-- Robert Hooke, "Micrographia" (1665)
The collapse of a feudal economy, the emergence of capitalism on a broad
scale, and the profound alteration in social relations that accompanied
these changes provided the context of the Scientific Revolution in
Western Europe. The equating of truth with utility, or cognition with
technology, was an important part of this general process. Experiment,
quantification, prediction and control formed the parameters of a world
view that made no sense within the framework of the medieval social
and economic order. The individuals discussed in Chapter 1 would not
have been possible in an earlier age; or, perhaps more to the point,
would have been ignored, as were Roger Bacon and Robert Grosseteste,
who pioneered the experimental method in the thirteenth century. Modern
science, in short, is the mental framework of a world defined by capital
accumulation, and ultimately, to quote Ernest Gellner, it became the
"mode of cognition" of industrial society.1
It is not my intention to argue that capitalism "caused" modern science.
The relationship between consciousness and society has always been
problematic because all social activities are permeated by ideas
and attitudes and there is no way to analyze society in a strictly
functional way.2 We are confronted, then, with a structural totality, or
historical gestalt, and my point in this chapter will be that science.
and capitalism form such a unit. Science acquired its factual and
explanatory power only within a context that was "congruent" to those
facts and explanations. It will be necessary, therefore, to look at
science as a system of thought adequate to a certain historical epoch;
to try to separate ourselves from the common impression that it is an
absolute, transcultural truth.3
Let us begin our examination of this theme by comparing the Aristotelian
and seventeenth-century world views, and then consider the changes
wrought by the Commercial Revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries on the social and economic world of feudalism (see Chart 1).
The most striking aspect of the medieval world view is its sense of
closure, its completeness. Man is at the center of a universe that is
bounded at its outermost sphere by God, the Unmoved Mover. God is the
one entity that, in Aristotle's terminology, is pure actuality. All
other entities are endowed with purpose, being partly actual and partly
potential. Thus it is the goal of fire to move up, of earth (matter) to
move down, and of species to reproduce themselves. Everything moves and
exists in accordance with divine purpose. All of nature, rocks as well
as trees, is organic and repeats itself in eternal cycles of generation
and corruption. As a result, this world is ultimately changeless, but
being riddled with purpose, is an exceptionally meaningful one. Fact
and value, epistemology and ethics, are identical. "What do I know?"
and "How should I live?" are in fact the same question.
Turning to the world view of the seventeenth century, we are apt to
note first of all the absence of any immanent meaning. As E.A. Burtt
describes it, the seventeenth century, which began with the search for
God in the universe, ended by squeezing Him out of it altogether.4
Things do not possess purpose, which is an anthropocentric notion,
but only behavior, which can (and must) be described in an atomistic,
mechanical, and quantitative way. As a result, our relationship to nature
is fundamentally altered. Unlike medieval man, whose relationship with
nature was seen as being reciprocal, modern man (existential man) sees
himself as having the ability to control and dominate nature, to use
it for his own purposes. Medieval man was given a purposeful position
in the universe; it did not require an act of will on his part. Modern
man, on the other hand, is enjoined to find his own purposes. But what
those purposes are or should be cannot, for the first time in history,
be logically derived. In short, modern science is grounded in a sharp
distinction between fact and value; it can only tell us how to do
something, not what to do or whether we should do it.
Chart 1. Comparison of world views
World view of the Middle Ages World view of the seventeenth century
Universe: geocentric, earth in the Universe: heliocentric; earth has
center of a series of no special status, planets held
concentric, crystalline in orbit by gravity of the sun.
spheres. Universe closed, Universe infinite.
with God, the Unmoved
Mover, as the outermost
sphere.
Explanation: in terms of formal Explanation: strictly in terms of
and final causes, teleological. matter and motion, which
Everything but God in process have no higher purposes.
of Becoming; natural place, Atomistic in both the material
natural motion. and philosophical sense.
Motion: forced or natural, Motion: to be described, not
requires a mover. explained; law of inertia.
Matter: continuous, no vacua. Matter: atomic, implying
existence of vacua.
Time: cyclical, static. Time: linear, progressive.
Nature: understood via the Nature: understood via the
concrete and the qualitative. abstract and quantitative.
Nature is alive, organic; we Nature is dead, mechanistic,
observe it and make and is known via
deductions from general manipulation (experiment)
principles. and mathematical abstraction,
The openness that we see as characteristic of seventeenth-century
consciousness is also antithetical to the medieval cosmos. The universe
has become infinite, motion (change) is a given, and time is linear. The
notion of progress and the sense that activity is cumulative characterize
the world view of early modern Europe.
