Abstract
The chapter focusses on the Scottish natural philosophy of the late eighteenth century represented by John Anderson (1726–1796) and John Robison (1739–1805), which is considered a link between Newton’s natural philosophy and nineteenth-century physics in Britain (Kelvin and Maxwell). Anderson and Robison have to be seen in a tradition of Scottish Newtonians established in the seventeenth century by David Gregory and John Keill and specifically shaped in the Mid-eighteenth century through the chemical-physical work of Joseph Black and the common-sense philosophy of Thomas Reid. These latter Newtonians built on Newton’s theory of matter and short-range forces as indicated in Query 31 of his Opticks (Black) but also on his Rules of Reasoning of the second edition of his Principia (Black and Reid) and in this way created the theoretical framework in which Anderson and Robison developed their natural philosophy. In the center of their natural philosophy, which was oriented on experimental investigations, were the manifold open questions of the Baconian sciences of that time - theories of heat, light, electricity, magnetism as well as the understanding of the phlogiston. The chapter thus provides insight into the specific way in which the Newtonian camp participated in early modern natural philosophical speculations about minute particles of matter, fluids, or the propagation of light and heat.
In addition to the lively discussion with the contributors of this volume at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, I am grateful for helpful comments and questions after I presented versions of this material in talks at: a conference on “200 Years of Useful Learning” at Strathclyde University; the Midwest Junto for the History of Science; the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of Edinburgh University (IASH); the Dibner Institute for the History of Science; a Conference on Medicine, Science, and the Enlightenment sponsored by IASH; a Seven Pines Conference; and the History of Technology and Science Program at Iowa State University. My research has been greatly assisted by visiting research fellowships at IASH and at the Dibner Insitute. It has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, and Iowa State University. For permission to quote from manuscripts that they hold, I am grateful to St. Andrews University Library, The Andersonian of Strathclyde University, Edinburgh University Library, and the Beinecke Library of Yale University. J. Malcolm Allan has been especially helpful to me regarding materials in the Anderson Collection. In Edinburgh, I have benefitted from the assistance of Michael Barfoot, Erica Thomas, and Jean Jones
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Notes
- 1.
He was not included in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography or Olson, Scottish Philosophy, for example. But see Muir, Anderson, and, more recently, Wood, Science and Jolly Jack.
- 2.
See also Black, Notes 1. Harris’ notes are more complete and less obscure than Cochrane’s.
- 3.
Internal evidence suggests that these notes were copied from a “master” copy dating from the late 1760s. A similar set of notes is Black, Notes 5. For example, the same point is made in Dk.3.42308. See Perrin, Joseph Black.
- 4.
My view of Black and speculation is more like that of Thackray, Atoms and Powers, 147–148, than that of some other commentators on Black.
- 5.
Given the discussion of Robison below, I am arguing that this presentation of the Inquiry is how both Reid and Robison understood the book. There exists a large literature on Reid, but Beaublossom, Introduction, discusses Reid’s view of faculties; Daniels, Reids ‘Inquiry’, focusses on vision and geometry in the Inquiry; and Wood, Reid, considers Reid’s view of hypotheses more widely than in the Inquiry. I think Robison relied on the Inquiry.
- 6.
The principal collection of Anderson’s manuscripts is in Strathclyde University, The Andersonian, Special Collections, which also holds his personal library, including Keill’s Introduction to Natural Philosophy and ‘sGravesande’s Mathematical Elements.
- 7.
Anderson, Institutes (1786), 397–399; For what reason, 14–15; Lecture First, 30–35, 41–43; Introductory lecture.
- 8.
Anderson, Compend, 36–37; Institutes (1777), I 36, 44, 47, 68, 77, 79, 90–91, 236; Institutes (1786), 22, 37, 51–52, 64, 66, 78. The Anderson Collection includes a copy of Enquiry.
- 9.
Anderson, Institutes (1777), I 75; Institutes (1786), 51, 62, 343. Annotated copy of Anderson, Institutes (1786), vol. I, “lecture on divisibility of matter.” Cantor, Optics, a standard study of British theories of light in the eighteenth century, includes Robison but not Anderson.
- 10.
Anderson, Institutes (1777), I 99–100, 102, 106, 108–110, 120–123; Institutes (1786), 192, 194, 197–202, 211–214. Heilbron, Electricity, the standard study of eighteenth-century electricity, discusses Robison but not Anderson.
- 11.
Anderson, Institutes (1777), I 118, 134; Institutes (1786), 210, 228. Yost, Lodestone and Earth, is an extended examination of British magnetism during this period. It discusses Robison at some length and Anderson briefly. See also Yost, Robison.
- 12.
Annotated copy of Anderson, Institutes (1786), vol. III, “Sect. XIV. Of the cause of the magnetic virtue.”
- 13.
Annotated copy of Anderson, Institutes (1786), vol. III, “Sect. XIV. Of the cause of the magnetic virtue.”
- 14.
Anderson, Institutes (1777), I 146; Institutes (1786), 241; For what reason; annotated copy of Anderson, Institutes (1786), vol. III, “Gravitation Prop. VIII.”
- 15.
Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections, Dc.7.1 to Dc.7.40. These forty volumes contain notes ranging from the mid-1770s to around 1800. Generally, each volume concerns one topic of the course, though sometimes more than one volume deals with the same topic, reflecting revisions during his long tenure.
- 16.
St. Andrews University Library, Special Collections, QD 39.R8. Unlike the manuscript notes for Robison’s lectures on natural philosophy, these eight volumes of notes for his lectures on chemistry begin at the beginning of the course and go through to the end, without years of frequent revisions. Pasted within the first five volumes are twenty-two pages of Robison’s printed Plan of Chemical Lectures. This undated Plan is missing a few pages, including, for example, material on two of the effects of heat, ignition and inflammation.
- 17.
Cleghorn, De Igne, argued that heat was a fluid whose particles repelled each other but attracted those of ordinary matter. Though this theory of heat was similar to Robison’s of the 1760s, Cleghorn also maintained that heat and phlogiston were quite distinct. Robison reported that Cleghorn’s theory of heat convinced Black, and I am suggesting that it probably also convinced Robison that his earlier theory of heat was not so conjectural after all. See Black, Lectures, I 33–34; McKie and Heathcote, Cleghorn’s De Igne, 7–8.
- 18.
Editor’s note: Since the 1st edition of this volume in 2001, David Wilson published a comprehensive elaboration of the subject: David B. Wilson: Seeking Nature’s Logic – Natural Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009.
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Wilson, D.B. (2023). Scotland’s Philosophico-Chemical Physics. In: Lefèvre, W. (eds) Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 341. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34340-7_8
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