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ROY M. MACLEOD, The 'Creed of Science' in Victorian England. Variorum Collected Studies Series: CS598. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Pp. 346. ISBN 0-86078-669-2. L57.50.
The essays collected here were published between the 1960s and the 1990s and cover, primarily, aspects of the development of science in later Victorian Britain. Such a brief description scarcely does justice to the broad scope of MacLeod's work, however. He has done more than most to facilitate our understanding of the debates around scientific naturalism and his introduction sets out how he sees the relationship of these debates to the roots of contemporary issues concerning the role of science. For example, while his papers avoid any whiggish tendencies, he clearly subscribes to an overarching philosophy which will show how history of science can help us understand `the advance of science', which `has so far brought in its wake ...the "disenchantment of the world"' (p. xx).
Here Chapter 1, `The X Club: a social network of science in late Victorian England', is a good choice to start a collection influenced by such a programme. It is a paper seminal to studies such as the development of scientific naturalism, the relationship of the personal life with the life of science, and studies in science publishing. Work which this paper helped to promote is still being extended and now includes, for example, the popular reception of the X Club's particular brand...