Italian Jesuit conducted extensive astronomical observations at the behest of renowned Jesuit Scholars in Europe such as Kircher and Nieremberg.

In chapter six, Prieto takes a deep dive in the theological and philosophical underpinnings of Jose de Acosta’s Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias. This chapter touches upon the devlopment of Jesuit and Christian cosmology at the time when Acosta was writing his work, in particular discussing how the Jesuits methodology was influenced by Scholasticism, Aristotelian Philosophy, and natural magic. Acosta’s methodology was informed by the Aristotelian ‘why’, which manifested itself in Acosta’s work with a focus on scientia and god as the final cause for the difference and uniqueness of the natural world. To quote Prieto, “the Aristotelian manner of inquiry about nature, with its implicit link between the questioning mind and the answering world, was consistent with the Jesuit anthropocentric view of the world, (162). For Acosta, the study of nature revealed the majesty of god by showing the limitations of human rationality, hence the underlying cause for nature and the occult forces so discussed in contemporary scientific circles being attributed to god in Acosta’s work. Natural history, then, to 16th century Jesuits was about displaying the majesty of god, while moral history (human history) concerned the movement toward salvation. To Acosta, the description of the New world fulfilled both of these purposes.

Chapter seven contrasts Acosta’s work with Cobo’s. In particular, this chapter concerns the devloping methodology of Jesuit natural historians since Acosta’s time on the continent. While Acosta wished to compare the New and Old worlds, Cobo endeavored to show the uniqueness of the New world by playing close attention to indigenous nomenclature, taxonomy, and ecology contamination brought about by colonization. While Acosta thought that in-depth knowledge about nature was sinful, Cobo believed that examining nature could lead to a greater understanding of god’ majesty. Here we can see a slight break from the scholastic tradition of Acosta to the slight humanistic approach of Cobo.

Chapter eight touches again on methodology. In this chapter Pietro discusses how natural history of the New World, particularly Chile, served a proto-nationalistic function as the New World came under attack by European scholars. The two methodologies in this chapter, Ovalle’s and Rosale’s, vary in their attribution and description of the wonders of the new world, with Rosale focusing more on the flora indigenous peoples rather than the examples of wonders and miracles supposedly present in the New World that Ovalle touches upon, but both serve to highlight the uniqueness of the flora and people of South America.

Missionary Scientists does an extraordinary job of focusing the contributions of Jesuits to early modern science. Prieto makes incredible use of Jesuit publications and correspondence to present his case studies, in the process firmly placing the Jesuits in the scientific enterprise of the early modern period. In addition, this book is a much-welcomed entry into HIST 635 examination of natural history in the early modern period. It is refreshing to see that contemporaries of Sloane paid more attention to indigenous peoples, even if these actors were trying to disrupt their mode of living.

This work goes into more detail about the religious motivations of the examined scientists than perhaps any book we have read so far in this class. In particular, the examination of the influence of scholasticism and Aristotelian philosophy was much welcomed. Though many of the figures we have examined so far have come from protestant nations, Prieto’s discussion of the influence of Aquinas and Augustus on science in the 15th and 16th centuries (albeit in this instance in catholic circumstances) provides a great amount of insight into the theological undertones that permeated scientific inquiry in the early modern period.

There is a lot to say about the treatment of indigenous peoples in this work. Certainly, it is my personal belief that any history dealing with the colonization of indigenous peoples in such close proximity to its inquiry needs to attach at least some discussion of postcolonial theory. This was not present in any meaningful fashion in Prieto’s work beyond cursory acknowledgments of the uniqueness of indigenous cultures and cosmologies. Prieto can be forgiven for this omission, however, since his work provides a great amount of insight into the exploitation and evangelization of indigenous peoples, even if it is not touched upon in his work. A great deal of discussion could be had, and is occurring in the current discourse, about the indigenous medical practices and indigenous knowledge production and whether these native endeavors should be recognized as science, but since this is a work concerning a unique institution operating within the colonial framework, an in-depth discussion about indigenous knowledge production would likely have deterred from the authors goal of situating Jesuit scholars in the center of early modern scientific inquiry.

It is surprising, however, that for a work that is ostensibly about early modern science, how little science is actually discussed or examined. Though it is clear Prieto thoroughly examined these Jesuit’s writings, apparently doing most of the translations himself, no descriptions of flora by these Jesuits make it into the work. Personally, this seems a glaring omission, especially considering some of the other texts we have examined that go into excruciating detail about scientific practice.

