Introduction: Science Beyond the Enlightenment

Abstract

The eighteenth century has long been a problem for historians of science. The century suffers from an apparent lack of towering individuals and unifying theories, as Geoffrey Cantor observed in an essay published in 1982. Much good work has been done in the forty years since then, most of it aimed at locating science in the Enlightenment. But the Enlightenment is just one of several themes that can help to make sense of eighteenth-century science as a whole. The other themes may be summarised as Classification, the First Scientific Revolution, the Second Scientific Revolution, Discipline Formation, and Natural Philosophy. The articles in this special issue are relevant to all six themes, as a summary of those articles will show. This essay ends with suggestions for future research on eighteenth-century science. The upshot is that we need to go beyond the Enlightenment by considering the five other themes discussed here and by considering events in general history other than the Enlightenment.