The Butterfield Thesis and the Scientific Revolution: Comments on Peter Harrison

12 Historically Speaking September/October 2006 the clock, and particularly in the great cathedral clock of Strasbourg, the greatest work of ingenuity contrived by man: it symbolized the highest known intelligence and exemplified in the most elaborate detail the adaptation of means to ends. The image of clockwork led Boyle in the direction of a designer instead of the view that we are mere cogs in a machine . The Scientific Revolution turned God into a watchmaker but not one that was blind. Bacon and Descartes may have flirted with the arcane but they went on to marry reason. The Scientific Revolution marked the demise, however gradual , of the hermetic concept of knowledge. An open science is essential to an open society, and Butterfield saw diat this was a main thrust of the scientific movement. Books on magic, alchemy, and astrology still circulated in the 17th century, but they were increasingly read in a context where obscurity ceased to pass muster for depth and where pretentious claims were subjected to experimental confirmation. In the Middle Ages, philosophy had flourished in the cloisters as the handmaid of theology. In the 17th century, natural philosophy found a new home and a new atmosphere in scientific institutions. The academies in Rome, Florence, London, Paris, and Berlin saw the necessity of corporate investigation and international cooperation. They offered a forum for discussing scientific problems and methods. They also played a vital role in transmitting information and encouraging the spread of science through specialized journals. If they added prestige to the role of the scientist, they also stimulated interest among a large number of amateurs and thus created a scientific public. The goal of a unified science and the desire of achieving mastery over nature had been present in the alchemical tradition. That the same ideals should be shared by the Scientific Revolution is, of course, understandable, but it should not make us forget that the way of achieving those ends was profoundly different The new cast of mind favored experimental control and public debate whereas hermeticism dreamed of leaping over rationality itself. What Butterfield underestimated was the role that Christianity played in the emergence of modern science, and this has now been set right by Harrison and other scholars .4 The Scientific Revolution was not without ancestry , but it ushered in a radically new way of understanding the world and ourselves. William R. Shea is Galileo Professor of History of Science at the University of Padua, Italy. He is a member of the Council of theAcademia Europea, pastpresident of both the International Unionfor the History andPhilosophy of Science and the InternationalAcademy of the History of Science, andpast chair of the Standing Committeefor the Humanities of the European Science Foundation. He is the author , co-author, or editor of more than twenty-five books, the most recent of which are Designing Experiments and Games of Chance: The Unconventional Science of Blaise Pascal (Science History Publications, 2003), Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius (Oxford University Press, 2003), and Galileo Observed: Science and die Politics of Belief (Science History Publications, 2006). 1 John Donne, Complete Poetry andSelectedProse, ed. John Hayward (Nonesuch Press, 1972), 202. The quotation is from "An Anatomy of the World. The First Anniversary." 2 Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Louis Lafuma (Seuil, Pensée, 1963), 526. 1 Galilei, Galileo, 1890-1909 Opere, ed. Antonio Favaro, 20 vols. (Barbèra, 1890-1909), 8: 62. 4 Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, andthe Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also KennethJ. Howell, God's Two Books: Copernican Cosmology andBiblicalInterpretation (University of Notre Dame Press, 2002) and, from a different vantage point, Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Ltd to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2005). The Butterfield Thesis and the Scientific Revolution: Comments on Peter Harrison David C. Lindberg I admire Peter Harrison's willingness to march boldly into this particular jungle. The question of the "Scientific Revolution" (Was there such a thing? If so, when did it occur, and what were its defining characteristics?) has become a favorite pastime of historians of early modern science who thrive on frustration and conflict. Forty years ago...