John William Draper was a mid-nineteenth-century scientist and historian who did much to establish the mystique and the ethos of science and who brought to historiography an approach designed to use science to explain historical causation. Human history was a function of readily discernible biological and physical principles, and he was convinced that a humanely educated scientist could detect and elucidate the dynamics of history.

The optimism of his fearless foray into historiography was part and parcel of his positive view of science itself and was based on his Comtian faith in a fathomable universe and Benthamite belief in human progress. A century after his death, his works lie largely forgotten, but he pioneered in the writing of intellectual history and made the first scholarly attempt to grapple with the causes and the course of the American Civil War. Even more skeptical later generations have to admit that...