In order to understand the reception of Newton in biology in the eighteenth century we must first decide what we mean by biology and characterize those aspects of Newton’s work that can plausibly be thought to have had some impact on the life sciences in the eighteenth century. When Immanuel Kant at the end of the eighteenth century despaired of a ‘Newton’ of the organic world, ‘who could make ...

Contrary to what one might expect from the very general title, this book is a detailed, archivally-based study of a small, mostly rural state in northern Germany, the duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuttel. A subtitle might perhaps have been in order here, to warn the unwary student expecting a general textbook covering the whole of Germany. Yet Mary Lindemann's substantial new work is anything but...

Reviewed by Roy Porter, M.A., Ph.D., Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 183 Euston Rd, London NWI 2BP. In his brisk and clear book, Professor Anderson traces the development of historical interpretation of some leading issues of eighteenth-century history from the verdicts of contemporaries up to the present day. Changing evaluations of eighteenthcentury rulers such as Frederick th...