The University of Edinburgh in the Late Eighteenth Century: Its Scientific Eminence and Academic Structure

Abstract

S INCE THE SECOND WORLD WAR the history of science as an autonomous discipline has steadily expanded, mainly through institutional recognition, yet much of its undeniably vigorous activity remains regrettably unknown to general historians. The chief source of this inaccessibility is clear. As long as it is assumed that science is just recorded positive public knowledge, then its history is likely to be con- cerned with mere technical accounts of scientific ideas and resultsper se. If, however, it is considered as a socially organized and supported intellectual enterprise engaged in understanding and controlling nature, its history should demonstrate a synthesis of social and intellectual elements from which the fruitless distinction between external- ist and internalist historiographies would be excluded. Particularly in Britain has science been countenanced by a great variety of institu- tions. Of these the universities seem the most apposite for study because their osten- sible aims, organizational structure, financial arrangements, and teaching styles have often been well defined. Among the older British universities the collegiate structure of Oxford and Cambridge renders them historically fascinating and frustrating. The University of Edinburgh, however, being noncollegiate and professorial in its organiza- tion, was less diffuse and more compact. Moreover, in the late eighteenth century it achieved a notable preeminence in science which gained for it the reputation of being the best university for science in Europe and in the English-speaking world. It would seem therefore that the social history of late-eighteenth-century science in the Uni- versity of Edinburgh could be both illuminating and suggestive.