John Playfair and his books

References

• James Ballantyne and Co. 1820 . Catalogue of the Library of the Late John Playfair, Esq. Edinburgh Acquired by Harvard University Library in 1961.
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• For Playfair, Hutton, and the history of British geology, see Geikie Archibald The Founders of Geology , 2nd edn New York 1905 reprinted 1962); Charles Coulston Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1951; reprinted 1959); and Roy Porter, The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660–1815 (Cambridge, 1977). In what follows, I have omitted, abbreviated, paraphrased, and translated titles freely, but Playfair owned at least one copy of every book to which I allude.
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• While in Paris (1816), Playfair was fully able to ‘express himself freely in French on subjects of science, and it was only in the lighter conversation, and in the common occurrences of life, that he required any assistance’ The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Playfair James G. Edinburgh 1822 I xxviii xxviii his nephew, 4 vols While there he associated with Cuvier, Brongniart, and Humboldt (who wrote eight of the titles in Playfair's library).
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• When Playfair was on his death-bed, a relation offered to amuse him by reading aloud one of Scott's novels; Playfair requested Newton's Principia instead! Cockburn Henry Memorials of his Time Edinburgh 1856 359 359 reprinted 1977 Much of Playfair's English literature is in editions of 1805 or later, suggesting a delayed interest.
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• Playfair , James G. , ed. 1822 . The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Vol. IV , 161 – 161 . Edinburgh his nephew, 4 vols
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• Playfair , James G. , ed. 1822 . The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Vol. IV , 157 – 157 . Edinburgh his nephew, 4 vols 158–59, 167
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• Playfair was viciously calcumniated for his religious scepticism by Lockhart J.G. Blackwood's Magazine. ‘Although Playfair [had] never been suspected of orthodoxy’, however, Walter Scott was unaware that he had ‘upon any occasion made any attack upon religion’ The Letters of Sir Walter Scott Grierson H.J.C. London 1937 v 212 212 in 12 vols (To J.B.S. Morritt, 5 November 1818). Of the two dozen books dealing with religion in Playfair's library, several (Cheyne, Wollaston, Bolingbroke) are deistic or vindicate free-thinking. But he always believed in ‘final causes’ (Works (footnote 3), I, 133, 139; IV, 319).
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• Playfair , James G. , ed. 1822 . The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Vol. II , Edinburgh his nephew, 4 vols passim; also published as Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Edinburgh, 1824), II, 1–127; IV, 1–90.
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• Playfair's more important mathematical reviews are in his The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Playfair James G. Edinburgh 1822 his nephew, 4 vols For a complete list of those attributed to him, all of which appeared in the Edinburgh Review, see The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, I, edited by Walter L. Houghton (Toronto and London, 1966), pp. 1049–1050.
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• Playfair , James G. , ed. 1822 . The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Vol. IV , 316 – 317 . Edinburgh his nephew, 4 vols
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• His authors here includes Bouguer, D'Anville, Maupertuis, Charnieres, Laplace, and several others, some already mentioned. For Outlines, see The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Playfair James G. Edinburgh 1822 I xxiii xxiii his nephew, 4 vols
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• Playfair , James G. , ed. 1822 . The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Vol. IV , 78 – 81 . Edinburgh his nephew, 4 vols According to James G. Playfair (Works (footnote 3), I, xiii) his uncle met Hutton in 1769; Playfair himself (Works (footnote 3), IV, 82) specifies 1781.
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• Playfair , James G. , ed. 1822 . The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Vol. I , xvi – xix . Edinburgh his nephew, 4 vols
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• Playfair , James G. , ed. 1822 . The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Vol. I , Edinburgh his nephew, 4 vols includes the Illustrations (with very minor changes in accidentals). A photofacsimile of the first edition, edited by George W. White (Urbana, 1956; reprinted 1964) led to many other useful reprints of geological classics. Playfair's biographical account of Hutton (based on the French éloge, several examples of which were in Playfair's library) appeared originally in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 5 (1803), 39–99. It was reprinted in Playfair's Works (footnote 3), IV, 33–118, and again by V. A. Eyles and George W. White (Darien, Conn., 1970). For the friendship of Seymour and Playfair, see Cockburn (footnote 4), pp. 182–83, 357–59. They went as far afield as Devonshire and Yorkshire.
