The Birth of Photography: The Story of the Formative Years, 1800-1900 by Brian CoeReview by: Reese V. JenkinsIsis, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Mar., 1978), pp. 139-140Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/230664 .

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BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 69: 1 : 246 (1978) 139

Signalons un travail en langue italienne, Sui metodi analitici, suivi de trois articles publies a Milan en 1830-1831. Voici, traduites, quelques lignes qui se trouvent 'a la p. 177 et qui ne manquent pas d'interet: "Nous croyons que dans le calcul integral, la consideration des integrales definies doit preceder celle des fonctions primitives, et que cet ordre est non seulement naturel, mais meme le seul qui permette d'etablir les principes du calcul avec toute la rigueur que l'on est en droit d'exiger en analyse."

Viennent ensuite, en fac-simile, un long memoire sur les rapports qui existent entre le calcul des residus et le calcul des limites, pr6sente 'a l'Academie des Sciences de Turin le 27 novembre 1821, et un extrait de celui du 11 octobre 1831, 'a la meme Academie, et dont la seconde partie contient des applica- tions 'a la mecanique celeste. Puis, sept lecons de physique generale, tenues 'a Turin en 1833, et encore deux memoires d'analyse.

Dans la seconde partie du volume sont reunis les rapports presentes par Cauchy 'a l'Academie des Sciences de Paris entre 1816 et 1830. Bornons-nous 'a signaler ceux relatifs a des travaux elabores par Hachette, Dupin, Libri, Abel, Ostrogradsky et Sturm.

La troisieme partie est une annexe docu- mentaire, dont il est 'a peine besoin de sou- ligner l'interet pour l'historien des mathema- tiques. Enfin, la quatrieme partie, tres courte, est constituee par la Table des matieres des quinze tomes de la seconde serie.

Voila, dans les grandes lignes, un apercu sommaire de la richesse du volume. Pour sa realisation, il convient de feliciter M. Rene Taton et ceux qui l'ont aide 'a surmonter les difficultes qui ont surgi tout le long de sa preparation.

La meilleure conclusion est celle que nous donne M. Taton lui-meme dans la preface: "Nous esperons que les nouveaux textes et l'important materiel documentaire mis ainsi a la disposition des mathematiciens et des his- toriens des mathematiques, faciliteront les recherches en cours concernant differents aspects de l'oeuvre scientifique de Cauchy et permettront enfin d'aborder la grande etude de synthese qui reste a entreprendre sur l'en- semble de l'oeuvre, si vaste et si diverse, de l'un des mathematiciens les plus feconds de la premiere moitie du XIXe siecle."

PIERRE SPEZIALI

Departement de Physique Theorique Universite de Geneve

CH-1211 Geneve 4, Switzerland

Brian Coe. The Birth of Photography: The Story of the Formative Years, 1800-1900. 144 pp., illus., glossary, bibl., index. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1977. $9.95.

Photography is an increasingly popular form of art and visual communication. Since its birth as a commercial process in 1839, it has remained deeply indebted to the optical and chemical science in which it was con- ceived. The names of prominent and not so prominent natural philosophers and scien- tists-from Alhazen to Scheele, Davy, Her- schel, and Vogel-permeate the technical his- tory of photography. Scientific knowledge, journals, institutions, and personalities all have played a vital role. Yet no historical study has seriously addressed the important reciprocal influences between photography and science.

Brian Coe, curator of the Kodak Museum in London, is a highly knowledgeable student of the history of photography and its rela- tionship to science and other technologies. Unfortunately, in his most recent book his aim is not to study these significant relation- ships but instead to provide a brief introduc- tion to the history of photography, largely through pictures. Two hundred well-printed photographs overwhelm a diminutive text of less than thirty pages. The first half of the undocumented book cursorily traces key camera and photochemical developments from the camera obscura in the tenth century to the Brownie camera in 1900. The second half consists of five chapters, each devoted to one type of nineteenth-century photograph: portraits, views, stereophotography, art pho- tography, and snapshots. The photographs are well selected, but each chapter consists of only a very brief introduction and the remain- der is a gallery of pictures without commen- tary. Regrettably, the well-produced book adds nothing new to the historical under- standing of the technical, documentary, or aesthetic dimensions of photography.

