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From Renaissance Mineral Studies to Historical Geology, in the Light of Michel Foucault's the Order of Things

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

W. R. Albury  and
D. R. Oldroyd
W. R. Albury
Affiliation:
School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of New South Wales, PO Box 1, Kensington, NSW, Australia, 2033.
D. R. Oldroyd
Affiliation:
School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of New South Wales, PO Box 1, Kensington, NSW, Australia, 2033.
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Extract

In this paper we examine the study of minerals from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century in the light of the work of Michel Foucault on the history of systems of thought. In spite of a certain number of theoretical problems, Foucault's enterprise opens up to the historian of science a vast terrain for exploration. But this is the place neither for a general exegesis nor for a general criticism of his position; our aim here is the more modest one of taking certain points from Foucault's study, The order of things, and seeing how far they can be extended into an area not explicitly considered in that work.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , November 1977 , pp. 187 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1977

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References

NOTES

The body of the text of this paper was prepared through the cooperation of the two authors The Appendix was written by W. R. Albury alone, but the suggestions put forward there have the support of his co-author.

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14 Ibid., p. 29. ‘I shall now discuss earths which have taken their names either from the locality in which they are found or from their color …’

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36 Ibid., p. 55. Italics in original.

37 Ibid., pp. 39–40.

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41 Haüy, R. J., op. cit. (38), p. 49.Google Scholar

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47 Ibid., p. xxv.

48 By the 1770s, most chemists were agreed that there were several individual, empirically-separable, simple earths, rather than a single ‘terrene principle’, such as had earlier been envisaged by P.-J. Macquer. There was some uncertainty as to the precise number of the simple earths, but commonly silica, lime, magnesia, alumina and baryta were considered.

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53 We disagree, on this point, with the view commonly expressed in the secondary literature, that the application of chemical criteria to mineral classification was introduced ‘in the last quarter of the eighteenth century’; Adams, F. D., The birth and development of the geological sciences (2nd edn., New York, 1954), p. 200Google Scholar. In the Appendix, below, some suggestions are offered as to why the programme of investigating the internal constituents of bodies arose in mineral taxonomy so much earlier than it did in the classification of plants and animals.

54 Foucault, M., op. cit., (1, 1970), pp. 226–32.Google Scholar

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56 Ibid., p. 138. Italics in original.

57 Ibid., p. 293.

58 We shall return to the question of this relationship below.

59 de Buffon, G. L. L., Histoire naturelle des minéraux (5 vols., Paris, 1783–1788).Google Scholar

60 In the eighteenth century, several distinct minerals were conflated under the name ‘schorl’, but in general it referred to members of the tourmaline group.

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63 In thé version of the Year 5 (1797), the table was headed: ‘Tableau des corps bruts, ou exposition des principales substances minérales, disposées dans un ordre relatif au progrés des altérations qu'ont subi les dépouilles des corps vivans, et successivement leur différens produits’. In a footnote to the table, Lamarck stated that it described ‘le véritable ordre natural des minéraux’.

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70 Ibid., pp. 128–9.

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72 [Fitton, W. H.,] ‘Art. IV. Transactions of the Geological Society, established November 1807. Vol. III. 4to. pp. 444. W. Phillips, London, 1816’, Edinburgh review, xxix (1817), 70–94 (p.71). Italics as in original.Google Scholar

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74 This is apparent, for example, in: von Buch, L., ‘Uber den Gabbro, mit einigen Bermerk-ungen uber den Begriff einer Gebirgsart’ Der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin: Magazin für die neuesten Entdeckungen in der gessammten Naturkunde, v (1810), 128–49Google Scholar; and von Humboldt, A., A geognostic essay on the superposition of rocks, in both hemispheres … translated from the original French (London, 1823), pp. 3, 23 and passim.Google Scholar

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78 Ibid., p.xxx: ‘un organe est plutôt altéré, atrophié, anéanti, que transposé’.

79 Ibid., p. xxviii.

80 de Voisins, J. F. d'Aubuisson, ‘Suite de la lettre de M. d'Aubuisson, a M. Berthollet, sur les travaux de M. Werner, en minéralogie’, Annales de chimie, lxix (1809), 225–48 (p. 229). Our translation.Google Scholar

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90 Dagognet, F., ‘Valentin [sic] Haüy, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Augustin P. de Candolle: Une conception d' ensemble mais aussi un ensemble de conceptions’ Revue d'histoire des sciences, xxv (1972), 327–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dagognet, as his title indicates, attempts to extend the system of parallels to the botanical work of A. P. de Candolle also; but since de Candolle drew as much upon the functional principles of Cuvier as he did upon the topological principles of Haüy, we have not included a consideration of his work in our present discussion.

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