Finally, what is "really" real for the seventeenth century is what is
abstract. Atoms are real, but invisible; gravity is real, but, like
momentum and inertial mass, can only be measured. In general, abstract
quantification serves as explanation. It was this loss of the tangible
and meaningful that drove the more sensitive minds of the age -- Blaise
Pascal and John Donne, for example -- to the edge of despair. The "new
Philosophy calls all in doubt," wrote the latter in 1611; "Tis all in
peeces, all cohaerance gone." Or in Pascal's phrase, "the silences of
the infinite spaces terrify me."5
The culture that was permeated by the Aristotelian world view was, as we
know, characterized by a feudal economy and a religious way of life. By
and large, food and handicrafts were produced not for market and profit,
but for immediate consumption and use. Excepting luxury items, trade
existed only within local areas, and more closely resembled the tribute
structure of the ancient Roman Empire (out of whose disintegration
feudalism arose) than our modern notion of commercial exchange. Until
the late fifteenth century almost all shipping was coastal: boats
stayed within sight of land for fear of getting lost. The guilds,
which produced for personal commission, emphasized quality rather than
quantity, and closely guarded the secrets of craftsmanship. There was
no notion of mass production, and very little division of labor. The
economy was, essentially, a self-contained reward system. It could not be
described as "going" anywhere, and, in general, our notions of growth and
expansion would have made little sense in this static and self-sufficient
world. In the Middle Ages, meaning was assured, both politically and
religiously. The church was the ultimate reference when one sought
to explain a phenomenon, whether it occurred in nature or in human
life. Furthermore, the social order made sense in a direct and personal
way. Justice and political power were administered in terms of loyalty
and attachment -- vassal to lord, serf to land, apprentice to master --
and the system, as a result, possessed few abstractions. If the Middle
Ages seem, from our vantage point, to be hermetically sealed, they had the
advantage (despite the extreme instability afforded by plague and natural
disaster) of being psychologically reassuring to their inhabitants.6
It was, however, in the economic sphere that the feudal system became
increasingly nonviable. In terms of economic payoff, the limits of
feudalism had been reached as early as the thirteenth century. Since
significant capital investment in agriculture was not forthcoming,
there existed an upper limit to productivity. This limit in turn caused
a strain that was starting to transform peasant rebellions that had
begun in the thirteenth century into a class war. In response to this
threat, there emerged an enormous pressure to expand the geographical
base of economic operations. New areas for the cultivation of sugar
and wheat, direct access to the spices that could disguise bad meat,
new sources of wood, and more extensive fishing grounds were all seen
as necessary to the survival of European civilization. In addition,
the fall of Constantinople in 1453 gave the Ottoman Turks hegemony
over Eastern trade, creating the need for a non-Mediterranean passage
to the East. All these factors contributed to the rapid ascendancy of
the imperial program of expansion, and with this interest came a host
of inventions that made such a program possible. The full-rigged ship
appeared, better able to harness the wind. In the sixteenth century the
English set cannon in portholes for easier maneuverability. Gunpowder,
which the ancient Chinese had invented and used for fireworks displays,
became the basis for the firearm industry. It was no accident that
Francis Bacon identified the compass and gunpowder as the twin keys
to naval hegemony. The first maps designed with compass knowledge --
the beautiful "portolani" still preserved in the libraries of major
European cities -- began to appear, as did new models of the globe. The
image of boats hugging the coast, almost a perfect metaphor for the tight
mental horizon of the Middle Ages, was crumbling. It was now the age of
Magellan and Columbus and Vasco da Gama. The expansion of consciousness,
and territory, made the closed medieval cosmos seem increasingly quaint.
Concomitant to, and directly following on, the Commercial Revolution was
a series of developments which smashed the feudal system and established
the capitalist mode of production in Western Europe. Commerce naturally
began to influence industry. The Commercial Revolution, with its sharply
increased volume of long-distance trading, broke down the personal
relationship between guild master and customer. If the former were to sell
to distant markets, he needed merchant help and credit. The merchant first
obtained exclusive disposal of the manufacturer's output, and later began
to advance the artisan money on raw materials. Eventually, the artisan
fell into such debt that he had to turn his shop over to the merchant,
who became a merchant-manufacturer, or entrepreneur. The same process
that destroyed guild-master and journeyman turned the peasant into a wage
earner. In fifteenth-century England, the rise of the rural "putting-out"
system (domestic industry), especially in textile manufacture, marked the
beginning of a shift of capital investment away from the cities. Peasants
began to devote their energies to various aspects of cloth production,
and the cloth guilds began to fail as a result.
The Commercial Revolution also generated profits from trade which could
be invested in agriculture and manufacturing. Some industries, such
as mining, book printing, shipbuilding (which now employed thousands),
and the manufacture of cannon, required great capital outlay from the
start, and thus could not be contained within the narrow world of craft
production.~ In some cases, especially when the product had a military
use, the state itself became the leading customer. State arsenals, such
as the great arsenal at Venice, the scene of much of Galileo's research,
became major manufacturing centers in themselves. Military manufacture
also had close ties to mining and metallurgy, which expanded dramatically
in the early modern period. The application of water power to mining,
and the creation of a new type of forge, made possible the casting of
guns. A host of technical improvements for pumping, ventilating, and
driving mechanisms was developed -- and illustrated in lavish detail
in such books as Biringuccio's "Pirotechnia" (1540) and Agricola's "De
Re Metallica" (1556). England in particular experienced both industrial
growth and commercial expansion after 1550. She began casting cannon in
iron (since she lacked bronze); introducing such industries as paper,
gunpowder, alum, brass, and saltpeter; substituting coal for wood;
introducing new techniques in mining and metallurgy; and squeezing the
Hanseatic merchants out of the textile market.
There was no way that the medieval Christian-Aristotelian synthesis
could withstand such revolutionary changes, and if we consult the
characteristics of the seventeenth-century world view listed earlier
in this chapter, we find the counterpart to the economic transformation
just described. Heliocentricity reflects not only the awareness that the
universe is infinite, but also the European discovery of other worlds and
the consequent loss of the sense of European uniqueness. In his "On the
Revolution of the Celestial Orbs" (1543), Copernicus cites the widening
of geographical horizons as a major influence on his thinking. Turning
to the category of explanation, we see that explanations of events are
now couched in terms of the mechanical, and mathematically describable,
motion of inert matter. Nature (including human beings) is seen as so much
stuff to be grasped and shaped. Nothing can have purpose in itself, and
values -- as Machiavelli was among the first to argue -- are just so much
sentiment. Reason is now completely (at least in theory) instrumental,
'zweckrational.' One can no longer ask,, "Is this good?," but only, "Does
this work?," a question that reflects the mentality of the Commercial
Revolution and the growing emphasm on production, prediction, and control.