Shapin Steven The Scientific Revolution PDF
Shapin Steven The Scientific Revolution PDF
Shapin Steven The Scientific Revolution PDF
"(e
SCIENTIFIC
REVOLUTION
science-culture
A seriesedited by StevenShapin
I156
SCIENTIFIC
REVOLUTIQN
STEVEN SHAPIN
All rightsreserved.Published1996
Paperback edition 1998
Printed in the United States of America
05 04
96-13196
CIP
For Abigail
Inhalt
List of I1lustrations/
Photo Credits/
ix
xi
Acknow1edgments/xiii
Introduction/
ONE
~
flffustrations
21
22
23
24
25
26
ILLUSTRATIONS
27
28
14
39
go
Moro Credits
I thank the following institutions for permissionto publish the illustrations reproducedhere: the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley(gs. I and 20);the National Museumof American
History, Washington,D.C. (g. 6); the Syndicsof CambridgeUni
versityLibrary (gs. I3, 14,17,23,and 25);the Burndy Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts
(g. 15);and Edinburgh University Library
(gs. 21 and 22).
cknowzcfgments
xiv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
with their work could possiblyassociatethem with this booksremaining faults. Two anonymousreadersfor the University of ChicagoPresswrote constructiveand detailed reports far beyond the
usual call of duty. For assistance
in locating severalof the illustrations, I am grateful to Paula Findlen, Karl Hufbauer, Christine
Ruggere,Simon Schaffer,and DeborahWarner. I thank Alice Bennett, senior manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press,
whose diligent and dedicatedcopyediting did much to make my
writing clearerand lessfussy.My editor,SusanAbrams,hasthroughout given the support and advicefor which shehasbecomeso well
known and sohighly respected.
Tntrozfuction
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Revolution
in terms of autonomous
ideas or disembodied
men-
changesofthe seventeenth
centuryand changesin religious,political,
and economicpatterns.More fundamentally,somehistoriansnow
wish to understandthe concretehumanpractice:by which ideasor
conceptsare made. What did peopledo when they made or conrmed an observation,proveda theorem,performedan experiment?
An accountof the Scientic Revolutionasa history of free-floating
conceptsis a very different animal from a history of concept-making
practices.Finally, historianshave becomemuch more interestedin
the who of the Scientic Revolution. What kinds of people
wrought suchchanges?Did everyonebelieveas they did, or only a
INTRODUCTION
very few? And if only a very few took part in thesechanges,in what
sense,if at all, can we speakof the Scientic Revolutionaseffecting
massivechangesin how we view the world, asthe moment when
modernity wasmade,for us? The cogencyof suchquestionsmakes
for problemsin writing asunreectively aswe usedto aboutthe Sci
entic Revolution. Respondingto them meansthat we needan account of changesin early modern scienceappropriatefor our less
condent, but perhapsmore intellectuallycurious,times.
Yet despitetheselegitimate doubts and uncertaintiesthere re
mainsasense
in whichit ispossible
to writeabouttheScienticRevolution unapologeticallyand in good faith. There are two major
considerationsto bearin mind here.The first is that manykey gures
in the late sixteenthand seventeenthcenturiesvigorouslyexpressed
their view that they were proposingsomevery new and very important changesin knowledgeof natural reality and in the practicesby
which legitimateknowledgewasto besecured,assessed,
andcommunicated.They identied themselz/es
asmodems setagainstancient
modesof thought and practice.Our senseof radical changeafoot
comessubstantiallyfrom them (andthosewho weretheobjectof their
attacks),and is not simply the creationof mid-twentieth-centuryhistorians. So we can saythat the seventeenthcentury witnessedsome
selfconsciousand largescaleattemptsto changebelief,and waysof
securingbelief,aboutthe natural world. And a book aboutthe Scientic Revolution can legitimately tell a story about thoseattempts,
whetheror not they succeeded,
whetheror not theywerecontestedin
the local culture, whether or not they were wholly coherent.
But why do we tell thesestoriesinsteadof others?If different
sorts of seventeenthcenturypeoplebelieveddifferent things about
the world, how do we assembleour cast of characters and associated
INTRODUCTION
ence.Historians
differaboutwhichpractices
werecentralto the
Scientic Revolution, and participants themselvesargued about
which practicesproducedgenuineknowledgeand which had been
fundamentallyreformed.
More fundamentallyfor criteria of selection,it ought to be understoodthat most people-even most educatedpeoplein the
seventeenthcentury did not believe what expert scientic practitionersbelieved,and the sensein which peoplesthought aboutthe
world was revolutionizedat that time is very limited. There should
be no doubt whateverthat one could write a convincing history of
seventeenth-century
thought about nature without evenmentioning
the Scientic Revolutionastraditionally construed.
The very idea of the Scientic Revolution,therefore,is at least
partly an expressionof our interest in our ancestors,where we
are late twentieth-century scientistsand thosefor whom what they
believecountsastruth aboutthe natural world. And this interestprovidesthe secondlegitimate justication for writing about the Scien-
INTRODUCTION
tic Revolution.Historians of sciencehavenow grown usedto condemning presentoriented history, rightly sayingthat it often dis
torts our understandingof what the pastwas like in its own terms.
Yet thereis absolutelyno reasonwe shouldnot want to know how we
got from thereto here,who the ancestorswere,and what the lineage
is that connectsus to the past. In this sensea story about the
seventeenth-century
Scientic Revolutioncanbe an accountof those
changesthat we think led onnever directly or simply,to be sure
to certain featuresof the presentin which, for certain purposes,we
happento be interested.To do this would be an expressionofjust the
samesortof legitimate
historical
interestdisplayed
by Darwinian
evolutioniststelling storiesaboutthosebranchesofthe treeoflife that
led to human beingswithout assumingin any way that suchstories
areadequateaccountsof what life waslike hundredsof thousandsof
yearsago. There is nothing at all wrong about telling such stories,
though one must alwaysbe careful not to claim too much scopefor
them. Storiesaboutthe ancestorsasancestorsarenot likely to be sensitive accountsof how it was in the past:the lives and thoughts of
Galileo, Descartes,or Boyle were hardly typical of seventeenthcentury Italians, Frenchmen, or Englishmen, and telling stories
about them gearedsolely to their ancestralrole in formulating the
currently acceptedlaw of free fall, the opticsof the rainbow, or the
ideal gaslaw is not likely to capturevery much about the meaning
and signicanceoftheir own careersand projectsin the seventeenth
century.
INTRODUCTION
SomeHistoriogmp/zicalIssues
I mean this book to be historiographicallyup to datedrawing on
someof the mostrecenthistorical,sociological,and philosophicalengagementswith the Scientic Revolution.On the other hand, I do
not mean to trouble readers with repeated referencesto methodological and conceptualdebatesamong academics.This book is
not written for professionalspecializedscholars,and readerswho develop an interest in the academicstateof play will nd guidancein
the accompanyingbibliographic essay.There is no reasonto deny
that this story about the Scientic Revolutionrepresentsa particular
point of view, and that, although I help myself freely to the work of
many distinguished scholars,its point of View is my own. Other
specialistswill doubtlessdisagreewith my approachsome vehementlyand a large number of existing accountsdo offer a quite
different perspectiveon what is worth telling about the Scientic
INTRODUCTION
2.For a long time, historiansdebatesoverthe proprietyof a sociological and a historically contextual approachto scienceseemedto
divide practitionersbetweenthosewho drew attention to what were
called intellectual factorsideas, concepts,methods,evidence
and thosewho stressedsocial factorsforms of organization,political and economic inuences on science, and social uses or conse-
10
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
II
I2
INTRODUCTION
century,and especiallythe English setting,witnessedremarkableinnovationsin the modesof identifying, securing,validating, organizing, and communicatingexperience,and I want this surveyto reflect
the signicanceof thoseclaims.Nor, despitethe fact that this book
devotes much attention to what have been called the mechanical,
I want to engagewith and to summarizea moreorlesscanonical accountofchangesin belief widely saidto be characteristicofthe
Scientic Revolution,while giving someindication that relevantbeliefs varied and were evenstronglycontested.I start by picking up a
number of strandsin changingpatternsof belief about nature that
have routinely been treated by previous historians.I have claimed
that there is no essenceof the Scientic Revolution, yet pragmatic
criteria push me at times toward an articially coherentaccountof
distinctive changesin natural knowledge. (When that articial co-
INTRODUCTION
I3
14
INTRODUCTION
somescientic knowledgewhat one had to do to secureand persuasivelycommunicatea bit of natural knowledge. How did new
knowledge differ in shapeand texture from the old, and how did
new knowledgemakingpracticesdiffer from the old? I meanhere
to give readersa sensethat the knowledge,and changes,describedin
the rst chapterhad to be laboriouslymadeand justified, and to an
extent, that practitionersdiverged about how to go about securing
and warranting natural knowledge.I want to introduce a dynamic
sensibilitytoward sciencein actionand sciencein the making rather
than construingscienceasstaticand disembodiedbelief.
A similar sensibilityinforms the last chapter,which aims to de
scribethe range of historically situatedpurposesnatural knowledge
was put to in the seventeenthcentury.Natural knowledge was not
just a matter of belief it was alsoa resourcein a range of practical
activities.What did its advocatesreckona reformed natural philosophy wasgood for? What did they think could be done with it that
could not bedonewith traditional forms of knowledge?Why should
it be valuedand supportedby the other institutionsof society?
While acknowledgingthe selectivenatureofthis account,I want
to intersperseinterpretativegeneralizationswith a seriesof relatively
detailed vignettesof particular scientic beliefs and practices.I do
this becauseI want this book, howeverarbitrarily selective,to give
readers some feel for what it was like to have a certain kind ofknowl-
edge,to do a bit of natural knowledgemaking, to publicizeand recognize its value in early modern society.I do not think this task has
yet beensatisfactorilyattemptedin a treatment of this purposeand
scope.I meanthe vignettesto serveaswindows into the past,through
which readersare invited to peek.I want to give at leasta senseof
early modern sciencenot only as it was believed,but alsoas it was
madeand put to use.There is perhapsno more hackneyedhistorical
intention than the wish to make history comealive, yet it is something very like that desirethat animatesthis book.
One
WHAT
WAS KNOWN?
3 5.
Ball: Mauaririt
Sairf
I. Gaiilenkoscrmrabrzs
afmnspots
on .26jun: 1612.Saurve:
GczliimGaliler,
Ismriaif dimunszmzimni
nmrm)um:mzxcchic
sulari. . . (Rome.1613),
WHAT WASKNOWN?
17
18
CHAPTER ONE
WHAT WASKNOWN?
19
between
London
and
Staines.3From the early seventeenthcentury,observersusing telescopesand microscopesclaimedto revealthe limits of unassistedhuman sensesand suggestedthat revelationof even more details and
more marvelsonly awaitedimproved instruments.New and altered
intellectualpracticesprobed back in natural and human history and
advancedclaimsto reliableknowledgeaboutthings no living person
had witnessed.Newly observedentities that poseduncomfortable
problemsfor existing philosophicalsystemswere seizedon by those
eager to discomt orthodox theorists.Who could condently say
3. Staineswasa village abouttwenty miles westof the City ofLondon, near the
presentHeathrow Airport. Recenthistoricalwork haspointedout, however,that Europeanexperienceofthe New World washighly mediatedthrough the longstanding
textual traditions that generatedexpectationsof what sucha world might belike.
20
CHAPTER ONE
what did and did not existin the world when tomorrow might reveal
asyet undreamed-ofinhabitantsin the domainsof the very distant
and the very small?
In 1620the English philosopherSir Francis Bacon(15611626)
published a text called Instauratiomagna(The Great Instauration).
The title itself promiseda renovationof ancientauthority, while the
engravedtitle pagewas one of the most vivid iconographicalstate
mentsof new optimism about the possibilitiesand the extent of sci
entic knowledge(g. 2). A ship representinglearning is shownsailing beyond the Pillars of Herculesthe Straits of Gibraltar that
customarilysymbolizedthe limits ofhuman knowledge.Belowtheengraving is a propheticquotation from the biblical Book of Daniel
Many shall passto and fro, and scienceshall be increasedand
Baconlater explainedthat the modernworld had seenthe fulllment
of the biblical prophecywhen the openingof the world by navigation and commerceand the further discoveryof knowledge should
meetin one time and place.The traditional expressionof the limits
on knowledge,716
plus ultra no fartherwas deantly replaced
with the modernplusultrafarther yet. The renovationof natural
knowledgefollowed the enlargementof the natural world yet to be
known. Practitionersofa mind to do socould usenewly discovered
entities and phenomenato radically unsettleexisting philosophical
schemes.
2. Thefrontispiecc
of FrancisBacon;The GreatInstauration(1620).
22
CHAPTER ONE
3. The Copernican
system,asdepictedin the 15705by theEnglishmathematicianThomasDigges(ca.I 546- 95). Diggesmodied Copernicus}views
by developing
a notionof a physicalinnite universein which thestarswere
placedat differentpointsin that innite space.Source:ThomasDigges,A
Pert Descriptionof the CaelestiallOrbes(1576).
rehad
WHATwas KNOWN?
23
4. ThePtolemaitcosmos,
asdepicted
in themiddleofthemzenreentb
century
bytheeminentGerman-Poli:/J
astranomerjobannes
Heveliu:{I6I187).
Source:
jobannerHevelim, Selenographia(1647).
elcmentallypure,but what appearsearthyhasearthasa predominant element,the air we breathehaselementalair asits primary constituent,and soon. Earth and water areheavyelements,and they can
But heavenly
bodies,includingsun,stars,andplanets,weremadeof
a fifth elementthe quintessenceor ether"-that wasan incor-
24
CHAPTER ONE
25
sense,anthropocentrismwasrejected.The human experienceof inhabitinga staticplatform, diurnally circledby sunand starsthat were
subjectto their own annual motions, was denied.lf common sense
testied to the earthsstability,this new astronomyspokeof its double
motion, daily about its axis and annually about the now static sun.5
Commonexperiencewashereidentied asbut appearance.If common senseexpectedthat suchmotions,were they real, would cause
people to hold onto their hats in the resulting wind or fall off
the earth, then so much the worse for common sense.And if stones
in the moon.
26
CHAPTER ONE
his telescopeto the starshe sawvastlylarger numbersthan were observablewith the naked eye.To the three previouslyknown starsin
Orionsbelt Galileo now addedabouteighty more (g. 5). Somenebulousstarsnow were resolvedinto little Milky Ways.Galileoalsonoticed that, comparedwith the moon and the planets,starsdid not
appearto be much enlargedby the telescope.It was thus possible,
though Galileo himself wasreticenton the point, that the starsmight
be immenselyfar away.Sucha view supportedthe Copernicansys
tem by accountingfor the absenceof parallaxthat might otherwise
be expectedfrom a moving earth. Galileosdramatic discoveryof
moonsaround Jupiter wasusedto give further credibility to the Copernican system,sincethe earth-moon relationship was no longer
unique.
periods in European culture when cosmic innity seriouslychallenged the more comfortable dimensionsof common experience.
Human beingsmight occupyjust a speckof dust in a universeof un
imaginablesize.And though many expert astronomerssawno rea-
28
CHAPTER ONE
son for anxiety in the notion of an innite cosmos(someevencelebrating its sublimity), the samewasnot necessarilytrue for members
of the educatedlaity. Uneasein the faceof innity, of shakensystems
of traditional cosmologicalknowledge,and of the decenteringof the
earth waswidely expressed,nowheremore eloquentlythan it wasin
161I by the English cleric and poetJohnDonne:
And New Philosophycallsall in doubt,
The Elementof re is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th earth, and no mans wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
(1623-62)famouslyidentiedthemorallydisorientingeffectsof the
idea of innite space:Le silence ternel de ces espacesinnis
meffraye.7
The new philosophyassaultedcommon senseat a mundaneas
well asa cosmiclevel. Considerthe generaltreatment of motion in
Aristotelian and modern physics.For Aristotle, and for thoseme
dieval and early modern philosopherswho followed him, the elementsofearth, water,air, and re eachhad its natural motion, the
way it wasin its nature to move.As we haveseen,for the element
of earth the natural motion wasto descendin a straight line toward
the centerof the earth, and this it will do unlessthe earthy body en
counterseither an obstaclethat blocksits path or a pushthat actson it
7. The eternalsilence
ofinnite space
frightensme.Thesewordsweremeant
to express
notPascals
ownattitudesasa philosopher
butthoseofcontemporary
lib
ertines.
