In the second half of the nineteenth century, a new historiography of philosophy was shaped by the German Kantian/Hegelian scholar Kuno Fischer. For Fischer, seventeenth-century philosophy had inaugurated a new era in philosophy, generally characterized by the replacement of metaphysical concerns with epistemological ones, particularly of the earlier Aristotle/Plato metaphysical dichotomy with an epistemological one between empiricism and rationalism. The historiography of science began to be shaped around similar concerns when Alexandre Koyré, in his extremely influential work, conceived the Scientific Revolution in largely epistemological terms. Although Koyré still wrote of ‘Platonism’ and ‘Aristotelianism’, these were translated into rational/empiricist terms, with the Scientific Revolution itself effectively construed as a triumph of rationalism. There have, however, always been alternative historiographies. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Dilthey, for example, saw the crucial move not in terms of a shift from metaphysics to epistemology but rather in terms of a shift from metaphysics to anthropology. With the demise of the rationalism/empiricism model over the last twenty years or so, there has been renewed exploration of various alternatives, with one kind of anthropological model – that which works in terms of fundamental changes in the persona of the natural philosopher – having been pursued with particular vigour.

In his new book, Peter Harrison offers a different kind of anthropological approach, focusing on the consequences of the early modern commitment to the idea of the Fall for conceptions of the nature and limits of human grasp. Showing just how widespread a literal understanding of the Fall was, and how widespread was the notion that post-lapsarian sensory and other faculties were severely impaired, he constructs a theory of the aims and strategies of scientific understanding in terms of aspirations to recover prelapsarian abilities and sensibilities. In general terms, there were different considerations applicable to sensory and cognitive faculties. It was believed that the deficiencies of sensory faculties could be overcome instrumentally. Adam, it was said, could see things miles away quite clearly – a natural facility we have lost, but which the invention of telescopes compensates for. The deficiencies of the reason, by contrast, while thought by some (such as Calvin) to be largely irremediable, were more generally put down to the great influence of the passions over reason – an influence which, if it could be overcome, would render reason closer to its original pristine state.

Harrison argues that such concerns were pervasive in the later sixteenth century and in the seventeenth, that they shaped understandings of cognition, and that, by this route, they shaped ideas of the aims of science. He takes his cue from Charles Webster's detailed account of Puritan understandings of science in mid-seventeenth-century England, where the importance of the idea of the restoration of Adamic knowledge is indisputable, and extends it not just to England throughout the seventeenth century, but also, more problematically, to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. The strategy that makes this extension possible is twofold. First, he proposes a general thesis about the prevalence of Augustinianism, so that Puritanism emerges as a special case of a far more widespread phenomenon, which has a central Adamic theme not at all confined to the Puritan version, but common to both English Protestant and French Catholic cultures. Second, there is a revival of a Richard Popkin-style sceptical crisis thesis, so that concerns about the limits of postlapsarian knowledge are translated into sceptical concerns. In this way, Harrison can take over an epistemological reading and translate it into anthropological terms.

There can be no doubt that this way of proceeding throws light on a number of hitherto neglected aspects of early modern natural philosophy. Yet I have doubts about the two manoeuvres that enable him to widen the scope of Adamic concerns beyond Puritanism. As regards the first, it is not clear that Augustinianism is as widespread as Harrison claims. The strong case he makes for Adamic concerns in England does not hinge on Augustinianism. The Adamic thesis does indeed play a central role in post-Puritan thought, notably in the project of physico-theology that sought to reconcile religious and natural-philosophical concerns. But in France, physico-theology played no significant role, and the vindication of natural philosophy was pursued via a legitimating metaphysics. By the time of Malebranche, there was indeed a strong and explicit Augustinian interpretation which did work in explicitly Adamic terms. But this was a radical revision of Descartes's project, not something to be found in Descartes himself or in others who reworked the Cartesian project, such as Leibniz and Spinoza. As regards the scepticism thesis, Harrison's revival of this is a very high price to pay: the idea that the natural philosophies, or metaphysical concerns, of Gassendi or Descartes were provoked by genuine worries about scepticism (by contrast, at least in the case of Descartes, with its strategic use as something that would clear the decks for his own philosophy) has by now, in my view, been wholly discredited.

The real strength of the book lies in its demonstration of just how persistent the idea of the restoration of Adamic knowledge was. If the thesis is overstated and not as general as the author makes out, what he has provided us with is nevertheless a highly enlightening discussion.