The Language of Mineralogy

Reviews / Votes

'The Language of Mineralogy ranges far beyond the traditional canon of philosophical texts to fashion important new perspectives on the intellectual and social world of the Scottish Enlightenment. John Walker's multi-faceted life as a teacher, field naturalist, clergyman, and advisor and companion to powerful aristocratic patrons is a rich quarry that Matthew Eddy exploits with authority and elegance. His book brings to centre-stage the painstaking tasks of classification in which Walker excelled. In doing so, it sets systems of natural history as a matter of central concern at the fertile interface between chemistry and mineralogy within the Edinburgh Medical School. As Eddy shows, such systems were anything but the static impediments to creative thought that they have too often been taken to be. The rehabilitation they receive in this book is long-overdue. This is cultural history of a high order.' Professor Robert Fox, University of Oxford 'In this detailed study of the scientific career of John Walker, Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh in the late eighteenth century, Matthew Eddy has created a rich intellectual and social tapestry that greatly enhances our understanding of the scientific mindsets and activities of the Enlightenment. Eddy uses Walker's principal scientific interest in mineralogy to illustrate the relations and interactions between different sciences of the time, such as chemistry, medicine and geology. He also provides a detailed study of the commercial, industrial, social and cultural contexts of Walker's science and shows concretely how Walker participated in the international scientific 'republic of letters'. Eschewing retrospective "Whig" evaluation enables Eddy to present and analyze Walker's scientific theories and practices in mineralogy and geology with great historical empathy. We really get to feel what the sciences of chemistry, mineralogy and geology were like in the era before the triumph of Lavois