Personally, I enjoyed this book very much. As someone who studies Latin America, Missionary Scientists gave me much insight into the evangelizing process, and the cultural function the Society of Jesus played in the Spanish colonial venture.

In Andrés I. Prieto’s Missionary Scientists, the author explores the missionary zeal and scientific activities of Jesuit priests in South America, starting in the late sixteenth century and ending in 1767 with the expulsion of the Jesuits from the continent. Dr. Prieto obtained his PhD and his Masters at the University of Connecticut, but he obtained his Bachelor’s from the Universidad Catolica de Chile, which is located in Santiago. He is the Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Some of Prieto’s recent works include “Confessing to be an Indian: Penance and the Creation of a Native Self in José de Acosta’s Missiology,” “From the Devil’s Herb to Saint Thomas’ Gift: The Christianization of Guarani Sacred Plants in the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay,” and José de Acosta: A Jesuit at the Service of Empire, which is due to be published this year.

The author is clear in his introduction that he is delving into an aspect of South American history that has not been academically examined. The groundwork is laid for an exploration of the relationship between science and religion in the Jesuit missions, which were places where priests could dedicate themselves to studying theology and natural science simultaneously. Prieto organizes his book into three parts, where the focus is on a writer or prominent Jesuit, with the goal of demonstrating the underappreciated role South American Jesuits played in the development of science in the early modern period. In Chapter One, Prieto describes the sixteenth-century conflict between the viceroy of Peru and the Jesuits. The Jesuits were more focused on integration into the secular lives of the cities where they lived, whereas the viceroy was more concerned with bringing order to a country ravaged by civil war. This conflict forced the Jesuits into the countryside, as the viceroy assumed they would continue along their traditional missionary path. However, this ignited a scientific curiosity in the Jesuits. Readers are introduced to José de Acosta, a theologian and Jesuit whose magnum opus was entitled the Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, where he laid out his understanding of New World nature and cosmology. The Historia is effectively a manifesto for empire, as one cannot have an understanding of the New World at this time without the Spanish Empire. Prieto shifts to the medical aspects of Jesuit science in Chapter Two. Focusing on Chile, Prieto describes how if a Spanish colonist fell ill, they chose the services of a machi, or Mapuche shaman, instead of those of a Spanish doctor or surgeon. However, the Jesuits characterized the machi as devil worshippers, silencing the perspective of them as healers, revealing the Jesuits outside of their missionary norm. The Jesuits had to overcome their biases against native medicine, especially native herbs, in order to treat patients effectively. In Chapter Three, he shifts to the parallels of what is happening in Paraguay and the difference between medical treatment in Paraguay compared to Chile. In the Paraguayan missions, medical treatment was deeply intertwined with religion. The Jesuits kept medicinal herbs under lock and key, and regulated the dosages for patients. This practice was meant to prevent native converts from returning to their ancestral gods, but it functioned as a highly effective method of social control. Chapter Four introduces the reader to Bernabé Cobo, a Jesuit who authored the History of the New World, of which only the first volume has survived. Cobo traveled across the Jesuit network of missions and obtained objects ranging from Paraguayan geodes to fossils from Lima. In his quest for knowledge about South American natural history, Cobo was confirmed in his belief that the Edenic landscape of South America reflected God’s omnipotence. With Chapter Five, Prieto examines the international nature of the Jesuit order by introducing Niccolò Mascardi, an Italian who studied under the Jesuits in Rome. While in Rome, he was involved with verifying Galileo’s observations of Jupiter’s moons. In 1652, Mascardi was sent to Chile and wanted to preach amongst the native peoples there. He was assigned to the Mission Buena Esperanza, which was highly successful as a Jesuit mission. Mascardi’s circumstances as being both a missionary and an astronomer were unusual at the time, especially as the Inquisition was putting Galileo on trial when Mascardi was a student in Rome. Chapter Six takes the reader back to the sixteenth century and José de Acosta’s book. The chapter is a deeper dive into Acosta’s work within the context of subsequent missionary experiences in Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina. Acosta’s work is also situated within the context of the sixteenth century relationship between science and religion, with debates over vana curiositas dominating the minds of theologians. Chapter Seven compares Acosta’s book and Cobo’s work by showing their different philosophical perspectives. Acosta thought that nature was part of God’s plan for humanity, while Cobo thought that it was a reflection of the glory of God. These two different perspectives come from distinct theological schools of thought about nature. Acosta was a follower of the Augustinian school, where everything in nature conformed to God’s plan for the universe, and that to attempt to explain it was a sin. Cobo followed the Thomistic school, where nature was part of God’s majesty here on Earth. Prieto details in Chapter Eight how Cobo compiled his History of the New World for publication, but he died before seeing it in print. In fact, it would take until the 1890s for the book to be published. Prieto explains that the delay in publication was caused by Cobo being somewhat of a renegade, as his Jesuit superiors wanted him to abandon his scientific research and fully devote himself to preaching. The epilogue culminates with the expulsion of the Jesuits from South America. Unfortunately, the Spanish authorities began to use the Jesuits as a scapegoat for the problems faced at the time, and the edict of expulsion was issued in 1767, thus exiling the Jesuits to Europe and ending their tenure in South America.