WHAT WASKNOWN?
29
in anotherdirection.Natural motion tendstoward natural place.Aristotle was, of course, well aware that all sorts of nonrectilinear mo-
opmentalcharacter.Bodiesnaturally moved soasto fulll their natures, to transform the potential into the actual, to move toward
where it wasnatural for them to be.Aristotelian physicswasin that
sensemodeledon biologyand employedexplanatorycategoriessimilar to thoseusedto comprehendliving things. Iust asthe acornsdevelopmentinto the oak wasthe transformationof what waspotential
into what was actual, so the fall of an elevated stone was the actualiz-
accounts ofnatural
30
CHAPTER ONE
The Natural
Machine
or articial.
WHAT WASKNOWN?
31
matters it, provided things are put in the way to producean effect,
whether it be done by human meansor otherwise. This Baconian
sensibilitywas widely endorsedby seventeenthcentury
mechanical
philosophers.In France the atomist Pierre Gassendi(I592-1655)
wrote that concerning natural things, we investigatein the same
32
CHAPTER ONE
Revolution.
Mechanical
clocks
WHAT WASKNOWN?
33
his conversion
from
his former
34
CHAPTER ONE
ments of the human body: We seethat clocks . . . and other machinesof this kind, although they havebeenbuilt by men, do not for
this reasonlack the power to move by themselvesin diverseways.
Why shouldnthuman respiration,digestion,locomotion,and sensation be accountedfor in just the way we explain the motions of a
clock, an articial fountain, or a mill? In the 1660sthe English mechanicalphilosopherRobert Boyle (1627-91)wrote that the natural
world wasas it were,a great pieceof clock-work. Justasthe spectacular late sixteenthcenturyclock in the cathedral at Strasbourg
(fig. 6) usedmechanicalpartsand movementsto mimic the complex
motions of the (geocentric)cosmos,so Boyle, Descartes,and other
mechanicalphilosophersrecommendedthe clock metaphor as a
philosophically legitimate way of understandinghow the natural
world wasput togetherand how it functioned.For Boylethe analogy
betweenthe universeand the Strasbourgclock was both exactand
fertile: The severalpiecesmaking up that curious engine are so
framed and adapted,and are put into sucha motion, that though the
numerouswheels,and other partsof it, moveseveralways,and that
without any thing either of knowledgeor design;yet eachpart performs its part in order to the variousends,for which it wascontrived,
asregularly and uniformly asif it knew and wereconcernedto do its
duty.
A numberof featuresof the clockthus struck many seventeenthcentury mechanicalphilosophersas appropriate metaphorical resourcesfor understandingnature.First, the mechanicalclock wasa
complexartifact designedand constructedby peopleto fulll functions intendedby people.Although it wasitself inanimate,the clock
imitated the complexityand the purposiveness
of intelligent agents.
If you did not know there wasan intelligent clockmaker who purposefullybrought it into being,you might supposethat the clock itself was intelligent and purposive.The contemporarypopularity of
automatonsmachines that vividly mimicked the motions of animalsand humansalso impresseda number of mechanicalphilosophers (seethe cock automatonin fig. 6). That skillfully contrived
machinesmight trick naiveobserversinto believingthey were seeing
6. TheStrasbourg
cathedralclock.ThesecondStrasbourgcloc/{Boylereferred
to wascompletedin 1574.This illustrationshowstheclockasreconstructed
in the 18705.It not only tellstime but alsoindicatessolarand lunar cycles,
calculateseclipses,
andsoon. Thecoc/Q
automatonon thetop of thetowerat the
lay?crowsthriceeverydayat noonin memoryof thetemptationof SaintPeter.
Source:Scientic American, [0 April 1875.
36
CHAPTERONE
how regular natural motionsmight be mechanicallyproduced.Machinesin generalhad a determinatestructure:the materialsand motions required to make them, and to make them go, were knowable
by human beingsand, in principle, speciable.That is to say,ma
chineswereaecountedwholly z'7ztcllz'gz'ble.
In that culture it wasrepre
sented that there was nothing mysterious or magical, nothing
unpredictable,nothing causallycapriciousabouta machine.The ma
chinemetaphormight, then,bea vehiclefor taking the wonder out
ofour understandingofnature or, asthe sociologistMax Weberput it
in the early twentieth century, for the disenchantmentof the
world. Machinesthus provideda model of the form and scopethat
human knowledgeof naturemight properly haveand ofhow human
accountsof naturemight properly beframed.Think of nature asifit
were a machine; attend to the uniformities of its motions and not to
WHATWAS
KNOWN?
37
38
CHAPTERONE
9. Many,though not all, ancientnatural philosophersregardedthe ideaof a vacuum in nature asan impossibility.Certainly this wasthe inuential view ofAristotle,
and seventeenth-century
mechanicalphilosophersweredivided onxwhethervacuums
were possibleor whether nature wasfull of matter, a plenum.
39
whichpumpscouldraisewaterwas
already widely known in both
artisanalandphilosophicalcircles.
Thishadbeenestablished
in the 1640s
by GasparoBerti, who was in turn
inspired by remarks in Galileo} Two
New Sciencesof 1638. Hoyle wanted
to assurehimself of the matter of fact,
suspecting
that previousapparatus
was"not sufficientlystaunch,nor the
operationcritically enoughperformed
and taken notice of " For easeof
observation,
theuppertwo or three
feet of the tube was made of glass,
of New ExperimentsPhysico
mechanicalTouching the Spring
and Weight of the Air (1669).
40
CHAPTER ONE
B,The cxtraumlwnf,
gpp. '
.-:D,f" " at
DC,1'
fan:1-5:
it-vcml,
andKM.A1.7
panleluthe
Hm.
p nalinla endedin avqfzl
an.
fQ!i 90-[0t_b_an'L,Tk
nlefubngdn
dsvith
uimurfed
D,5enatu?J,gl,
rumln
5:
Quit!
lv:r,4nJr::I1'Iu
mm!
the
is the am Quick. 0" mun: tlaemfhm ..
[s'lmr4:!
he
HG}.
Awffclldlp
mum i.a..i:i
xi
lung
-.
W1'
'
.*.=,*:;:.:':.<-2.:-.:~.*,:<;;:.,-:.:*.'
:::;;r=7
f-
C K, Tb: Vacuum,
orSpa: Jefertd
the Greek
words
for
WHAT WASKNOWN?
41
weight and measurein what many regardedas a decisiveconrmation of the mechanicalview of nature. Many but by no meansall.
The Viewthat an abhorrenceof a vacuumplayedsomelegitimaterole
in explaining such results was well entrenchedand thought to be
plausibleby very many early to mid-seventeenth-centuryphilosopherswho were otherwisewell disposedtoward mechanism:Galileo
himself wasof this opinion.
In France,Pascalinitially reckonedthat the Torricellian experiment proved only that the force of naturesabhorrenceof a vacuum
was nite.
uum] aredue to the weight and pressureofthe air, which is their only
real cause.To be a mechanicalphilosopherwas to prefer inani-
10.The Puy de Dome experiment was repeatedseveraltimes by other practitionersclimbing other mountains. Although the original experiment was evidently
decisivefor Pascal,otherscould not replicatethe fall in the mercury level. Nor were
42
CHAPTER ONE
mate interpretations like the weight of air to the implied intentionality of matters abhorrence.
Many mechanicalphilosophersfavorably contrastedtheir accountsof natural phenomenato thosethat invoked occult powers.
In the Renaissance
natural magical" tradition, for example,it was
commonto supposethat bodiesmight act on eachother at a distance
through occult powers of sympathy,attraction, or repulsion. Although the effectsof suchpowerswere regardedas observable,the
meansby which they acted were hidden (which is why they were
called occult) and might not be speciablein terms of the ordinary
manifest propertiesof sensiblematter. Thus it was by invoking
occult powers that astrologicalinuences from celestialbodieslike
the planetswere saidto act on on earthly affairs,that the sun had the
capacityto bleach,that rhubarb could act asa laxative,and that the
magnetattractediron. Thesepowerswere all said to be perceptible
from their effectsbut couldnot beinferred from the manifestappearanceof planets,sun, rhubarb, or magnets. The human body (the
microcosm)wasconnectedto the universe(the macrocosm)through
a seriesof occult correspondences
and inuences. By no meansall
new philosopherssoughtto discreditthe legitimacyofoccult powers,
nor did all ofthem rejectat leastsomeofthe claimsofthe astrological
tradition. Among astronomers,Kepler and his contemporaryTycho
Brahe were astrologicaladepts;and Baconand Boyle,for example,
resourcesabsentto accountfor an observedfall without acceptingcompletemechanism, for example,by pointing to the possiblerole of temperaturechanges.A distinction betweenthe weight and the pressureofthe air will betreatedin the next chapter.
I I. The meaningsof the word occult varied and changedin the early modern
period. Moreover,the descriptionof explanatoryaccountsasoccult was widely used
by mechanicalphilosophersasa form of accusation.For example,mechanicallyinclined practitioners who refusedto offer a specificcausalaccountof how a certain
physicaleffectwasproducedmight beaccusedby othersof reintroducing discredited
occult powers,as wasthe casein the early eighteenthcenturydisputesover gravitation betweenNewton and Leibniz notedlater in this chapter.It hasevenbeenargued
recentlythat, by shifting the meaningof occult qualities from what was hidden and
insensibleto what was visible in its effectsbut unintelligible in mechanicaland corpuscular terms, modern natural philosophersactually reintroducedoccult qualities
while claiming to reject them.
WHAT WASKNOWN?
43
gave legitimacy to magical beliefsand practices,and also,as Mersenneespeciallyfeared, to religious heresy.Mersenneworried that
projecting supernaturalpowersonto things that, properly speaking,
do not have suchpowerswould blur the religiously crucial distinction betweenthe natural and the supernaturalto the ultimate detriment of Christian
institutions.
44
CHAPTER ONE
12.Metaphysics
is the philosophicalinquiry into rst principles, including the
attempt to characterizethe ultimate nature of what existsin the world. Although
somemodern writers regardedmetaphysicsasan important part of natural philosophy,or evenasits foundation,otherscondemnedmetaphysicalspeculationasbeyond
the proper boundsof scientic inquiry, using the term metaphysicsasa loosepejorative for philosophicalclaimsthat wereabstruse,abstract,or otherwiseundecidableby
ordinary means.
WHAT WASKNOWN?
45
Baconalsosurveyedmany ancientand receivedtraditions and observationstouching the sympathyand antipathy of plants. It was
commonto explainwhy someplantsthrived bestwhen growing near
other typesby invoking occult principlesof sympathy.Here he atly
repudiatedany suchsecretfriendship and hatred as utterly mistaken and suggestedthat somegenuineeffectsmight be referredto
mundanecauses-theeffectson plantsof neighborsdrawing certain
nutrientsout of thesoil.
In the mid-1660sEnglish physiciansand natural philosophers
disputed both the reality and the proper explanation of alleged
stroking curesattributed to the Irish healerValentineGreatrakes.
Many trustworthy sourcestestied that Greatrakeshad cured sufferersfrom scrofula,ulcers,and kidney stonesby the laying on of his
hands.Boylesapproachto suchstupendousperformanceswas to
cautiouslycredit their reality and offer a provisionalmechanicalinterpretation of how they might actually work. He said that he was
not convincedthere was anything purely supernatural about the
curesand endeavoredto give a physicalaccount ofthem. Perhaps
material sanativeefuvia passedfrom Greatrakessbody to that of
the patient, and perhapsit was theseefuvia that effectedthe cure.
46
CHAPTERONE
The Mat/zcmatz'zatz'0n
of Qualities
In Boylessummary there were only two grand principles of the
mechanicalphilosophy:matter and motion. There were no principlesmore primary, more simple, more comprehensive,and more
comprehensible.Matter and motion werelike the lettersofthe alphabet, simple and finite in themselvesbut capablein combination of
producing almostendlessdiversity.Sofar asit concerneda properly
conceivedpracticeof natural philosophy,everything in the natural
world was to be explainedwith referenceto the irreducible properties of matter and its statesof motion: that wasone thing that made
the interpretation of nature like the interpretation of machines.
Nothing occult wassupposedto be involved in talking aboutmatter
and motion. A mechanicalaccountofnature wasthen given its limiting form and content:specifythe shape,size,arrangement,and motion of the material constituentsof the things concerned.
Seventeenth-century
mechanicalphilosopherstraced the legitimacyof sucha Viewof naturesfundamentalstructurebackto scriptural sources.The apocryphalWisdom of Solomonhandedit down
that God has disposedof all things in number, weight, and measure,"and similar sentimentswereintermittently expressed
throughout the Middle Ages.What wasnew in the seventeenthcentury was
the vigor with which the principlesof matter and motion were advancedasdening resourcesof a proper natural philosophy.If a purportedly natural philosophicalaccount brought to bear resources
other than matter and motion, it ran a substantialrisk of beingidentied asunintelligible, asnot in fact being philosophicalat all.
WHAT WASKNOWN?
47
48
CHAPTERONE
9. Descartes:
scheme
explainingmagneticeffects.Source:ReneDescartes,
Principlesof Philosophy(I644).
flowing through appropriately sized pores to the brain and the organsof reproduction.The bodysanimal spirits were composedof
the smallestand most highly agitated of the particlesin the blood,
which enteredthe cavitiesof the brain, then owed through the hollow nervesand on into the musclesto produce sensoryand motor
effectsthat wereexplicablein the sameterms usedfor articial fountains and similar mechanical devices. So instances of what one would
WHAT WASKNOWN?
49
50
CHAPTER ONE
WHAT WASKNOWN?
51
I 1. Illustration:of microscopically
enlargedcommonobjects,
from Robert
Ho0}{e'x
Micrographia (1665):at thetop a needlepoint,belowit aprinted
full xtop or period, and at the bottom the edgeofa sharp razor.
52
CHAPTER ONE
WHAT WASKNOWN?
53
54
CHAPTER ONE
tal distinction took a giant step,asthe historian E. A. Burtt haswritten, toward the reading of man quite out of the real and primary
realm. Human beings,and human experience,were no longerto be
taken asthe measureof all things."
In making this claim, the mechanicalphilosopherswere setting
themselvesnot just againstcommon experienceand common sense
but also against the central Aristotelian doctrine of substantial
forms (or real qualities). Medievaland early modern Aristotelians
liked to make an analytic distinction betweenthe matter and the
form of bodies. Looselyput, the matter of a marble statueis the
material substratum out of which a statue of Alexander
or a statue of
his horsemight be made.You can make a statueof anyoneor anything at all out of marble,so the matter ofa particular statuedoes
not give an adequateaccountof what it is. The form of a given
statueis that immaterial ordering principle that makesit a representation of Alexander
or Alexander's
horse. The matter
out of which
WHAT WASKNOWN?
55
56
CHAPTERONE
concluded
by afrming that there is no phenomenonin nature whosetreatment hasbeenomitted andthat cannotbeaccountedfor by mechanical principles.
However, although micromechanical explanatory structures
could readilybethoughtup for all natural phenomena,not all of them
could draw on the intelligibility flowing from having mechanical
counterpartsin the realmof medium-sizedobjectsthat populatehumanexperience.Take,for example,humansensation.I-IereDescartes
WHAT WASKNOWN?
57
notablyofferedextendedmechanicalexplanationsbasedon hydraulic
principlesand the mechanicaloperationofuids, valves,and tubesasin hisaccountofbodily sensationof, and movementawayfrom, the
heatof a re. But in the macroscopicdomain there was nothing to
explain how sensationwas mechanicallyproducedthat enjoyedthe
intelligibility of, for example,a micromechanicalkinetic explanation
of heat or a micromechanicalstructural explanationof air pressure.
For thesereasons,somecritically minded historiansand philosophers
haveevenwonderedwhetherthe claimedglobal intelligibility of mechanicalexplanationswasmorethan just practitionersagreement
that
suchexplanationswould count asmore intelligible than alternatives.
