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10306 results in History of science: general interest

Page 269 of 516

  • The authority of human nature: the Schädellehre of Franz Joseph Gall

  • JOHN VAN WYHE
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 35 / Issue 1 / March 2002
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    25 April 2002, pp. 17-42
    Print publication:
    March 2002

  • This essay is the first account in English to examine Franz Joseph Gall and the origins of phrenology. In doing so a host of legends about Gall and the beginnings of phrenology, which exist only in the English-language historiography, are dispelled. An understanding of the context of phrenology's origins is essential to the historicization of the movement as a whole. The first of two sections in the essay, therefore, introduces Gall's biography and the context in which his provocative science emerged. It is shown to what extent Gall borrowed from other thinkers of his time. I show that Gall's system was meant to be a certain science of human nature. In the second section I analyse the reactions of contemporaries to Gall's important two-year lecture tour of Europe. I conclude that although many critics dismissed Gall as a charlatan, there was no consensus about the proper way to disseminate scientific knowledge or the attributes necessary for the gentleman of science. For example, it was not clear whether science could be profitable, whether it should be shared with lay audiences or whether it could in fact be science at all if it was also entertaining. I argue that in any case Gall's aim was never really to impart science or to disseminate his system. His science and early means of disseminating it were meant to generate elite intellectual status. In this Gall was quite successful.

  • Analysis and synthesis in John Playfair's Elements of Geometry

  • AMY ACKERBERG-HASTINGS
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 35 / Issue 1 / March 2002
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    25 April 2002, pp. 43-72
    Print publication:
    March 2002

  • John Playfair (1748–1819), professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, is a relatively obscure figure today, best known as the popularizer of James Hutton's theory of geology. However, Playfair was also involved in mathematics for most of his active career, with his most widely distributed publication, Elements of Geometry (1795), shaping the mathematics education for at least thirteen thousand British students during the nineteenth century. This study focuses on the mathematical context surrounding Elements of Geometry. Specifically, after recounting the background of the text, the paper explores the ways in which Playfair's presentation of elementary geometry reflected three understandings of the terms ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis’, which were intrinsic components of mathematical culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. In one sense, the words denoted differing styles of mathematical practice in Great Britain and in France. In a second sense, the terms evoked contemporary appeals to ancient methods of proof. Finally, ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis’ were understood in reference to separate approaches to mathematics education. Playfair's appeals to these understandings help reveal how he viewed himself as a mathematician. Overall, then, this study enriches the standard portrait of a professor who straddled the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Page 269 of 516