Margaret Jacob

Last updated
Margaret C. Jacob
Born1943 (age 7980)
NationalityAmerican
Education St. Joseph's College (B.A.)
Cornell University (M.A., Ph.D)
OccupationHistorian

Margaret Candee Jacob (born 1943) is an American historian of science and Distinguished Professor of Research at UCLA. She specializes in the history of science, knowledge, the Enlightenment and Freemasonry.

Contents

Life

Margaret C. Jacob was born (1943) and raised in New York City. She graduated from St. Joseph's College in 1964 with a B.A. degree and then attended Cornell University, earning a master's degree in 1966 and her Ph.D. two years later. Jacob was appointed as an assistant professor at the University of South Florida in 1968 and spent 1969–71 as a lecturer in history at the University of East Anglia. She was hired as faculty at Baruch College of the City University of New York in 1971 and received tenure four years later. Jacob was appointed professor of history at the New School for Social Research in 1985 and simultaneously became dean of its Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts until 1988. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and co-authored a textbook on Western Civilization that has gone through five editions. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Modern History , Restoration, Journal of British Studies , Isis , and Eighteenth-Century Studies . "Best known for her studies of Isaac Newton and the development of Western scientific thought, Jacob has also written about the politics of writing history." [1]

Works

Books

1970–1999

  • The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720, Cornell University Press and Harvester Press, Ltd., 1976. Reviewed in New York Review of Books, December 7, 1978. Italian translation, I Newtoniani e la rivoluzione inglese, 1689-I720, 1980 by Feltrinelli Editore, Milan. Reprinted, 1983; Japanese translation, 1990. Available from Gordon and Breach, "Classics in the History of Science."
  • The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, published by George Allen & Unwin, London and Boston,1981; Italian translation, L'Illuminismo Radicale, published by Societa Editrice Il Mulino,1983. Second edition, revised, Cornerstone Books, 2005
  • The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution, Alfred Knopf, sold to McGraw-Hill, New York, 1988, 273 pp. Reviewed New York Review of Books, April 28, 1988; Italian translation, Einaudi Editore, 1992.
  • Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth Century Europe, 1991, 350pp. Oxford University Press; reviewed TLS, June 12, 1992; AHR, 1993; JMH, 1994; Italian rights bought by Laterza. French translation appeared in 2004 with L'Orient, Paris.
  • Telling the Truth about History with Lynn Hunt and Joyce Appleby, New York, W.W.Norton, 1994. Reviewed New York Times Book Review, March 25, 1994. TLS, June 10, 1994; The New Republic, Oct. 24, 1994; editions in Spanish, Polish, Lithuanian and Chinese under contract. A selection of the History Book Club. Forums on the book in History and Theory and the Journal of the History of Ideas.
  • Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism, with Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs. My half discusses Newtonian mechanics and European industrial culture throughout the 18th century. Humanity Press, 1995. Winner of the Watson-Davis Award, History of Science Society

2000–2023

  • The Enlightenment: A Brief History of Documents. Bedford Books. 2001. 237 pages. ISBN   978-0312237011. 2nd ed. 2016
  • The Enlightenment: A Brief History, Bedford Books, 2001.
  • With Lynn Hunt and Wijnand Mijnhardt, The Book that Changed Europe,Harvard University Press, 2010 reviewed New York Review of Books, June 25, 2010. TBD
  • Janet Burke & Margaret Jacob, Les premières francs-maçonnes au siècle des Lumières, Bordeaux University Press, 2010. 190pp, avec un cahier de 8 illustrations en couleur.
  • with Lynn Hunt and Wijnand Mijnhardt, eds. Bernard Picart and the First Global Vision of Religion. Getty Publications, 2010 | TBD
  • “How Radical Was the Enlightenment? What Do We Mean by 'Radical'?" in Justyna Miklaszewska, and Anna Tomeszewska, Filozofia Oświecenia. Radykalizm – religia – kosmopolityzm, University Press, Jagiellonia, 2016, translated as “Ja bardzo radykalne bylo Oświecenie i co oznacza “radikakne?”, pp. 46–64.
  • The Secular Enlightenment. Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press. 2019. 360 pages. ISBN   978-0691161327.
  • The Scientific Revolution: A Brief History with Documents, Bedford Books, 2010. Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West, published by Oxford University Press; 1997, a sequel to The Cultural Meaning; new edition planned for 2010, with additional chapters with Catherine Secretan, eds.
  • The Origins of Freemasonry. Facts and Fictions, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
  • Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
  • The Self-Perception of Early Modern Capitalists,Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008
  • Europe, the Americas, North and South , with Maru Vasquez. Freemasonry and Civil Society. to be published in 2023 by Peter Lang

