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52 5 N and the Rise of Science In the nineteenth century, technological change, fueled by the engine of market capitalism, dramatically altered the ability of industrializing nations to extract, process, and transport the material that flowed through growing economies. Just as important was another type of change, one that accelerated the pace of innovation in directions rewarded by markets. That change involved using the positivist predictive knowledge generated by the process of science to guide the trial-and-error development of new technologies. Before the nineteenth century, scientific theories played a relatively small role in the process of technological change. Those who worked to make the production of saltpeter more efficient, for example, generally did so without the benefit of chemical theories to test their ideas and to filter out paths not worth exploring. Instead, equipped with the skills of their craft and guided by tacit knowledge accumulated over years of experience, they relied on brute processes of trial and error. Similarly, the English agriculturalists who converged on four-field systems of crop rotation by systematically varying their practices did so without the aid of sophisticated theories of soil ecology. Even the inventors who developed and improved early steam engines did not use scientific theories to guide their experimentation.1 In the nineteenth century, however, innovators increasingly began to use science-based predictive models to guide their experimentation, an approach that allowed them to filter out ideas unlikely to be successful and to dedicate resources to the most promising paths of exploration. Using one cycle of variation and selection (science) to guide the trial-and-error exploration encouraged by another (market capitalism), they pushed the pace of technological development into high gear. In short, innovators were learning how to be more efficient in acquiring the types of technological knowledge that markets and states rewarded. Some of that knowledge—such N A ND T HE R ISE OF SCIENCE 53 as how to increase the production of fixed nitrogen—eventually allowed industrial societies to bypass ecological constraints that limited growth, fundamentally altering the relationship between humans and the rest of nature. From the Technology of Alchemy to the Science of Chemistry Five hundred years ago, before what historians have called the scientific revolution , most knowledge about medicines, salts, solvents, and other chemicals rested in the practices and procedures of alchemists. In China, India, Persia, and the Arab and European worlds, practical matters such as preparing medicines and assaying metals were generally attended to by loosely networked groups of individuals who had mastered the alchemical arts. Some sought to discover the secret of how to convert lead into gold or to prepare life-extending elixirs, but all knew quite a bit about practical matters as well, such as how to produce a range of interesting compounds from material at their disposal. Most knew, for example, how to make acidum salis (hydrochloric acid) and aqua fortis (nitric acid) as well as how to combine the two in a special mixture, aqua regia (nitrohydrochloric acid), capable of dissolving gold. Although they tended to be highly empirical, constantly trying out new materials and processes, their experimentation focused on improving chemical technology—that is, the processes and procedures for manipulating material—rather than chemical theory.2 In the world of alchemy, theories as to why materials reacted as they did tended to be static (and not all that useful) due to a culture of secrecy that decoupled theory from practice. Those who possessed alchemical knowledge worked to protect themselves and their art. Being secretive, for example, helped one to avoid being persecuted for pursuing what others might consider to be the black arts or from being pressed into the service of a powerful prince. Alchemists also saw their activities as having a spiritual component, so they sought to protect their body of knowledge. One alchemist warned that, if alchemy were not kept secret, those less skilled would attempt to repeat what the alchemists had learned but would do so with error.3 As a result, alchemists often wrapped explanations of their procedures in metaphysical musings that obscured more than they revealed.4 Even relatively straightforward explanations, such as the Aristotelian notion that everything consisted of four basic elements (fire, water, earth, and air), offered little guidance to experimenters. Thus, alchemists had no tradition of altering explanatory theories to better predict what they might learn through experimentation. While their recipes and procedures (technological knowledge) steadily evolved, their explanatory theories...

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