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Science and the Reformation COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS sociologist who went on to invent terms that have become part of everyday speech, such as ‘role model’, ‘unanticipated consequence’ and ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. Merton’s first book, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England, attracted lit- tle attention initially. But in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, historians of science endlessly and inconclusively debated what they called the DHM BERLIN/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES Merton thesis: that Puritanism, the religion of the founders of the New England colonies, had fostered scientific enquiry, and that this was precisely why England, where the reli- gion had motivated a civil war, had a central role in the construction of modern science. Those debates have fallen quiet. But it is still widely argued by historians of science that the Protestant religion and the new sci- ence were inextricably intertwined, as Protes- tantism turned away from the spirituality of Catholicism and fostered a practical engage- ment with the world, exemplified in the idea that a person’s occupation was their vocation. Merton was following in the footsteps of Ger- man sociologist Max Weber, who argued that Protestantism had led to capitalism. Martin Luther in the Circle of Reformers, 1625–50 (oil on panel), by an artist of the German School. I disagree. First, plenty of great sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientists were HISTORY Catholics, including Copernicus, Galileo and Pascal. Second, one of the most striking features of the new science was how easily it passed back and forth between Catholics Science and the and Protestants. At the height of the reli- gious wars, two Protestant astronomers were appointed one after another as mathemati- cians to the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor: Reformation first Brahe, then Kepler. Louis XIV, who expelled the Protestants from France in 1685, had previously hired Protestants such The scientific and religious revolutions that began as Christiaan Huygens for his Academy of 500 years ago were not causally related, but were both Sciences. The experiments of Pascal, a devout Catholic, were quickly copied in England by stimulated by printing, argues David Wootton. the devoutly Protestant Boyle. The Catholic Church banned Copernicanism, but was quick to change its mind in the light of New- n 31 October 1517, as legend has Galileo Galilei’s telescopic discoveries (1610), ton’s discoveries. And third, if we can point it, renegade monk Martin Luther the experiments with air pressure and the vac- to Protestant communities that seem to have nailed a document to the door of All uum by Blaise Pascal (1648) and Robert Boyle produced more than their share of great scien- OSaints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany. The (1660), and Isaac Newton’s Principia (1687). tists, we can also point to Protestant societies Ninety-five Theses marked the beginning of Were the Reformation and this revolution where the new science did not flourish until the Reformation, the first major break in the merely coincident, or did the Reformation later — Scotland, for example. unity of Christianity since 1054. Luther pro- somehow facilitate or foster the new sci- claimed a radical new theology: salvation by ence, which rejected traditional authorities DISCOVERY AND DISSEMINATION faith alone, the priesthood of all believers, the such as Aristotle and relied on experiments What made the scientific revolution possible ultimate authority not of the Church, but of and empirical information? Suppose Martin were three developments. A new confidence the Bible. By 1520, he had rejected the author- Luther had never existed; suppose the Ref- in the possibility of discovery was the first: ity of the pope. Lutherans and followers of ormation had never taken place. Would the there was no word for discovery in European French reformer John Calvin found them- history of science have been fundamentally languages before exploration uncovered selves engaged in bitter wars against Catholi- different? Would there have been no scien- the Americas. The printing press was the cism that lasted for a century and a half. tific revolution? Would we still be living in second. It brought about an information This age of religious warfare was also the the world of the horse and cart, the quill pen revolution: instead of commenting on a few age of the scientific revolution: Nicolaus and the matchlock firearm? Can we imagine canonical texts, intellectuals learnt to navi- Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the a Catholic Newton, or is Newton’s Protestant- gate whole libraries of information. In the Celestial Spheres (1543), Tycho Brahe’s ism somehow fundamental to his science? process, they invented the modern idea of Introduction to the New Astronomy (1588), The key book on this subject was published the fact — reliable information that could Johannes Kepler’s New Astronomy (1609), in 1938 by Robert Merton, the great US be checked and tested. Finally, there was the 454 | NATURE | VOL 550 | 26 OCTOBER©2017 M2017ac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. ©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT new claim by mathematicians to be better at accustomed to making a sharp intellectual been more rapid, because the Church would understanding the world than philosophers, distinction between his philosophy and have been less dogmatic in responding to a claim that was grounded in their develop- Christian theology. Even in the Nether- novelty. The Council of Trent (1545–63), ment of the experimental method. lands, the Cartesians were able to establish assembled by the Catholic Church in reaction If the scientific revolution is properly called themselves in universities only by insisting to Luther’s bombshell, tightened up doctrine, a revolution, it is because of that: the mathe- that they, too, were entitled to keep their requiring it to conform to long-established maticians seized power and prestige from the philosophy distinct from their theology. tradition. This led directly to the condemna- philosophers. The challenge is in the full title tion of Copernicanism and its heliocentric of Newton’s Principia: Philosophiæ Naturalis NOT SO DIFFERENT cosmos as heretical. One only has to think of Principia Mathematica — the mathematical Protestants did not reject Aristotelianism. the continuing clash between Protestant fun- principles of natural philosophy. This revolt Their universities outside the Netherlands damentalism and Darwinism to see that there goes back to works such as Niccolò Fontana were as wedded to it as Catholic ones. In is no straightforward match between Protes- Tartaglia’s New Science of 1537, a study in the England, a chair in natural philosophy was tantism and scientific values. The Catholic mathematics of artillery. The frontispiece established in 1621 at Oxford, one of the Church has never condemned Darwinism. shows ancient Greek mathematician Euclid universities most open to the new science. So, let’s for a moment imagine again that holding the gate through which one must pass Yet until the end of the century, its holders there had been no Ninety-Five Theses, no to attain true knowledge, announcing the were required to teach Aristotle; Oxford’s Reformation, no Protestantism. In this alter- new ambition of mathematicians to interpret mathematicians taught the new physics and native world, Copernicus would surely have the world. With the exceptions of Boyle and astronomy of Galileo, Kepler and Newton. published On the Revolutions, and Vesalius anatomist Andreas Vesalius, all the scientists Moreover, Catholics were often just as his 1543 treatise On the Fabric of the Human I mention here were mathematicians, and willing as Protestants to make intellectual Body. Brahe would have observed the super- even Boyle is remembered for a law on the space for the new science. Kepler’s argument nova of 1572 and the comet of 1577; the tele- behaviour of gases that he discovered with the that Copernicanism could be reconciled scope would still have been invented; and help of mathematicians. with the Bible was censored by Protestant Galileo would have observed the phases of theologians, but later published under Venus and discovered the law of free fall. BREAK WITH TRADITION Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. The intellectual problems that led to Kepler’s This was no easy or rapid victory: And among both Catholics and Protes- new astronomy, and made possible the New- philosophy, particularly Aristotelianism, tants, religious commitment sometimes tonian synthesis, would still have been in had long had a powerful hold over Europe’s clashed with scientific activity. Pascal gave place by the early seventeenth century. intellectual life. It was widely held that up science after a religious experience; so Scientists, as scientists, are under no Aristotle had known everything worth did the Protestant Jan Swammerdam, one of particular obligation to either celebrate or knowing about nature, and that to recover the first great microscopists. And although bemoan the publication of Luther’s theses that knowledge one had only to study his Protestants had a tradition of disputing 500 years ago. There have been great Prot- texts with exquisite care, rather than explore authority and undertaking radical change, estant and Catholic scientists, and others what Galileo and others called the book of Protestantism as a state religion could be as who had different faiths or (perhaps includ- nature. The key question is: did the Protes- conservative as Catholicism. If England led ing Galileo) no religious belief at all. What tant Reformation encourage the turn from the way in promoting the new science, the happened in the scientific revolution was the books of Aristotle to the book of nature? relative openness and intellectual diversity that science developed its own procedures Certainly, Aristotelian philosophy was of its culture after the restoration of the and modes of enquiry and thus established embedded in Catholic theology. The Catho- monarchy in 1660 is more significant than its independence from both philosophers lic doctrine of transubstantiation — that the religion of its scientists.
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