John MacVicar and the Economy of Nature

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Notes

¹ See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (The original DNB account remains useful, especially for the list of MacVicar's writings.) There are brief but important references by P.F. Rehbock in The Philosophical Naturalists: Themes in Nineteenth Century British Biology (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). Obituaries appeared in the Dundee Advertiser (12 February 1884), The Scotsman, The Athenæum, and the Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 16 (1884): 95–8 (by John McMurtrie).

² See J. MacVicar, Enquiry into Human Nature (Edinburgh and London, 1853), 207. Reid was of central importance for MacVicar's own thinking.

³ He would also have heard the moral‐philosophy lectures of Thomas Brown (1778–1820), whose work he later cited with approval.

⁴ This Dundee Advertiser statement is at variance with later accounts, which probably refer to ordination for his charge in Ceylon.

⁵ For MacVicar's university career see R.N. Smart, Biographical Register of the University of St Andrews 1747–1897 (St Andrews: University of St Andrews Library, 2004), 573.

⁶ See P.R. Sloan, ‘The making of a philosophical naturalist’, in The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, edited by J. Hodge and G. Radick (Cambridge, 2003), 17–39, at 20–21.

⁷ J.A. Secord, ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians: Robert Jameson and Robert E. Grant’, Journal of the History of Biology, 24 (1991), 1–18.

⁸ Knox is mentioned – ‘John [sic] Knox’ – in the Dundee Advertiser obituary. On him, see D.B. Horn, A Short History of the University of Edinburgh 1556–1889 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967), 124–5; R.D. Anderson, M. Lynch and N.T. Phillipson, The University of Edinburgh: An Illustrated History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 92–3.

⁹ Secord, ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians’, 17.

¹⁰ Ogilvy is mentioned in MacVicar's letter to Thomas Chalmers, 29 September 1825: New College, Edinburgh [NCEdin], MS. CHA.4.46.48.134.

¹¹ On Fleming see J.H. Burns, ‘John Fleming and the geological deluge’, British Journal for the History of Science, 40 (2007), 205–25.

¹² A. Bryson, ‘Memoir of the Rev. John Fleming, D.D., F.R.S.E.’: Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 22 (1861), 661.

¹³ See First Annual Report of the Trustees of the Watt Institution of Dundee.

¹⁴ See J.H. Burns, ‘From “polite learning” to “useful knowledge”’, History Today, 36 (April 1986), 21–9.

¹⁵ On Chalmers see S.J. Brown, in Oxford DNB. For the Cuvier review, see W. Hanna, Memoirs of Thomas Chalmers, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1854), vol. 1, 291–3.

¹⁶ Cf. Burns, ‘John Fleming and the geological deluge’, 222, fn. 88 and 219, fn. 76. On the terminology of the earth sciences, see M.J.S. Rudwick, The New Science of Geology: Studies in the Earth Sciences in the Age of Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

¹⁷ George Combe (1788–1858), author of Essays on Phrenology (1819) and A System of Phrenology (1825), lectured on phrenology in Edinburgh in the 1820s (Horn, Short History of the University of Edinburgh, 109).

¹⁸ The Dundee Advertiser obituary refers correctly to ‘the institution, on the suggestion of Dr Chalmers, of a lectureship in natural history.’

¹⁹ Robert Haldane (1772–1854), professor of mathematics from 1809, became professor of divinity and principal of St Mary's College in 1820: as ‘a man of scientific learning’ (Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology, edited by N.M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993), 387) he no doubt welcomed MacVicar's appointment. For John Hunter (1745–1837) see Oxford DNB. Francis Nicol (1770–1835) was principal of the United Colleges from 1819 and of St Leonard's College 1820–24.

²⁰ Royal Commission on the Scottish Universities, 1827–31, Evidence, 158. I am indebted to Dr R.N. Smart for drawing my attention to this source. The (correct) statement there that the lectureship had existed for the two years 1825–27 may have led to the (mistaken) impression that the post existed only for that period.

²¹ Hanna, Memoirs of Thomas Chalmers, vol. 2, 80 n.

²² H. Lonsdale, ‘Biographical Memoir’ in The Anatomical Memoirs of John Goodsir, edited by W. Turner, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1868), vol. 1, 14, cit. Rehbock, The Philosophical Naturalists, 91.

²³ MacVicar had ‘gone to the Continent’ by 4 May 1827, Evidence, 158.

²⁴ Such as Joachim Frederik Schouw (1789–1852), author of Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Pflanzgeographie (1823); J.B.A. Dumas (1800–84), whose Traité de chimie appliquée MacVicar would surely have known; and H.M. Ducrotay de Blainville (1777–1850), Cuvier's successor at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle.

