The Natural History of Nations: Simon Newcomb and the Forging of a Postwar American Science

Abstract Both historians of science and Americanists have depicted famed nineteenth-century astronomer and political economist Simon Newcomb as a relatively stern “mugwump,” impressive in his scientific achievement, yet at times stunted by a parochial arrogance. In histories of nineteenth-century liberalism, in particular, Newcomb makes cameos as a stand-in for an economically conservative wing. This article analyzes two facets of Newcomb’s postwar thinking that have been consistently left out: race and nationalism. After the Civil War, Newcomb pushed a nationalist discourse of American scientific progress in The North American Review that at times wavered between cultural and biological determinism. He spoke in terms of national styles and believed that American science, opposed to French, German, or English science, languished. His advocacy for an American science rested upon implicit “ethnoracial” nationalist assumptions. Contrary to his laissez-faire liberalism, it called for a more activist scientific state, and feared a nationalism of apathy that he believed pervaded both American science and politics. This article, moreover, argues that Newcomb’s thought was intimately tied to his experiences in postbellum Washington, suggesting the need for more localist and urban studies of the rise of state science after the Civil War.