Laura J. Snyder

Traces the influential friendship of William Whewell, Charles Babbage, John Herschel and Richard Jones, citing their pivotal contributions to a significant array of scientific achievements throughout the mid-19th century.

Four Remarkable Friends who Transformed Science and Changed the World

The Philosophical Breakfast Club

Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing

Eye of the Beholder

By the early 17th century the Scientific Revolution was well under way. Philosophers and scientists were throwing off the yoke of ancient authority to peer at nature and the cosmos through microscopes and telescopes. In October 1632, in the small town of Delft in the Dutch Republic, two geniuses were born who would bring about a seismic shift in the idea of what it meant to see the world. One was Johannes Vermeer, whose experiments with lenses and a camera obscura taught him how we see under different conditions of light and helped him create the most luminous works of art ever beheld. The other was Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, whose work with microscopes revealed a previously unimagined realm of minuscule creatures. By intertwining the biographies of these two men, Laura Snyder tells the story of a historical moment in both art and science that revolutionized how we see the world today.

The remarkable story of how an artist and a scientist in seventeenth-century Holland transformed the way we see the world. On a summer day in 1674, in the small Dutch city of Delft, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek—a cloth salesman, local bureaucrat, and self-taught natural philosopher—gazed through a tiny lens set into a brass holder and discovered a never-before imagined world of microscopic life. At the same time, in a nearby attic, the painter Johannes Vermeer was using another optical device, a camera obscura, to experiment with light and create the most luminous pictures ever beheld. “See for yourself!” was the clarion call of the 1600s. Scientists peered at nature through microscopes and telescopes, making the discoveries in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and anatomy that ignited the Scientific Revolution. Artists investigated nature with lenses, mirrors, and camera obscuras, creating extraordinarily detailed paintings of flowers and insects, and scenes filled with realistic effects of light, shadow, and color. By extending the reach of sight the new optical instruments prompted the realization that there is more than meets the eye. But they also raised questions about how we see and what it means to see. In answering these questions, scientists and artists in Delft changed how we perceive the world. In Eye of the Beholder, Laura J. Snyder transports us to the streets, inns, and guildhalls of seventeenth-century Holland, where artists and scientists gathered, and to their studios and laboratories, where they mixed paints and prepared canvases, ground and polished lenses, examined and dissected insects and other animals, and invented the modern notion of seeing. With charm and narrative flair Snyder brings Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhoek—and the men and women around them—vividly to life. The story of these two geniuses and the transformation they engendered shows us why we see the world—and our place within it—as we do today. Eye of the Beholder was named "A Best Art Book of the Year" by Christie's and "A Best Read of the Year" by New Scientist in 2015.

Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing

The Victorian period in Britain was an “age of reform.” It is therefore not surprising that two of the era’s most eminent intellects described themselves as reformers. Both William Whewell and John Stuart Mill believed that by reforming philosophy—including the philosophy of science—they could effect social and political change. But their divergent visions of this societal transformation led to a sustained and spirited controversy that covered morality, politics, science, and economics. Situating their debate within the larger context of Victorian society and its concerns, Reforming Philosophy shows how two very different men captured the intellectual spirit of the day and engaged the attention of other scientists and philosophers, including the young Charles Darwin. Mill—philosopher, political economist, and Parliamentarian—remains a canonical author of Anglo-American philosophy, while Whewell—Anglican cleric, scientist, and educator—is now often overlooked, though in his day he was renowned as an authority on science. Placing their teachings in their proper intellectual, cultural, and argumentative spheres, Laura Snyder revises the standard views of these two important Victorian figures, showing that both men’s concerns remain relevant today. A philosophically and historically sensitive account of the engagement of the major protagonists of Victorian British philosophy, Reforming Philosophy is the first book-length examination of the dispute between Mill and Whewell in its entirety. A rich and nuanced understanding of the intellectual spirit of Victorian Britain, it will be welcomed by philosophers and historians of science, scholars of Victorian studies, and students of the history of philosophy and political economy.

A Victorian Debate on Science and Society

Reforming Philosophy

Cambridge, 1812. Quattro brillanti studenti universitari – William Whewell, John Herschel, Charles Babbage e Richard Jones – scoprono di avere in comune l’amore per la scienza, oltre che per il buon cibo e le grandi bevute. Al loro primo incontro ne seguono altri, ogni domenica mattina, fino all’istituzione di un vero e proprio Club dei filosofi. Ispirandosi al metodo induttivo di Bacone, i quattro amici si propongono di rivoluzionare il concetto di scienza, portandola fuori dai polverosi ambienti accademici per metterla al servizio dell’umanità e delle classi sociali meno agiate. In cinquant’anni di amicizia, dibattiti, invenzioni, successi e fallimenti, questi straordinari pensatori riescono a mettere in atto una profonda trasformazione della scienza. La loro storia è quella di un grande sogno, e dell’incredibile legame umano e professionale che li unì. Il ritratto affascinante di un’epoca di importanti innovazioni e scoperte scientifiche destinate a cambiare per sempre il mondo. La storia di quattro uomini straordinari e delle loro intuizioni rivoluzionarie I membri del Club dei filosofi: William Whewell studiò la scienza delle maree. Fu lui a coniare la parola “scienziato” Charles Babbage, genio della matematica, gettò le basi per l’invenzione del computer John Herschel realizzò la mappa stellare dell’emisfero sud e contribuì all’invenzione della fotografia Richard Jones ridisegnò i confini della scienza dell’economia Laura J. Snyder è professore associato di Filosofia alla St. John’s University e presidente dell’HOPOS (International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science). Nelle sue ricerche si è dedicata principalmente alla scienza e alla filosofia del diciannovesimo secolo e per i suoi studi ha ricevuto numerosi premi (American Philosophical Society, National Endowment for the Humanities, U.S. Fulbright Commission). Ha contribuito a diversi saggi e scritto numerosi articoli, ha tenuto conferenze in tutto il mondo ed è autrice del volume Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society.

Laura J. Snyder

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