186 Book Reviews: Modern

can shift the emphasis to different groups of actors later forgotten or marginalized without being debunk-
ing or developing speculations about the actor’s psychological motives. In Kuhn’s merciless portrayal,
Jones appears to be driven by an “acute anxiety which impelled him to manufacture a series of myths
all of which revolved around himself ” (p. 12). Whereas his book offers strong and compelling material
for a new and more complex picture of early psychoanalysis in Britain, one must regret that his own his-
toriography is sometimes marred by the “personal” and often polemical tone that permeates the language
of his actors.

Andreas Mayer

Andreas Mayer is Directeur de Recherche (Senior Researcher) at the Centre Alexandre Koyré–Histoire des Sci-
ences et des Techniques (CNRS) and teaches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Juan Vicente Mayoral. Thomas S. Kuhn: La búsqueda de la estructura. 523 pp., bibl.,
index. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2017. €29 (paper). ISBN
9788416933488.

Juan Vicente Mayoral, from the University of Zaragoza, is probably the foremost scholar of Thomas S.
Kuhn’s work throughout Spain. As a result of his intensive research, Mayoral has written Thomas S. Kuhn:
La búsqueda de la estructura. This text rigorously explores the intellectual path of the American physicist
and philosopher to his most famous work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In La búsqueda de la
estructura, Mayoral considers Kuhn’s published work as well as his letters, drafts, interviews, and school
and university work. Mayoral has analyzed many unpublished manuscripts and other archival docu-
ments—especially the Thomas Samuel Kuhn Papers, located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-
ogy. Moreover, consulting the extensive secondary literature enabled him to compose a “historical and
biographical” account of the Structure (p. 27) that knows no equal in the Spanish language.
Mayoral’s work consists of eight chapters that address Kuhn’s life, from his birth to the publication of
his best-known book in 1962. In these eight chapters, Mayoral thoroughly contextualizes the life of the
young Kuhn in a comprehensive way: not only does he present us with an overview of the political ideals
of his family, but he also runs through the development of the liberal American schools—inspired by
John Dewey’s thought. In addition, Mayoral reveals who Kuhn’s most influential professors were during
his training as a physicist at Harvard University in the 1940s. It is noteworthy that Mayoral dedicates so
many pages to the future physicist’s education in literature; he reveals that some of Kuhn’s most well-
known premises had already been developed early in his life. Mayoral addresses in sufficient detail the
problems and visions Kuhn had to face, from the—at that time—typically Whig History of Science to
the operational analysis of Percy W. Bridgman and the peculiar perspectives of James B. Conant. Mayoral
also focuses on the period in which Kuhn was part of the Harvard Society of Fellows, which was signif-
icant in the formation of his ideas.
However, a correct interpretation of the book under review requires the consideration of another point.
Mayoral does not attempt to illustrate what Kuhn would have said about himself and his training. On the
contrary, he has taken a comprehensive approach. Thus, despite its biographical and historical procedure,
Mayoral’s book is not devoid of philosophical content. I think one of Mayoral’s most critical points consists
of his demonstration that Kuhn not only was able to present a successful vocabulary but also, first and
foremost, designed a scheme for understanding the history of science that was much more accurate than
those of his predecessors. This can clearly be seen in the second half of the book, in which Mayoral pres-
ents a detailed study of the Lowell Lectures of 1951 (Ch. 5) and an analysis of successive drafts of the
Structure (Ch. 8).
Therefore, I consider Mayoral’s publication to be an essential sourcebook for all researchers seeking to
analyze Kuhn’s work, whether or not Spanish is their native language. It is my firm conviction that this
book should be translated into English at the earliest possible opportunity. Thomas S. Kuhn: La búsqueda
ISIS—Volume 110, Number 1, March 2019 187

de la estructura demonstrates that Kuhn’s work has received particular attention from Spanish philoso-
phers—and probably will continue to be studied in the future since Kuhn’s thought can undoubtedly
be connected to the works of Spanish authors such as José Ortega y Gasset. This is why I strongly recom-
mend this book.

Rodolfo Gutiérrez Simón

Rodolfo Gutiérrez Simón is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. He
is a researcher in the Department of Philosophy and Society. His doctoral thesis addresses the relationship
between José Ortega y Gasset and American Pragmatism. He has already published some papers on Ortega
y Gasset’s philosophy.

Richard Taibi. Charles Olivier and the Rise of Meteor Science. xxxii + 497 pp., figs.,
tables, app., index. Berlin: Springer, 2017. $129 (cloth). ISBN 9783319445175.

Isis readers interested in the collective psyche of the amateur scientist will find Charles Olivier and the
Rise of Meteor Science illuminating and informative, though maybe a bit frustrating. Richard Taibi, the
author and compiler—a retired psychologist, longtime amateur astronomer, and ardent raconteur of
the lives of “forgotten amateur astronomers” (p. viii)—originally set out to write a history of the American
Meteor Society (AMS), founded in 1911. But soon he decided to focus on its founder, the astronomer
Charles P. Olivier (1884–1975), and Olivier’s unending efforts to seek a means to collect visual observations
of meteors by a means reminiscent of what today is called crowdsourcing.
The first half of the book is a biographical account of Olivier’s scientific life and contributions, up
to his midlife in the 1930s as an established astronomer at the University of Virginia and then the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania. The second half is a compilation of biographical sketches of many dozens of mem-
bers of the AMS from 1900 to 1936. In the first half, we are given a partial biographical profile marking
the growth of Olivier’s interests in meteor studies. It is interrupted at times by insightful but distracting
diversions to describe the apparently woeful state of meteor studies as a prelude to how Olivier, as Taibi
suggests, reconstituted it as a science.
Throughout the second half of the book, there are detailed descriptions of the contributions, world-
wide, that AMS members made to one particular type of meteor astronomy. They visually observed me-
teor trails streaking through the earth’s atmosphere, recording these trails by hand on star charts. They
then compiled these observations into systematic reports and attempted to ascertain from these data their
systematic behavior. Olivier hoped the AMS observations would reveal whether meteor orbits were spo-
radic or traveled in swarms. If so, where do the swarms come from, are they related to comets, do they
orbit the Sun, or do they come from somewhere outside the solar system? All of these questions are em-
bedded and more or less implied throughout the body of this book, and the various answers and options
about them differ widely between Olivier and his predecessors and contemporaries, which makes for a
potentially lively story, although better editing from the publisher might have made it more appealing.
What is appealing about this book is that it reveals the various styles of astronomical networking among
amateur groups in the first half of the twentieth century in America, and how they felt their contributions
were appreciated. There is enough detail on the leaders of the various amateur groups to delineate how
they made use of, or created, effective networks of observers and recorders and reporters. However, the
Taibi’s personal perspective is distinctly colored by his clear concern that meteor studies lacked legitimacy
among professionals. He frequently refers to allegations that professional astronomers saw little or no value
in meteor studies, but throughout he provides evidence that indeed the primary issues were not ones of
legitimacy. Rather, they were debates over the questions one could pose about meteors and their origins.
His frequent clouding of these issues makes for some confusion.
For instance, Olivier’s chief claim was that meteor radiants—the place in the sky where their trails
seem to converge—are not stationary in space, which opposed the assertions others had made. However,