When mechanicalphilosopherssought to explain pleasantand unpleasantsmellsor tastesby pointing to the rough or smoothtextureof
bodiesconstituentparticles,werethey really offering somethingdifferent from, and inherentlymoreintelligible than,theexplanationsof
their Aristotelian opponents?The historical philosopherAlan Gabbey thinks not: in the mechanicalphilosophythe phenomenato be
explainedwere causedby entities whosestructureswere such that
they causedthe phenomena.Previously,opium sentyou to sleepbecauseit had a particular dormitive quality: now it sentyou to sleep
becauseit had a particular corpuscularmicrostructurethat actedon
your physiologicalstructuresin sucha way that it sentyou to sleep.
From this perspective,the superior intelligibility, and therefore the
explanatorypower, of the mechanicalphilosophywasmore limited
than its proponentsclaimed.Adherentsconvictionthat mechanical
accountswere globally superiorto alternatives,and more intelligible,
hasto be explainedin historical rather than abstractlyphilosophical
terms.
58
CHAPTERONE
to mathematization,and a number of mechanicalphilosophersvigorouslyinsistedon the centralrole of mathematicsin the understanding of nature. Boyle, for example,acceptedthat a natural world
whosecorpuscleswere conceivedto be variously sized,shaped,arranged,and moved called out, in principle, for mathematicaltreatment. Despite widespreadcontemporary professionsof a natural
fit between mechanism and mathematically framed accounts,
however,very little of the mechanicalphilosophywasactuallymathematized, and the ability to representmathematically expressed
physicalregularitiesor lawsdid not dependon belief in their mechanical causes.That is to say,although the mathematizationof natural
philosophy was certainly an important feature of seventeenthcentury practice,professionsof a constitutiverelation betweenmechanism and mathematicsremain problematic.
Seventeenthcenturyconfidence in the basic propriety and
power of a mathematicalframework for natural philosophyhad ancient warrants. Modern natural philosophersturned to Pythagoras,
and especiallyto Plato (ca.427-347 B.C.),to legitimatea mathematical treatment of the world, quoting Platosdictum that the world
was Godsepistlewritten to mankind and that it was written in
mathematicalletters. Galileo arguedthat natural philosophyought
to be mathematical
in form
because nature
was mathematical
in
structure.Modern natural philosophers,and not just thoseofthe mechanicaland corpuscularvariety,werewidely agreedthat mathematicswasthe most certain form of knowledge,and for that reasonone
of the most highly valued. Yet the overarchingquestionsfor those
concernedwith the studyof physicalnature were how, in what ways,
and to what extent it was proper to apply mathematicalmethodsto
the interpretation of real natural bodiesand real physicalprocesses.
That it waspossibleto study nature mathematicallywas in principle
not to bedoubted,but wasit practicaland wasit philosophicallyright
to do so? Here there was important divergenceof opinion among
sixteenth and seventeenth-centurypractitioners. Someinuential
philosopherswerecertainthat the endsof sciencewere,and ought to
be, mathematicallyformulated binding laws of nature, while others
WHAT WASKNOWN?
59
doubtedthat mathematicalrepresentations
could capturethe contingenciesand the complexitiesof real natural processes.
Throughout
the seventeenthcenturythere were inuential voicesskepticalof the
legitimacy of mathematical idealizations in the explication of
physical nature as it actually was. Such practitionersas Baconand
Boyle said that mathematicalaccountsworked very well when nature wasconsideredabstractlyand lesswell when it wasaddressedin
its concreteparticularities. Galileosmathematicallaw of fall pertained to ideal bodiesmoving in a frictionlessenvironment.It is possible that no, or very few, real bodieshave ever moved in precise
obedienceto suchlaws.Galileo announcedthat motion is subjectto
the law of number, but the moving things concernedwereonly very
approximatelylike the actual medium-sizedbodieswhosemotions
are the objectsof daily experience.The question,to which chapter2
will return, is whethernatural philosophywasproperly addressedto
the domain of the mathematicalidealor to that of the concretelyand
particularly real, or whether some compromiseposition could be
achieved.
60
CHAPTER ONE
lxnvumonuvnnuu-ruvn
HDGNIIONIIJTDUTANTIAJ
IIIVLIIIA
nanny.
cu:-drum
Innuu. ruwiuaz/I
xuuu-i.1-...:ncwu...y-,4
J1
(u'v-__
JV:
L. -q- as.
,...u.u,-v
(;rLa.lula'ln'a#'
'
June.
Q'.-__l___.__'T''1
iamngvnh
..i
~r..u.~ 4...-'_./L..,..
(
gzik-ri
fiance
no.4-'
I-1:
/"1,'Z'J.4.?'
)ro'.1:......n
_.......:,s.i
L-ii:'-*--av--'-y
M
x .A....1'!h'_-1.
_/1..-,2]:
'3=~.--I-
1%-'.'.4.L...a
Ls.
''#7-57'
'12-?
I2. Kepler;scheme
showingthe ".i\/Iarvclous
Proportion of the CelestialSp/zeres
. . established
by meansoft/zez/eregularGeometricsolids.SOM1C.']0}l(l77I25
Kepler.Mysterium cosmographicum,2d ed. (1621).
mensions,the number of heavens,their proportions, and the relations of their movements. A mathematically inclined astronomer
had discovered that the creator God was a mathematician:
the Cre
tive featureof how the world wascreatedandwhatprinciplesgoverned its motions.Nature obeysmathematicallaws becauseGod had
usedtheselaws in creatingnature.
The idea that nature obeysmathematicallaws gavecondence
to thosepromoting a mathematicalconceptionofnatural philosophy.
61
NaturalP/zilosolplzy.
The worldmachinefollowedlaws that were
mathematicalin form and that could be expressedin the languageof
mathematics.Mathematicsand mechanismwere to be merged in a
new denition of proper natural philosophy.
Newtons achievementwas representedby many contemporariesasthe perfectionof the mechanicalphilosophyand by historians
as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution. Certainly Newton
decisivelyadvancedthe Galileanimpulseto consolidatethe domains
to which a singlenatural philosophicalschemecould be legitimately
applied. The Princzpiaunied mathematicswith both celestialand
terrestrial mechanics.Newton showedthat the elliptical orbits of the
planetspreviouslydescribedby Kepler were to be accountedfor by
two motions: one was inertialplanets tended to move with uniform velocityin a straight line, and thereforeto fly offat a tangentto
their orbits; the other was the centripetalgravitational attraction
betweenplanetsand sun that tendedto pull them toward the center
of the solar system.All bodieswhatevercelestial or terrestrial
tended to move uniformly in straight lines or to remain at rest; all
bodieswhateverwherever they wereexperienced gravitational
attractionbetweeneachother.Gravitation is a universalforce,acting
in an inversesquarerelation to the distancesbetweenbodiesand describableby the mathematicalequationF = G(mm '/D
Z).G is a constant, with the same value in all cases,no matter whether the force
concerned acts between Mars and the sun, between Mars and Venus,
or between this book in your hands and the earth below it. All
62
CHAPTER ONE
of
16. Chapter3 will haveto make somevery signicant qualications to this sen
timent, important as it was to traditional accountsof the identity of the Scientic
Revolution.
WHAT WASKNOWN?
63
for a practicewhoseend wasthe lawful characterizationof the mathematical regularities of naturelaws (as Newton said) deduced
from the actual observedbehaviorof bodies.The aim was physical
certainty,and the tool for achievingthat certainty wasmathematics.
Yet the price of that conceptionof scienceincluded at times a disengagementfrom inquiry into physicalcauses.So Newton freely ac knowledged that I have been unable to discover the causeof
. . . gravity from phenomena,and I feign no hypotheses.He meant
only to give a mathematicalnotion of thoseforces,without considering their physical causes.The mathematization of the universe
might then standagainstthe questfor causes,mechanicaland material or otherwise.One interpretation of the Newtonian enterprise
thus hasit setting asidecausalinquiry in favor of mathematicalformulations of the regularitiesobservablein nature, while another interpretation celebratesNewtons expansionof the scopeof causal
mechanicalexplanation.
Crucially, however,Newton reintroduced,or at least put new
stresson the role of, immaterial active powers in a properly constituted natural philosophy,especiallyin accountingfor effectswhose
reduction to mechanicalprincipleshe consideredimpossibleor improper: magnetism,electricity,capillary action, cohesion,fermentation, and the phenomenaof life. Although it might still be said that
the preferred form of causalaccountingwas mechanicaland material, in this versionthe practiceof natural philosophywasno longer
to be circumscribedby the provisionof suchaccounts,and chapter3
will treat the religiousaswell asthe philosophicalcontextsthat gave
sucha position much of its significance.Newton insistedthat he had
not sacriced mechanism;such rival philosophersas the German
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)violently accusedhim of
using the enormouscultural prestigeof mathematicsto reintroduce
occult principlesand of abandoningthe dream of specifyinga completelymechanicaluniverse.For Leibniz, and others,the paramount
conditionof intelligibility wasthe provisionof a plausiblemechanical
cause, and since Newton had not done soas
in the case of
64
CHAPTERONE
persistentlytried to nd a modusoperandifor how gravitational attraction was conveyedthrough a medium. Yet even without that
physicaltheory,gravitationalattraction wasnot to be regardedasunintelligible: its intelligibility residedin the lawful accountof its action. The law of gravitation could be usedfor explanatoryendseven
if no mechanicalcausecould be specied.
Accordingly,therecanbeno facilegeneralizationaboutwhether
the Newtonian
achievement
of the
mechanicalphilosophy,asits subversionby the reintroduction of occult qualities,or asthe creationofa new practice,to bejudgedby new
philosophical standards.Late seventeenth-and early eighteenthcentury philosophersdebatedjust thosepoints about the proper understandingofNewtons achievement.They disputedwhetherNewton had perfectedmechanismor denied it; they debatedwhether
mechanicalcauseshad to begiven asthe condition for physicalexplanation. So too do historians,and so too do many present-dayscientists.
Two
HOW
WAS IT KNOWN?
ReadingNature: Book
Nothing somarked out the new scienceof the seventeenthcentury
asits proponentsreiteratedclaimsthat it wasnew. Corpuscularand
mechanicalphilosophers,on manyoccasions,
vigorouslyinsistedthat
their innovationsrepresentedradical departuresfrom traditionally
constitutedbodiesof natural knowledge.Text after text stipulated
the novelty ofits intellectualcontents.In physicsGalileo offered his
Discourse: and Demon.ctratz'ons
concerning Two New Sciences;in as-
66
CHAPTER TWO
realities.
I. Indeed, Descartesexplicitly worried about the effectshis version of methodologicalmodernism would have were it to be collectivelyadopted:There is no
plausibility in the claim of any private individual to reform a stateby altering everything, and by overturning it throughout, in order to setit right again.Nor is it likewiseprobablethat the whole body ofthe Sciences,
or the order ofteaching established
by the Schools,should be reformed. . . . In the caseof great bodiesit is too difficult a
taskto raisethem againwhen they areoncethrown down . . . and their fall cannotbe
otherwisethan very violent." His maxims of method were intended, so he said,for
himself;given his own situationand his own idiosyncratictemperament,although one
may well speculatewhether that restrictivecaution wasingenuousor likely to be effective.
68
CHAPTER TWO
casionallycontestingfor the right to be regardedas modern or ancient.Somepractitionersassertedthe primitive antiquity ofwhat was
apparentlynew, while others argued that what seemedtraditional
wasactuallyup-to-dateand intellectuallyunsurpassed.
Chapter I referred to Baconsview that modern advancesin natural knowledge
were the fulllment of Old Testamentprophecy,and chapter3 will
note that severalmodern practitionersconceivedof increasingtechnical control within a Christian messianiccontext.For everypractitioner who equated the innovatory with the valuable there was
another who linked modern opinions with uneducatedignorance.
The Scientic Revolutionwassignicantly, but only partially, a New
Thing. Nevertheless,the rhetoric of wholesalerejectionand replacement draws our attention to how practitioners tended to position
themselveswith respectto existingphilosophicaltraditions and institutions.
What wassaidto be overwhelminglywrong with existingnatural philosophicaltraditions wasthat they proceedednot from the evidenceof natural reality but from human textual authority. If one
wishedto securetruth about the natural world, one ought to consult
not the authority of booksbut the authority of individual reasonand
the evidenceofnatural reality.The English natural philosopherWilliam Gilbert (1544-1603),for example,dedicatedhis 1600book on
magnetismto true philosophers,ingenuousminds, who not only in
booksbut in things themselveslook for knowledge. This was,Gilbert said,a new styleof philosophizing. When Descartesshut himself up alone, it was an expressionof a resolveto seekno other
knowledgethan that which I might nd within myself,or perhapsin
the great book of nature. And William Harvey said that it was
base to receive instructions
exam-
69
The SwissRenaissance
medicalman and natural magicianParacelsus(1493-1541)arguedvehementlythat thosewho soughtmedical truth should put aside the ancient texts and take themselves
directly to the study of herbs,minerals,and stars.Natural reality is
like a letter that has been sent to us from a hundred miles off, and in
which the writers mind speaksto us. He saidthat he did not compile his textbooks from excerptsof Hippocrates and Galen but
wrote them anew,founding them upon experience:If I want to
proveanything I do sonot by quoting authoritiesbut by experiments
and reasoning. When Galileo advocateda mathematically conceivednatural philosophy,he usedthe gure of naturesbook to argue his case:Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe,
which standscontinually open to our gaze. . . . It is written in the
languageof mathematics,and its charactersare triangles,circles,and
other geometricgures without which it is humanly impossibleto
understanda singleword of it. In the 1660sBoylewrote that each
pagein the great volume of nature is full of real hieroglyphs,where
(by an inverted way of expression)things standfor words, and their
qualities for letters. Few modern natural philosophersomitted to
make referenceto the Book of Nature, recommendingits direct inspectionover the texts of human authorities,however ancient and
howeverhighly valuedthey had been.
No seventeenth-centurymodernist maxims seem more selfevidentlysoundthan these:rely not on the testimonyof humansbut
on the testimony of nature; favor things over words as sourcesof
knowledge;prefer the evidenceof your own eyesand your own reasonto what otherstell you. Here is the root idea of modern empiricism,the view that proper knowledgeis and ought to bederivedfrom
direct senseexperience.And heretoo are the foundationsof-modern
mistrustof the socialaspectsof knowledgemaking: if you really want
to securetruth about the natural world, forget tradition, ignore authority, be skepticalof what otherssay,and wander the elds alone
I 3. ]0/tannesHeveliusandhissecondwife, Elisabet/1a
Koopman,making
astronomical observationswith a sextant. Elisabethathirtysix
yearsyounger
HOW WASITKNOWN?
71
He!/eliuswasregarded
ashavingparticularly keenandpenetratingeyes,and
hisobservations
werein generalViewedashighlyaccurateand reliable.His
observatorywas on the roof of his own house,and by the /6605 it was one of the
premierobservatories
in Europe.Source:IoliannesHeuelius,Selenographia
(1647).
72
CHAPTER TWO
sciences,
everyonehassomuch ashe really knowsand comprehends.
What he believesonly, and takeson trust, are but shreds.
There is probably no other sensibilitythat more strongly links
seventeenthcenturyand late twentieth-century moderns than the
recommendationof intellectual individualism and the rejection of
trust and authority in the pursuit of natural knowledge.Yet the rhetoric of individualistic empiricism was neither unalloyed nor self
evident for early modern practitioners.Both the practiceof observa
tion and the credibility of observationreports in the early modern
period could be intenselyproblematic.Triumphalist historiesof sciencesardonicallyrelatethe story of the foolish professorfrom Padua
who refusedto look through Galileo's
telescopeto seewith his own
eyesthe newly discoveredmoonsaround Iupiter. What can one say
abouta man who prefersthe authoritativetradition maintaining that
such moons could not exist to the evidenceof his own eyes?For
twentiethcentury modems,merely to describesuch behavior is to
condemn it as absurd.
Nevertheless,
in earlymodernculturetherewere wellentrenched
justificationsfor suchan apparentlybizarre preference.If, for example, Galile0stelescopicobservationswere to count asevidencefor or
againstastronomicaltheories,there had to be grounds for assurance
that this evidencewas secure.Suchassurancewas practically available for telescopicobservationsof terrestrialthings. When Galileo
went to Rome in 1611to demonstratehis telescope,he gathereda
numberof eminentphilosopherson top ofone of the city gates.Peering through the telescopefrom this vantagepoint, they were ableto
seethe palaceofa noblemanso distinctly that we readily countedits
eachand everywindow, eventhe smallest;and the distanceis sixteen
Italian miles. And from the samepoint observerscould readthe letters on a gallery distant two miles, so clearly,that we distinguished
eventhe periodscarvedbetweenthe letters. Sothe reliability oftele
scopicobservationof terrestrialobjectscould be vouchedfor by comparing what wasseenthrough the instrument to what wasknown by
unmediatedinspection.
