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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
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.

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
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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37 Ibid., pp. 39–40.

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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, 17831788).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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65 Foucault, M., op. cit. (1, 1970), p. 276.Google Scholar

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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), 7094 (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 GebirgsartDer 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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89 von Humboldt, A., op. cit. (74), p. 43Google Scholar. Also worthy of note is the parallel between Geoffroy's experimental study of the deforming effects of variations in temperature and mechanical agitation upon a developing embryo, and the study by the Wernerian stratigraphers of the role of extreme heat, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes in producing deviation from the normal sequence of formations.

90 Dagognet, F., ‘Valentin [sic] Haüy, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Augustin P. de Candolle: Une conception d' ensemble mais aussi un ensemble de conceptionsRevue 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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