Staff profile

Contact

Office Hours: By appointment (m.d.eddy[at]durham.ac.uk) in Department of Philosophy, 50-51 Old Elvet, DH1 3HN on Fridays 11:00-14:00.

Social Media: Bluesky

Profile

I am a prize-winning historian and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society whose research centres on the social, cultural and intellectual history of Britain and the Atlantic world. I am the author of two monographs on the popular Scottish Enlightenment and its influence in Britain and across the British Empire. Media and the Mind won the Pickstone Prize and was shortlisted for the Book History Prize. The Language of Mineralogy was shortlisted for the Neville Prize. I am especially interested in how people with limited social and political power used scientific knowledge to achieve agency and purpose within their everyday lives. I have extended this line of inquiry to political, gendered and religious history as well as the Black Atlantic world in leading journals such as the American Historical Review and the Journal of British Studies. In parallel, I have edited volumes on William Paley’s Natural Theology; Science and Beliefs; Gender, Science, and Sociability, and, most recently, Global Science and Colonial Information. Open access (free) copies of my work are availible at Durham Research Online (DRO).

I am based at Durham University, where I am the Department of Philosophy's Chair and Professor in the History and Philosophy of Science and a member of the university's natural sciences management committee and exam board. I've co-directed the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies and am a founding member of the Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society, the Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease, the Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences and the Institute for Medical Humanities.

Over the course of my career, I've worked at Princeton University, MIT, Caltech and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. I've also held fellowships at Harvard University, UCLA, the Huntington Library, the Science Heritage Foundation, Uppsala University and Cambridge University. My research has been nationally and internationally recognised and supported by grants awarded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Mellon Foundation, the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and the Royal Society of London. 

My work has been profiled by Inside Higher Ed, the BBC, The Scotsman, Yahoo News and Apple News. I have acted as a historical consultant for several BBC documentaries, served on the executive council of the British Society for the History of Science, given evidence to the UK's Department of Work and Pensions and acted as government evaluator for Greece's National Hellenic Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. I presently sit on the editorial boards of Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, History of the Human Sciences and History of Education.

Current Projects

I presently have two book projects. The first, Moral Data: Black Doctors, Medical Statistics and Colonial Information Systems, 1780-1850, focuses on how the moral values and ethical decisions of Scottish-trained black physicians led them to use medical science and its associated data technologies to promote public health in the Atlantic World during the early nineteenth century. The second, Political Medicine, explores the hidden origins and limitations of Scottish medical activism in Britain, Ireland and the former British Empire in the Age of Reform.

I am currently coordinating five collaborative projects. The first is an AHRC-funded project with Keith Moore of the Royal Society of London.  Titled Astronomical Notebooks and the Material Culture of Predigital Communication Systems, it funds a PhD student and investigates the paper technologies used by the astronomer Caroline Herschel during the late Georgian era.  The second project, Scientific Instructions and Colonialism, is a collaboration with Linda Burnett Anderson and Maria Florutau, both based at Uppsala University, Sweden. It investigates how seemingly simple lists of instructions issued by colonial institutions during the 18th and 19th centuries shaped the values of scientists and naturalists as they collected data at home and across the globe. The third project, Gender, Science and Sociability in the Diary of Jane Ewbank of York (1770-1824), is a collaboration with Jane Rendall and Rachel Feldberg, both based at York University's Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies.  It focuses on the daily interactions between science, the arts and sociability in the city of York as experienced by the provincial diarist Jane Ewbank. My fourth project is a Chinese translation of the Oxford World's Classics edition of William Paley's Natural Theology that I originally published in 2006.  It is being translated by with Hong (Iris) Jiang (Sichuan University) and Meng Li (Peking Univeristy) and I serve as an advisor. Finally, with Zachary Kingdon of the National Museum of Scotland, I'm leading a AHRC-funded project titled Data, Race and Empire, which examines the scientific career and informatoin-gathering strategies of the Scottish-educated black physician and African missionary Archibald Hewan during the mid 19th century. 

Publications

Monographs

Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023), 550 pp + 120 figures. 

    * Winner of the British Society for the History of Science Pickstone Prize, awarded to the best scholarly book in the history of science and its cultural influences.

