The British Journal for the History of Science 

About: The British Journal for the History of Science is an academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Natural philosophy. It has an ISSN identifier of 0007-0874. Over the lifetime, 1402 publications have been published receiving 16673 citations. The journal is also known as: British Journal for the History of Science.

The Radical Enlightenment

Abstract: That Sulloway also recognises that Schiller and Schopenhauer provided vital conceptual inspiration for Freud is indicative of the importance of literary and philosophical motifs as conceptual inspirations for biologists. Biology—itself a synthetic and by no means uncontroversial term in the later nineteenthcentury—was a rich source for other branches of inquiry, because it had itself borrowed extensively from many other areas of literature, philosophy, history and the social sciences. Instead of a process of the scientizing of Freudian psycho-analysis, one might see the reverse, that biology was more historical, social and philosophical than is customarily appreciated by historians of science.

De-centring the ‘big picture’: The Origins of Modern Science and the modern origins of science

Abstract: Like it or not, a big picture of the history of science is something which we cannot avoid. Big pictures are, of course, thoroughly out of fashion at the moment; those committed to specialist research find them simplistic and insufficiently complex and nuanced, while postmodernists regard them as simply impossible. But however specialist we may be in our research, however scornful of the immaturity of grand narratives, it is not so easy to escape from dependence – acknowledged or not – on a big picture. When we define our research as part of the history of science, we implicitly invoke a big picture of that history to give identity and meaning to our specialism. When we teach the history of science, even if we do not present a big picture explicitly, our students already have a big picture of that history which they bring to our classes and into which they fit whatever we say, no matter how many complications and refinements and contradictions we put before them – unless we offer them an alternative big picture.

Corresponding interests: artisans and gentlemen in nineteenth-century natural history

Abstract: Early nineteenth-century natural history books reveal that British naturalists depended heavily on correspondence as a means for gathering information and specimens. Edward Newman commented in his History of British Ferns: ‘Were I to make out a list of all the correspondents who have assisted me it would be wearisome from its length.’ Works such as William Withering's Botanical Arrangement show that artisans numbered among his correspondents. However, the literary products of scientific practice reveal little of the workings or such correspondences and how or why they were sustained. An exchange or letters is maintained if the interests of both recipient and writer are satisfied. Withering's book tells us only that his interests were served by his correspondents; it allows us to say nothing with certainty about the interests of those who wrote to him. Published texts effectively hide the means by which the author determined the veracity of distant correspondents and also the way these informants demonstrated their credibility.

Science and popular education in the 1830s: the role of the Bridgewater Treatises.

Abstract: As is widely known, the Bridgewater Treatises on the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Creation (1833–36) were commissioned in accordance with a munificent bequest of the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, the Rev. Francis Henry Egerton (1756–1829), and written by seven leading men of science, together with one prominent theological commentator. Less widely appreciated is the extent to which the Bridgewater Treatises rank among the scientific best-sellers of the early nineteenth century. Their varied blend of natural theology and popular science attracted extraordinary contemporary interest and ‘celebrity’, resulting in unprecedented sales and widespread reviewing. Much read by the landed, mercantile and professional classes, the success of the series ‘encouraged other competitors into the field’, most notably Charles Babbage's unsolicited Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837). As late as 1882 the political economist William Stanley Jevons was intending to write an unofficial Bridgewater Treatise, and even an author of the prominence of Lord Brougham could not escape having his Discourse of Natural Theology (1835) described by Edward Lytton Bulwer as ‘the tenth Bridgewater Treatise’.