Journal articles

Awards

Notes

Related Research Articles

<i>Annales</i> school Group of historians

The Annales school is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century to stress long-term social history. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and monographs. The school has been highly influential in setting the agenda for historiography in France and numerous other countries, especially regarding the use of social scientific methods by historians, emphasizing social and economic rather than political or diplomatic themes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freemasonry</span> Group of fraternal organizations

Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities and clients. Modern Freemasonry broadly consists of two main recognition groups: Regular Freemasonry, which insists that a volume of scripture be open in a working lodge, that every member professes belief in a Supreme Being, that no women be admitted, and that the discussion of religion and politics do not take place within the lodge; and Continental Freemasonry, which consists of the jurisdictions that have removed some, or all, of these restrictions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Age of Enlightenment</span> 17th–18th-century European cultural movement

The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe, especially Western Europe, in the 17th and 18th centuries, with global influences and effects. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as natural law, liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scottish Enlightenment</span> Intellectual movement in 18th–19th century Scotland

The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th- and early-19th-century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century, Scotland had a network of parish schools in the Scottish Lowlands and five universities. The Enlightenment culture was based on close readings of new books, and intense discussions which took place daily at such intellectual gathering places in Edinburgh as The Select Society and, later, The Poker Club, as well as within Scotland's ancient universities.

<i>Encyclopédie</i> General encyclopedia published in France from 1751 to 1772

Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, better known as Encyclopédie, was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It had many writers, known as the Encyclopédistes. It was edited by Denis Diderot and, until 1759, co-edited by Jean le Rond d'Alembert.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Early modern Europe</span> History of Europe by period

Early modern Europe, also referred to as the post-medieval period, is the period of European history between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century. Historians variously mark the beginning of the early modern period with the invention of moveable type printing in the 1450s, the Fall of Constantinople and end of the Hundred Years’ War in 1453, the end of the Wars of the Roses in 1485, the beginning of the High Renaissance in Italy in the 1490s, the end of the Reconquista and subsequent voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492, or the start of the Protestant Reformation in 1517. The precise dates of its end point also vary and are usually linked with either the start of the French Revolution in 1789 or with the more vaguely defined beginning of the Industrial Revolution in late 18th century England.

The Counter-Enlightenment refers to a loose collection of intellectual stances that arose during the European Enlightenment in opposition to its mainstream attitudes and ideals. The Counter-Enlightenment is generally seen to have continued from the 18th century into the early 19th century, especially with the rise of Romanticism. Its thinkers did not necessarily agree to a set of counter-doctrines but instead each challenged specific elements of Enlightenment thinking, such as the belief in progress, the rationality of all humans, liberal democracy, and the increasing secularisation of society.

The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment came to Spain in the 18th century with the new Bourbon dynasty, following the death of the last Habsburg monarch, Charles II, in 1700. The period of reform and 'enlightened despotism' under the eighteenth-century Bourbons focused on centralizing and modernizing the Spanish government, and improvement of infrastructure, beginning with the rule of King Charles III and the work of his minister, José Moñino, count of Floridablanca. In the political and economic sphere, the crown implemented a series of changes, collectively known as the Bourbon reforms, which were aimed at making the overseas empire more prosperous to the benefit of Spain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Progress</span> Movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state

Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension will continue to result, in an improved human condition; the latter may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through activism, or as a natural part of sociocultural evolution.

The Republic of Letters was the long-distance intellectual community in the late 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and the Americas. It fostered communication among the intellectuals of the Age of Enlightenment, or philosophes as they were called in France. The Republic of Letters emerged in the 17th century as a self-proclaimed community of scholars and literary figures that stretched across national boundaries but respected differences in language and culture. These communities that transcended national boundaries formed the basis of a metaphysical Republic. Because of societal constraints on women, the Republic of Letters consisted mostly of men. As such, many scholars use "Republic of Letters" and "men of letters" interchangeably.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Picart</span> French engraver (1673–1733)

Bernard Picart or Picard, was a French draughtsman, engraver, and book illustrator in Amsterdam, who showed an interest in cultural and religious habits.