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• Playfair wrote seven major geological reviews (traditionally unsigned) for Edinburgh Review 1807 9 19 31 on Hall; 18 (1811), 80–97 on Werner; 18 (1811), 214–30 on Cuvier and fossil elephants; 19 (1812), 207–229 on Transactions of the Geological Society I; 19 (1812), 416–35 on Mackenzie's Iceland; 20 (1812), 269–386 on Cuvier, Brongniart, and the Paris Basin, and 22 (1814), 454–75 on Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, translated by Kerr. See also 27 (1816), 156, and The Wellesley Index (footnote 11), I, 1049–1050. No geological reviews appear in Works.
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• Playfair himself suggested several of Hutton's sources The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Playfair James G. Edinburgh 1822 I 501 501 his nephew, 4 vols but the list is obviously incomplete.
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• The most authoritative biographical essay on Hutton since Playfair's is that of V.A. Eyles in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography Gillispie Charles C. New York 1972 VI 577 589 There is nothing of book length. Playfair also wrote memorials of Matthew Stewart and John Robison (Works (footnote 3), IV).
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• I assume that Playfair's relatives withheld personal copies of his books, and others not by him containing extensive annotations (as his copy of Kirwan Richard Geological Essays London 1799 if he owned one—must have had). If so, their present whereabouts is unknown. Playfair's Illustrations cites a plethora of sources, including works by Bacon, Saussure, de Luc, Kirwan, Leibniz, Buffon, Moro, Pliny, Pallas, Pini, Newton (Opticks), Spallanzani, Faujas de St. Fond, Dolomieu, Jameson, Lagrange, Laplace, Breislak, and Fortis. Leibniz, Boscovich, and even Plato are among those cited in his biographical account of Hutton.
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• Remarking upon the Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society, another periodical mentioned that Playfair was engaged in ‘a new and enlarged edition’ of the Illustrations (Monthly Review, 66 [1811], 47). For Playfair in 1811, see especially Simond Louis Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain Edinburgh 1815 II 1 20 2 vols Playfair owned a copy.
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• 1814 . Edinburgh Review , 22 : 454 – 475 . Kerr's Cuvier included a Mosaical preface by Jameson.
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• 1815 . Explication de Playfair sur la Théorie de la terre par Hutton, et Examen comparativ des systèms géologiques fondes sur le feu et sur l'eau par M. Murray Paris translated by C. A. Basset Playfair owned at least five copies (Nos. 80, 507, 601, 922, and 1161).
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• According to James G. Playfair (in Playfair John The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Playfair James G. Edinburgh 1822 I xxiv xxv his nephew, 4 vols the second edition of his uncle's Illustrations, larger and rearranged, would have begun, à la mode, with ‘a description of all the well authenticated facts in geology … without any mixture of hypothesis whatever’. Geological theories contradicting these facts would be discarded, leaving but one thoroughly consistent with ‘the laws of the physical world’ (xxv). As he had previously remarked, Hutton's theory alone ‘agrees with physical astronomy, in assigning to our system a principle of compensation which leaves its duration limited only by the will of its Creator’ (xx). Clearly, then, Playfair's revision would have attempted to combine major elements of Hutton's theory with Laplacean cosmology (IV, 316), geophysical discoveries by Sir James Hall and himself, data from reading and travels, and some theory of persistent volcanism not dependent upon the outmoded (but Huttonian) concept of phlogiston (II, 101–2). The chief, and perhaps insuperable, difficulty associated with this synthesis would be to reconcile Hutton's steady, unprogressive geological forces with the directionalist ones implicit in Laplacean cosmology. Perhaps Playfair realized, eventually, that if either Hutton or Laplace were right, the other was almost surely not.
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• For contemporary disparagement by Francis Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review, see Playfair The Works of John Playfair, Esq… with a memoir of the Author Playfair James G. Edinburgh 1822 I 65 65 his nephew, 4 vols
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