73
74
CHAPTER rwo
And there were still other generalproblemsattendingthe modern useof individual sensoryexperienceto evaluatetraditionally established bodies of knowledge. Christian theology assured the
devoutthat the senses
of human beingsfollowing the fall from grace
werecorrupt, and that reliableknowledgewasnot to behad by trusting suchdebasedsources.Among the modernsBaconwas far from
alone in wholly acceptingthat beforethe Fall Adam had possessed
pure and uncorruptednatural knowledge, the power that allowed
him to give creaturestheir proper names.Galileo maintained that
Solomon and Mosesknew the constitution of the universe perfectly, and later Boyleand Newton reckonedthat there might be a
chain of speciallyendowedindividuals through whom the pure and
powerful ancient wisdom had beenhandeddown intact, both intimating that they themselvesmight be present-daymembersof this
lineage. In a more secular idiom, the idea of linear, cumulative
intellectual progresswas still novel and not widely accepted.Many
scholars,including someof the more prominent natural philosophers
of the early modern period, acceptedas a matter of coursethat the
ancients had better knowledge, and more potent technology,
than that possessed
in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturiesor
than any that modern human beingscould have.The ruins of stillunsurpassedGreek and Roman engineering works appearedto
stronglysupportthat idea.Moreover,the self-evident view that testimony and authority areto be resortedto only when we cannothave
individual experientialaccessis, asthe philosopherIan Hacking has
noted,a creationof the very sixteenth-and seventeenth-century
culture whosejudgmentswe want to understand:The Renaissance
had
it the other way about.Testimonyand authority were primary, and
thingscould countasevidenceonly insofarasthey resembledthe witnessof observersand the authority of books.
Onestrongargumentin favor of trusting to personalobservation
rather than traditional
75
76
CHAPTERTWO
literary scholarshipcommonly was closely joined to that of observational science.So, for example, while some sixteenth- and
seventeenthcentury
astronomers,including Kepler (fig. 15),insisted
on the relativecrudity of ancientastronomycomparedwith its modern perfection,others,including Newton, sawtheir taskasincluding
the recoveryof the lost wisdom of the ancients,undertaking painstaking philological studiesto supportthat enterprise.Somehumanistsevenconcludedthat pristine textual truth could now be restored
only by engagingthe evidenceof naturedirectly. Individual observation might thereforebe a meansto decidewhich copiesof Greek and
Latin manuscriptswere indeedauthentic.
This subtleand consequentialhumanist spur to direct observation wasa featureof a wide rangeof earlymodernscientic practices,
but it wasperhapsmoststriking in sixteenth-centurynatural history.
Here it wasunderstoodthat currently availabletextsby suchGreek
and Roman natural historians as Theophrastus(ca. 372-287 B.c.),
Pliny the Elder (A.D.23-79), Dioscorides(H. A.D.54-68), and Galen
wereproblematiccopiesof copies.Editions wereknown to vary,to be
incompleteand corrupt. How could one discoverthe original pure
and accuratedescriptionsof plantsand animals?Where human history wasconcerned,the only major methodsavailablewerephilology
and the collation of text with text. For botanyand zoology,however,
onemight alsoimportantly collatetextswith thedirectlyobserved
appearanceof theliving t/ting: in questionon the culturally innocuous
assumptionthat the forms of plants and animals had not changed
over the intervening years.Observationcould help decidewhat the
original ancientdescriptionshad actuallybeenand,further, what ancient namesand descriptionsreferred to what existing plants.After
all, wasnt this what the ancient authorities themselves had done?
Hadnt Aristotle
Hadnt
78
CHAPTERTWO
with picturesworrying that the human artist could not copy any
given plant with the requisiteaccuracyor capturethe seasonalvariationsin their appearancebut the printed booksof suchRenaissance
German botanistsas Otto Brunfels (ca. 1488-1534)and Leonhard
Fuchs(1501-66)offered detailedwoodcutillustrationsto act both as
standing recordsof botanicalreality and asgaugesto discipline the
observationsof others(fig. 16).
Christian religiousimpulsesalsogured in this connection.The
Book of Nature that one was enjoined to read in preferenceto the
textsof the Schoolmenwasunderstoodto bedivinely written. It was
widely saidthat God had written two booksby which his existence,
attributes,and intentionsmight be known. The one wasHoly Scrip
ture, but the other was increasinglyreferred to in the early modern
period as the Book of Nature? The ProtestantReformationof the
sixteenthcentury laid specialstresson the desirabilityof eachChristians having direct engagementwith Scripture, not relying on the
interpretationsof priestsand popes,and the invention of printing
with movabletype in the 14505madethe injunction to readthe Bible
for oneselfmore practically realizable.A similar impulse informed
the encouragementto read the Book of Nature for oneself,not relying on the traditional interpretationsof institutionalized authority.
Direct experienceof nature wasaccountedvaluableinsofarasit was
understoodto be engagementwith a divinely written text.
Of course,more characteristicallymodern sentimentsalso gured in the preferencefor the evidenceof thingsover the authority of
texts.Chapter I notedopinionsthat the natural world to which mod
ern philosophersenjoyedaccesswas simply much larger and more
varied than that known by the ancients.Philosophicalschemesbased
on restrictedknowledgewere likely to be faulty for just that reason,
and the expandedexperienceafforded, for example,by the voyages
of discoveryto the New World was an important support for cur-
PICTOR
dnntuo niumaurcr.
ES OPERIS,
llbcrtuoMcpcr.
s C v L PT 0 R
DuncQkoolpig.
Spccflc.
8o
CHAPTER TWO
81
82
CHAPTER TWO
account of motionannounced
vswm...
\
I7. Depiction of a hydrostatic experiment reported by Pascalin 166;. In the
following yearBoyleexpressed
pointedslepticismthat Pascal"actuallymade
theexperimentin question.Perhaps,Boylesaid,Pascal"thoughthe might safely
set/ this result]down,it beingveryconsequent
to thoseprinciplesof whosetruth
hewasalreadypersuaded.
" Sue/1thought experiments"
did not, in Boyle's
z/iew,
belongto a propernaturalphilosophy.Source:BlaisePascal,Traitez dc
Vquilibrcdcsliqueurs (166g).
84
CHAPTERTWO
whethertheseexperimentswereeveractuallyperformedor whether
they are best regarded as thought experiments, imaginative rehearsalsin Galileosmind of what wouldhappenwerecertainmanipulations to be carried out, given what we already securelyknow
aboutthe physicalworld.3 Here, asPeterDear haspointedout, Galileo wasnot saying,I did this and this, and this is what happened,
from which we can conclude. . . Rather,he wassaying,This is
what happens.The experiencethat wasproducedand madepublic
asa result of communicatingthis experimentwas thereforelike the
experiencethat would result from doing the experiment imag
inatively in your head,whether or not Galileo physicallyperformed
the particular experimentalmanipulationsin question.
This kind of attitude toward experienceaswhat happensin nature continuedto bean important featureof bothmuch modernand
much Aristotelian practiceon the Continent. It wasa major task of
ContinentalIesuit practitionersto cometo terms with the new stock
of particular,and articially obtained,experienceafforded,for exam
ple,by the telescopeand barometer,and to bring suchfindings within
the compassof Aristotelian conceptionsof the proper role of experi
encein philosophizing.This they did by deploying a wide rangeof
socialand linguistic techniquesto give suchparticular experiencethe
auraof certaintythat Aristotelian philosophicalpracticedeemednec
essary,including the naming of reliablewitnesses,the public display
of relevantexpertise,and the useof narrative techniquesdesignedto
make empirical statementslook like indubitable axioms.It is simply
not true, therefore, that seventeenthcenturyAristotelian natural
philosophylackedthe resourcesto cometo termswith the new experienceaffordedby articial experimentor scientificinstruments,nor
did Aristotelian frameworks immediatelywither away with the appearanceof modernalternatives.Right through the seventeenth
cen-
85
squeezedand mouldedthat is, when nature is put to experimental trial or subjectedto technologicalintervention.First natural his
tory (the reformed and purified register of effects),than natural
philosophy(reliableknowledgeof the causalstructureof nature that
produced such effects).And a central feature of a closely related
strandof modern natural philosophicalpracticewasthat it relied for
its empirical contentnot just on naturally availableexperience
of what
went on in the world but also on experiments
artificially and purposefully contrived to produce phenomenathat might not be observed,or at leastnot easily,in the normal courseof nature. These
experimentstypically involvedthe constructionand useof specialapparatus,suchasthe barometerdescribedin chapter 1.The barometer, remember, was an instrument that was advertised to make the
earlymodernEurope.Source:UlisseAldroz/andi,Ornithology (I600).
87
88
CHAPTER TWO
is admitted
HOW WASITKNOWN?
89
19.A latesixteenthcentury
representation
of acephalous
American
Indians.
Thebeliefthatdistantpartsof theworldwereinhabited
bystrange
peoples
who
"haveno heads
" andwhose"eyesbein their shoulderswascurrentin antiquity,
eat,/ TheAnthropophagi,
andmenwhose
heads
/ Dogrowbeneath
their
shoulders."
For thosewhosepurposewasthe reformof natural history,such
testimony
became
emblematic
of theproblemofsortingoutthegenuine
from
thefabulous.
Source.
Lez/inius
Hulsius,Kurtzewunderhare
Beschreibung
(I599).
90
CHAPTER TWO
jumbleof marvelous
naturalandartajcialobjects,
actedascuituralmagnets
for localmenof letter;and
for gentlemen
makingtheGrandTourof Europe.
Souree:
LorenzoLegati,MuseoCospiano
annesso
a
quello dcl famosoUlisscAldmvzmdi . . . (1677).
92
CHAPTER TWO
tional natural philosophicalpractice.Hitherto, he noted,natural philosophyhad tendedto useparticularsonly asa quick meansto arrive
at general principles of nature. With the truth of thoseprinciples
taken as indubitable, they could then be used to judge among the
phenomenaof nature, to decidebetweenthe often conflicting evidenceof sensoryexperience.That method of reasoningfrom settled
generalprinciplesconsidered to be true in their own rightt0 the
explicationof particularsis calleddeduction,and to its soleuseBacon
ascribedthe ills of contemporarynatural philosophy.It wasnot true,
as is sometimes said, that Baconian induction commended mindless
93
94
CHAPTER TWO
orderly natural philosophy,therefore,it had to be controlled, monitored, and disciplined.Ifuntutored sensewaslikely to mislead,then
ways had to be found to regulate what experiencecould properly
ground philosophicalreflection.The questionof what experienceencompassedjudgments about whoseexperience.The boundary be
tween authenticatedexperienceand what was widely called old
wivestales had to be marked and insistedon. The English natural
philosopherIohn Wilkins, for example,distinguishedbetweenthe
vulgar and the learnedon preciselythesegrounds:the former accorded primacy and privilege to immediate senseimpressions,
whereasthe latter were suitablycautiousabouttheir reliability: You
may assoonpersuadesomecountry peasantthat the moon is madeof
greencheese,
(aswe say)asthat it is biggerthan his cartwheel,since
both seemequally to contradict his sight, and he has not reason
enough to lead him farther than his senses.Boyle argued that the
judgment ofthe undiscerningmultitude . . . seemsrather lodgedin
the eyethan in the brain, and that was the major basisfor vulgar
error. The physicianSir ThomasBrownes(1605-82)Pseudodoxia
epidemica(1646)observedthe erroneousdispositionof the peoplethat
madethem credulousand readily deceivedby fortunetellers, jugglers,[and] geomancers."Senseneededto be guided by knowledge,
and lacking knowledgethe commonpeoplewerebut baddiscerners
of verity: Their understandingis so feeblein the discernmentof
falsities,and averting the errorsof reason,that it submittethunto the
fallaciesof sense,and is unableto rectify the error of its sensations.
That is to say,for such practitionersthe disciplining of experience
importantly implicateda map of the socialorder.Experiencesuitable
for philosophicalinferencehad to emergefrom thosesortsof people
t reliably and sincerelyto haveit, to report it, or, if it wasnot their
own, to evaluateothersreportsof experience.Undisciplinedexperience was of no use.
95
assessing,
and distributing scientic knowledge.In fact, the relation
betweenany body of formal methodologicaldirectionsand concrete
natural philosophicalpractice in the seventeenthcentury is deeply
problematic.For example,neither thosewhosemethodologicalpronouncementsprofessedradical disengagementbetweentheorizing
and fact gatheringnor thosewho announcedtheir systematicskeptical rejection of traditional culture wholly succeededin their aims.
There is much to commend a revisionist View that formal methodol-
ogyis to beunderstoodasa setofrhetorical toolsfor positioningpracticesin the culture and for specifyinghow thosepracticeswere to be
valued.This is not, however,to deny formal methodologya role in
seventeenth-century
science.Methodologymay be in part, as it has
beencalled,a myth, but myths may havereal historical functions.
Methodologicalpronouncementslike Baconswere avidly seizedon
by later,especiallyEnglish,natural philosopherstojmtzfy a concerted
collectiveprogram of observationaland experimentalfact collecting,
while broadly deductivemethodologieswere usedby other sortsof
philosophersto justify the importanceof rational theorizing over the
accumulationof factual particulars.Formal methodologyis important, therefore,in the sameway that the justication of a practiceis
important to its recognizedidentity and worth. A practicewithout an
attendant myth is likely to be weak, hard to justify, hard even to
makevisible asa distinct kind of activity.5Iustications are not to be
simplyequatedwith the practicethey justify, and we still needa more
vivid picture of what a rangeof modernnatural philosophersactually
did when they setaboutsecuringa pieceof knowledge.Modern natural philosophersdid not just believethings about the natural world;
theydid things to secure,to justify, and to distribute thosebeliefs.Do
ing natural philosophy,that is, wasa kind of work. Sowe now need
to turn from abstractmethodologicalformulasto the practicalwork
6. Making a related point, sociologistsmight saythat methodologiescan be regardedasn0rmsstipulations of what conductoughtto l2cand like all norms,they
canfulfill the function of reminding peoplehow they shouldbehave,evenif they do
not describehow peoplealways,or evenusually,do behave.
96
CHAPTERTWO
HOW WASITKNOWN?
97
Physicomechanical
Touching the Spring of the Air (1660).
98
CHAPTERTWO
and the spreadof the clock metaphorfor nature,aswell asthe credibility of telescopicobservationsof the heavens,marks that acceptance. Experimentation with such instruments opened up the
possibilitiesof enormous control and convenience.One might in
principle lay on experimentalphenomenaat will, at anytime, in front
of any observers,without waiting for them to occur naturally; one
might evenproduceeffectsthat were not at all accessible
to normal
human experience.In the caseof the air pump much of the natural
philosophicalinterest in its articially made phenomenaproceeded
by acceptingthat the vacuum it produced might stand for what
would beobservedif onewere to travel to the top of the atmosphere.
The pump might make accessibleand manifest the invisible, and
normally insensible,effectsof the air. Yet thesepracticalrecommendationsin favor of articial experimentationwere utterly dependent
on acceptingthe principle that the productsof human art could and
did stand for the order of nature. Without that basic acceptance,
therecould beno secureinferencefrom what experimentalapparatus
mademanifestto the natural order of things.
The air pump was intendedto producean operationalvacuum
in its great glass receiver. By repeatedlydrawing the piston (or
sucker) of the pump up and down and adjusting the valve and
stopcockconnectingthe receiverto the brasspumping apparatus,
quantitiesof air could be removedfrom the receiver.The effort of
drawing the suckerdown becamemore and more difficult until at
last it resistedall human effort. At that point Boyle judged that he
had exhaustedalmostall atmosphericair from the receiver.This it
self counted as an experiment,and it was reported as the rst of
Boyles seriesof fortythree New ExperimentsPhy5ic0mec/mnical
Touchingthe Springof theAir (1660).It was this operationalvacuum
that wasto standfor the impossibletask of traveling to the top of the
atmosphere,and Boyleoffereda mechanicalaccountof the tactileexperienceof working the sucker.
