John William Draper and His Sources
It has often been said, by his contemporaries as well as modern scholars, that John William Draper made little reference to other authors. This is not entirely accurate. To be sure, there are no footnotes or endnotes in Draper’s books. But he does refer to a variety of authors and sometimes even quotes directly from their work. Below is a complied list of some of the more significant authors Draper specifically refers to in his publications. Draper mentions some of these authors merely in passing. Others are used to support his argument in various places. Still others serve more as guiding principles of his narrative. Draper was obviously influenced by other thinkers, ones he alludes to wittingly or unwittingly simply by the style of his rhetoric. His reasons for not including all his sources are presumably complex. At any rate, this list is not exhaustive. Moreover, I have selected authors that peak my own interests. But the important point here is that Drapers explicitly mentioned all of them in the body of his work.
A Treatise on the Forces which Produce the Organization of Plants (1844):
- Isaac Newton (1643-1727)
- Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)
- William Herschel (1738-1822)
- Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814)
- Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833)
- William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828)
- Charles Bell (1776-1842)
- Henri Dutrochet (1776-1847)
- Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848)
- Siméon Denis Poisson (1781-1840)
- David Brewster (1781-1868)
- Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826)
- Louis Daguerre (1787-1851)
- Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
- John Herschel (1792-1871)
- Charles Daubeny (1795-1867)
- Macedonio Melloni (1798-1854)
- John Lindley (1799-1865)
- David Boswell Reid (1805-1863)
- William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1885)
- Edmond Becquerel (1820-1891)
A Text-book on Chemistry (1846):
- Robert Hare (1752-1811)
- Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848)
- Robert John Kane (1809-1890)
- Thomas Graham (1805-1869)
- Olinthus Gilbert Gregory (1774-1841)
- George Fownes (1815-1849)
- Jean Baptiste André Dumas (1800-1884)
- […] Millon
A Text-book on Natural Philosophy (1847):
- Thomas Dick (1774-1857)
- François Arago (1786-1853)
- John Herschel (1792-1871)
- Gabriel Léon Jean Baptist Lamé (1795-1870)
- Oscar Ferdinand Peschel (1826-1875)
- Friedrich Eisenlohr (1831-1904)
Human Physiology (1856):
- George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788)
- Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton (1716-1800)
- Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840)
- Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828)
- John Dalton (1766-1844)
- George Cuvier (1769-1832)
- Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
- Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832)
- Humphry Davy (1778-1829)
- Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848)
- James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848)
- Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876)
- Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874)
- Henri Milne-Edwards (1800-1885)
- Jean-Baptiste Joseph Dieudonné Boussingault (1801-1887)
- Alcide d’Orbigny (1802-1857)
- Justus Freiherr von Liebig (1803-1873)
- Ernst Freiherr von Bibra (1806-1878)
- Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)
- Robert Bentley Todd (1809-1860)
- Georg Friedrich Karl Heinrich von Bidder (1810-1894)
- William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1885)
- Claude Bernard (1813-1878)
- James Paget (1814-1899)
- William Bowman (1816-1892)
- Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (1817-1894)
- Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894)
- Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902)
- William Senhouse Kirkes (1822-1864)
- Carl Schmidt (1822-1894)
A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1863):
- Alhazen (965-1040)
- Avicenna (d.1037)
- Al-Ghazali (1058-1111)
- Averroes (1126-1198)
- Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202)
- Roger Bacon (1214-1292)
- Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471)
- Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
- Martin Luther (1483-1546)
- Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531)
- John Calvin (1509-1564)
- Jean Bodin (1530-1596)
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
- Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580-1644)
- John Milton (1608-1674)
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
- John Locke (1632-1704)
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
- Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827)
- George Cuvier (1769-1832)
- Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)
- Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen (1791-1860)
- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)
- James Anthony Froude (1818-1894)
- Max Müller (1823-1900)
Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America (1865):
- Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
- Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)
- Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876)
- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)
- Ernest Renan (1820-1892)
History of the Civil War (1867-1870):
- Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
- Jean Bodin (1530-1596)
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
- John Adams (1735-1826)
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
- Daniel Webster (1782-1852)
- François Guizot (1787-1874)
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
- Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)
History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874):
- Alhazen (965-1040)
- Avicenna (d.1037)
- Al-Ghazali (1058-1111)
- Averroes (1126-1198)
- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
- Petrarch (1304-1374)
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
- Jean-Félix Picard (1620-1682)
- Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
- Humphrey Prideaux (1648-1724)
- John Toland (1670-1722)
- Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
- Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1693-1755)
- Samuel Shuckford (1693-1754)
- Thomas Newton (1704-1782)
- Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert (1717-1783)
- Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794)
- William Jones (1746-1794)
- Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827)
- Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)
- Henry Hallam (1777-1859)
- Jean-Pierre Huber (1777-1840)
- Benjamin Collins Brodie (1783-1862)
- François Guizot (1787-1874)
- Richard Whately (1787-1863)
- Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886)
- Hermann Hupfeld (1796-1866)
- Ernst Wihelm Hengstenberg (1802-1869)
- John Colenso (1814-1883)
- Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896)
- Ernest Renan (1820-1892)
- George John Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll (1823-1900)
- William Huggins (1824-1910)
“Dr. Draper’s Lecture on Evolution: Its Origin, Progress, and Consequences,” Popular Science Monthly (1877):
- Benoît de Maillet (1656-1783)
- Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708)
- George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788)
- Jean-Baptiste Lamacrk (1744-1829)
- George Cuvier (1769-1832)
- Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)
- Lorenz Oken (1779-1851)
- Robert Chambers (1802-1871)
James C. Ungureanu, PhD 