The period around the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is a period of change, it redefined what was understood as science. However, processes of change do not stick to arbitrary limits such as those
6 Among others 1660, 1725, 1776 or 1800 (see Moskowich 2012: 47-48).
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of centuries, and their description in such compartmentalised terms would lead to oversimplification.
This is why, for contextualisation, the period object of description in these sections will surpass the thresholds of the two centuries, using instead the concepts of the long 18th and long 19th centuries.
These, following Beal (2012: 2), stretch from the Restoration in the 1660s to the fall of Napoleon in the 1815 and from the French Revolution in 1789 to the end of World War I in 1918, respectively7. At the same time, in order to fully explain the situation of any given topic at a moment in time, one needs to look back into the past. Thus, in order to explain the development of science from the final decades of the seventeenth century, it is necessary to make an excursion into the paradigm that was being substituted, scholasticism.
Thus, Section 1.1 below presents the precedents of science in the period under examination, studying scholasticism, the medieval paradigm of knowledge. Section 1.2 deals with the characteristics of New Science, focusing on the aspects defining science as a social activity and specifically on the groups of power and the elements of control over knowledge, whilst Section 1.3 focuses on the role of women in science at this time, and Section 1.4 briefly explains the evolution of astronomy, philosophy and life sciences during the period.
In relation with the approach selected in this section, it is important to state that processes of change are not conceived here as changes en masse, but as a complex set of factors which interrelate and influence each other in an incremental way, in order to change a set of elements from a given state of events to another, different, state. In this sense, the approach taken in this section follows Burke’s (2000) Social History of Knowledge in two aspects. The first one has to do with this multifactorial conception of how scientific paradigms change. Burke’s model follows Kuhn’s (1962) model of Scientific Revolutions in that the discomfort with orthodox, established thought evolves into a new paradigm which later becomes established itself. However, Burke conceives changes as being multifactorial (this is, influenced by different factors acting on different features at different speeds and rates) rather than recursive and straightforward, as Kuhn did. The second aspect is that the changes in scientific paradigms are conceived of as being the consequence of the very social nature of science, this is, of the nature of science as an exchange of knowledge between individuals in a society, and not as the result of the influence of ideas or events devoid of their incardination in these social communities of scientists, or on a mere relation of new discoveries and theories.
7 This however, does not imply the extension of the period of the data analysed in the dissertation, which sticks to the two centuries, from 1700 to 1900.
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1.1. A controlled science: Scholasticism
Even though science was never completely abandoned after the fall of the classical world, the period between the fifth and the eleventh centuries is commonly depicted as a Dark Age in which little knowledge is created8. It is from the end of the eleventh century and the twelfth century that a series of events would coalesce into the emergence of the Lower Middle Ages’ paradigm of knowledge:
Scholasticism.
1.1.1. Origins of scholasticism
Scholasticism is considered to have been greatly influenced in its development from the end of the eleventh centuries by two main elements:
First, contacts with the Muslim world allowed for the recovery of part of the previously lost or inaccessible classical tradition and, specifically, Aristotelian thought. Aristotle’s works had been lost in Western Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire, but they had been preserved in Muslim Territories, where they helped develop a Muslim philosophical school which produced scholars such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Rusd. Access to Muslim knowledge, which also included inventions such as the astrolabe (Pearsall 1999: 218), was possible because of the cohabitation of Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula. The availability of these texts would improve after the conquest of Toledo in 1085, giving Christian scholars physical access to them and prompting the foundation of a school of translators, who made Latin versions of these classical works. These new texts transferred Aristotelian ideas through Europe, influencing authors such as Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, who integrated Aristotelian philosophy and Christian thought and whose work would serve as the basis of the institutionalised worldview of the period in Western Europe.
Second, the foundation of medieval universities expanded and amplified this new knowledge. These new institutions were founded as a consequence of the good economic situation of the period, in which agricultural innovations and the development of cities and commerce helped raising money for other onerous quests such as the Crusades or the building of cathedrals. The first universities, in Paris, Bologna, Oxford, or Salamanca evolved from cathedral schools at the middle of the twelfth century, and continued their development during the following centuries under the control of the Church.