The exhaustedreceiverof the air pump was,however,lesssignicant asan experimentin itself than asa spacein which onemight
do experiments(g. 22).The receiverhad a removablebrasscoverat
HOW wAsITKNowNf
99
cohesionof smoothmarbledisks.
Boyleaimedto explainthiserect by
referenceto air pressure,predicting
that when the receiver was exhausted
the disks would separate.Source:
RobertBoyle,Continuation of New
ExperimentsPhysicomechanical
Touching the Spring and Weight
ted into the glassglobe,and the rest of Boyles seriesof trials on the
properties of air consisted of observati()ns of objects and apparatus
he had totally, or almosttotally, exhaustedthe receiver,then the mercury in the long tube would descendall the way,or almostall the way,
to that contained
had
carriedhis barometernot just up the Puy de Dome but to the very top
of the oceanofiair surrounding the earth, this is what he would have
observed.And indeed,whereasthere wasno changein the mercurys
height when the barometerwasplacedin the receiverand sealedup,
I00
CHAPTER TWO
perimental phenomenamechanically,and this Boylecalledthepressureor the springof the air. From theseand other phenomenaof the
pump Boyleinferred that the corpusclesofair probablyhavean elas
tic, springlike characterthat resistsforcesacting upon them and that
expandswhen thoseforcesare diminished.The more forceyou exert
on an enclosedbody of air, the more force it exertsback. When a
quantity of air wasremovedfrom the receiver,the expansiveforceof
the remainingair wasreduced.The mercuryofthe enclosedbarometer descendedbecause,
asBoylesaid,therewasthen insuff1cientprc5sureto resistthe weight of the mercury.8
7. Practitionersdisputedat times violentlywhether
HOW wAsI'rKNowN?
101
I02
CHAPTER TWO
to be aware ofwhich
103
I04
CHAPTER TWO
HOW WASITKNOWN?
I05
English practicewasto reject the legitimacy within natural philosophy ofexplicitly theological,moral, and political considerations.The
Book of Nature that the modern natural philosopherread was un
derstoodasGodsbook, but it was often said that a mechanicalphilosophyhad to treat nature in its mechanicalaspects.So,for example,
in the 1660s,criticsof Boyleswork on the spring ofthe air challenged
the adequacyof a mechanicalaccountand urged the necessityof taking spiritual powersinto consideration.Boyle respondedby noting
his own profound piety but reminding his critics oftheproper boundariesof natural philosophy:
None is more willing [than myself] to acknowledgeand
venerateDivine Omnipotence,[but] our controversyis not
what God can do, but about what can be done by natural
agents,not elevatedabovethe sphereof nature, . . . and in
the judgment of true philosophers,I suppose[the mechani
cal] hypothesiswould needno other advantage. . . than that
in ours things are explicatedby the ordinary courseof nature, whereas in the other recourse must be had to miracles.
1o6
CHAPTER TWO
Making KnowledgePublic
It is traditional
of the Scientic
Revolution
through the textsofindividual practitioners.Yet the individual natural philosopherdid not makeknowledgeall alone,andthe very ideaof
knowledgeimplicatesa public and sharedcommodity,to becontrasted
with the individualsstateofbelie To establishits credibility and to
secureits statusasknowledge,individual beliefor experiencehasto be
effectivelycommunicatedto others.Indeed,modernnatural philoso
phersdevoted much reflective attention and practical work to the
questionof just how experiencecould effectivelyand reliably make
the passage
from the privateto the public domain.Many practitioners
judged that the widely diagnosedsicknessof contemporarynatural
philosophyproceededfrom its excessivelyprivate or individualistic
character,and the next chapterwill considersomedangersthat were
seento flow from intellectualindividualism and privacy.
We have seenthat the seventeenth-centuryEnglish empirical
tradition laid specialemphasison factual particulars as the secure
foundationfor natural philosophicalknowledge.Ifparticular experi-
107
108
CHAPTER TWO
communica-
109
IIO
CHAPTER TWO
III
II2
CHAPTER TWO
The
113
of whiteness.
I6. Refraction designatesthe bending oflight asit passesfrom one transparent medium to another,sayfrom air to glass.Refrangibility refersto the capacityof
different forms of light to be bent or the different capacitiesof media to bend light.
II4
CHAPTER TWO
Unlike Boyle's
experimentalreports,Newtons communications
to the Royal Societyin the early 1670sabout his work with prisms
offered only the most sketchyaccountsof manipulations and their
circumstances.
Although the experimentsconcernedwere presented
as decisive,their reporting was far from detailed. Indeed, Newton
acknowledgedthe relatively stylized manner of his experimentalreporting, saying in mitigation that the historical narration of these
experimentswould makea discoursetoo tedious& confused,& therefore I shall rather lay down the Doctrine Firstand then, for its examination, give you an instanceor two of the Experiments,
asa specimen
ofthe rest. Later he justied the sparseness
of his experimentalnarrativesby drawing an implicit contrastwith Boyleanpractice:It is
not number of Experiments,but weight to be regarded;& where one
will do, what need ofimany?
115
116
CHAPTER TWO
demonstrations.
Newton
stood ac-
cusedof offending againstthe modestyand good mannersappropriate to proper natural philosophyin Boylesidiom.
But Newton, it might besaid,had not somuch violatedthe rules
of one game as he had insistedon the legitimacy of playing by the
rulesof anothergame.The certaintyof mathematicaldemonstration
was what he wasafter, insofar asit could be legitimately attainedin
physicalinquiry. He wasnot contentwith probability,and he did not
acceptBoyleanlimits on the certaintyto behad in natural philosophy.
He hopedthat instead of the conjecturesand probabilitiesthat are
being blazonedabout everywhere,we shall nally achievea natural
sciencesupportedby the greatestevidence.Newtonsexpectationsof
physicalcertaintyarosefrom the mathematicalrather than experiential foundations of his natural philosophicalpractice.He rejected
physical theories unless they could be mathematically deduced
from experiment,but thosetheoriesthat could legitimately be sodeduced were to be spokenof with absolutecondence,not with the
cautionof the probabilist.18The aimso far asit waspossiblewas
to bind assentin iron chainsof mathematicaland logical deduction,
117
Iree
WHAT
WAS THE
KNOWLEDGE
FOR?
Natural PhilosophyCuresItself
Seventeenth-centurymechanicalphilosophersattempted to discipline, if not in all casesto eliminate,teleologicalaccountsof the natural world. Yet as ordinary actorsthey acceptedthe propriety of a
teleologicalframework for interpreting human cultural action,and
with someexceptionsso do modern historiansand socialscientists:
the very identity of human actionas actionrather than behavior
embodiessomenotion ofits point, purpose,or intention. An account
of the action of someonewaving goodbyeis not adequatelygiven by
detailing the muscular movementsinvolved. Similarly, any interpretation of what natural philosophersbelievedand what they did
hasto deal with thepurposes
of natural knowledge.In general,what
wasnatural knowledgefor?Specically,to what endswasa reformof
natural knowledgeundertakenin the seventeenthcentury?Natural
knowledgewas given its shapein contextsof purposiveuse,and its
meaningsemergedfrom its uses.
One may take it asa matter of coursethat early modern natural
philosophersasa group werein part motivatedby a desireto produce
and extend true, or probably true, knowledge.Arguably, so are all
scholarsworthy of the name,ofall typesand at all times.Iust because
119
I20
CHAPTER THREE
I21
I22
CHAPTER THREE
philosophical reformers diagnosedtraditional wordiness and litigiousnessas symptomsof intellectual disease,mercantileas well as
polite societyoften sawthe wrangling scholarasa gure of fun, uselessto civil society.An English critic of the universitiesin the 16505
indicted Scholastic culture as a civil war of words, a verbal contest, a
William Gilbert announcedhis cavalierdisregardfor commonopinion: We carenaught,for that, aswe haveheld that [natural] philosophy is for the few. Galileo vigorouslyendorsedthoseexclusionary
sentiments,attemptingto drive a wedgebetweenthe perceptionsand
competences
of the commonpeopleand thoseappropriateto genuine mathematicaland natural philosophicalexpertise.The delivery
of truth aboutthe natural world wasto bethe preferentialpreserveof
I23
thosewho possessed
specialcompetence.Despitemuch early Royal
Societyrhetoric stressingthe virtues of a more open natural philosophical practice, social realities remained substantiallyrestrictive.
Artisans, for example,were rarely representedin the new scientic
societiesspringing up throughout Europeif not alwaysfor reasons
of overt socialdistaste,then becausecriteria of intellectual competencepresupposeda courseof formal educationthrough which the
massesseldompassed.The view that mathematics,and much of natural philosophy,ought to be producedby and for certiably expert
practitionerscontinued to be an important sentimentright through
our period of interest and beyond.There was nothing new in this.
Historians appreciatethat evenin antiquity there wasa gulf of competenceand comprehensionseparatingthe mathematicalsciences
including much that boreon interpreting the physicalworldfrom
the understandingofeven ordinarily educatedpeople.The book that
is said to have marked
the culmination
of the Scientic
Revolution
124
CHAPTER THREE
niquesfor securing
knowledge
areevidently
inadequate,
andnew
I25
proceduresare canvassed.Method, broadly construed,is the preferred remedy for problems of intellectual disorder, but which
methodis it to be?Here the overarchingproblemto which correct
methodis supposedto be an answeris skepticismasthe solventof
all securebelief.How to boundskepticism?How to manageit within
safelimits? How evenwith Descartescan one turn skepticism
on itself and, by taking it to its limits, showthat what remainsis im
mune to doubt? Debatesover method take on greater signicance
when it is reckonedthat the order of societydependsin large measure on arriving at and then disseminatingthe correct method for
securingbelief.Addressingthe problemof knowledge,and the skepticism that corrodesbelief, is what links philosopherswork to the
concernsof the wider society.This permanentcrisisof Europeaninstitutions during the early modern period affectedattitudestoward
knowledgein general,and it affectedattitudesto natural knowledge
for reasonsthat weretouchedon in earlierchaptersand will bedevelopedbelow.Knowledgeof nature wasconsidereddeeplyrelevantto
problemsoforder, not leastbecause
naturewaswidely understoodto
be a divinely written book whoseproper reading and proper interpretation had the potential to secureright belief and thus to guaranteeright conduct.Conversely,right belief and conductcould always
potentially be subvertedby improper waysof readingand interpreting the Book of Nature.
The permanentcrisisof Europeanorder was,then, the general
backdropto debatesover natural knowledgeand its relation to state
power and socialorder. Yet appreciationsof that relationshipwere
also shapedby more specific European developments,one set of
which concernedchangesin the sortsof peoplewho participatedin
natural knowledge and associatedchangesin expectationsabout
what natural knowledge was good for. If natural philosophy remainedthe exclusiveconcernofprofessionalscholars,therewould be
no particular reasonto suggestthat its contentiousness
required urgent remedy.Medievaland early modern scholarlylife just wascontentious,and few university scholarssaw anything very wrong in
this. Yet interestin natural knowledgewasneverthe soleprerogative
I26
CHAPTER THREE
I27
writer
was more
enthusiastic
or more
inuential
than
I29
Authoritarian statesreckonedthat mattersof belief and its professionwere their legitimateconcerns.Individualism in belief, rather
than being celebratedas a condition for intellectual progress,appearedto crown servantsan objectof anxiety.It was taken as a responsibility of the state,and the state church, to monitor and to
managebelief in general,and when Baconannouncedthat he had
taken all knowledgeto bemy province, he wasemployingthe ElizabethanEnglish for the Latin proz/z'nciaan
administrativedistrict
of the centralgovernment.Knowledgewasto be effectivelybrought
under the administrativecompetence
ofthe state.Baconwasworried
about centrifugal intellectual tendenciesassociatedwith the Protestant Reformationof the sixteenthcentury and especiallyits stresson
individuals competenceto determinetruth for themselves,by their
own lights. He condemned intellectual individualists as voluntaries, and later commentatorsdenouncedreligious enthusiasts
who claimedwithout the mediation of prieststo know divine
truth by direct inspiration.
To be sure, a measure of intellectual free action was the condition for reformafter all, the Schoolmen were criticized for their
130
CHAPTER THREE
edgewasconceivedasan instrumentof statepower.A statethat abdicatedits right to monitor what wasbelievedwasputting its authority
at risk. Second,asBaconfamouslysaid,Human knowledgeand human power meetin one. The ability ofnatural philosophicalknowledge to yield practical outcomesand to produce the means for
VVIIATVVAS
THE KN()WLliI)()}i FOR?
131
2;. An imaginary z/isit by King Louis XIV (center) and his minister Colbert
I33
the London organizationthat advertisedits Baconianinspirationexpectedmuch in the way of concreteroyal support but receivedlittle
more from the English Crown than the pieceofparchment that chartered it. Nevertheless,there are severalways the emergenceof the
new scientic societiesthroughout Europe was a responseto concernsfor order similar to thosethat animatedBaconswritings.
First, the societiesgenerally representedalternative organizational forms to the universities,and in many casestheir leadersexplicitly condemnedhierarchicaland disputatiousuniversitiesassites
t for a genuinenatural philosophy.Baconsaidthat the universities
are the seatand continent of the distempers of learning, while
proponentsof the Royal Societymany of them university men
identied
the authoritarianism
ofthe universities
as inimicable
to the
134
CHAPTER THREE
orderlinessand the rules of proper behaviorin making and evaluating natural knowledge: not for them the wrangling of traditional
scholarlylife. The legitimacyof the new knowledgewasto be made
manifestin the civility and goodorder ofits collectiveproduction.A
publicist of the early Royal Societyof London announcedthat its
membershipwas composedfor the most part of Gentlemen, free
and unconfined, and, indeed, one marked contrast with traditional
case for
I35
ment of Boylesmattersof fact dependedon protecting the boundaries between the factual and the theoretical, so the constitution of the
RoyalSocietyof London explicitly prohibited its fellowsfrom speaking of religion or politics during the courseofits scientic meetings,
and similar prohibitionswereinscribedin the chartersofa numberof
Continental societies.A precursorto the French AcadmieRoyale
desSciences,for example,announcedits intention that in the meetings, there will never be a discussionof the mysteriesof religion or
the affairs of state.2Suchsubjects,it wasthought, could only divide
people,and by the 1660sthere was already somebitter experience
with philosophicalsocietiesthat split apartalonggrand metaphysical
fault lines.Chapter2 notedthat many suchmattersweredeemedinherently subjective,not amenableto rational treatmentand rational
agreement.The reformednatural philosophywasto offer its participantsa quiet and orderly spacefrom which an objectiveaccountof
nature might credibly emergeand in which practitionerscould civilly disagreewithout bringing down the whole houseof knowledge.
Scienceas Religion?Handmuid
Late twentiethcentury modernsare accustomedto hearing about
the inevitable oppositionbetweenscienceand religion, if, indeed,
religion gures at all in our contemporaryunderstandingof science
and its history.Possiblymuchof what I havewritten in the preceding
chaptersaboutthe mechanicalphilosophy,and aboutthe relation betweena reformed natural knowledgeand secularconcerns,hasbeen
read from that perspective.It is time to systematicallycorrect any
suchimpression,for the sensein which early modernchangesin nat2. In practice,theseprohibitions amountedto a ban only on controversialitems
oftheologyand politics.In societieswhosemembersall took the existenceofa creator
God for granted,references,for example,to the divine origins ofthe world would not
count asreligiousdiscussion,but allusionsto the scopeof human free will, or to the
physicalreality of transubstantiation,or to the proper relationsbetweenchurch and
statemight well be treatedascontroversialand divisive.
136
CHAPTERTHREE
ural philosophy threatened religion or were animated by irreligious impulsesneedsto be very carefully qualied or evendenied.
In speakingaboutthe purposesofchangingnatural knowledgein the
seventeenthcentury,it is obligatory to treat its usesin supportingand
extendingbroadly religiousaims.