²⁵ A helpful outline of naturphilosophisch principles is given by Rehbock, The Philosophical Naturalists, 118–19. See also F. Bauer, ‘Kant and Naturphilosophie’, in The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth‐Century Science, edited by M. Friedman and A. Nordmann (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2006), 7–26; and, especially, M. Friedman, ‘Kant – Naturphilosophie – Electromagnetism’, ibid. 51–79.

²⁶ Friedman, ‘Kant – Naturphilosophie – Electromagnetism’, 59.

²⁷ Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, 1 (Nov.–Feb. 1828–29), 1–20, 121–35, 181–5, 219–23, 290–95. MacVicar was appointed editor in November 1827, but the first number was delayed until May 1828 in view of his ‘absence […] owing to his engagements at St Andrews.’ By March 1829, MacVicar ‘considered himself unfit’ for the editorship: his difficulties with the publisher, William Blackwood, had persuaded the publications committee that ‘a change in the Editorship was essential’. MacVIcar was paid 20 guineas for his work on the first four numbers (Information from the Society's sederunt Books kindly supplied by the Librarian, Mr Jim Murray).

²⁸ J. MacVicar, Elements of the Economy of Nature; or, The Principles of Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology: Founded on the Recently Discovered Phenomena of Light, Electro‐Magnetism, and Atomic Chemistry (Edinburgh and London, 1830).

²⁹ Rehbock, The Philosophical Naturalists, 89, citing McMurtrie's obituary, 97. Playfair (1819–98), was professor of chemistry at Edinburgh 1857–69, and matriculated at St Andrews in 1834. His mother had earlier been ‘allowed to take her young son to science lectures in the university’ (J. Meadows, The Victorian Scientist: the Growth of a Profession (London: British Library, 2004), 28). Thus he might even have heard MacVicar's lectures there.

³⁰ MacVicar, Elements of the Economy of Nature (1830), 528.

³¹ MacVicar, Elements of the Economy of Nature (1830), 4.

³² Thus in the table of contents on page 2, ‘subtile’ is replaced by ‘motorial’.

³³ MacVicar, Elements of the Economy of Nature (1830), 9n.

³⁴ MacVicar, Elements of the Economy of Nature (1830), 168.

³⁵ MacVicar, Elements of the Economy of Nature (1830), 472n.

³⁶ J. Macvicar, Enquiries concerning the Medium of Light and the Form of its Molecules (Edinburgh and London, 1833), 116 n.

³⁷ J. Macvicar, A Sketch of a Philosophy, Part IV: Biology and Theodicy (London, 1874), 98.

³⁸ Knox used the phrase ‘transcendental anatomy’ when introducing his 1839 translation of de Blainville: Rehbock, The Philosophical Naturalists, 3. For MacVicar and de Blainville see fn. 24 above.

³⁹ He presented a copy of the book to the University. (Information supplied by Rachel Hart, the Muniments Archivist, to whom I am indebted for this and other data.)

⁴⁰ MacVicar to Chalmers, 24(?) July 1830: NCEdin (10), MS. CHA.4.43.37. An undated letter was sent to Chalmers with a copy of ‘my first book in Philosophy’.

⁴¹ The old DNB entry on MacVicar may have led to misunderstanding on this point.

⁴² MacVicar to John Hunter, 17 March 1831: St Andrews University Muniments, UYUC516/1830. The accompanying receipt refers to the payment as ‘salary […] for Session 1830–31’.

⁴³ The reference (Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, vol. 7, 556) to MacVicar's ordination in 1830 as chaplain in Ceylon is mistaken.

⁴⁴ See fn. 28 above.

⁴⁵ The subtitle of the 1830 book had already referred to ‘the recently discovered phenomena of light and electro‐magnetism’.

⁴⁶ Brewster (1781–1860) invented the kaleidoscope in 1815, having published A Treatise on New Philosophical Instruments in 1813; the Treatise on Optics appeared in 1831.

⁴⁷ MacVicar, Enquiries concerning the Medium of Light, 10n.

⁴⁸ MacVicar, Enquiries concerning the Medium of Light, 1.

⁴⁹ Rehbock, The Philosophical Naturalists, 96–8.

⁵⁰ MacVicar to Chalmers, 11 January 1836: NCEdin (10), MS. CHA.

⁵¹ J. McVicar, On the Beautiful, the Picturesque, the Sublime (London, 1837), 208–9.

⁵² MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 208. MacVicar's use of the word ‘thinks’ may reflect his imperfect command of spoken Italian.

⁵³ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 9. See also page 152: ‘The simply beautiful, therefore [is …] that which is most harmonious with the Economy of Nature, and most deeply impressed by her seal and signature’ [italics in original] and page 187 – ‘The fountain of the Beautiful is the Economy of Nature’.

