Abstract Summary
The long eighteenth century saw changes in ideas of order not only in politics and society, but also in philosophy, the arts, and natural science. In the aftermath of the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution, the Aristotelian two-sphere cosmology, which for millennia divided a geocentric universe into the earthly and heavenly realms, gave way to a unified and (semi-) mechanized universe. This had momentous and well-studied implications for astronomy and mechanics. Despite this collapse, the eighteenth century inherited old classificatory schemes—e.g. four ancient elements, three kingdoms of nature, subterranean and terrestrial realms—whose boundaries and aims had to be redefined, especially in experimental and natural historical pursuits. This panel examines some of these processes of conceptual, practical, and institutional renegotiation, and the way they played out in some of the most prominent domains of eighteenth-century scientific inquiry like experimental physics, chemistry, pneumatics, geology, and zoology. The papers assembled here, which span the years 1699–1812, examine British, French, German, Dutch, and Russian case studies to show both why old schemes were still useful in organizing and presenting scientific knowledge but also why and how they had to be revised. We explore shifts in classification before and after Linnaeus’s binomial system; the development of early atmospheric and meteorological studies; Lomonosov’s mineralogical science in the context of ‘mining Enlightenment’; and the relations between collections, classificatory systems, and commercial publishing at the close of the eighteenth century.
