The Scottish Crucible: John Walker and the Chemistry of Geology in Enlightenment Edinburgh

在18世纪后期，苏格兰人和其他北欧人使用“系统”一词来描述服务于实际目的(教学、智力或其他)的连贯的信息安排。尽管近年来有一些研究致力于这一主题，但启蒙运动自然学家用来安排自然历史标本的特定方法(或“系统学”)已被证明在18世纪文化研究中是有问题的。对于社会历史学家来说，系统学的制度定位是有特权的，它对自然的功利主义定义过于简单化。对于科学史学家来说，它的长长的分类清单在智力上是静态的，阻碍了原始进化论的发展。对于哲学史学家来说，它未能符合现代思想家归因于勒内·笛卡尔、约翰·洛克和大卫·休谟等早期现代哲学家的物化的自然种类和因果关系的概念。此外，即使对于愿意搁置这些假设的勇敢的学者来说，也存在着主要来源的平淡无奇的问题。更具体地说，启蒙博物学家的日常整理实践大多局限于手稿笔记本，即如果存在，只能在档案中查看的单一对象。考虑到这些责任，为什么会有人想要写系统的自然历史的历史？这个项目认为，答案是，上述刻板印象是被误导的，自然物体的分类是在启蒙运动大学任教的教授们关注的核心问题。系统分类受到如此少的关注的原因之一可以归因于这样一个事实，即自然历史是一门非常多样化的学科，吸引了广泛的从业者。在社会等级的顶端，有一些富有的赞助人，他们的收藏品和对自然的看法是基于自然秩序的概念，这加强了他们对社会秩序的看法。然而，也有一些专业人员和教育工作者的职业福祉需要使用务实的分类做法。一个这样的群体是医学专业人员，特别是医生，整个欧洲的医学院教授学生如何将自然历史标本归入分类类别，以与土著实验社区正在开发的方法和实践相协调。这一点在爱丁堡大学医学院表现得最为明显，该学院是欧洲领先的医学项目之一。我这本书的目的是用这个社区来勾勒出另一种描述，即确定的制度背景的分类实践如何使博物学家能够创造自然历史系统。特别是，我认为医学化学在这一过程中发挥了核心作用。此外，通过挖掘约翰·沃克教授对全球结构的动态理解，我提供了一种独特的知识环境，正是这种环境导致了他的同时代人和学生在19世纪初将地质学重塑为自己的学科。虽然我会与已出版的自然历史书籍进行比较，但我的论点的证据基础牢牢地建立在手稿上，特别是沃克、他的学生和他的同事们写的那些手稿。它在精神上是跨学科的，借鉴了以历史为导向的作品，内容涉及语言的文化定位、文本(印刷和手稿)的影响和收藏的形成。最后，由于沃克的许多学生后来会成为有影响力的实业家、科学家、医生和政治家，这本书提供了独特的洞察力，让我们了解到英国摄政时期和维多利亚时代的多少顶尖知识分子都被教导思考物质世界的组成和结构。

During the late eighteenth-century, the word 'system' was used by Scots and other Northern Europeans to describe a coherent arrangement of information that served a practical purpose (pedagogical, intellectual or otherwise). Although a few studies have been devoted to this subject in recent years, the specific methods (or 'systematics') that Enlightenment naturalists used to create arrangements of natural history specimens have proven to be problematic in studies of eighteenth-century culture. For social historians, the institutional placement of systematics was privileged and its utilitarian definition of nature was simplistic. For historians of science, its long classification lists were intellectually static and impeded the development proto-evolutionary theories. For historians of philosophy, it failed to conform to reified notions of 'natural kinds' and causation that modern thinkers have attributed to early modern philosophers like René Descartes, John Locke and David Hume. Moreover, even for intrepid scholars willing to set aside these assumptions, there is the insipid matter of primary sources. More specifically, the day-to-day arrangement practices of Enlightenment naturalists were most often confined to manuscript notebooks, that is, singular objects that, if extant, can only be viewed in archives. Bearing these liabilities in mind, why would anyone want to write about the history of systematic natural history? The answer, as this project argues, is that the above stereotypes are misguided and that the classification of natural objects was a central concern for professors who taught in Enlightenment universities.One of the reasons that systematic classification has received such little attention can be attributed to fact that natural history was an extremely diverse subject that appealed to a wide range of practitioners. At the top of the social scale, there were wealthy patrons whose collections and perceptions of nature were based upon notions of the natural order that reinforced their perception of the social order. Yet, there were also professionals and educators whose occupational well-being necessitated the use of pragmatically orientated classification practices. One such group was medical professionals, especially physicians, and throughout Europe medical schools taught students how to fit natural history specimens into classification categories that harmonised with the methods and practices being developed in indigenous experimental communities. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Medical School of the University of Edinburgh, one of Europe's leading medical programmes. It is the goal of my book to use this community to sketch an alternative account of how the classification practices of a defined institutional setting enabled naturalists to create systems of natural history. In particular, I argue that medical chemistry played a central role in this process. Furthermore, by excavating Professor John Walker's dynamic understanding of the fabric of the globe, I provide a unique view of the intellectual milieu that led his contemporaries and students to refashion geology into its own discipline during the early nineteenth century. Although I will draw comparisons to published natural history books, the evidentiary foundation of my argument rests firmly on manuscripts, especially those written by Walker, his students and his colleagues. It is interdisciplinary in spirit and draws from historically orientated works on the cultural placement of language, the impact of texts (printed and manuscript) and the formation of collections. Finally, since many of Walker's students would go on to become influential industrialists, scientists, physicians and politicians, this book provides 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.