    * Finalist for the Society for the History of Readership, Authorship and Publishing Prize, awarded to the best book in book history.

The Language of Mineralogy: John Walker, Chemistry, and the Edinburgh Medical School, 1750-1800 (London: Routledge, 2008 hardback; 2016 paperback), xx + 332 pp.

    * Finalist for the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Neville Prize.

Edited Volumes

Dialogues on Chemistry between a Father and His Daughter (Taylor and Francis: forthcoming). A text about moral and social values of scientific experimentation written during the 1790s by James Keir and edited by his daughter Amelie Keir (forthcoming 2027).

Scientific Instructions and Colonial Information, 1700-1850, co-edited with Linda Andersson Burnett  and Maria Florutau, Special Issue, of the British Journal for the History of Science (forthcoming 2026).

Gender, Science and Sociability in the Diary of Jane Ewbank of York (1778‒1824), co-edited with Jane Rendall and Rachel Feldberg (Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming 2026).

A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century, Co-edited with Ursula Klein (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).  This is volume 4 out of Bloomsbury’s A Cultural History of Chemistry, Volumes 1-6.  The entire series was named one of the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles for 2023, the only edited series to be given the award in 2023.

Chemical Knowledge in the Early Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2014); Volume 29 in the History of Science Society’s Osiris series.  Co-edited with William R. Newman and Seymour Mauskopf.

Prehistoric Minds: Human Origins as a Cultural Artefact, 1780-2010, Special Issue, Notes and Records of the Royal Society (London: Royal Society Publishing, 2011). 

William Paley's Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Co-edited with David M. Knight. Reprinted numerous times. The Chinese translation [自然神学] with introduction and annotations will appear with Beijing's Commercial Press [商务印书馆] in 2026.

Science and Beliefs: From Natural Philosophy to Natural Science, 1700-1900 (London: Routledge, 2005 hardback, 2017 paperback), Co-edited with David M. Knight.

Articles and Book Chapters

‘The Moral Doctor:  Datafication, Activism and the Early Medical Career of James McCune Smith in Late Georgian Scotland', American Historical Review, forthcoming 2026.

‘”A Very Curious Subject”: Jane Ewbank, Public Lectures and Experimental Philosophy in Late Georgian York’, in Matthew Daniel Eddy, Jane Rendall and Rachel Feldberg (Eds.), Gender, Science and Sociability in the Diary of Jane Ewbank of York (1770-1824) (London: Boydell and Brewer: forthcoming).

(with Jane Rendall and Rachell Feldberg) ‘The World of Jane Ewbank: Rethinking the Gendered, Scientific and Sociable Context of a Yorkshire Diarist’, in Eddy, Rendall and Feldberg (forthcoming).

(with Jane Rendall and Rachell Feldberg) ‘Jane Ewbank’s Life’, in Eddy, Rendall and Feldberg (forthcoming).

‘Society, Environment and the Chemistry and Daily Life during the Eighteenth Century’, in Matthew Daniel Eddy and Ursula Klein (Eds.), A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 113-135.

(with Ursula Klein), ‘The Core Concepts and Cultural Context of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry’, in Matthew Daniel Eddy and Ursula Klein (Eds.), A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).

‘New Discovery Reveals How First African American Doctor Fought for Women’s Rights in Glasgow’, The Conversation, 8 October 2021. [Link]. Over 150,000 reads/downloads:

·        Republished as feature articles by Apple News, Yahoo News, Florida News Times, Today News, Western Morning News, and Glasgow Live.

·       Republished as a learning resource by Teaching Social Studies Journal (New Jersey Council for the Social Studies) [Link].

 ‘Diagrams’, in Anthony Grafton, Ann Blair and Anja Sylvia Goeing (Eds.), Information: A Historical Companion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 397-401.

‘Family Notebooks, Mnemotechnics and the Rational Education of Margaret Monro’, in Carla Bittel, Elaine Leong and Christine von Oertzen (Eds.), Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 160-176, 269-272.

‘The Nature of Notebooks: How Enlightenment Schoolchildren Transformed the Tabula Rasa’, Journal of British Studies, 57(2018), 275-307.

‘Childmade Evidence: A Reflection on the Sources Used to Historicise Childhood’, Insights, Vol. 10, No. 15, 11 (2018), 1-10.

