Robert Morris, Architecture, and the Scientific Cast of Mind in Early Eighteenth-Century England

Recent research into the history of science has alerted us to the rich cultural contribution a growing awareness of science made to eighteenth-century society in general and to the literate classes in particular. The boundaries of art and science, it has become apparent, were less stringently defined than today, and a growing literature is revealing the crossover from the visual arts to science, especially to medicine, optics, and the applied science of mechanics. It might be asked how far architecture, so close to the physical world in its materials and in its ambition, connected with science during the eighteenth century.