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Edgar Zilsel the Social Origins of Modern Science

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Edgar Zilsel the Social Origins of Modern Science THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF MODERN SCIENCE BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editors ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKYt, (Editor 1960-1997) Editorial Advisory Board THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University VOLUME 200 EDGAR ZILSEL THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF MODERN SCIENCE Foreword by JOSEPH NEEDHAM lntroduction by DIEDERICK RAVEN & WOLFGANG KROHN Edited by DIEDERICK RAVEN Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands WOLFGANG KROHN Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany and ROBERT S. COHEN Boston University, Boston, U.S.A. SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for Ihis book is availablc from lhe Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-4020-1359-1 ISBN 978-94-011-4142-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-4142-0 Printed an acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Origina11y published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003 Sollcuver reprint uflhe hardcover IsI edilion 2003 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a rclricval system, Of transmittcd in any fOfln ar by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written pennission from the Publisher, with fhe exception of any material supplied specitically for the purpose of heing enlered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of Ihe work. Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) Oil painting by an unknown artist in Austrian expressionist style painted during World War I when Zilsel was in his early twenties. Picture is reproduced with kind pennission of Paul Zilsel. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE Robert S. Cohen ix FOREWORD Joseph Needham xi ORIGIN OF THE ESSAYS xv A NOTE OF THE USE OF ARCHIVE MATERIAL XVI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS XVll EDITORIAL POLICY xviii INTRODUCTION: Edgar Zilsel: His Life and Work (1891-1944) Diederick Raven and Wolfgang Krohn XIX PHOTO OF EDGAR ZILSEL lxi PART 1: THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF MODERN SCIENCE 1. The Social Roots of Science 3 2. The Sociological Roots of Science 7 3. The Methods of Humanism 22 4. Remarks on Zilsel's 'The Methods of Humanism' PaulO. Kristeller 65 5. The Origins of William Gilbert's Scientific Method 71 6. The Genesis of the Concept of Physical Law 96 7. Copernicus and Mechanics 123 8. The Genesis of the Concept of Scientific Progress and Cooperation 128 viii PART II: PHYSICAL LAW AND SOCIO-HISTORICAL LAW 9. Problems of Empiricism 171 10. Physics and the Problem of Historico-sociological Laws 200 11. Phenomenology and Natural Science 209 12. Concerning 'Phenomenology and Natural Science' 214 13. History and Biological Evolution 216 14. Science and the Humanistic Studies 221 PART III: APPENDICES Appendix I: The Sociological Roots of Science 227 Appendix II: Laws of Nature and Historical Laws 233 Appendix III: Bibliography of Works Cited by Zilsel 235 Appendix IV: Bibliography of Edgar Zilsel's Works With a Bibliography of Secondary Literature Concerning Zilsel 243 Index of names 252 Index of topics 258 ROBERT S. COHEN PREFACE Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) lived through the best of times and worst of times, through the renewal of scientific optimism and humane politics, and through the massive social collapse into idolatrous barbarism. With it all, and with his per­ sonal and family crises in Vienna and later in America, Zilsel was, I believe, a heroic, indeed a model, scholar of the first half of the 20th century. He was widely admired as a teacher, at high schools, in workers education, in research tutoring and seminars. He was an original investigator on matters of the methodology of science, and of the history of the sciences. He was a social and political analyst, as a critical Marxist, of the turmoil of Vienna in the 20s. Above all, he achieved so much as a sociological historian who undertook re­ search on two central facts of the early modern world: recognition of the cre­ ative individual, and the ideal of genius; and the conditions and realities of the coming of science to European civilization. His teacher, I think of Heinrich Gomperz the philologist, was distinguished indeed, and so was Leonardo Olschki from whose work on Galileo he learned so much, but Zilsel went far beyond. Thus, why did our science arise, where and when it did, and why not at other times? He was one of a handful of pio­ neers in this comparative historical sociology of science, seeking to understand the history of the concepts of laws and regularities of nature, of the idea of progress in knowledge, of the specific explanatory terms of mechanism, and so on. In his few years writing in English, his