Just Published: Professor Joe Drury on Samuel Johnson

Professor Joe Drury has just been published on Samuel Johnson (well, just been published in the UK; the book will be out on this side of the pond in another few months). Professor Drury contributed a chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson. Here is the excerpt for Professor Drury's chapter:

"Even though Samuel Johnson paid close attention to the natural sciences, conducted chemical experiments at home, and included a large number of scientific terms in his Dictionary, he is typically thought to have made no significant contribution to Enlightenment science. This chapter challenges this view by reading Johnson’s periodical essays as important examples of 'experimental moral philosophy,' an eighteenth-century field of inquiry that sought to extend the Newtonian method from the sensible world to the study of human subjectivity. Drawing on the methods and conceptual repertoire of vitalist natural philosophy, especially chemistry, Johnson’s essays offer a qualitative, experimental account of the primary forces of the mind that emphasizes the tragic burden imposed by its restless activity."

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