Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550 (review)
eighteenth-century savants concerning resistance and stability were often particularly abstruse, involving complex relationships between abstract mathematical points that don’t really exist (like centers of gravity and buoyancy), described in the language of the calculus. The difficult nature of this subject matter would seem to have cried out for a chronological approach in which basic concepts could be patiently explained as they were introduced, debated, and later codified in mathematical terms. Here, the explanations of the crucial theoretical concepts generally lack depth and clarity, and are generally marred by a too-easy recourse to equations. The lack of attention to the explanations of theory may result from the author’s spreading himself too thin by misconstruing his subject. The main subject matter is buried under an avalanche of extraneous material on topics that, since no one can be expert on so many things, the author frequently mischaracterizes. This extraneous material includes a rambling first chapter purporting to give histories of all European navies, a very peculiar fifth chapter giving the tables of contents of books previously discussed in the text, and a weak sixth chapter purporting to describe the professionalization of naval architecture in numerous countries. This sixth chapter may offer a clue to the author’s misconception of his subject and the consequent disorganization of the book. All engineering professions have disciplinary histories. These are generally mythical. This book represents an attempt to retell the modern naval architect’s mythical disciplinary history in more detail than usual. The actual history would not fit into this straightjacket. The author (who is a naval architect) does not seem to realize this and structured his book accordingly. An intellectual biography of Bouguer would have been less ambitious, but much preferable. DAVID MCGEE Massachusetts Institute of Technology