There wasnosuchthing asa necessary
seventeenthcentury
conflict betweenscienceand religion, but there were a number of quite
specic problemsfor the relationsbetweenthe viewsof somenatural
philosophersand the interestsof somereligiousinstitutionsthat were
precipitatedby the changestreatedin precedingchapters.From the
medieval period Aristotelian natural philosophy had been Christianized in the culture of Scholasticism,and over a long period of
adaptation,whatever mismatchesthere might originally have been
betweensomepagan perspectives
and Christian doctrine had been
ironed out, reconciled,or simply set aside.The Roman Catholic
Church not only had learnedto live with the philosophiesofancient
Greeceand Rome,it had activelyshapedsomeofthem into systemsof
belief whosecompatibility with Scripture and the doctrinesof the
churchfatherswasassumed.The institutionsofChristian religion had
evolvedtogetherwith traditional bodiesof natural knowledge,notably including thoseassociatedwith Aristotle, Galen, and Ptolemy.
This meantthat anysystematicchallengeto traditional natural philosophy mig/ztbe taken asan attackon elementsof Christianity itself.
So,for example,Galileosadvocacyof Copernicanismasa physically true accountof the cosmoswasapplaudedby somequartersof
the Catholic Church but eventuallyencounteredvigorousopposition
from the Inquisition. In denyingthe geocentricand geostaticsystem
of Ptolemy,Galileo wastakenasrejectingthe truth of Scripture.The
Bible did indeedmakeperiodicreferencesto the stability of the earth
and the movementof the sun, and Galileo accountedit both very
piousto sayand prudent to afrm that the holy Bible canneverspeak
untruth. The referencein the Book of Joshuato the sun standing
still wasto beacceptedastrue. But hereGalileo insistedon at leastthe
equalstatusof GodsBook of Nature asa sourceof truth and, consequently,on at leastthe equalstatusof natural philosophersasexperts
137
138
CHAPTERTHREE
139
140
CHAPTER THREE
I41
many seventeenthcenturycommentatorsfound the new philosopherspromisesnot just falsebut funny. On the other hand, we have
already noted intimate links betweenthe mixed (or impure)
mathematicalsciences
and military and productivetechnologygoing
backto antiquity, and thereis no reasonto think that suchlinks were
not strengthenedthrough the early modern period. Moreover,there
can be little doubt that the vast expansionof natural historical and
geographicalknowledge that attended the voyagesof exploration
and conquestcontributed signicantly to the making of empiresand
fortunes. It is the link betweentheory as a causeand technical
changeasan effect that remainsat issue.
The possibleeffectof economicconcernson changesin scientic
knowledgehasalsobeendebatedat length.In the 19305RobertMerton famouslyclaimed to haveshoweda clusteringof scientic work
of the early Royal Societyin areasof potential economicor military
application,arguing that thesefoci ofinterest were evidenceofthe
inuence of wider socialconcernson the dynamicsof science.Here
again the operative word is potential, since historians have had
greatdifculty in establishingthat anyofthesespheresoftechnologi
cally or economicallyinspiredscienceboresubstantialfruit. Baconian
rhetoric,that is to say,translatedpoorly into practicalreality,and the
military-industrialscientic complexis more properly regardedasa
creation ofthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is, however, one
thing to look for the usesof scientificknowledgeand anotherto consider the spheresof practical activity engagedin by scientically
trained people.Scientificallyderived information,skills,and perhaps
attitudeswere important resourcesin all sortsof practical activities,
and there is no problem in identifying many seventeenthcentury
natural philosophersand natural historianswho usedtheseresources
in economicallyand militarily consequentialways.Marxist historians
have made particularly valuablecontributions toward understanding how closelyreforms in natural knowledgewere associatedwith
new social and cultural
relations
between
scholars
and crafts-
I42
CHAPTER THREE
To presentdaysensibilitiesit is the mechanicalaspectofthe new natural philosophythat must appearmostseriouslyat oddswith religious
belief.If natureis a greatmachine,then what needof God or evenof
spiritual agenciesto understandhow nature works? Yet it was preciselythe mechanicalconceptionof naturethat generatedsomeof the
most powerful and persuasiveargumentsthat the new practicewas
religionstruest handmaid.Justbecausemachineswere conceivedof
as impersonaltheir characteristicsto be juxtaposedto the intelligent and purposefullife of humanbeingsa mechanicalmetaphor
for nature posedquestionsabout the apparentevidencein nature of
intelligenceand purpose.How wasit that, ifnature wasreally a great
machine,one wasto explain the appearance
of complexpatterns,vitality, and purposiveness?
Put anotherway,how ought a mechanical
philosophyto deal with thoseaspectsof nature to which traditional
organicistand animist philosophiesrespondedsostrongly?
That nature showedsolid evidenceof designthat it was artfully contrivedwas wholly acceptedby mechanicalphilosophers.
But ifthat designwasnot to beaccountedfor by the indwelling intelligenceof material nature, then artful contrivancehad to arisefrom
somethingoutsidenature itself. This train of inferencewasthe basis
of the most pervasiveseventeenth-centuryargument for the exis
tenceand intelligenceofa deitythe argumentfromdcszgnwhich
linked the practiceof scienceto religiousvaluesfrom the early modern period through the nineteenth century.5The clock metaphor
5. The argument from designwasthe cornerstoneofnatural theology,that is, the
practiceof establishingthe existenceand attributesof God from the evidenceof nature. It was the premisesand reasoningof the argument from designthat Charles
143
again. Imagine that one is walking along a road and finds a watch
lying on the ground. Taking it apart,oneobserveshow intricately its
mechanicalparts are put togetherand how well adaptedthey are to
the evident function of the watch in telling time. In just the same
way, those who observedand reflectedon the natural world were
confrontedwith the solidevidenceofdesign and the inescapable
conclusionthat there wasan intelligent designer,onewhoseintelligence
wasunimaginablygreaterthan that of the human articer.
So Boyle wrote of the material parts of the human body asmechanicalcontrivances.And when the mechanicallyinformed anatomist has learnedthe structure,use,and harmony of the partsof the
body,he is ableto discernthat matchlessengineto beadmirably contrived, in order to the exercise of all the motions and functions,
whereto it wasdesigned:and yet [this anatomist],had he nevercontemplateda human body,could neverhaveimaginedor designedan
engineofno greaterbulk, any thing nearsotted to perform all that
variety of actionswe daily seeperformed either in or by a human
body. The more we learn aboutthe worldengine,the more we are
persuadednot just of the existenceofa creator God but alsoof his
creativewisdom. No suchenginecould conceivablyhavecomeinto
existenceby the chanceconcurrenceof corpuscles.In the 16705the
FrenchCartesianNicolasMalebranche(1638-1715)agreed:When I
seea watch, I havereasonto conclude,that there is someIntelligent
Being,sinceit is impossiblefor chanceand haphazardto produce,to
rangeand position all its wheels.How then could it be possible,that
chance,and a confusedjumble ofatoms,shouldbecapableofranging
in all men and animals,suchabundanceofdifferent secretspringsand
engines,with that exactness
and proportion? This clearevidenceof
contrivancein the natural world was,asBoylesaid,one ofthe great
motives to religiousbelief,and thosewhosenatural knowledgewas
greatestwere saidto bemostdisposedto venerateGodscreativewisdom. In 1691the English naturalistand divine Iohn Ray(1627-1705)
Darwin's
midnineteenthcentury materialist accountof evolution by natural selection wasdirectedagainst.
144
CHAPTER THREE
That the Eye is employedby Man and all Animals for the
useof Vision, which, asthey are framed, is so necessary
for
them,that they could not live without it; and God Almighty
knew that it would be so;and seeingit is soadmirably tted
and adaptedto this use,that all the Wit and Art ofmen and
Angelscould not havecontrived it better,if sowell; it must
needsbe highly absurdand unreasonableto afrm, either
that it wasnot designedat all for this use,or that it is impossible for man to know whether it was or not.
scopically
magnzedquadrant
ofa stemof thecommon
sumactree( Rhus).
Notethedetailedrepresentation
of vessels
whosephysiological
functions
Grewsought
to identify(partlybyanalogy
with betterunderstood
animal
structures).
These
features
canbeseenwithouta microscope,
butmuchmore
detailis revealedmicroscopically.
Grew wasconcerned
to showwhatstructures
variousplantshadin commonand in what waystheywerespecifically
dzerentiated,bothservingto display"the Constantand UniversalDesignof
Nature. His observations
weresimilar to thosemadeslightlyearlierby the
Italian MarcelloMalpzghi(1628-94). Grew wasthensecretaryof Royal
Society
ofLondon,andhisbookwassponsored
bytheSociety
anddedicated
to
itspatronKingCharles
II. Thededicatory
epistle
celebrated
thecomplex
design
microscopically
observable
in eventhemostcommon
naturalobjects:
"Onewho
walksaboutwith themeanest
Stick,holdsa Pieceof Nature} Handicraft,
whichzr surpasses
themostelaborate
Woofor Needle-Work
in theWorld."
Source:NehemiahGrew,The Anatomy of Plants (1682).
I47
148
CHAPTERTHREE
I49
practitionersanxiouslydebatedwhetherCartesianphilosophymade
that role asevident asthe effectivedefenseof Christianity required.
Later in the seventeenthcentury a group of turbulent deists
throughout WesternEuropesoughtto restrictGodsrole in natureto
his creativeact and his attributesto wisdom in creating a perfectly
running worldmachine. English mechanical philosophers from
Boyle to Newton were not content with sucha conceptionof God,
arguing that it was philosophicallyincorrectaswell astheologically
unsafe.
I50
CHAPTER THREE
I51
152
CHAPTER THREE
to collapsein on itself. A periodicreformation of solarsystemicorder was required, and Newton maintained that such reformations
had occurred, as evinced by the systemscontinued existence.It
might be that God used natural agents to effect this periodic
reformationNewton speculatedabout the role of cometsin this
respector it might bethat he interveneddirectly. Either way,a vol
untarist conceptionofGodsactivity in naturewasbuilt into the heart
of the Newtonian system.It wasconsiderednot an imperfectionbut a
6. Although the radical sectswere effectivelycrushedby the restorationof the
English monarchyin 1660,broadly similar cultural tendencies(including the deism
mentioned above)erupted again in the late seventeenthand early eighteenthcenturies, when they were counteredby philosophicalargumentscomparableto Boyles.
I53
154
CHAPTER THREE
Chapter 2 noted that many leadingfellows of the RoyalSocietyprofessedbelief in demonsand witches,and Boyle wrote that suchbeliefs weretheologicallyuseful:To grant. . . that thereareintelligent
beingsthat are not ordinarily visible doesmuch conduceto the re
claiming . . . of atheists;they would help to enlargethe somewhat
too narrow conceptionsmenarewont to haveof the amplitudeof the
works of God. What the mechanicalphilosophersbelievedas mechanicalphilosopherswasnot coextensivewith what they might legitimately believewastrue aboutthe world.
Moreover, somemechanicalphilosophersundertook to verify
spirit testimoniesto sort out thosethat might havea natural explanation from thosethat did notin order to reconstituteour supernatural knowledge on a rmer foundation. Testimony about
miraclesand the actionsof spirit had to bevigilantly policed.Uncontrolled reporting of spiritual actions,and uncontrolledbelief in miracles,worked to subvertlegitimateauthority and to corrupt religion.
Again, private belief might be socially dangerous.If uninstructed
155
I56
CHAPTERTHREE
tical with the scopeof the worlds phenomena.And other practitioners, equally persuadedof the explanatoryvalue of mechanism,
acceptedno suchlimitations on what kinds of accountsthe natural
philosophermight properly bring to bear on the world. On the one
hand, Descartesproceededby imagining a hypothetical natural
world that God might havecreated,a world wholly amenableto mechanicalexplanation:this wasthe world the natural philosopherwas
to explain.On the other hand,suchwriters asRobertBoyleand Iohn
Ray were concernedto trace the evidenceof Godspurposeand design in the world he did create.That is why they were comfortable
with the philosophicalpropriety of giving explanationsin terms of
purpose when, as they reckoned, the evidence of nature unambiguously supportedsuch conclusions.The argument from design
that constitutedthe keystoneof natural theology wasin this sensea
teleologicalexplanation:it explainedthe adaptationof natural structure to function in termsof divine purpose.Thesedifferencesin ex
planatory strategies reect different conceptions of the proper
businessof natural philosophersand natural historians.All practitioners might agreein principle that a reformed understandingof
nature should allay doubt, secureright belief, and ensurethe adequatefoundationsfor moral order,yet they divergedin their notions
of how natural inquiry might be framed to bestfit it for thosetasks.
For somephilosophersthere was to be a proper role for nonmechanicaland teleologicalexplanationsin the understandingof nature. In such casesone should not speak of an incomplete
mechanism,for that might imply that the businessof a natural philosopherwas just to give mechanicalexplanations,regardlessof the
nature of the phenomenaand of the evidenceavailableto support
suchexplanations.Boyle,for example,offered a measureddefenseof
the philosophicalpropriety of nal causes,most especially,but not
exclusively,in the explanationof living things: There is no part of
nature known to us wherein the considerationof final causesmay so
justly take place,as in the structure of the bodiesof animals. The
sheercomplexityof animatestructures,aswell astheir evidentadaptation of structureto function, speciallyimpelledbelief in the super-
157
I58
CHAPTERTHREE
I59
I60
CHAPTER THREE
rious unionsthe union ofa rock with gravity, of the ngers with
the hand, of different kinds of tissuein the samebodybut in the
end what united mind and matter in human beingswas a primary,
and therefore unexplicated,notion. If the mind is unextendedin
space,whereis it? At what placedo the two realmsmake contact?
Here Descartesdid offer a candidateresponse.Iust asall sensations
and impressionsmust cometogetherto be the objectsof thought, so
one is to look for a little organ,not duplicatedin bilateral symmetry,
in the middle of the massof the brain (g. 30).This was the small
pineal gland, the seatof imagination and common sense,indeed,
the seatof the soul. Tiny, and tenuouslysupportedonly by surrounding blood vessels,it was well adaptedto transfer movements
from the body to the mind and from the mind to the body.The ultimate mysteryresided,ttingly, in apoint.
Pressinghis program of mechanicalexplanation as far as he
could make it go, Descartesendedwith a notion that wasitself outsidethe scopeofhis mechanicalphilosophyand that evenappearedto
violate someof his mostcherishedprinciples.The uniquenessof human beings owed from the mysteriousinteraction betweenwhat
could be encompassedwithin a mechanicalframework and what
could not. Human beings have purposive minds, and purposive
minds, after all, movematter.As you turn the pagesofthis book,you
manifest the causal role of mind in nature. And just as mechanism
I61
gs I
w V
33-\
Disinterestedness
and the Usesof Natural Knowledge
I havesaid that there is nothing like an essence of the Scientic
Revolution,and I havesoughtwhereverpossibleto introducereaders
162
CHAPTER THREE
fails to be scienceifit
163
whereas talk of what exists in the natural world can be rational, disinterested, and consensual. That sentiment too was an achievement
condition:
I64
CHAPTERTHREE
One consequence
of the presentationof sciencedevelopedin the
seventeenthcenturyto be sure,oneofthe leastimportantis that
manyof the categorieswe haveavailablefor talking aboutscienceare
just thosewhosehistory and sociologywe wish to understand.So,for
example,if we seekto understandthe inuence of societyon science, or the relationshipbetweenscienceand values, we run the
risk of taking for granted the existenceof entitieswhosedistinctive
nessin our culture wasa product of the ScientificRevolution.It has
beensuggestedthat unlesswe invent a specialnew languageto talk
aboutthesethings we will remaintrappedin an unsatisfactorymodern condition. I am rather more optimistic. I think that aswe come
to understandmore aboutthe processes
that madeour culture what it
is, words like scienceand society will cometo havenew mean-
I05
ings.And I havesomehopethat at leasta few readerswill think differently aboutscienceand societynow than they did at the beginning
of this book.
One nal awkwardness
remains to be confronted.