⁵⁴ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 15–16.

⁵⁵ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 35.

⁵⁶ Alison (1769–1839) was for many years minister of the Episcopalian chapel in Edinburgh. For Brown see fn. 3 above: MacVicar refers here to his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind.

⁵⁷ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 51–2.

⁵⁸ P.M. Roget, Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to Natural Theology (1834).

⁵⁹ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 57–8. See I. Kant, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (Königsberg, 1764).

⁶⁰ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 58.

⁶¹ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 111–12. MacVicar refers here to Augustus Charles Pugin's Specimens of Gothic Architecture (1821–23).

⁶² MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 99–100. He says that the dialogue ‘never has been intelligibly translated’ and thus ‘is but little known’ (100).

⁶³ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 159–60.

⁶⁴ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 160–61.

⁶⁵ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 190.

⁶⁶ MacVicar, On the Beautiful, 192. MacVicar refers here to ‘Addizione alle Prigioni di Silvio Pellico, per Pietro Maroncelli’. Pellico (1789–1854) published Le miei Prigioni, an account of his years of incarceration as a member of the Carbonari in 1832. Maroncelli (1795–1846) published his Addizioni in 1834.

⁶⁷ See J.R. Wolffe, ‘Candlish, Robert Smith (1806–73)’, in Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology, 20; MacVicar, Enquiry into Human Nature, iii. MacVicar's preface to The Catholic Spirit of True Religion (1840) shows that he was in London in November 1839.

⁶⁸ The minister at MacVicar's marriage was David Dobson of St Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, secretary of the Scottish Missionary Society.

⁶⁹ Governor Mackenzie laid the foundation stone in 1841. I am indebted to the late Professor David Wright for drawing my attention to information in the 1893 Handbook of the Church of Scotland in India and Ceylon; and to Dr Tom Barron for further information.

⁷⁰ Daughter of Major David Robertson and Margaretta McDonald of Kinlochmoidart. (I am indebted to my wife for ascertaining family‐history particulars.)

⁷¹ See K.M. de Silva, Social Policy and Missionary Organizations in Ceylon, Imperial Studies – Royal Commonwealth Society, 26 (London: Longmans, 1965), 169; also, more generally, the same author's History of Sri Lanka (London: Hurst & Co, 1981).

⁷² See Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, vol. 2, 217.

⁷³ J. MacVicar, The Catholic Spirit of the True Religion, printed in Edinburgh for Scott, Webster & Geary (London, 1840). MacVicar acknowledged his authorship on the title pages of some later works.

⁷⁴ MacVicar, The Catholic Spirit of the True Religion, 13–15. The reference is to Isaac Taylor (1787–1850), whose work, The Natural History of Enthusiasm (1829), reached its tenth edition in 1845.

⁷⁵ MacVicar, The Catholic Spirit of the True Religion, 102–3.

⁷⁶ NCEdin (10) P. b. 15/18. It would be interesting, but it may be impossible, to identify the ‘Socialists’ MacVicar had in mind.

⁷⁷ An Enquiry into Human Nature (Edinburgh and London, 1853), for the period of composition see 228.

⁷⁸ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, iii.

⁷⁹ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 4 and 4n.

⁸⁰ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 202. For de Blainville see fn. 24 above.

⁸¹ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 5.

⁸² MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 90 and 90n.

⁸³ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 204–5.

⁸⁴ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 206: ‘Very severe is the Philosopher of Königsberg […]’. MacVicar refers here to Kant's 1783 Prolegomena zu einer jeden künstigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können.

⁸⁵ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 207.

⁸⁶ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 207–8. In a footnote MacVicar cites J.H. Burton's 1846 biography of Hume.

⁸⁷ MacVicar gives no Kant references here.

⁸⁸ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 209.

⁸⁹ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 213. MacVicar adds – ‘The system of Kant is […] plainly at fault when considered as the science of common sense, because it so palpably contradicts it.’ Yet Kant's defence of ‘the doctrines of liberty, immortality, God’ – yet it relied on ‘an appeal to common sense’ (210).

⁹⁰ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 214, 216.

⁹¹ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 221.

⁹² MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 223–4.

⁹³ MacVicar, An Enquiry into Human Nature, 228.

⁹⁴ Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, vol. 2, 217. MacVicar was presiding over the kirk‐session by 8 August.

⁹⁵ J. MacVicar, The Philosophy of the Beautiful (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas 1855), with illustrations by Samuel Edmonston. The title page identifies MacVicar as author, not of The Catholic Spirit of True Religion, but of An Enquiry into Human Nature.

