Once upon a time there was no such thing as science in Western society. There were sciences, but no rubric that could be called science, singular. It was a time of silly, ignorant people not at all like we modern folk. Thankfully, Great Men, like Galileo and Newton, came along to invent Science.
That story, or something very similar, has been the driving force in the historiography of science since the existence of a “scientific method” could be claimed. The view is embedded in the most important phrase in the lexicon, “scientific revolution.” The problem with this view of history is that it is, well, not very scientific. It is not based on conclusions drawn a posteriori. It is, as the sociologists say, a myth of origins. It is a myth that is not just contained within the scientific community. Because concepts of modernity (with apologies to James and Courtney) with which the West now defines itself are inextricably linked to a scientific world-view, the myth of the scientific revolution is modern man’s Genesis narrative. Even those protean heroes enshrined in its lore succumbed to the myth; Newton stood upon the shoulders of giants. By calling the scientific revolution a myth, I do not wish to imply that it did not exist or that it was not a specific historical phenomenon definable from other historical trends. Rather I would like to point out the inefficiency of such monolithic narratives to accurately portray the past. Specifically, the account given at the beginning of this post, often derisively referred to as the “dead white European men” view, does not give credence to cultural, economic, or political agency in the development of modern science. In fact, to do so would destroy the myth by identifying trends that attach scientific development to what came before. Fortunately, over the last forty or so years the historiography of the scientific revolution has been trending towards a redefinition of the origins of science.
If “early modern science,” for want of a better phrase, was not the tidy linear path out of the mire of medieval idiocy previously claimed, then what was it? Well, it was a lot of things. Natural philosophy–the forerunner of modern science, roughly–had no centralizing model or method. One sixteenth-century treatise on mathematics lists the following disciplines as natural philosophies, hypogeiodie, hydragogie, horometrie, zographie, architecture, navigation, and archemastrie. And that’s only in mathematics! The author of that treatise, John Dee, based his model of natural philosophy on angelology. Sitting comfortably in the twenty-first century, we can smugly say, “well, that’s not science.” Doing so, however, is to broadcast current concepts into the past, which is anachronistic and distortive. In a society where people took the existence of angels as fact, what is “unscientific” about trying to observe them? Old models of knowledge where collapsing, new models where not yet formed, and anything was open game to the curious.
Given the disparate practices and beliefs subsumed under the modern banner “early modern science,” no definition of what is “science” and what is “pseudo-science” is adequate for describing them as a whole. Most models resolve themselves to the unsatisfying and circular assertion that “scientific activity during the period was scientific and pseudo-scientific activity was not.” That definition is especially unpleasant when applied to the sixteenth century, when those who involved themselves in natural philosophy mostly did not make those distinctions, and certainly never came to a consensus on what was and what was not the proper focus of natural philosophy. So why did some models of natural philosophy prevail in the process of creating modern science while others where left to languish in the trash heap of “pseudo-science?” The older view, still common in our high schools, is that those things that survived did so because they worked. That view ignores far too many problems presented by the historical record. Obviously, “intellectual factors,” such as the practicability, verifiability, and reproducibility—whether or not a model “worked”—played a role, but these facets could only be assessed over time. Given the considerable array of beliefs and activities demonstrated by individual natural philosophers, as well as their attachment and bias to their own peculiar models, the survival of a “scientific” model in the short term did not depend on the approval of the broad intellectual community.
And So:
It is my argument that individual models of natural philosophy where only able to be broadly examined under intellectual scrutiny once they survived cultural agents. Long before fellow intellectuals where able to fully inspect a particular model, it had to survive the pressures presented by the community in which the natural philosopher operated. The perceptions held by the public, perceptions created by observation and speculation of a natural philosopher’s activities, were, for better or worse, the first perceptions of the philosopher’s work. As soon as a natural philosopher went from accumulation of knowledge to application of that knowledge, the community in which he lived almost instantly became aware of the activity. The accoutrements necessary to a particular philosopher’s study, such as globes, compasses, lenses, and alchemical stills, were instantly recognizable as non-normative artifacts by the community. Thus, the first group to witness the externalization of a natural philosopher’s method and beliefs, from what he thought to what he did, was the local community. Given the population’s general unfamiliarity with natural philosophy and their familiarity with legend and dogma, these immediate witnesses were prone to form negative opinions. Though the overwhelming majority of the contemporary population did not know of the network of ideas and methods that loosely made up the community of natural philosophers, they did know of that strange man who lived in that strange house at edge of their town. These perceptions began to form at the beginning of a philosopher’s career, and partially informed the broader world of who the philosopher was before his work could fully disseminate throughout the intellectual community. These perceptions spawned by the local community affected the philosopher’s, and thus his particular method’s and model’s, acceptability in two very direct ways; first, they either aided or harmed his attempt to gain patronage in order to continue the development of his “science,” and second, it colored the intellectual community’s image of him. Whether or not pure science happens in a vacuum devoid of cultural influences is irrelevant; those who do the science do not live in a cultural vacuum, and they are as susceptible to reputation and public image as anyone. Cultural agency as a sculpting force in the emergent sciences has been treated elsewhere in regard to the scientific community and in regard to the household of the natural philosopher (see Deborah Harkness’ “Managing an Experimental Household: the Dees of Mortlake,” Stephen Shapin’s The Scientific Revolution, and Mario Biagioli’s Galileo Courtier). It is my intent to give the mob with the pitchforks and torches their say; to listen to the steady undercurrent of public opinion against which the natural philosopher had to constantly pit the public image that he wished to portray.
That’s the basic nature of my research right now. I think the next post will be some background to all of this, titled something like “Astrology was the Real Forerunner of Modern Science.”
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