The cultural
Q3i5[z'ogra}96ic
Cssay
176
189
I68
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHICESSAY
I69
I7O
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
2. HistoriographicalRevisionsand Debates
Traditional views of the Scientic Revolutionhavebeenhotly disputed,and
evenrejected,by somerecenthistorians.GroundsofdissenthaveVaried,but
in one way or anotherthis newerwork tendsto beskepticalof the coherence
and integrity ofwhat had previouslybeenunderstoodasthe Scientic Revolution. Revisionisthistoriographyis suspiciousof talk about its essence,its
coherentlyand effectivelymethodicalcharacter,and its unambiguousmod-
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
I71
emity. This newer scholarshipis reluctantto take asits major taskcelebrating the heroic achievementsofGreat Men Making Modernity," preferring
to interpret historical gures aims in context_ualand often in mundane
terms. Such work often seeksto uncoverthe voicesof lesser participants
(and sometimesof the laity) and to tracethe role of forms of culture traditionally consideredperipheralto, or evenoutside,scienceproper." Within
the past fteen yearsor so,somehistorianswithout necessarilyrejecting
the conceptualidentity ofthe Scientic Revolution-have becomeintensely
interestedin the concretepractice:through which scientic concepts(and
evenscientic facts)wereproduced.Debatesoverthe proper descriptionand
interpretation of the Scientic Revolutionhavetendedto developa highly
reflective historiographical character:what you say about the Scientic
Revolution is now widely presumedto implicate fundamentalconceptions
of what it is, in general,to producean authenticallyhistoricalaccount.
Formal writings on the historiographyofthe Scientic Revolutionhave
had a partisanquality for a long time, reflecting the historical communitys
deep-rooteddisagreementsabout what it is that needsto be interpretedand
how it is bestinterpreted.A thorough recentsurveyofsomeoftheseissuesis
H. Floris Cohen,TheScienticRevolution.A HistoriographiazlInquiry (Chicago:University ofChicago Press,1994).Its bibliography is a usefulstarting
point, but someof Cohenscharacterizationsof other historiansviewsmust
be treated with caution. A balancedhistoriographicsurveythat lucidly sets
out many of the issuesinvolved in giving a genuinely historical accountof
the Scientic Revolution is *Roy Porters The Scientic Revolution: A
Spokein the Wheel? in Revolutionin History,ed. Roy Porter and Mikulas
Teich (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,1986),290-316,while Reappraisal:of the Scientic Revolution,ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert
S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990),containsa
number of excellentpapers,of which specialnote should be taken here of
Lindberg's
introductory essayConceptions of the Scientic Revolution
from Bacon to Buttereld: A Preliminary Sketch, 126and *Ernan
McMullins Conceptions of Sciencein the Scientic Revolution, 27-92,
which nicely surveyshistorical variation in the denition of scienceand in
appropriatemethodology.For overviewsof relevantnational differencesin
science,The ScientificRevolutionin National Context,ed. Roy Porter and
Mikulas Teich (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1992),has some
ne historiographical essays(and seethe substantialessay-reviewof this
book by Lorraine Daston, The SeveralContextsof the Scientic Revolution, Minerva32 [1994]:108-14).
I72
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC
ESSAY
173
The curious but consequentialhistory of thesehistoriographicaldebatesis briey reviewed in StevenShapin,Discipline and Bounding: The
History and Sociology of Science as Seen through the Externalism
Internalism Debate, History of Science30 (I992): 333~69.The classicbtc
noir of Marxist externalismis a long essayby the Sovietphysicistand philos
opher Boris Hessen,The Socialand EconomicRootsof NewtonsPrincipia, in Scienceat the CrossRoads,ed. N. I. Bukharin et al. (London: Frank
Cass,I971;orig. publ. I93I), 149-212;seealsoEdgar Zilsel, The Sociological Rootsof Science,AmericanIournal ofSociology47 (1942):245-79;Franz
Borkenau, The Sociologyof the MechanisticWorldPicture, Sciencein
ContextI (1987):Io927 (art. orig. publ. 1932);Henryk Grossmann,The
SocialFoundationsof MechanisticPhilosophyand Manufacture,Sciencein
ContextI (I987): 129-80(art. orig. publ. 1935);alsoseeGeorgeClark, Science
and SocialWelfarein the Age ofNeu/ton, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1970;orig. publ. I937);and Robert M. Young, Marxism and the History of
Science,in Companionto theHistoryofMoa'ern
Science(p. 172above),7786.
The Marxist tradition in the study of sciencehas recently lost much of its
former vigor, but it is by no meansdefunct: for recent continuations of
broadly Marxist sensibilitiesin the study of early modern science,seeworks
by IamesIacoband MargaretJacob(pp.204-5 below);RichardHadden and
Frank Swetz(both p. 180below); and Gideon Freudenthal,Atomand Individual in the Ageof Newton: On the Genesis
of the MechanisticWorld View,
trans.PeterMcLaughlin (Dordrecht: D. Reidel,I986;orig. publ. 1982).The
I938 work of the American sociologistRobert K. Merton on the relation
betweenscienceand religion in seventeenth-century
England (p. 195below),
though it carefully dissociateditself from Marxist externalism,was neverthelessalsoan important target of attack,and the historiographyof Alex-
I74
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
practitioner
andthesocialrelations
of science
werecanvassed
in A. Rupert
Hall, The Scholar and the Craftsman in the Scientic Revolution, in Criti-
3. Frameworksand Disciplines
A. The Mechanical Philosophyand the Physical Sciences
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
I75
mcanisme
(Paris:I. Vrin, 1943);PeterDear,Mersenne
andtheLearningof the
Schools(Ithaca: Cornell University Press,1988),chap. 6; and Gaukrogers
biographyof Descartes(p. 209below), 146-52(and chap.3 for IsaacBeeck
man). Fundamental problems with dening the coherence,intelligibility,
and cultural identity of the mechanicalphilosophy are treated in "Alan
Gabbeysimportant paper The MechanicalPhilosophyand Its Problems:
Mechanical Explanations, Impenetrability, and Perpetual Motion, in
ChangeandProgress
in ModernScience,
ed.JosephC. Pitt (Dordrecht: D. Re
idel, 1985),9-84; seealsoidem, The Caseof Mechanics:One Revolutionor
Many?" in Reappraisals
of theScienticRevolution(p. 171above),and ""Alan
Chalmers, The Lack of Excellencyof BoylesMechanical Philosophy,
Studiesin History andPhilosophyofScience24 (1993):541-64. And for problemswith the intelligibility of Newton's
treatmentof gravitation, see"Gerd
Buchdahl, Gravity and Intelligibility: Newton to Kant, in The MethodologicalHeritage of Newton, ed. Robert E. Butts and Iohn W. Davis
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1970),74-102. For acute historical
sensibilitiestoward the identity of the practiceknown as natural philosophy, with specialreferenceto its Newtonian form, seeSimon Schaffer,
Natural Philosophy, in The Fermentof Knowledge:Studiesin the Historiographyof Eighteenth-Century
Science,ed. George S. Rousseauand Roy
Porter (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,1980),55-91.
The rangeofphysical sciences
is ofcourseextensivelydiscussedin all of
the Great Tradition
I76
BIBLIOGRAPHICESSAY
archical interconnectedness
of creation,seeone of the dening exercisesin
the history of metaphysicalideas,Arthur 0. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of
Being:A Studyof the History of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press,1964;orig. publ. 1936),and also E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan
WorldPicture(Harmondsworth:Pelican,1972;orig. publ. 1943).For physicotheology and notions of the environment, seeClarence I. Glacken,
Traceson theRhodianShore:NatureandCulturein WesternThoughtfrom Ancient Timesto theEnd ofthe EighteenthCentury(Berkeley:University ofCali
fornia Press,1976;orig. publ. 1967),pt. 3; Yifu Tuan, TheHydrologicCycle
and the I/Visdomof God:A Themein Geoteleology
(Toronto: University of
Toronto Press,1968);idem, Topophilia.'
A Studyof EnvironmentalPerception,
Attitudes,and Values(EnglewoodCliffs, N.].: PrenticeHall, 1974);and Roy
Porter, The TerraqueousGlobe," in The Fermentof Knowledge(p. 175
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
177
above),285-324.For more s0cialhistoricallyorientedapproachesto changing views of nature, seeKeith Thomas, Religionand the Declineof Magic:
Studiesin PopularBeliefsin SixteenthandSeventeenth
Century England(Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1973),and idem, Man andthe Natural World:A History ofthe ModernSensibility(New York: Pantheon,1983).SeealsoAllen G.
Debus,Man andNature in theRenaissance
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,1978),and for feminist perspectivessee,for example,Carolyn
Merchant,TheDeathof Nature:Women,EcologyandtheScientic Revolution
(SanFrancisco:Harper SanFrancisco,1990;orig. publ. 1980).
C. Astronomyand Astronomers
Copernicanismand related issuesin theoreticaland observationalastronomy havebeenthoroughly discussedin Great Tradition textson the Scientic Revolution. A useful and conciseentry to this literature is I. R. Ravetz,
The CopernicanRevolution, in Companionto theHistoryof ModernScience
(p. 172above),201-16, while a detailedaccountof technicaland conceptual
issuesis ThomasS.Kuhn, TheCopernican
Revolution:PlanetaryAstronomyin
theDevelopment
of WesternThought(Cambridge:Harvard University Press,
1957).Arthur KoestlerssemipopulartreatmentofKepler, TychoBrahe,and
Galileo, The Sleepulalkers:
A History of Man's
ChangingVisionof the Universe
(New York: Macmillan, 1959),still has the capacityto stimulate and provoke.SeealsoAlexandre Koyr, TheAstronomicalRevolution:Copernicus
KeplerBorelli, trans. R. E. W. Maddison(New York: Dover Books,1992;
orig. publ. 1973),and hisFromtheClosedWorldto theInnite Universe(p. 169
above);Albert Van Helden, Measuringthe Universe:CosmicDimensions
from
Aristarchusto Halley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1985);Karl
Hufbauer, Exploring the Sun: SolarSciencesinceGalileo (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press,1991),1~32;Edward Grant, Planets,Stars,and
Orbs:TheMedievalCosmos,1200-1687(Cambridge:Cambridge University
Press,1994);Iean Dietz Moss,Noveltiesin theHeavens:Rhetoricand Science
in the CopernicanControversy(Chicago:University of ChicagoPress,1994);
IatnesM. Lattis, BetweenCopernicus
and Galileo:ChristophClaviusand the
Collapseof PtolemaicCosmology(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1994);variousessaysin The Copernican
Achievement,
ed. RobertS.Westman
(Berkeley:University of California Press,1975);Westman,The CopernicansandtheChurches,in GodandNature:HistoricalEssays
on theEncounter
betweenChristianityand Science,ed. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L.
I78
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
I79
scholarshipon the mathematicalpapersof key gures of early modern science,the historiographyofcarly modernmathematicsremainsrelativelyundevelopedin comparisonwith other strandsofscientic practice.Canonical
surveys,including accountsofimportant aspectsofearly modernmathemat
ics,areCarl B. Boyer,TheHistoryof CalculusandIts Conceptual
Development
(New York: Dover Books,1959;orig. publ. 1949),esp.chaps.4-5, and I. F.
Scott,A History of Mathematics:
FromAntiquity to theBeginningof theNineteenthCentury (London: Taylor and Francis, 1958),esp.chaps.6-12. An
overviewofseventeenth-centurydevelopmentsis D. T. Whiteside,Patterns
of MathematicalThought in the Seventeenth
Century,Archiz/e
for Historyof
ExactSciences
1 (1961):179-388,and an important assessment
ofmathemat
ics in relation to the intelligibility of the new mechanicsis Michael S. Mahoney, Innitesimals and TranscendentRelations:The Mathematicsof
Motion in the Late SeventeenthCentury, in Reappraisal:of the Scientic
Re;/olution(seep. 171above),461-91.For an accountofearly modernmathematicsin relation to contemporaryphilosophyof mathematics,seePaolo
Mancosu,Philosophyof Mathematics
andMathematicalPracticesin theSeventeenthCentury(Oxford: Oxford University Press,1995).Gaukrogersintellectual biographyof Descartes(p. 209below)is particularly rich in material
180
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
I81
StatisticalInference(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,1975);seealso
Lorraine Daston, ClassicalProbability in the Enlightenment(Princeton:
Princeton University Press,1988),chap. 1, and for social statistics,Peter
Buck, SeventeenthCenturyPolitical Arithmetic: Civil Strife and Vital Statistics, Isis68 (1977):67-84. Looselyrelatedstudiesof the origins and senses
of the notion of scientic laws or laws of nature include Iohn R. Milton,
an
I82
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
chemistry.The changinghistoriographyofseventeenthcenturychemistryis
well reviewedby]. V. Golinski, Chemistry in the Scientic Revolution, in
Reappraisal:
of the Scientic Revolution(p. 171above),367-96. Someof the
landmarks of the newer tendencyinclude Owen Hannaway,The Chemists
and the Word:TheDidactic Originsof Chemistry(Baltimore: Iohns Hopkins
University Press,1975);Charles Webster,The Great Instauration:Science,
Medicine,and Reform, I626166o (London: Duckworth, 1975);Bruce T.
Moran, The AlchemicalWorld of the GermanCourt: Occult Philosophyand
ChemicalMedicinein the Circleof Moritz of Hessen( I 572~I632) (Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner,1991);PamelaH. Smith, TheBusiness
of Alchemy:Science
and
Culture in the Holy RomanEmpire (Princeton:Princeton University Press,
1994);and Piyo Rattansiand Antonio Clericuzio, eds.,Alchemyand Chemistry in theSixteenthandSeventeenth
Centuries(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994).And
for further material on alchemy and Paracelsianismand their relation to
medicineand science,seeWalter Pagel,Paracclsus:
An Introductionto PhilosophicalMedicinein theEra of theRenaissance,
2d ed. (Basel:S. Karger, 1982;
orig. publ. I958);idem,]oan BaptistaVanHelmorzt:Reformerof Scienceand
Medicine(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,1982);Allen G. Debus,
TheChemicalPhilosophy:
Paracelsian
Science
andMedicinein theSixteenthand
SeventeenthCenturies,2 vols. (New York: ScienceHistory Publications,
1977);idem, The EnglishParacelsians
(London: Oldbourne, 1965);Betty Io
Teeter Dobbs,The Foundationsof Newton:Alchemy,or "The Hunting of the
GreeneLyon (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1975);idem, The
]anus Faceof Genius:TheRoleof Alchemyin Newton's
Thought(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press,1991);and William R. Newman, Gehennical
Fire: The Livesof GeorgeStarkey,an AmericanAlchemist(Cambridge:Har
vard University Press,1994).
The themesof matter theory, atomism,and corpuscularianismin the
Scientic Revolution,and especiallythe mechanicalinsistenceon an inanimateconceptionofmatter, havealsobeenextensivelydiscussed:for atomism
see,among many examples,Robert H. Kargon, Atomismin Englandfrom
Hariot to Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1966),the concisereview in
Martin Tamny,Atomism and the MechanicalPhilosophy,in Companionto
theHistory of ModernScience(p. 172above),5976o9,and variouscontribu
tions to Ernan McMullin, ed., The Conceptof Matter in ModernPhilosophy
(Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press,1978;orig. publ. 1963),pt.1.
For Baconsmatter theory and cosmology,see Graham Rees,Francis
BaconsSemi-ParacelsianCosmology, Ambix 22 (1975): 81-101; idem,
Francis BaconsSemi-Paracelsian
Cosmologyand the Great Instauration,
BIBLIOGRAPHICESSAY
I83
I84
BIBLIOGRAPHICESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHICESSAY
I85
Despitethe grip of mechanicalconceptionson medicaland physiological thought during the seventeenthcentury,historianshavenot in the main
found reasonsto celebratea body of notable,stillrecognizedachievements
owing from mechanism.Indeed,the mechanizationofmedicine and physiology has more usually beenidentied as a failed aspiration,and other
bases,including socialand political considerations,haveoften beenadduced
to accountfor the appealof mechanismin theseareas.For the English setting see,for example,TheodoreM. Brown, The Collegeof Physiciansand
the Acceptanceof Iatromechanismin England, 1665-1695,Bulletin ofthe
History ofMedicine44 (1970):12-30; idem, Physiologyand the Mechanical
Philosophyin MidSeventeenth-CenturyEngland, Bulletin of theHistoryof
Medicine51 (1977):25-54; Anita Guerrini, Iames Keill, GeorgeCheyne
and Newtonian Physiology,1690-1740,journal of theHistory of Biology 18
(1985):247-66; idem, The Tory Newtonians:Gregory,Pitcairneand Their
Circle, ]ournal ofBritish Studies25 (1986):288-311;idem, Archibald Pitcairneand Newtonian Medicine, MedicalHistory 31 (1987):70-83; Charles
Webster,The GreatInstauration(p. 182above);idem, William Harvey and
the Crisis of Medicinein JacobeanEngland, in William HarveyandHis Age
(p. 184above),1-27; and ChristopherHill, William Harvey and the Ideaof
Monarchy, in The Intellectual Revolutionof the Seventeenth
Century,ed.