Missionary Scientists provides a reader with an in-depth analysis of the little-known role of South American Jesuits in furthering scientific understanding in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I would recommend this book to someone interested in the complex relationship between science and religion in this era, where Jesuits could be both missionaries and scientists. Instead of a standard narrative, the author chose to pull out selected Jesuits as case studies to provide insights into the intricacies of their missionary work, thus allowing the reader better insight into the primary sources and the ability to place them in a broader Atlantic context. The author’s well-written notes section provided easy-to-digest insight and commentary that furthered the understanding of Missionary Scientists. Perhaps some context would have been helpful in the introduction to understand why this topic has not been covered by modern historiography. The title of the book seemed like an oxymoron, as one would not typically associate missionaries with science, but Prieto shows us that the Jesuits augmented their missionary work with their scientific discoveries, seeing it as a way to further the glory of God.

Margaret Schotte received her BA in history from Harvard, an MA from the University of Toronto, and her PhD from Princeton.  “Sailing School” is her first book, and it builds upon the topical foundation of her publication history, which concerns the systemization of nautical logbook-keeping processes, as well as a study of data-gathering practices by the Dutch East India Company (the “VOC”).  Overall, her research focuses on processes of formal maritime knowledge formation during the Age of Discovery – a period when growing theoretical knowledge from mathematics and astronomy integrated steadily with centuries of “small navigation” seamanship grounded in tacit knowledge.  The unprecedented demands of “large navigation” — wayfinding across vast distances on the open ocean, without the benefit of landmarks — drove inexorable systematization and professionalization of navigational techniques by all the major European naval powers over a period of three centuries.  In Sailing School, Schotte chronicles the emergence of a dialogue between pure and applied science that persists to this day.

Schotte structures her book around five “schools” of maritime navigation, arranged in chronological order and framed as case studies.  The prologue describes the formation of the Casa de la Contratacion, the “House of Trade”, in Seville, under the patronage of the Spanish crown, headed by a chair of cosmography.  This school served as a state-sponsored template for its later northern European counterparts, and Schotte points out that the variations between these northern European players, in their respective implementations of the Spanish model, reveal the subtle influences on national-level navigational cultures.  For example, she cites the importance of maritime trade and business arithmetic in England as a key factor in the eventual English emphasis on arithmetic over astronomy, and a Mediterranean safely traversable largely without recourse to theory as an explanation for the paucity of Italian contributions to the large-navigational literature.  This revealed pattern of cultural evolution under competitive selection pressure is typical of Schotte’s ability to synthesize patterns across a truly vast trove of primary sources, drawn almost exclusively from maritime archives across Europe.  The book features over fifty pages of endnotes and a forty-page bibliography, and this extraordinary compilation reflects both the author’s exhaustive efforts and maritime history’s remarkable legacy of documentation and preservation.

Chapter one chronicles a thriving commercial market for maritime reference material in Amsterdam, owing to high rates of literacy in the population, the involvement of a large cross-section of Dutch society in the growth of Dutch sea power, and the relatively high social status of sailors.  Chapter two examines Dieppe, on the French channel coast, and the efforts of Guillaume Denys to introduce the powerful mathematical tools of trigonometry and tables of logarithms to standard navigational practice.  Chapter three details three distinct class-oriented paths to navigational certification in Greenwich, England: a high-aptitude theoretical track for promising math students at the Royal Mathematical School, seasoned “small-navigators” who wished to upgrade their skills for larger vessels (not unlike modern airline pilots qualifying for multiple engines and instrument ratings), and sons of the nobility seeking commissions in the Royal Navy.  Here Schotte cultivates a “you are there” atmosphere as she puts readers in the shoes of examinees, particularly those subject to curricula influenced heavily by mathematical and astronomical luminaries like Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley.  She also makes great use of the legendarily prolific output of Samuel Pepys, the administrator of the Royal Navy.  The fourth chapter returns to the Netherlands and depicts the emergence of the modern test preparation industry — a network of private educators selling practice tests and cramming regimens for the exacting VOC navigational certification process, almost 250 years before SATs, ACTs, LSATs, GREs, GMATs, and MCATs.  