8 This is, admittedly, a Eurocentric view. It is true that the fall of the Roman Empire caused the physical loss of an important number of documents, but, at the same time, science was being cultivated in the Middle East and, especially, in China. Even though caution has been taken to refer in the text to the fact that the object of the narration is European science, any claims in which this is not explicitly stated or denied must be also understood as referring to the European reality, or, after the development of North American Science, to the Western reality.
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1.1.2. The paradigm: scholasticism
Scholasticism was the result of the expansion of the rediscovered Aristotelian thought in the context of medieval universities. Universities taught the seven liberal arts, which were divided in two groups of subjects: the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy). They offered postgraduate or specialization courses on medicine, law and theology as well. Scholasticism was used in these universities both as a didactic system and as a methodology to obtain knowledge.
Scholastic knowledge was based on already existing texts9 on science and philosophy, the most important of which were the Bible, classical philosophers, such as Plato and, especially, Aristotle; and the medieval philosophers who adapted Plato’s and Aristotle’s works to Christian teachings, as the already mentioned Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas. These authors were considered
“authorities” (Taavitsainen 2000; Crespo 2004) whose teachings were trusted and considered indisputable, as they were “handed down from above” (Taavitsainen & Pahta 1998: 176). Any new knowledge stemmed from the teachings in these authoritative sources (Atkinson 1996: 335) whose premises would then either be applied to particular cases or combined with other theoretical statements to obtain a new, derivative point, in both cases by means of applying the rules of classical deductive and inferential logic introspectively (Taavitsainen & Pahta 1998, Crespo 2004).
Scholastic knowledge mainly reapplied the then-considered irrefutable contents of classical sources, producing sterile and petty discussions (Burke 2000: 53-54) and largely ignoring experimentation or even the observation of the world. Thus, knowledge generated within this framework was rigid and fruitless, and consequently inapplicable to the real world. It was instead artisan knowledge, linked to commerce and largely ignored –if not rejected10– by scholastic philosophers, which provided the technologies which produced real improvements in society. It was the work of artisans rather than scholars that developed such discoveries as the application of hydraulic force to produce saws or bellows, new knowledge of structural forces and building techniques, or the invention of the helm and the compass; which helped develop cast iron, Gothic architecture, and navigation and commerce, respectively. Moreover, it was through commerce that Western Europe had access to new materials such as gunpowder or paper (c.1150) and technologies such as the precedents of the print and the clocks.
9 It has been characterised as “logocentric” (Taavitsainen & Pahta 1998: 167), this is, based on the power of the written word.
10 During the Late Middle Ages the social habit among higher classes of disregarding manual, useful knowledge was in full fledge (Burke 2000: 115).
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Scholastic knowledge was not easily accessible either. Only the members of a wealthy educated minority were capable of affording medieval learning, with members of the clergy and non-inheriting sons of the nobility filling the ranks of the universities. Moreover, the “divine” consideration of knowledge led to the exclusion of vernacular languages, which were considered corrupt. This meant that scientific matters were mainly discussed in Latin, which constituted another hindrance to its accessibility, as it implied the necessity of having a deep knowledge of this language just to be able to follow these discussions.
Finally, scholastic knowledge was deeply and tightly controlled by the Church. First, most teachers and students were members of the clergy, “bearers of knowledge and purveyors of the written and spoken word” (Jacob 1998: 11), and were ready to uphold the perspective of the Church and to denounce any departure from it. This control was reinforced by the fact that universities were granted independence and had a monopoly over higher education in their area of influence, thus being free from the influence of the nobility and from any competition, privileges which had the side-effect of strengthening the control of the Church over knowledge.
This ecclesiastical control manifested in two main aspects. First, it affected the object of study of science, as the Church controlled what could and could not be taught, denouncing departures from orthodoxy and exerting their force over dissenters such as Galileo Galilei or Miguel Servet. Second, it also affected the access to knowledge, as apart from the obvious pecuniary obstacles to access University, there were explicit vetoes in admissions to the universities for certain groups, such as illegitimate offspring, women, or followers of other faiths11. Consequently, the official Church had a near monopoly12 on both contents and admission to academic knowledge in Western Europe during this period (Burke 2000: 54) and imposed their limited view of the world.