CharlesWebster (London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1974),160-81; see
alsoHarold I. Cook, The New Philosophyand Medicine in SeventeenthCentury England, in Reappraisal:
of theScientificRevolution(p. 171above),
397-436.For Cartesianmechanisticphysiologyand medicine,seethe basic
accountin G. A. Lindeboom,Descartes
and Medicine(Amsterdam:Rodopi,
1978);Thomas S. Hall, The Physiologyof Descartes,in his edition of
Descartess
Treatiseof Man (Cambridge:Harvard University Press,1972),
xxvi-xlviii;
I86
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHICESSAY
I87
I88
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHICESSAY
I89
H. Sciences
of the Human Mind, Human Nature,
and Human Culture
I90
BIBLIOGRAPHIC
ESSAY
theSocialSciences
(Cambridge:MIT Press,I 994);idem, The Scientic Revolution and the Social Sciences," in The Natural and the Social Sciences:Some
CriticalandHistoricalPerspectives,
ed.I. BernardCohen(Dordrecht: Kluwer,
1994),153~2o3;andfor anthropology,seeMargaretT. I-Iodgen,EarlyAnthro
pologyin theSixteenthand Seventeenth
Centuries(Philadelphia:University of
PennsylvaniaPress,1964).For conceptionsof human history, seeShapiro,
Probabilityand Certainty,chap.4; Rossi,TheDark Abyssof Time (both p. 189
above);and IosephM. Levine,HumanismandHistory:Originsof ModernEnglishHistoriography(Ithaca:Cornell University Press,1987).There are now
somesuperb,and culturally resonant,accountsof the understanding and
treatment of mental illness in the seventeenthcentury: see,for example,
Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam.Madness,Anxiety, and Healing in
SeventeenthCentury
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981),and RoyPorter,MindForg'd
Manacles.'
A Historyof Madness
in England
from the Restorationto the Regency(Cambridge:Harvard University Press,
1987)
An important treatment of conceptionsof the person and the self in
seventeenth-centuryphilosophy is CharlesTaylorsSourcesof the Self: The
Making ofModern Identity (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1989),
esp. chaps. 8-10 (for Descartes,Locke, and Montaigne), while Norbert
EliassThe Ciz/ilizingProcess,
trans. Edmund Iephcott, 2 vols.(Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1978,I983;orig. publ. I939, 1969)is a sociologicalstudy ofchanging early modern formationsof the self that hasbeenimportantly drawn on
by a number of recenthistoriansof the Scientic Revolution. Specialmention shouldbemadeof the sweepingsurveyof changingmoral philosophical
idioms by *Alisdair Maclntyre, After Virtue:A Studyin Moral Theory,2d ed.
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984;orig. publ. 1981),
which draws attention to the effects ofthe Scientic Revolution and the En-
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
I91
4. Topicsand Themes
A. Experiment,Experience,
andtheDistributionof Knowledge
One of the characteristicmarks of current historiographyof early modern
scienceis a heightenedconcernwith thepracticesby which scientic knowl-
I92
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
I93
ment);andalsoCharles
B.Schmitt's
classic
Experience
andExperiment:A
Comparisonof Zabarella's
View with Galileosin De motu," Studiesin the
Renaissance
16(1969):80-137.Further important writing on the constitution
and reporting of experienceincludesLorraine Dastonswork cited above
(pp. 188-89);Iulian Martin, FrancisBacon,theState,andtheReformof Natural Philosophy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);Michael
Aaron Dennis,Graphic Understanding:Instrumentsand Interpretation in
RobertHookesMicrographia,Science
in Context3 (1989):3o964;PeterDear,
Narratives, Anecdotes,and Experiments:Turning Experienceinto Science
in the SeventeenthCentury, in TheLiteraryStructureof ScienticArgument:
Historical Studies,ed. Peter Dear (Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania
Press,1991),135-63; Henry Krips, Ideology, Rhetoric, and BoylesNew
Experiments,"Sciencein Context7 (1994):53-64; Christian Licoppe,La formation alela pratiquescienttque:Le discoursde l'exprience
en Franceet en
Angleterre(1630-1820) (Paris: Editions la Dcouverte,1996);and Daniel
Garber, Experiment, Community, and the Constitution of Nature in the
SeventeenthCentury, Perspectives
on Science3 (1995):173-201.One of the
most sensitive and detailed studies of seventeenthcenturyexperimental
practice and of inference from experiment is Simon Schaffersessayon
NeWtonscrucial prism experiments:GlassWorks: NewtonsPrismsand
the Usesof Experiment, in The Usesof Experiment:Studiesin the Natural
Sciences,
ed.David Gooding,Trevor Pinch,and SimonSchaffer(Cambridge:
CambridgeUniversity Press,1989),67-104,on which episodesseealso*Zev
Bechler,Newtons 1672Optical Controversies:A Study in the Grammar
of Scientic Dissent, in The InteractionbetweenScienceand Philosophy,ed.
YehudaElkana (Atlantic Highlands,N.].: Humanities Press,1974),115-42.
For the Italian setting,PaulaFindlensPossessing
Nature (p. 188above),
her Controlling the Experiment:Rhetoric,Court Patronageand the Experimental Method of FrancescoRedi, Historyof Science31 (1993): 35-64, and
Jay Tribby's
Club Medici: Natural Experiment and the Imagineering of
Tuscany,Congurations 2 (1994):215-35, are relevantin connectionwith
natural history and observationalelementsof experiment,while Biagiolis
Galileo,Courtierand Wink1ersand Van Heldensessaysare important for
observationalastronomyin Italy, northern Europe, and other Continental
settings(p. 178above).For the assimilationof the microscopeto seventeenth-
I94
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC
ESSAY
I95
I96
BIBLIOGRAPHICESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
I97
I98
BIBLIOGRAPHICESSAY
Aristotelianism.And into the twentieth centurycommentatorson the Scientic Revolution sawthe mechanicalphilosophyasone of the basiccausesof
the disenchantmentof the world. Yet it is the legitimacy of that rhetoric
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
199
200
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
A. RupertHall, Magic,Metaphysics
andMysticismin\theScienticRevolution, in Reason,Experiment,andMysticismin the ScienticRevolution,ed.
M. L. Righini Bonelli and William R. Shea(New York: ScienceHistory
Publications,1975),275-82;Brian Vickers,Introduction to OccultandScientic Mentalitiesin theRenaissance,
ed.Brian Vickers(Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press,1984),1-55; and for measuredcriticism of FrancesYatess
views in relation to Copernicanism,seeRobert S. Westman,Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis Reconsidered," in Her-
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
201
202
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
203
pia'
and Zilsel's
The SociologicalRootsof Science(both p. 173above),
and representativesystematicinternalist ripostesare A. Rupert Hall, Ballis-
204
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
205
206
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
207
5. Persons
and Their Project;
Much relevant historical work on the contributions of individual scientic
208
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
A. Galileo Galilei
Ludovico Geymonat,GalileoGalilei:A BiographyandInquiry into His Philosophy of Science,trans.Stillman Drake (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965;orig.
publ. 1957);Ernan McMullin, ed.,Galileo:Man of Science(New York: Basic
Books, 1967);William R. Shea,GalileosIntellectual Revolution(London:
Macmillan, 1972);Stillman Drake, GalileoStudies:Personality,Tradition,and
Revolution(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,1970);idem, Galileoat
Work.His Scientic Biography(Chicago:University of ChicagoPress,1978);
William A. Wallace,GalileoandHis Sources:
TheHeritageof theCollegioRomano in Galileo's
Science(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984);
idem, Galileo's
LogicofDiscoveryandProof(Dordrecht:Kluwer, 1992);Pietro
Redondi,GalileoHeretic,trans. RaymondRosenthal(Princeton:Princeton
University Press,1987;orig. publ. 1983);RichardI. Blackwell,Galileo,Bellar
mine,andtheBible(Notre Dame:Notre DameUniversity Press,I99I); Joseph
C. Pitt, Galileo,Human Knowledge,andtheBookof Nature:MethodReplaces
Metaphysics
(Dordrecht:Kluwer, I992);AnnibaleFantoli, Galileo:For Copernicanismandfor the Church,trans. GeorgeV. Coyne(VaticanCity: Vatican
Observatory,1994);and Rivka Feldhay,Galileoand the Church:Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue?(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
I995).
B. Francis Bacon
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
209
C. Thomas Hobbes
D. Rene Descartes
E. RobertBoyle
Louis Trenchard More, The Life and Worksof the HonourableRobertBoyle
(London:Oxford University Press,1944);R. E. W. Maddison,TheLife of the
HonourableRobertBoyleER.S. (London: Taylor and Francis, 1969);James
Jacob,RobertBoyle(p. 204above);IonathanHarwood, ed., TheEarly Essays
and Ethicsof RobertBoyle (Carbondale:SouthernIllinois University Press,
1991);StevenShapin, Personal Changeand Intellectual Biography: The
Caseof RobertBoyle, BritishIournalfor theHistoryof Science
26( I993):335-
210
BIBLIOGRAPHIC
ESSAY
H RobertH ooke
Margaret Espinasse,RobertHool(e(London: Heinemann, 1956);F. F. Centore, RobertHookesContributionsto Mechanics:
A Studyin Seventeenth
Century Natural Philosophy(The Hague: M. Nijhoff, I970); A. Bennett,
Robert Hooke asMechanicand Natural Philosopher,"NotesandRecords
of
theRoyalSociety35 (1980):33-48; MichaelHunter and SimonSchaffer,eds.,
Robert Hooke: New Studies(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989);Stephen
Pumfrey, Ideas aboveHis Station:A SocialStudy of Hooke's
Curatorship
of Experiments,"Historyof Science29 (1991):I-44; and RobertIliffe, Material Doubts: Hooke, Artisan Culture and the Exchangeof Information in
16705London, British ]ournal for the History of Science28 (1995):285-318.
G. ChristiaanHuygens
Arthur Bell, ChristianHuygensand theDevelopmentof Sciencein the SeventeenthCentury(New York: LongmansGreen, 1947);H. I. M. Bos,M. I. S.
Rudwick, H. A. M. Snelders, and R. P. W. Visser, eds., Studieson Christiaan
H. Isaac Newton
BIBLIOGRAPHIC
ESSAY
211
Newton(Cambridge:
CambridgeUniversityPress[Cantoedition],1994);
Gale E. Christianson,In the Presence
of the Creator:IsaacNewton and His
Time:(New York: FreePress,1984);Iohn Fauvel,RaymondFlood, Michael
Shortland,and RobinWilson, eds.,Let NewtonBe! (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
Tmex
AcadmieRoyaledesSciences
(Paris),131,135
ticism
131-32
Active powers, 63, 157
Astrology,6, 42-43
Alchemy,6, 140
Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 86
Anatomy, 67, 143-44, 146, 156-61
Anthropocentrism,24-26, 53-54,
160-61, 163
Bachelard, Gaston, 2n
Bacon, Sir Francis, 20, 31, 42, 44,
55, 59, 65-66. 68, 74-75, 80.
INDEX
214
30716,Robert,34.37,39,42-44, 49,
58-59, 65,69,74-75. 83,92n,
Dear, Peter,81,84
Deduction, in natural philosophy,
n4"6
135143 I4953>
155-56, 158
Deism, 149,152
B0yleslaw, 7, 10on,111
Brahe,Tycho, 25n,42, 77
Browne, Sir Thomas,94
Brunfels, Otto, 78
Buttereld,
124,163-64.SeealsoProbability
Charleton, Walter, 40,47n
Chemistry,4, 6, 65.SeealsoAir; Atomism; Corpuscular
philosophy;Matter theory
Civil conversation,in science,13435
Descartes,Ren,32-34, 37,44,4751, 56-57, 66-67, 82, 90, 1012, 104, 109-10, 113,121, 130,
140! 148-497 153a1557I57"6Iv
163
Designargument.SecArgument
from design;Natural theology
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 45n
Digges,Thomas,22
Dioscorides,76
Disinterestedness: of scientific
Cohesion,phenomenonof, 63,
99
Comets, 17, 152
Communication,in science,84,
106-9, 114-15
Copernicanism,13,20,22,24-26,
53,67, 136-37
Copernicus,Nicolaus,3, 20,25,67,
77: 93122
Corpuscularphilosophy,12,47n,
49-53, 58,65, 100,1o3n,104,
111, 115, 144
Efficient causes,139
Empiricism, 69,72
Enlightenment,3
Epicurus,52
Euclid, 81
Experience:articially produced,
73-74, 96-103; common, 2526, 52-54, 56, 59, 62, 81-82,
34-85190193-94I09-I0,
122-23;communicationof,
106-10, 114-15; constitution
INDEX
Externalism,9-10, 141-42
215
Fuchs,Leonard, 78-79
Human beings,mechanicalaccount
of, 47-49, 56-57, 158-61, 163
Humanism, and science,75-76,
127: 134
Huygens,Christiaan, 147
Hylozoism. SeeAnimism; Renaissance naturalism
Gabbey,Alan, 57
Galen,67,69,76, 136
Galilei, Galileo, 15-19, 26-27, 3839,41,52-53, 58-59, 62,65,
69,72-73, 82,84,93, I22, 126,
Internalism, 9- 1o
Gassendi,Pierre,31-32, 47n
Iesuits,25n,37,84
INDEX
216
158-61.SeealsoArt; Clock
metaphor;Intelligibility; Micromechanism
Malebranche,Nicolas, 143
Malpighi, Marcello, 146
Mathematics:applicationto natural
philosophy,11, 13,46,57-64,
69,81, 111-12, 115-17, 122;
differencesfrom natural philosophy,61,63, 120,137;social
participation in, 122-23;technologicalusesof, 127-28, 141
Matter theory,22-24, 43-44, 47,
49-50, 54-55, 148, 150-52,
159.SeealsoActive powers;
Atomism; Corpuscularphilosophy; Qualities;Renaissance
122,125,130,133,138
Microcosm
andmacrocosm,
42
Micromechanism,49-50, 53,5657104
Microscope, 19, 50-51, 73, 93, 14448
naturalism
Natural philosophy:characterized,
5-6; consensus
and dissensus
in, 88, 105-6, 116, 121-22,
INDEX
I57-58
New World, assourceof new experience, 19-20, 78, 123
217
Pinealgland, 160-61
Plato,58-59
Pliny the Elder, 76
Power, Henry, 66
Primary qualities.SeeQualities
Printing, significancefor science,
78, 124,127
Probability, 101-4, 112,115-17.See
also Certainty
Progress,notionsof scientic, 3, 5,
7-8, 68,74-75, 77,80, 106,
112, 115-17, 133
Ptolemaicsystem,20,22-26, I 36
Ptolemy,Claudius,20, 136
Pumps, water or suction, 38-39, 41.
Seealso Air pump
Pythagoras,58-59
Qualities,primary versussecondary, 1352-55, I 13
SeealsoExperience;Microscope;Telescope
Occult phenomenaand explana
tions, 42, 45-46, 50, 55, 63-64,
157
139,141,146,153
Paracelsus,
69
Parallax, 26
Pascal,Blaise,28,41,65,82-84,
92n, 99-100, 112
Scholasticismz
characterized,17n,
54-55; corrupt statusof, 7576;disputatiousness
of, 12122, 125,129-30, 134;relations
with religion, 44, 136;techno-
INDEX
218
Scholasticism (continued)
logicaluselessness
of, 140.See
also Aristotelianism
Scientic method.SeeMethodology
Secondaryqualities.SeeQualities
Sensation,mechanicalaccountof,
48-49, 57
Skepticism,80,95, 109,I 16n,12425
Societies,scientic, 123,131-35.See
alsoAcadmieRoyaledesSciences; Accademia del
Cimento; RoyalSocietyof
London
Testimony,role in science,69,72,
74.87-89, 108,138,154-55
Theophrastus,76
Torricelli, Evangelista,38,40-41,
132
Tycho.SeeBrahe,Tycho
154_55
Vesalius,Andreas,67
Weaponsalve,45
Weber,Max, 36, I 38n
Wilkins, Iohn, 25,94
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