The eighteenth century is an important period both in the history of science and in the history of languages. Interest in science, and especially in the useful sciences, exploded and a new, modern approach to scientific discovery and the accumulation of knowledge emerged. It was during this century, too, that ideas on language and language practice began to change. Latin had been more or less the only written language used for scientific purposes, but gradually the vernaculars became established as fully acceptable alternatives for scientific writing. The period is of interest, moreover, from a genre-historical point of view. Encyclopedias, dictionaries and also correspondence played a key role in the spread of scientific ideas. At the time, writing on scientific matters was not as distinct from fiction, poetry or religious texts as it is today, a fact which also gave a creative liberty to individual writers. In this volume, seventeen authors explore, from a variety of angles, the construction of a scientific language and discourse. The chapters are thematically organized into four sections, each contributing to our understanding of this dynamic period in the history of science: their themes are the forming of scientific communities, the emergence of new languages of science, the spread of scientific ideas, and the development of scientific writing. A particular focus is placed on the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). From the point of view of the natural sciences, Linnaeus is renowned for his principles for defining genera and species of organisms and his creation of a uniform system for naming them. From the standpoint of this volume, however, he is also of interest as an example of a European scientist of the eighteenth century. This volume is unique both in its broad linguistic approach - including studies on textlinguistics, stylistics, sociolinguistics, lexicon and nomenclature - and in its combination of language studies, philosophy of language, history and sociology of science. The book covers writing in different European languages: Swedish, German, French, English, Latin, Portuguese, and Russian. With its focus on the history of scientific language and discourse during a dynamic period in Europe, the book promises to contribute to new insights both for readers interested in language history and those with an interest in the history of ideas and thought.

First published in 1993, Literature & Medicine During the Eighteenth Century analyses the close interplay of medicine and literature by paying special attention to questions of body language and the representation of inner life. Although today, medicine and literature are widely seen as falling on different sides of the ‘two cultures’ divide, this was not so in the eighteenth century when doctors, scientists, writers, and artists formed a well-integrated educated elite. Locke, Smollett and Goldsmith were doctors, and physicians such as Erasmus Darwin doubled as poets. Written by leading historians of medicine and eighteenth-century literary critics, this book uncovers the interconnections between medical and psychological theory and ideas of taste, beauty, and genius. Its contributors explore the rich cultural milieu of the period and investigate the ways in which medicine itself contributed to informing a gendered discourse of the world. This book will be of interest to historians, literary scholars and medical historians.

In modern times science has avoided rhetorical and poetical forms. Its hallmarks were brevity and exactitude, with disdain for "non-functional" ornamentation. This book shows that the language of scientists does remain language and that a skillful use of its rhetorical and poetic aspects often determines the "facts" and the transmission of information. The exceptional literary qualities of Darwin's The Origin of Species are taken as a point in case. The importance of language in science has ontological implications: science can no longer be considered an action performed by a speaking subject on a mute object. Does the creative role of language in science mean that human beings "create" the world? The author emphatically rejects a conclusion which would degrade nature to mere malleable material at the mercy of human beings. A hermeneutical model for the relationship between knower and known is suggested: creative interaction between reader and text. The reader's responses actualise a text's meaning; in like manner, scientists give their responses to reality by actualising one of many possibilities. The hermeneutical ontology proposed in this book steers away from the rocks of realism and anti-realism.

This work is the first explicit examination of the key role that mathematics has played in the development of theoretical physics and will undoubtedly challenge the more conventional accounts of its historical development. Although mathematics has long been regarded as the "language" of physics, the connections between these independent disciplines have been far more complex and intimate than previous narratives have shown. The author convincingly demonstrates that practices, methods, and language shaped the development of the field, and are a key to understanding the mergence of the modern academic discipline. Mathematicians and physicists, as well as historians of both disciplines, will find this provocative work of great interest.

The fullest and most complete survey of the development of science in the eighteenth century.

Language is the most essential medium of scientific activity. Many historians, sociologists and science studies scholars have investigated scientific language for this reason, but only few have examined those cases where language itself has become an object of scientific discussion. Over the centuries scientists have sought to control, refine and engineer language for various epistemological, communicative and nationalistic purposes. This book seeks to explore cases in the history of science in which questions or concerns with language have bubbled to the surface in scientific discourse. This opens a window into the particular ways in which scientists have conceived of and construed language as the central medium of their activity across different cultural contexts and places, and the clashes and tensions that have manifested their many attempts to engineer it to both preserve and enrich its function. The subject of language draws out many topics that have mostly been neglected in the history of science, such as the connection between the emergence of national languages and the development of science within national settings, and allows us to connect together historical episodes from many understudied cultural and linguistic venues such as Eastern European and medieval Hebrew science.

Classification is an important part of science, yet the specific methods used to construct Enlightenment systems of natural history have proven to be the bête noir of studies of eighteenth-century culture. One reason that systematic classification has received so little attention is that natural history was an extremely diverse subject which appealed to a wide range of practitioners, including wealthy patrons, professionals, and educators. In order to show how the classification practices of a defined institutional setting enabled naturalists to create systems of natural history, this book focuses on developments at Edinburgh's medical school, one of Europe's leading medical programs. In particular, it concentrates on one of Scotland's most influential Enlightenment naturalists, Rev Dr John Walker, the professor of natural history at the school from 1779 to 1803. Walker was a traveller, cleric, author and advisor to extremely powerful aristocratic and government patrons, as well as teacher to hundreds of students, some of whom would go on to become influential industrialists, scientists, physicians and politicians. This book explains how Walker used his networks of patrons and early training in chemistry to become an eighteenth-century naturalist. Walker's mineralogy was based firmly in chemistry, an approach common in Edinburgh's medical school, but a connection that has been generally overlooked in the history of British geology. By explicitly connecting eighteenth-century geology to the chemistry being taught in medical settings, this book offers a dynamic new interpretation of the nascent earth sciences as they were practiced in Enlightenment Britain. Because of Walker's influence on his many students, the book also provides a unique insight into how many of Britain's leading Regency and Victorian intellectuals were taught to think about the composition and structure of the material world.

Societies perceive "Reform" or "Reforms" as substantial changes and significant breaks which must be well-justified. The Enlightenment brought forth the idea that the future was uncertain and could be shaped by human beings. This gave the concept of reform a new character and new fields of application. Those who sought support for their plans and actions needed to reflect, develop new arguments, and offer new reasons to address an anonymous public. This book aims to compile these changes under the heuristic term of "languages of reform." It analyzes the structures of communication regarding reforms in the 18th century through a wide variety of topics.

This volume of the Cambridge History of the English Language covers the period 1476-1776, beginning at the time of the establishment of Caxton's first press in England and concluding with the American Declaration of Independence, the notional birth of the first (non-insular) extraterritorial English. It encompasses three centuries which saw immense cultural change over the whole of Europe: the late middle ages, the renaissance, the reformation, the enlightenment, and the beginnings of romanticism. During this time, Middle English became Early Modern English and then developed into the early stages of indisputably 'modern', if somewhat old-fashioned, English. In this book, the distinguished team of six contributors traces these developments, covering orthography and punctuation, phonology and morphology, syntax, lexis and semantics, regional and social variation, and the literary language. The volume also contains a glossary of linguistic terms and an extensive bibliography.