William Cullen and Joseph Black: Chemistry, Medicine, and the Scottish Enlightenment

摘要

The Enlightenment was a highly diverse intellectual movement that emerged in the first half of the 18th century. Its central theme was the move from given knowledge to rationalism. The scientific method of gaining knowledge started to permeate arts and humanities; a formalized approach to social sciences, history, and the arts was attempted (1).The major pillar of Enlightenment thinking was Newtonian physics. It was thought that Isaac Newton (1642–1727) managed to scientifically understand and describe (completely and finally was the assumption) natural phenomena. Science was seen as a path to absolute truth. There was also the idea of linear progress, which was rather hurriedly extended to all fields, including the new social sciences. These tenets, entrenched in Enlightenment thinking, in spite of their inaccuracy, curiously still surface from time to time in contemporary thinking.The Enlightenment started in France, where Voltaire (1694–1778) and the Encyclopedists were its major proponents. Eventually, one of its foci became Scotland after the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688, and the Act of Union in 1707, which created Britain (2).At that time, chemistry was causing increasing interest among medical people. …