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The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Concept of Scientific Revolution Author(S): I The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Concept of Scientific Revolution Author(s): I. Bernard Cohen Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1976), pp. 257-288 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708824 . Accessed: 03/06/2013 11:30 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the History of Ideas. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 148.206.40.98 on Mon, 3 Jun 2013 11:30:35 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION1 BY I. BERNARDCOHEN Many historians of science, like their fellow general historians, believe that the concept of revolution in science is of fairly recent origin, and that it has been superimposed anachronously-and even harshly-on events of the past.2 In fact, however, for some three centuries there has been a more or less unbroken tradition of viewing scientific change as a sequence of revolutions. In the eighteenth century, when this tradition appears to have taken its first rise, there was still some confusion and ambiguity about the sense of the word "revolution": in relation not only to science but to political events. Although "revolu- tion" came into general usage during the eighteenth century to denote a breach of continuity or a secular change of real magnitude, there also remained current the older sense of "revolution" as a cyclical phenomenon, a continuous sequence of ebb and flow, a kind of circula- 'This article, based on research supported by a grant from the Spencer Foundation, is taken from a larger and more general survey of the origins and development of the concept and name, "scientific revolution," presented at the semicentennial meeting of the History of Science Society (Oct. 1974) and-in a somewhat altered version-at the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science (Feb. 1975). 2 In the past decade or more, the discussions of revolutions in science have pivoted on Thomas S. Kuhn's bold and challenging tract, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962; also issued as vol. 2 of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science; 2nd ed., enlarged, 1970). For a response to Kuhn's analysis, see Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge, 1970), comprising a primary paper by T. S. Kuhn, followed by critical discussions by J. W. N. Watkins, S. E. Toulmin, L. Pearce Williams, K. R. Popper, Margaret Masterman, I. Lakatos, P. K. Feyerabend, plus a final "Reflections on my Critics" by Kuhn. Among many reviews and review articles, particular attention may be called to those by Gerd Buchdahl, Dudley Shapere, and Israel Scheffler. The propriety of using the word and concept of "revolution" in relation to science is discussed by Stephen E. Toulmin, in the course of a lengthy historical narrative of, and critique upon, Kuhn's views, in Human Understanding (Princeton, 1972), I, 100-30, esp. 117-18. The reaction to Kuhn's thesis of social dynamics of scientific change in terms of a sequence of revolutions (alternating with what he calls "normal science") has been either to apply or to challenge some fea- tures of his analysis, or to question the meaning (or meanings) of the technical terms he uses, or to raise doubts as to the propriety of using the concept of revolution in relation to scientific change. Thus the secondary literature on the philosophy and history of science has become saturated with books and articles using the word "revolution" in al- most every possible context, and dealing with almost every aspect of scientific revolu- tions, save one: there has been no adequate study of what the particular uses of this word and concept may have been in successive past ages. (But see note 19 infra.) 257 This content downloaded from 148.206.40.98 on Mon, 3 Jun 2013 11:30:35 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 258 I. BERNARD COHEN tion and return, or a repetition.3 After 1789, the new meaning came to predominate and, ever since, "revolution" has commonly implied a radical change and a departure from traditional or accepted modes of thought, belief, action, social behavior, or political or social organiza- tion. Thus in early modern times there occurred a double transforma- tion of "revolution" and the concept for which it is the name. First, a scientific term, taken from astronomy and geometry, came to be ap- plied to a general range of social, political, economic, and intellectual or cultural activities; and, second, in this usage the term gained a new meaning that was radically different from-if not diametrically opposite to-the original and strict etymological sense of "revolution" (revolu- tion, revoluzione), which is derived from the mediaeval Latin revolutio, a rolling back or a return, usually with an implied sense of revolving in time.4 During the eighteenth