1.1.3. First departures from scholasticism.
Scholasticism received its first criticism as early as the thirteenth century, when Roger Bacon (c.1214-1294) criticised those who based their opinions on fallible authorities or the weight of habit and asked for a true knowledge based on the real world. However, it would not be until the Renaissance that serious criticism started to affect this paradigm of knowledge.
11 This veto was suffered, among others, by Leonardo da Vinci, who was not allowed into university as he was an illegitimate son.
12 The only alternative to universities, monasteries, were still part of the Church, even though they had some higher degrees of freedom.
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A major factor in the emergence of these first criticisms was the start of the encounter between the artisan and cult traditions13. Artisan knowledge started to evolve towards a more refined state, as specialist artisans advanced their knowledge by devoting their time to read classical texts. At the same time, they also started to write about their practical knowledge to hand it down to future generations, thus inadvertently both connecting the practical and the cult traditions and starting the process of vernacularisation of science14. It was also during this period that guilds and their regulatory powers appeared.
Concurrently, the cult tradition witnessed the emergence of a new generation of thinkers who considered that science should pay more attention to the real world and to the artisan tradition. These scholars, including figures such as Erasmus or Leonardo da Vinci, conformed a new movement, Humanism, characterised by the approximation of artisan and cult traditions and a return to classical ideas.
Humanists proposed a new curriculum inspired in classical times, in which a man of science would have to know a little about every subject (hence the idea of the Renaissance man). The main beneficiaries were subjects which were considered as the most interesting in the real world, especially what would later be called humanities and, among these, rhetoric. At the same time, they also vindicated classical figures who applied scientific knowledge to change reality, such as Archimedes, and promoted activities that combined artisan and scientific knowledge, such as engineering, which was cultivated by the philosopher-engineers of the time, of which the best example is Leonardo da Vinci.
At the same time, humanists also contributed to debilitate scholasticism by reducing the influence of the Church on science. This manifested in two different aspects: Humanists tried to escape from church-controlled universities, where their ideas were received with hostility, creating new places of learning. They founded both new humanist universities with regal patronage, such as Wittenberg or Leiden (Burke 2000: 57-58), and the first associations and academies, especially in Florence and Venice, under the sponsorship of cultivated nobility. At the same time they also started to undermine logocentrism, the position of authority of the texts, by studying translations and discovering forgeries, thus debilitating the influence of religion over the subject matter of science.
13 In fact, Burke (2000: 28ff) argues that all of the Revolutions in science are nothing more than the popularisation of a type or other of artisan knowledge after being legitimised by academia.
14 The first examples of scientific texts in English are texts on medicine from the fourteenth century. Medicine started the process of vernacularisation as the most immediately useful science.
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During this period, some other factors played a role in the development of science. Among these, perhaps the most important is the development of printing, which contributed to the expansion and popularisation of knowledge, since it transmitted both artisan and erudite knowledge; and to undermine the Church’s control over science, as it allowed for a more independent learning.
Another important aspect was the emergence of Protestantism, which featured Luther’s requirement that lay people had the right to read and understand Scripture by themselves as one of its foundational traits (Burke 2000: 114). Thus, Latin was identified as a hindrance to access knowledge and translation to vernacular languages (firstly of religious texts, and then of all other types) was boosted, contributing to make science more accessible. At the same time, Protestant churches were also more open for new ideas, contrarily to the restriction of Catholic areas, and served as refuge for scholars being prosecuted for their ideas in other areas15.
1.2. A new science: The emergence of a new paradigm
Scholasticism remained dominant until the seventeenth century, the period during which the demise of the paradigm started. From the end of the sixteenth century, Francis Bacon (later joined in the seventeenth century by Robert Boyle) criticised the cornerstones of the scholastic methodology: its lack of interest in making new discoveries, its contemplative nature, its inapplicability, its reliance on logical deduction, and the authority and unquestionability of classical sources. At the same time, Bacon also criticised artisan knowledge, and specifically artisan medicine, as it did not study the real causes of diseases, but just concentrated on the recovery of patients (Burke 2000: 30).