⁹⁶ MacVicar, Philosophy of the Beautiful, 129 n. MacVicar also deplores the fact that ‘an artist who could conceive, and represent in colours, such exquisite religious feeling as that of “The Return of the Dove to the Ark” in the Edinburgh Exhibition of last year should spend – how long? – in painting every straw in the heap the youths are standing upon.’ This painting by J.E. Millais is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. MacVicar's adverse opinion had been anticipated by Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, reviewing the 1851 Royal Academy exhibition. (I am indebted to my son Michael Burns for these particulars.)

⁹⁷ J. MacVicar, Elements of the Economy of Nature (Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox, 1856). The full title of the 1830 Elements of the Economy of Nature is reproduced, with the addition of ‘Second Edition’.

⁹⁸ MacVicar, Elements of the Economy of Nature (1856), iii.

⁹⁹ On whom see now Oxford DNB.

¹⁰⁰ 16 & 17 Victoria c. 89 §2. See Horn, Short History of the University of Edinburgh, 152.

¹⁰¹ See the Oxford DNB articles on Fraser and Ferrier.

¹⁰² See The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849–1873, edited by F.E. Mineka and D.N. Lindley, 4 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), vol. 2, 836–7.

¹⁰³ J. MacVicar, ‘Vegetable Morphology: its General Principles’, Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 6 (1860), 401–18; J. MacVicar, ‘The First Lines of Morphology and Organic Development Geometrically Considered’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, new series, 14 (1860), 1–14.

¹⁰⁴ Rehbock, The Philosophical Naturalists, 98.

¹⁰⁵ Balfour, after arts faculty studies in Edinburgh, went to St Andrews with a divinity course in mind, but returned to Edinburgh to study medicine (M.D. 1831). He could thus have heard MacVicar's St Andrews natural‐history lectures.

¹⁰⁶ J. MacVicar, The First Lines of Science Simplified and the Structure of Molecules Attempted (Edinburgh: Sutherland & Knox, 1860). In the preface (‘Manse of Moffat, January 1860’), MacVicar says that only a few copies of the 1856 book had circulated.

¹⁰⁷ MacVicar, First Lines of Science, lvi–lxi. MacVicar notes that this section was based on a paper which he had presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh ‘last winter’ and that an abstract of the paper had been published in the Society's ‘proceedings’ (i.e. the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh), lvi.

¹⁰⁸ MacVicar, First Lines of Science, x.

¹⁰⁹ Gerhardt (1816–56) had developed ideas advanced by Dumas (see fn. 24 above). Briefly professor at Strasbourg, he did his major work in Paris (1849–55).

¹¹⁰ J. MacVicar, A Sketch of a Philosophy, 4 vols. (London and Edinburgh, 1868–74). The volumes are designated as ‘Parts’, each with its own subtitle.

¹¹¹ MacVicar, A Sketch, vol. 1, 94n.

¹¹² MacVicar, A Sketch, vol. 1, 95.

¹¹³ MacVicar, A Sketch, vol. 1, 104–5, 112–13.

¹¹⁴ MacVicar might have agreed with John Morley that Beesly and Congreve were ‘clergymen gone right’. See D. Wormell, Sir John Seeley and the Uses of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 20–21.

¹¹⁵ This, unlike the other volumes, was printed in Leipzig, not Edinburgh – perhaps because of the typographical problems posed by numerous diagrams. MacVicar acknowledged that some of his drawings were unsatisfactory: one he describes as ‘very bad’, adding that ‘a recent attack on [his] finger joints’ prevented his drawing new diagrams.

¹¹⁶ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 2, viii. The Contemporary Review had commenced publication in 1865.

¹¹⁷ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 2, 2n. The reference is presumably to Herschel's 1864 catalogue of nebulae and star clusters.

¹¹⁸ Rehbock, The Philosophical Naturalists, 98

¹¹⁹ The text was completed in the autumn of 1869. See MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 3, 138n, where he refers to the death of ‘the admirable Graham’. Thomas Graham (1805–1869) died on 16 September 1869.

¹²⁰ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 3, 160.

¹²² MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 4, vi.

¹²¹ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 4, iii.

¹²⁸ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 4, 98.

¹²³ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 4, 2 and 128n.

¹²⁴ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 4, 18.

¹²⁵ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 4, 22, 31.

¹²⁶ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 4, 31n. Richard Owen (1801–92), superintendent of the British Museum's natural history departments since 1856, had, in On the Nature of Limbs (1859), vehemently criticised Darwin's Origin of Species.

¹²⁷ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 4, 109–19.

¹²⁹ MacVicar, Sketch, vol. 4, 176.

¹³¹ J. McVicar, A Supplement to A Sketch of a Philosophy (London, 1881), 16.

¹³⁰ J. McVicar, A Science Primer. On the Nature of Things (Edinburgh and London, 1878). MacVicar ‘(æt. 78)’ acknowledges its ‘obvious faults’, [xvi].