The book culminates with chapter five’s harrowing tale of Lieutenant Edward Riou’s experience in the crucible of an iceberg collision, causing a hull breach and a broken rudder, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope en route to New South Wales.  Riou guided his ship Guardian and much of the crew to safety at Table Bay in South Africa through two months of dogged navigation and extreme privation across the vast Southern Ocean.  Early in his career, Riou had served in Captain James Cook’s fleet on Cook’s third and final voyage of discovery.  The story of the Guardian brings together all the techniques Schotte describes, as Riou draws upon every ounce of his theoretical training and practical experience to accomplish the impossible.

Sailing School’s most penetrating insights are twofold and of profound import for modern economic and policy debates regarding the nature of scientific and technological development, as well as concerns about human skill growth and maintenance in a world of increasing automation and complexity.  First, that there was no oversimplified narrative of one-way navigational progress from theory to application.  Schotte writes, “no consensus will emerge; the pendulum of opinion will continue to swing between shipboard practice and classroom study. . .[there is] no straightforward trajectory from traditional to scientific sailing or from memory to mathematics.”  Second, that new theories and technologies, far from outright superseding human capability, require ever-more-sophisticated modes of human-machine collaboration.  For parents and teachers concerned that their children and students cannot navigate without Google Maps or remember once-hallowed facts now available on-demand from Wikipedia or ChatGPT, Schotte offers some comfort: “We find this is not a teleological story of inexorable mathematization, where traditional techniques were sloughed aside to make room for rational modernity,  One of the most traditional hallmarks of the professional navigator maintained its paramount importance:  his memory.  There was simply a sea change in the nature of what he was expected to memorize.  Instead of geographic and calendrical details, which were increasingly easy to look up in reference works (especially as tables proliferated), the eighteenth-century navigator had to master mathematical calculations and remember formulas — and comprehend them as well.  Yet, even when offered a panoply of labor-saving inventions, he still continued to use a range of older techniques”.  

Reading Sailing School, one is reminded of the primary finding in the loss of an Air France flight over the south Atlantic between Buenos Aires and Paris: when foul weather caused automation systems to fail, the pilots proved incapable of snapping out of their state of decreased vigilance and simply flying the airplane, as they were once capable of doing.  Arguably, the lessons of Edward Riou’s nuts-and-bolts training and experience had been forgotten.  Schotte’s work provides a fascinating window into the earliest efforts to extend human cognitive and sensory capabilities with technology.

“He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies.”
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene II (Maria to Toby, referring to Malvolio)

By the end of the 16C maritime references were common. In Twelfth Night, a comedy first performed in 1602, Shakespeare refers, obliquely, to the “new” Mercator maps with their rhumb lines, and assumes his audience will understand. In 1590, after returning from Walter Ralegh’s ill-fated Roanoke colony, Thomas Harriot sought to understand the mathematics of the helical secant lines that Mercator used. (Arianrhod, pp 92-94) How could such an abstruse topic as long distance ocean navigation become a topic that could be used for popular humor as well as mathematical research?

Margaret Schotte’s 2019 book, Sailing School, provides an explanation. Although educated at Harvard and Princeton, Schotte is from Canada. She is a York (Toronto) history professor with an interest in the history of science. Her interest in the history of navigation is personal as well as professional; she has ancestors from the Netherlands and learned to sail on visits to her grandparents home in Halifax. Her book is based on her dissertation thesis, and both the thesis and book received prizes.

One reason navigation became so important is that the only way to profit from the supposed riches of the lands discovered by European explorers in the 15^th and 16^th centuries was by ship, and those ships had to be able to go and return across oceans. All sea-facing states in the 16C knew how to build ships, but pilot-navigators were scarce. Schotte uses four case studies to show how navigators’ educations evolved between 1550 and 1800. She begins with a brief discussion of the first “sailing school” which was established in Seville in the mid-16C. Her case studies focus on Netherlands (two chapters), France, and England. Another chapter discusses a case involving a British naval ship that hit an iceberg in the South Indian Ocean. Naval training, including navigational training, skill, and luck enabled the captain to bring the ship to port over a two-month journey. An epilogue surveys the arc of navigational education over her time period. Her conclusion is that navigators were made, not born.

