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A riverbank of science

Bernard Lightman, A companion to the history of science . Wiley Blackwell Companions to World History. Wiley Blackwell, Chichester, 2016. Pp. xvi + 601. £120.00 (hardback). ISBN 978-1-118-62077-9.

Assembling a one-volume companion to the history of science across ages, scientific disciplines and global space is a particularly daunting task. The editor has approached this challenge in a somewhat unconventional way, as the companion is not organized chronologically or according to disciplines but in four overarching thematic sections devoted to roles, spaces, communication and tools in the history of science.

The first thematic section explores social roles in the world of science from antiquity to the present. Drawing on the notion of the persona, the contributions in this section analyse a wide range of roles and social identities involved in the study of the natural world, including, for example, the alchemist, the instrument maker and the human experimental subject. This approach provides the reader with a strong sense of the shifting intellectual hierarchies among those who have studied nature through history. Moreover, the section also brings out illuminating contrasts, for example between the natural historian and the natural philosopher, and it historicizes the contested relations between amateurs and professionals.

The second thematic section analyses the spaces and places that have been central in the study of the natural world and includes public and domestic as well as professional domains. A …