At a time when several such books are appearing on the market, the serious reader seeking an analytical introduction should turn, instead, to Beaumont Newhall's recently revised, art-oriented History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (1977) and his short but technically detailed Latent Image: The Discovery of Photography (1967). For a more comprehensive and technically detailed study, Helmut and Alison Gernsheim's His- tory of Photography (1970) is a well-

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140 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 69: 1 : 246 (1978)

illustrated work. The Newhall and Gernsheim studies, which draw heavily from art history, have largely defined for the history of photog- raphy the current historiographic framework. From an older, technical tradition there is Josef M. Eder's History of Photography (1945). Despite its many defects of age, na- tional perspective, and methodology, it re- mains for the historian of science the most detailed and best documented introductory survey. Moreover, the German edition of 1932 provides a well-selected collection of technical illustrations. Of course, the metho- dological problems of Whiggism and positiv- ism permeate the Eder work as well as even the most recent studies.

With the current explosion of interest in photography as an art form and social docu- ment, the history of photography is attracting increased attention. What is now needed is an integrated social-cultural approach to the history of the photo sciences. Such a study could make a significant contribution not only to the history of science but also to the understanding of the social-intellectual roots of that visual revolution which was acceler- ated by the introduction of photography and is now epitomized in the extreme by the popular genre to which the Coe book be- longs.

REESE V. JENKINS

Program in History of Science and Technology

Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio 44106

Neil Coughlan. Young John Dewey: An Es- say in American Intellectual History. xii + 187 pp., index. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1975. $10.75.

Focusing on the period before 1894, when Dewey went to the University of Chicago, this intellectual biography presents an excel- lent history of the development of Dewey's ideas through Hegelianism to the emergence of his own brand of Pragmatism. Throughout the book, Coughlan, formerly an historian at Wesleyan and now a law student at Yale, stresses Dewey's intellectual relations with his teachers and colleagues, especially H. A. P. Torrey (at Vermont), George S. Morris (at Johns Hopkins and Michigan), Franklin Ford (at Michigan), and George H. Mead (at Michigan and later Chicago). Coughlan hints, perhaps unintentionally, at the ways in

which Dewey relied on these men, and he stresses the ideas that he shared with each. And though he discusses the nonintellectual sides of these relationships, especially impor- tant to Dewey in the cases of Torrey and Ford, Coughlan clearly de-emphasizes what these interactions meant to Dewey person- ally. In doing so, he perhaps may have fallen into a version of David Hackett Fischer's "idealist fallacy," which reduces individuals to pure rationality at the expense of their total humanity. But it is clear that this book is not meant to be a definitive biography, or even half of one, and as Dewey was a philoso- pher, a concentration on his ideas is appro- priate.

In stressing Dewey's relationships with such individuals, Coughlan presents interest- ing sketches of their own work and ideas, and these are often quite valuable. For example, a short inquiry into the thought of Newman Smyth, a Protestant minister who wrote ex- tensively on philosophical topics in the 1870s, not only provides insight into the sources of Dewey's modified Hegelianism of the 1880s, it also contributes to the current reassessment of the American philosophical tradition of the late nineteenth century out of which De- wey's own work, and experimental psychol- ogy, developed.

More important, Coughlan's twenty-page chapter on Mead, Dewey's younger col- league, is excellent. Mead, like Dewey, passed through Hegelianism to come finally to a pragmatic position known as Social Behav- iorism, and a discussion of his career before going to Chicago with Dewey gives Coughlan an opportunity to sketch just why Dewey's Pragmatism was as attractive as it was in the 1890s. Mead's early experiences-including his intense religious feelings, travels in Eu- rope, flirtation with Idealism, and so on- were not unusual for an intellectually inclined young American in the late nineteenth cen- tury, and perhaps Coughlan has missed a bet by not generalizing more than he has. But as a biographer, Coughlan is probably correct in restricting the focus of his attention to De- wey.

The book itself is well made and fairly well indexed. It is an important "essay in Ameri- can intellectual history," and, one would hope, sets the stage for other, broader, studies of Dewey.

MICHAEL M. SOKAL

Department of Humanities Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Worcester, Massachusetts 01609

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