In the 16C there was still a debate about how to get more navigators. Some thought the skill was innate, so navigators had to be found; debates focused on the essential qualities, often focused on family status. Others thought navigation was teachable, but there was no agreement on how that was to be accomplished. Schotte’s case studies show how the “navigation is teachable” intuition translated into specific pedagogical and institutional arrangements and how those arrangements changed over time. The major military powers—Spain, France, and England—established state-run schools. Sailing schools in the Netherlands were independent. Unsurprisingly, each country had its own maritime tradition and its own geographical circumstances. For instance, the mercantile interests of the Netherlands had created an extensive trade network throughout the Baltics; knowledge of specific ports, tides, currents, hazards, and coastal landmarks, what was known as “small navigation,” was essential for Dutch navigator-pilots who captained relatively small ships. Navigators on large ships on long ocean voyages needed additional navigational skills; locating a ship in the featureless ocean required specialized instruments and astronomical and mathematical knowledge, i.e., celestial navigation. This developing skill-set, or “large navigation,” was taught at all the sailing schools of the period.

During the roughly 250-year period that is the focus of Schotte’s book, the main problems faced by “large navigation” practitioners were measuring a ship’s speed and its longitude. Latitude could be measured with a crossbar or astrolabe (or an octant or sextant by the late 18C). Direction could be measured with a compass. These tools were well-understood, and their use had long been incorporated into common maritime practice. What was beginning to change was the quality of the instruments, the measurement protocols, and the use of more accurate and easier to use tables to adjust raw observations for the earth’s position in its orbit. Although elements of plane trigonometry had been known since antiquity, practical application to celestial navigation on a sphere, took place primarily in the 17C and required what were considered at the time to be difficult and time-consuming calculations. Logarithms and devices based on them greatly simplified calculation by transforming multiplication and division operations into simpler addition and subtraction, or physical manipulation. By increasing the quality of the tools, procedures, and mathematical techniques, navigators could improve the accuracy of their estimates of latitude. But few tools or techniques were available for estimating speed and longitude; experience, careful observation, and the techniques of dead reckoning remained the primary method used to complete the determination of ship’s position for most of the period.

Over time the curriculum of the sailing schools changed. Initially, the schools’ students were mostly experienced sailors who had multiple years of practical experience; they only needed to be instructed in state-of-the-art navigation techniques and examined for competency. Few early students were literate or numerate, so instruction typically consisted of recitation, demonstration, and discussion. Gradually students became more literate and numerate, and this allowed the schools to incorporate textbooks into their curriculum. This was especially true in the Netherlands (and, to some degree, England) where there was a widespread network of commercial mathematics instructors for students interested in commercial mathematics (basic arithmetic, accounting, weights and measures). Amsterdam was also a major printing location, so navigational textbooks flourished there. As basic literacy and numeracy spread more students of the sailing schools came prepared for more advanced topics and the schools’ instructors obliged. The royal schools in France and England were more centralized, and this led to documentation of the debate over curriculum which Schotte has used to good effect to show change in curricular emphasis over time.

By the end of the 18C, knowledge of celestial navigation had become an essential skill for sailors who wished to be navigators or captains. The baseline level of knowledge and mathematical knowledge was much higher than it had been even in 1700. The instruments were easier to use and more accurate. Speed calculations had been made easier. Marine chronometers were beginning to be used so longitude could be calculated with good accuracy. Navigational expertise was no longer scarce; the sailing schools now had to emphasize judgment and basic maritime skills that had been common among 16C students.

By 1800 thousands of men from many parts of Europe were involved in the maritime effort as sailors, stevedores, and merchants. Schotte estimates that for some large cities one in six men were involved in marine activities. Knowledge of marine activities appears to have been commonplace. Celestial navigation posed interesting and novel problems that drew the attention of mathematicians, physicists, and other natural philosophers. Both playgoers and mathematicians became more familiar with abstract symbols, such as those used in maps (e.g., the rhumb lines that Shakespeare compared to the lines on Malvolio’s face), numbers, and letters. All of this knowledge indicates a growing use of the tools needed for thinking about the natural world in the new “mechanical” way.