This paper aims to explore the concrete and consistent program and endeavors of John Smeaton(1724-1792), a very well-known 18th-century British ‘civil’ engineer, to establish a proper relationship between theoretical natural philosophy and practical engineering, by closely examining his research on waterwheels, especially his construction of a waterwheel model and other related machines. In doing so, it will present a more nuanced (and ironical in a sense) picture of the historical evolution of multifaceted interactions between natural philosophy and engineering through the 18th-century in Britain.
Some historians focus on the microscopic-level interplay of science and technology, embodied in Smeaton’s waterwheel research, with an aim to explicate their conceptual and methodological differences. On the contrary, other historians deliberately attempt to show Smeaton’s ardent interests in scientific problems in order to highlight the ethos of him and his contemporaries that reinforced the interdependence of science and technology at the macroscopic level. In contrast, this paper argues that if we combine the microscopic and macroscopic approaches to Smeaton in the context of the long and converging relationship between natural philosophy and engineering, we can reach a new understanding of the historical emergence of the ‘civil’ engineer in 18th-century Britain, as well as Smeaton’s own natural philosophical and engineering practices.