‘The Politics of Cognition: Liberalism and the Evolutionary Origins of Victorian Education’, British Journal for the History of Science, 50 (2017), 677-699. BJHS article with the highest number of downloads in 2018.

 ‘The Interactive Notebook: How Students Learned to Keep Notes During the Scottish Enlightenment’, Book History, 19(2016), 87-131.  Praised as a breakthrough study by Scott McLemee, ‘Notable History’, Inside Higher Ed, 22 June 2016.

‘The Cognitive Unity of Calvinist Pedagogy in Enlightenment Scotland’, in Ábrahám Kovács (Ed.), Reformed Churches Working Unity in Diversity: Global Historical, Theological and Ethical Perspectives (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2016), 46-60.

‘The Child Writer: Graphic Literacy and the Scottish Educational System’, History of Education, 45 (2016), 695-718.

‘Useful Pictures: Joseph Black and the Graphic Culture of Experimentation’, in Robert G. W. Anderson (Ed.), Cradle of Chemistry: The Early years of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 2015), 99-118.

‘How to See a Diagram: A Visual Anthropology of Chemical Affinity’, Osiris, 26 (2014), 178-196.

(With Seymour H. Mauskopf and William R. Newman), ‘An Introduction to Chemical Knowledge in the Early Modern World’, Osiris, 26 (2014), 1-15.

 ‘The Shape of Knowledge: Children and the Visual Culture of Literacy and Numeracy’, Science in Context, 26 (2013), 215-245.

‘Natural History, Natural Philosophy and Readership’, in Stephen Brown and Warren McDougall (eds.), The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Vol. II: Enlightenment and Expansion, 1707-1800 (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2012), 297-309.

‘The Prehistoric Mind as a Historical Artefact’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 65 (2011), 1-8.

‘The Line of Reason: Hugh Blair, Spatiality and the Progressive Structure of Language’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 65 (2011), 9-24.

‘The Alphabets of Nature: Children, Books and Natural History in Scotland’, Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science, 25 (2010), 1-22.

‘The Sparkling Nectar of Spas: The Medical and Commercial Relevance of Mineral Water’, in Ursula Klein and Emma Spary (eds.), Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 198-226.

 ‘Tools for Reordering: Commonplacing and the Space of Words in Linnaeus’s Philosophia Botanica’, Intellectual History Review, 20 (2010), 227-252.

‘The Dark Side of Collecting: Early Modern Chemistry, Humanism and Classification’, Ambix, 55 (2008), 283-292.

‘An Adept in Medicine: Rev. Dr. William Laing, Nervous Complaints and the Commodification of Spa Water’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 39 (2008), 1-13.

‘The Aberdeen Agricola: Chemical Principles and Practice in James Anderson’s Georgics and Geology’, in Lawrence M. Principe (ed.), New Narratives in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 139-156.

 ‘The Medium of Signs: Nominalism, Language and Classification in the Early Thought of Dugald Stewart’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 37 (2006), 373-393.

‘Set in Stone: The Medical Language of Mineralogy in Scotland’, in David Knight and Matthew D. Eddy (eds.), Science and Beliefs: From Natural Philosophy to Natural Science, 1700-1900 (Aldershot: Ashgate: 2005), 77-94.

‘Scottish Chemistry, Classification and the Late Mineralogical Career of the “Ingenious” Professor John Walker’, British Journal for the History of Science, 37 (2004), 373-399.

‘Elements, Principles and the Narrative of Affinity’, Foundations of Chemistry, 6 (2004), 161-175.

 ‘The Science and Rhetoric of Paley’s Natural Theology’, Literature and Theology, 18 (2004), 1-22.

‘The University of Edinburgh Natural History Class Lists’, Archives of Natural History, 30 (2003), 97-117.

‘Scottish Chemistry, Classification and the Early Mineralogical Career of the “Ingenious” Rev. Dr. John Walker’, British Journal for the History of Science, 35 (2002), 411-438.

‘The Doctrine of Salts and Rev. John Walker’s Analysis of a Scottish Spa’, Ambix, 48 (2001), 137-160.

‘Geology, Mineralogy and Time in John Walker’s University of Edinburgh Natural History Lectures’, History of Science, 39(2001), 95-119.