A01=Matthew D. Eddy
Acid Principle
ANH
Antoine Lavoisier
Author_Matthew D. Eddy
Category=DNB
Category=N
Category=NH
Category=PNV
century
Chalybeat Waters
chemical geology
Chemical Revolution
chemistry
Da Costa
earth sciences history
Edinburgh's Medical School
edinburghs
Edinburgh’s Medical School
eighteenth
Eighteenth Century Chemistry
Eighteenth Century Medical World
eighteenth-century mineral classification
Enlightenment science
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
Extraneous Fossils
Geology Lectures
Iron Principle
john
John Walker
Joseph Black
Lavoisier
Lord Kames
medical
mineralogical
Mineralogical System
natural history education
Peat Moss
Primary Earths
Primary Strata
school
scientific nomenclature
Scottish Enlightenment
Secondary Strata
Spa Water
system
systematic classification
Tertiary Strata
walker
Walker's Index
Walker’s Index
Product details
- ISBN 9781138265646
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 15 Nov 2016
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Matthew D. Eddy is a Lecturer at the University of Durham, UK