century, the point of view emerged that scientific change is characterized by an analog of the revolutions that alter the forms of society and the political affairs of the state. Whereas earlier, science had contributed "revolution" to the discourse of social 3An example is Colin Maclaurin: An Account of Isaac Newton's Philosophical Dis- coveries (London, 1748); a facsimile edition, with an introduction by L. L. Laudan (New York, 1968). Here it is said (39) to be "not worth while ... to trace the history of learn- ing thro' its various revolutions in the later ages." Maclaurin also referred to a com- parison made by Aristotle of the "revolutions of learning" and "the rising and setting of the stars." Maclaurin obviously had in mind a cyclical phenomenon, or ebb and flow. In another passage (ibid., 42), he referred to the return of learning to the "western parts of Europe," observing that "the period which commenced upon the revolution we have mentioned, has already continued some hundred years." He also wrote that with the dis- pelling of the cloud of mediaeval darkness, "the liberal arts and sciences were restored, and none of them has gained more by this happy revolution than natural philosophy" (ibid., 41). 4Some historical studies of the concept and name of "revolution" are: Felix Gilbert, "Revolution," Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener, 5 vols. (New York, 1973), IV, 152-67; Karl Griewank, Der neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegriff En- stehung und Entwicklung (Weimar, 1955); Arthur Hatto, "Revolution: An Enquiry into the Usefulness of an Historical Term," Mind, 58 (1949), 495-517; Melvin J. Lasky, "The Birth of a Metaphor. On the Origins of Utopia & Revolution," Encounter, 34 (Feb. 1970), 35-45, 34 (Mar. 1970), 30-42; Eugen Rosenstock [=Rosenstock-Huessy], "Revolution als politische Begriff in der Neuzeit," Abhandlungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft fur vaterlandische Cultur (Geisteswissenschaftliche Reihe), 5. Heft: "Festgabe der rechts- und staatswissenschaftlichen Fakultat in Breslau fur Paul Heil- born zum 70. Geburtstag 6. Februar 1931" (Breslau, 1931), 83-124, of which the main points are given in summary in Hatto's article; Vernon F. Snow, "The Concept of Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England," The Historical Journal, 5 (1962), 167-74. Useful as first guides to the history and successive meanings of "revolution" are E. Lit- tr6, Dictionnaire de la languefrancaise, 4 vols. and suppl. (Paris, 1881-83), and A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, ed. James A. H. Murray, Henry Bradley, W. A. Craigie, C. T. Onions, and reissued as The Oxford English Dictionary, 12 vols. and suppl. (Oxford, 1933). This content downloaded from 148.206.40.98 on Mon, 3 Jun 2013 11:30:35 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CONCEPT OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 259 and political change, now social and political thought gave back to science the concept of revolution in the newly established sense, no longer as a term serving in the scientific explanation of natural phenomena, but rather an expression to be used in the social or in- tellectual explanation of scientific change itself-now visualized as a series of secular discontinuities of such magnitude as to constitute defi- nite breaks with the past. The rejection of the older and more traditional opinions in which scientific change was seen as a cyclical continuous process, and the rise of the doctrine that science progresses by radical revolutions has occurred by degrees ever since the opening years of the eighteenth century, and has been continuously influenced by the development of concepts and theories of political and social (and cultural) revolution. Accordingly, an understanding of the rise of the idea of revolutions in science (and of the existence of the Scientific Revolution) requires some knowledge of the general history of the con- cept and name "revolution."6 The history of the idea of revolution in the sciences is of real im- portance for our understanding of the development of the sciences. For example, we today conceive Galileo to have been a revolutionary figure and write about the "intellectual revolution" that he wrought; but did he consider himself to have been a revolutionary?7 Did Newton? When did the value of progress become linked to the concept of change by revolu- tion? Such questions illuminate the nature of scientific change by mak- 5 An example of the ways in which political and social events may affect the image of revolution in science occurs in the acceptance by today's scholars of the conception that the Scientific Revolution was not an event or a set of events that occurred in a narrow compass of time (as was the case for the American and French Revolutions), but may have lasted through two or even three centuries.
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