Francesca Bordogna. William James at the Boundaries: Philosophy, Science, and the Geography of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. 392 pp. $39.00 (hardcover). ISBN-13: 978-0-226-06652-3

✍ Scribed by Eugene Taylor

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 125 KB
• Volume: 45
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.20389

✦ Synopsis

Case studies of three little-known enthusiasts for science are the core of this book. William Martin (1772-1851) "performed" science. He demonstrated his inventions to skeptical crowds and encouraged audience participation during lectures on his anti-Newtonian natural philosophy. Thomas Hawkins (1810-1889) wrote science-large, expensive, illustrated books on fossils. Charles Waterton (1782-1865) collected natural history objects in the Americas and displayed them in his country house/museum, where he also constructed himself as an object of interest to visitors. The idiosyncracies of Carroll's chosen individuals are conspicuous but, she is careful to demonstrate, these three exemplars of eccentricity were eccentric by the conventions of early-nineteenth century England. (The omission of England or English from the title is an oversight. Martin and Waterton performed and displayed in the north of England; Hawkins participated in London scientific society.)

"Defining Eccentricity in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain" is the topic of Chapter 1. The back-cover claim that the concept of eccentricity "was central to how people in the nineteenth century understood their world" goes far beyond any evidence provided, but the classification of individuals as "eccentric" was clearly made in popular culture. From the beginning of the century until at least the 1860s, "eccentric biography" was a popular form of collected biography. Dwarves and giants, misers and hermits, hermaphrodites, and people who did not conform to fashion were all included as "eccentrics." J. S. Mill and William Hazlitt admired a rather different type of eccentric-visionary people with the mental vigor and moral courage to point the way to the future. Carroll proposes that the common feature of earlynineteenth-century eccentricity was boundary crossing and suggests (p. 28, with hesitations at p. 44) that the interest in eccentrics was a response to the problem of imposing social order in a changing society.

Of the three eccentric individuals, William Martin was from the humblest background (skilled artisan) and his ambitions were furthest from his achievements. Carroll succeeds in making him partly comprehensible to us, the educated elite of a different century. The earliest record of Martin's activities is from 1805 to 1807 when, in response to a vision from God, he began inventing perpetual motion machines. One, a pendulum driven by air rising invisibly from a pipe under the floor, even worked. Styling himself a "natural philosopher," he developed an anti-Newtonian philosophy based on the principle that, after God, air was the cause of all things. He publicized his theory in one small book and many broadsides, and began giving lectures in the Newcastle region. Some listeners were serious; others went for the entertainment value. One is tempted to consider Martin as being on the edge of sanity, an interpretation which Carroll allows and then counters. The uneducated style which Martin cultivated was, she shows, regarded among millennarian groups as a sign of a prophetic voice-a message from God rather than man. Nor did anti-Newtonianism put Martin beyond the bounds of sanity, for Hutchinsonianism persisted into the nineteenth century. Carroll goes on to consider the interactive nature of Martin's performances as audiences applauded, laughed, and disrupted the proceedings. She proposes that his lectures can be interpreted as a carnivalesque opportunity to invert traditional hierarchies.