Both Bacon and Boyle laid the foundations for a new form of knowledge based on evidence and induction (Taavitsainen and Pahta 1998: 162). Bacon, in The Advancement of Learning (1605), argued that “an empiricist approach to facts based on experimental data was more reliable than a recursive reinterpretation of reality using Aristotelian syllogism and metaphysics.” (Camiña 2012: 94), whilst in Novum Organum (1620) he asked for a new way of creating knowledge, a third way between scholasticism and empiric, artisan traditions, which started with sensorial information and advanced towards general conclusions.
Bacon’s proposals would become a reality with the emergence of empiricism, a new system of knowledge which was the definitive factor in the process of weakening of scholasticism. Empiricism
15 This does not mean that there were no opposition to new ideas in protestant countries, but, rather, that it was much milder. For instance, Giordano Bruno’s ideas about the nature of the Universe were not accepted in Lutheran or Calvinist areas either, but it was back in Italy that these ideas caused his condemnation to be burnt at the stake.
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finished the process, started by humanists, of undermining the concept of textual authority, totally rejecting the introspective efforts made by scholastics. Instead, empiricism proposed a new type of knowledge focusing on the observation of the physical world, which is systematised and expressed as mathematical data16 (Atkinson 1996: 335-336; Taavitsainen & Pahta 1998: 162; Crespo 2012: 17), and which would later evolve to experimentation after the development of the scientific method.
The pivotal role given to knowledge about the physical world in new scientific paradigms, combined with the increase in the exchanges between academic and artisan traditions, put the basis for the major breakthrough17 in scientific results at the period, changing medieval knowledge to make it become science as we understand it nowadays. However, scholasticism did not disappear completely, and continued to influence some works, authors, and disciplines (especially philosophy) for a longer time18.
1.2.1. Characteristics of the new paradigm
The emergence of empiricism prompted the demotion of texts from their authoritative role, shifting the focus of science towards the physical world and artisan knowledge. This new approach made knowledge much more useful for society. Whilst scholastic scientific production had little utility for society as a whole, this new approach focused on realities which affected the lives of all people in a much more immediate way. For instance, the combination of the study of astronomy, geography and magnetism, together with artisan advances in shipbuilding, allowed for a much more efficient transatlantic navigation, with all its well-known consequences. Moreover, the Scientific Revolution was the germ of the consequent development of the Industrial Revolution (Moskowich 2012), as can be noted in the importance given in the new paradigm to new disciplines such as the mechanical sciences, perhaps the most cultivated in this period, with astronomy in second place (Camiña 2012:
93).
16 For instance, empiricist astronomers systematised the observation and annotation of the positions of the celestial bodies and, by applying calculus and trigonometry (with the help of the continuously improving new telescopes), they were able to discover the laws of planetary motion.
17 This breakthrough is a process which comprises several stages and phenomena, referred to by different names (Enlightenment, New Science, English Enlightenment (Beal 2012: 2), Scientific Revolution...) which are not always used consistently to refer to the same realities. In this sense, care has been taken to use more aseptic constructions such as “emergence of a new scientific paradigm” or “development of a new system of knowledge”, which help refer to the general, long process taking place, and avoid other, potentially misleading concepts. However, readers must be warned that Scientific Revolution, when used, will refer to its traditional rather than its Kuhnian sense.
18 As explained above, processes of change are not considered (in this dissertation) to be complete and radical from one day to the following, but gradual and multifactorial. A good example of this is the presence of scholastic influences in different disciplines, most notably philosophy, well into the nineteenth century, which shows how
18 As explained above, processes of change are not considered (in this dissertation) to be complete and radical from one day to the following, but gradual and multifactorial. A good example of this is the presence of scholastic influences in different disciplines, most notably philosophy, well into the nineteenth century, which shows how