Jonathan Irvine Israel is a British writer and academic specialising in Dutch history, the Age of Enlightenment and European Jews. Israel was appointed as Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, in January 2001 and retired in July 2016. He was previously Professor of Dutch History and Institutions at the University College London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newtonianism</span> Philosophical principle of applying Newtons methods in a variety of fields

Newtonianism is a philosophical and scientific doctrine inspired by the beliefs and methods of natural philosopher Isaac Newton. While Newton's influential contributions were primarily in physics and mathematics, his broad conception of the universe as being governed by rational and understandable laws laid the foundation for many strands of Enlightenment thought. Newtonianism became an influential intellectual program that applied Newton's principles in many avenues of inquiry, laying the groundwork for modern science, in addition to influencing philosophy, political thought and theology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Science in the Age of Enlightenment</span>

The history of science during the Age of Enlightenment traces developments in science and technology during the Age of Reason, when Enlightenment ideas and ideals were being disseminated across Europe and North America. Generally, the period spans from the final days of the 16th and 17th-century Scientific Revolution until roughly the 19th century, after the French Revolution (1789) and the Napoleonic era (1799–1815). The scientific revolution saw the creation of the first scientific societies, the rise of Copernicanism, and the displacement of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Galen's ancient medical doctrine. By the 18th century, scientific authority began to displace religious authority, and the disciplines of alchemy and astrology lost scientific credibility.

<i>Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism</i> Book by Abbé Augustin Barruel

Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism is a book by Abbé Augustin Barruel, a French Jesuit priest. It was written and published in French in 1797–98, and translated into English in 1799.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atheism during the Age of Enlightenment</span> Aspect of history

Atheism, as defined by the entry in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, is "the opinion of those who deny the existence of a God in the world. The simple ignorance of God doesn't constitute atheism. To be charged with the odious title of atheism one must have the notion of God and reject it." In the period of the Enlightenment, avowed and open atheism was made possible by the advance of religious toleration, but was also far from encouraged.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midlands Enlightenment</span> Regional English cultural and scientific movement

The Midlands Enlightenment, also known as the West Midlands Enlightenment or the Birmingham Enlightenment, was a scientific, economic, political, cultural and legal manifestation of the Age of Enlightenment that developed in Birmingham and the wider English Midlands during the second half of the eighteenth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scottish education in the eighteenth century</span> Overview of the Scottish education during the eighteenth century

Scottish education in the eighteenth century concerns all forms of education, including schools, universities and informal instruction, in Scotland in the eighteenth century.

The ideas of the Spanish Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, science, practicality, clarity rather than obscurantism, and secularism, were transmitted from France to the New World in the eighteenth century, following the establishment of the Bourbon monarchy in Spain. In Spanish America, the ideas of the Enlightenment affected educated elites in major urban centers, especially Mexico City, Lima, and Guatemala, where there were universities founded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In these centers of learning, American-born Spanish intellectuals were already participants in intellectual and scientific discourse, with Spanish American universities increasingly anti-scholastic and opposed to “untested authority” even before the Spanish Bourbons came to power. The best studied is the University of San Carlos Guatemala, founded in 1676.

The Gottschalk Prize is awarded for an outstanding historical or critical study on the 18th century and carries a prize of US$1,000. It is named in honour of Louis Gottschalk (1899–1975), second President of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), President of the American Historical Association, and for many years Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. His scholarship exemplified the humanistic ideals that this award is meant to encourage.

References

  1. Scanlon & Cosner, pp. 118–19
  2. Gráda, Cormac Ó. (2016). "Did Science Cause the Industrial Revolution?". Journal of Economic Literature. 54 (1): 224–239. doi:10.1257/jel.54.1.224. hdl:10197/6385. JSTOR   43932447.
  3. Roberts, Lissa (2015). "Margaret C. Jacob. The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750–1850 . Ix + 257 pp., illus., bibl., index. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. £19.99 (Paper)". Isis. 106 (2): 456–457. doi:10.1086/682787.
  4. Hudson, Pat (2016). "The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750–1850 . By Margaret C. Jacob. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. X+257. $85.00 (Cloth); $29.99 (Paper); $24.00 (Adobe eBook Reader)". The Journal of Modern History. 88 (3): 646–647. doi:10.1086/687425.
  5. Razumenko, Fedir V. (2016). "The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750–1850 by Margaret C. Jacob (Review)". Canadian Journal of History. 51 (2): 365–367. doi:10.3138/cjh.ach.51.2.rev08. S2CID   151898087.
  6. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-10-11.
  7. "Margaret Candee Jacob". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2021-10-11.
  8. "Six professors named 2019 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science". UCLA. Retrieved 2021-10-11.