The Scientific Revolution Revisited
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MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 2012 PREPRINT 432 Mikuláš Teich The Scientific Revolution Revisited THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION REVISITED Mikuláš Teich To the memory of Alistair Crombie (1915‐1996) Rupert Hall (1920‐2009) Joseph Needham (1900‐1995) Roy Porter (1946‐2002) scholars most learned and friends most loyal CONTENTS Preface...............................................................................................................................................................1 Author's Preface............................................................................................................................................3 Note on terminology and acknoWledgements................................................................................3 Introduction....................................................................................................................................................4 1. From pre‐classical to classical pursuits.......................................................................................8 2. Experimentation and quantification..........................................................................................20 3. Institutionalization of science....................................................................................................... 37 4. Truth(s)....................................................................................................................................................49 5. The Scientific Revolution: The big picture..............................................................................54 6. West and East European contexts...............................................................................................66 7. Epilogue ...................................................................................................................................................78 PREFACE One can access the history of the sciences from various angles and with various interests. The approach taken by Mikuláš Teich in the present endeavour is macroscopic in that it aims to capture a highly complex and long‐lasting process: the Scientific Revolution, i.e. the crystallization and establishment of scientific knowledge in the Early Modern Period. The particular focus of the present endeavour is not on the individual ideas or methods that surfaced in the context of this epochal process, but rather on the connections to the specific economic, social, and political contexts. This is not to be understood in the narrow sense of a history of science proceeding externalistically, emphasizing how ideas and methods are influenced by society. Rather, Teich is concerned with construing the history of science as a part of general history, as an active element in the formation of modern society. Science is seen both as the product and the ferment of social change. Put more pointedly, there is an internal coherence between the Scientific Revolution and the transformation from feudalism to capitalism in Early Modern Europe. As Teich stresses, the Thirty Years’ War and the beginning globalization functioned as catalysts of this systemic change. Today, such an approach to the history of science has become the exception, and it is clear that it has biographical and thus historical roots. Mikuláš Teich was born in July 1918 in Eastern Slovakia, i.e. as a subject of the Austro‐Hungarian Empire. He began to study medicine in Prague but, as a Jew, emigrated to Great Britain in 1939. There he studied chemistry and earned a PhD in 1946. In the same year he returned to Prague to help building a socialist society; his wife Alice, who was born in Vienna and is an historian of economy, followed him. In 1952 he was expelled from the Communist Party. In the 1960s he became a member of a working group rallying around Radovan Richta which dealt with the topic of the “Scientific‐Technological Revolution”. The book that resulted from this work, Political Economy of the Twentieth Century counts among the theoretical foundations of the “Prague Spring”. When the troops of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia, Mikuláš Teich and his wife were on their way to take up research fellowships in the USA, whereupon they decided to emigrate for the second time. In 1977 Mikuláš Teich became a founding fellow of Robinson College in Cambridge. His area of research is the history of the sciences, in particular of biochemistry. Let us here only mention his opus magnum Bier, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft in Deutschland 18001914. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Industrialisierungsgeschichte, Böhlau Verlag, Wien 2000 (Beer, Science and Economy in Germany 1800‐1914. A Contribution to the History of German Industrialization), in which the scientific and technological dimension of beer brewing in Germany is thoroughly described and its significance for the Industrial Revolution analyzed. An extensive bibliography of Teich’s works is to be found in the Festschrift to his 80th birthday: From PhysicoTheology to BioTechnology. Essays in the Social und Cultural History of Science, eds. Kurt Bayertz and Roy Porter, Rodopi, Amsterdam‐Atlanta 1998. 1 We are glad to be able to present this text to the reader as a preprint of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where Mikuláš Teich was a fellow in the year 2000. Kurt Bayertz Hans‐Jörg Rheinberger 2 PREFACE In 1969, after taking up a Visiting Scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, I was approached by the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University, to give a public lecture. The subject‐matter I chose was 'Three Revolutions: the Scientific, Industrial and Scientific‐Technical'. When it was announced in the University Reporter [100 (1969‐70), 1577], for some reason, the Scientific‐Technical Revolution metamorphosed into the Scientific‐Industrial. I gave the lecture on 4 May 1970 in which I attempted to convey that the Three Revolutions were products of and factors in historically far‐reaching societal transformations, and that the place of science and technology cannot be left out of the picture. It was this perspective that led me to return to the subject‐matter and address it in book form. Apart from underestimating the difficulties to present a short account of the problematic, other commitments prevented me to focus solely on the project. When I reached my 90th, it occurred to me that if I was to contribute to the debates regarding the three great movements of thought and action, a viable course would be to produce the work in three separate parts of which The Scientific Revolution Revisited is the first. The other two parts are in preparation. Autumn 2011 NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In a book about the much debated Scientific Revolution unavoidably problems arise with terminology. They pertain to terms such as science/normal science/modern science; social/societal and others. I regret possible ambiguities in their employment despite efforts to be consistent. There is also the question of references. They are given in full but I apologize for inadvertent omissions. This also applies to bibliography relevant to the debate. I am indebted to Dr. Albert Müller who read the large part of the early version of the book and Professor Sir Geoffrey Lloyd who commented on chapters 1 and 2 in draft. The responsibility for the published text is mine. It is a pleasure to record discussions with Professors Kurt Bayertz, Herbert Matis and Michael Mitterauer, and Dr. Deborah Thom. Thanks are due to the late Professor William N. Parker. Lastly and firstly, my warmest words of gratitude go to my family, above all to Professor Alice Teichova and daughter Dr. Eva Kandler – without their assistance the book would not see the light of day quite literally. 3 INTRODUCTION I This book is about interpreting the Scientific Revolution as a distinctive movement directed towards the exploration of the world of nature that came into its own in Europe by the end of the seventeenth century. The famed English historian Lord Acton (1834‐ 1902) is said to have advised that problems were more important than periods. If he held this opinion, he ignored that problems are embedded in time and place and do not surface autonomously. This has been amply demonstrated in six collections of essays, examining the 'national context' not only of the Scientific Revolution but other great movements of thought and action, which Roy Porter and I initiated and co‐edited.1 In general terms, one way of encompassing the world we live in is to say that it is made up of society and nature with human beings belonging to both.2 It is reasonable to connect the beginnings of human cognition of inanimate and animate nature (stones, animals, plants) with the ability of systematic making of tools/arms within a framework of a hunting‐and‐gathering way of life, presently traceable to about 2.5 million years ago. It is also reasonable to perceive in the intentional Neanderthal burial, about 100.000 years ago, the earliest known expression of overlapping social and individual awareness of a natural phenomenon: death. While the theme of interpenetration of the social, human and natural has a long history, there is scant debate over reciprocal links between perceptions of nature and perceptions of society from Antiquity to the present. This is most important not only for the understanding of evolution of knowledge of nature as well as knowledge of society but also of type of