results seemed to be that of a research institute, as this book shows. His theme was enlightening. Three social strata came together through Re­ naissance and later: the working artisans, the new post-medieval secular human­ ists, the higher university scholars. With indefatigable documentation, Zilsel traced how those whose minds were devoted to fonnal knowledge, known through logic and mathematics, came to collaborate with others who lived by observation and hand-working experience, even by experimentation and com­ mon sense causality. Zilsel's story was a study of early capitalism, of society rationalized, mechanized, exploratory, enterprising, and of one central part of its cultural accompaniment, early modern science. I first camc upon Zilsel's works on the sociology of science 50 years ago. This was partly due to my wish for a treatment of natural science within the so­ ciology of knowledge (Mannheim) but beyond the initial studies in that direc­ tion which were stimulating but incomplete in scope and in critical depth of their scientific content (Merton, Lukacs, Hessen). To a reader of the essays in ix x ROBERT S. COHEN this volume, especially to one who follows Zilsel for the first time, his impact may be solid enough, and his results persuasive, but perhaps not so surprising any longer. Indeed, the sociological history of science has flourished these past five decades, both internalist and externalist, but Joseph Needham's happy and welcoming recognition of Zilsel stands today. Needham has a genial chemical metaphor for the process of science develop­ ing, what he calls the 'fusion' of works of the hand and the brain, of Zilsel's three strata, and this is an apt summary of Zilsel's teaching and his challenge. Just what were the social, political, economic, religious, aesthetic and perhaps other factors required for that innovative 'fusion' to occur? Zilsel's method was clearly comparative in plan, across civilizational conditions, but here we can only wonder how far he would have been able to go if the world of his earlier social dream and hope, and the other world of his private stability, had not col­ lapsed. Lately a friend, Elisabeth Nemeth, brought me Zilsel's essay of 1912 on Mo­ zart and his times, which the author subtitled 'a didactic fantasy' . How lovely to see in this little essay of the young Zilsel the new sensitivity of the first years of that century, not as a scientific inquiry but as a matter of feelings, an essay in which we recognize what reappears throughout Edgar Zilsel's life and works: the deeply emotional and moral dimensions of his search for rationality. Zilsel's life touched many, beyond his knowing. Paul Kristeller, in his 90S, wrote to me as 'a great admirer of Zilsel for many decades, and a personal friend'. Also in old age, the leading Chinese empiricist philosopher Tscha Hung (who took his doctorate in Vienna with Schlick) wrote to me from Beijing to aks about the career of his old friend Zilsel with whom he had lost touch; he was especially interested in Zilsel's own 'fusion' of logical empiricism with a historical materialist sociology of science. When Zilsel continued his personal teaching in Vienna after the murder of Schlick, the little 'Zilsel Circle' bravely met until the early months of 1938. Kurt Gtidel gave probably his last lecture to an audience in Vienna at the Zilsel Circle, accepting Zilsel's suggestion to talk about 'the status of consistency questions in logic'; this took place the evening of January 29th• Except for Zilsel, there was likely to be a mathematically unsophisticated audience ... but there was Zilsel! I did not know Edgar Zilsel. But I know his son Paul, my friend and fellow physics graduate student at Yale, where we received our doctorates in 1948. Paul's understanding of his father's life and work is admirable, and equally his sympathetic resonance for the vicissitudes of Edgar Zilse1's existence. May this preface, and this volume, be an affectionate and respectful tribute. JOSEPH NEEDHAM FOREWORD It is a great privilege and pleasure for me to have been invited to write a fore­ word for this collection of the papers of Edgar Zilsel. I never met him, and even now I don't know what he looked like, or indeed any details of his personal life. I only recall, and record, with great affection, the intellectual stimulus which I derived from his writings, and for which, together, I am sure, with many others, I shall always be unfeignedly grateful. My own intellectual odyssey was, to be sure, extremely different from his. Even now I don't really know very much about the "Vienna Circle" of logical positivism, or the philosophies of Mach, Husserl, and Jaspers. I don't appreciate to the full what is meant by Platonic metexis or Kantian schematism and amphiboly; though I can form a rough idea of what excited Zilsel so much as to lead him to devote such a quantity of time and research to the history of the con­ cept of human genius.
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