A m s t e r d a m U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s H. FlORIS COHEN How Modern Science Came Into The World Four Civilizations, One 17th-Century Breakthrough How Modern Science Came Into The World how modern science came into the world Four Civilizations, One 17 th-Century Breakthrough H. Floris Cohen Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Yves Tanguy, There Motion Has Not Yet Ceased (Là ne finit pas encore le mouve- ment), 1945 , oil on canvas, 71,1 x 55,5 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Bequest, Rich- ard S. Zeisler, 2007, 2007.47 / © c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010 Cover design: Studio Jan de Boer, bno, Amsterdam Lay-out: ProGrafici, Goes isbn 978 90 8964 239 4 e- isbn 978 90 4851 273 7 nur 685 © H. Floris Cohen / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2010 All rights reserved. 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In memory of Rob Wentholt, mentor and friend table of contents preface xiii prologue:solvingtheproblemofthescientificrevolution xv The historiography of the Scientific Revolution: Past and present state xvii The toolkit xx Major questions here resolved xxix Users’ guide xxxiii Notes on literature used xxxix Part I Nature-KNowledge IN tradItIoNal SocIety 1 i greekfoundations,chinesecontrasts 3 A tale of two cities 4 Athens and Alexandria compared 15 Athens and Alexandria: Rare efforts at unification 23 Greek knowledge of nature: Upswing and downturn 27 Chinese knowledge of nature 33 Chinese and Greek nature-knowledge compared 44 Theory – a latent developmental potential and conditions for its realization 47 Notes on literature used 50 ii greeknature-knowledgetransplanted:theislamicworld 53 Upswing 54 Downturn 64 On the threshold of a Scientific Revolution? 70 Notes on literature used 74 iii greeknature-knowledgetransplantedinpart:medievaleurope 77 Upswing 77 Downturn 89 tableofcontents viii Nature-knowledge in Islamic civilization and in medieval Europe: A comparison 90 Notes on literature used 97 iv greeknature-knowledgetransplanted,andmore:renaissanceeurope 99 Athens replayed in full 99 Alexandria: A replay with a difference 100 Europe’s coercive empiricism 113 At the dawn of the Scientific Revolution 141 Notes on literature used 152 Part II three revolutIoNary traNSformatIoNS 157 v thefirsttransformation:realist-mathematicalscience 159 Johannes Kepler 161 Galileo Galilei 178 The knowledge structure of Alexandria-plus 195 Causes of the first transformation 201 Notes on literature used 216 vi thesecondtransformation:akinetic-corpuscularianphilosophy ofnature 221 Revival continued 222 Beeckman and the transformation of ancient atomism 224 The Cartesian variety of kinetic corpuscularianism 226 Causes of the second transformation 238 Notes on literature used 243 vii thethirdtransformation:tofindfactsthroughexperiment 245 Bacon’s vision 245 Bacon’s proposed practice: The natural history of sound 247 Gilbert: Lodestone and amber treated the Baconian way 249 Harvey: Bodily processes revised 252 Van Helmont: Paracelsianism reformed 255 Theory: Experimentation, theorizing, and background worldview 258 Causes of the third transformation 260 Notes on literature used 268 tableofcontents ix viii concurrenceexplained 271 An explanatory overview 271 Causal gaps identified 272 An underlying sense of values shared across the culture 273 An upswing luckily not interrupted 276 The achievement still at risk 278 Notes on literature used 279 ix prospectsaround1640 281 Chronology and continuities 281 Dynamics of the revolution, in brief 284 Notes on literature used 287 Part III dyNamIcS of the revolutIoN 289 x achievementsandlimitationsofrealist-mathematicalscience 291 The classic Alexandrian subjects absorbed 293 Scholastic concepts mathematized 307 Craft techniques mathematized 309 Mathematical instruments 327 Analogies of motion 335 From Euclidean ratios to the calculus 346 Power and pull of realist-mathematical science 360 Notes on literature used 368 xi achievementsandlimitationsofkineticcorpuscularianism 373 Musical sound as moving corpuscles: An explanatory sample 375 Rapid adoption 382 Modifications of the doctrine 388 Whirlpools for a revolving Earth 394 Another sort of power; another sort of pull 397 Notes on literature used 401 xii legitimacyinthebalance 403 Strangeness: Three successive clashes 403 Strangeness: Against common sense 415 Sacrilege: Three successive clashes 417 Strangeness and sacrilege: A looming crisis of legitimacy 426 Notes on literature used 441 tableofcontents x xiii achievementsandlimitationsoffact-findingexperimentalism 445 Facts collected and categorized 446 Instrument-driven fact-finding 448 Subject-driven fact-finding 463 Craft techniques improved through experimental science 472 Problems with facts and how to ascertain them 483 Pooling of efforts 494 Power and pull of fact-finding experimentalism 499 Notes on literature used 506 xiv nature-knowledgedecompartmentalized 509 Whence the breakdown of barriers? 5 11 Quantities and corpuscles 5 15 Revolutionary fusion in the making 517 Notes on literature used 519 xv thefourthtransformation:corpuscularmotiongeometrized 521 Motion, four principal ways 522 Anomalous refraction revisited 539 Notes on literature used 546 xvi thefifthtransformation:thebaconianbrew 549 Kinetic corpuscularianism crosses the Channel 549 Spirit and active principles in kinetic corpuscularianism 552 The Baconian Brew 554 Notes on literature used 564 xvii legitimacyofanewkind 565 The edges off controversy, and a shift of center Europe-wide 566 Strangeness mitigated 568 Sacrilege insulated 572 Utility sanctioned in the Baconian Ideology 578 Sustenance for nature-knowledge in monotheist surroundings – a comparative summing up 590 Notes on literature used 595 tableofcontents xi xviii nature-knowledgeby1684:theachievementsofar 599 Predecessors on their way out 600 17 th-century props 606 Advances on many fronts: the big picture 6 1 1 The force knot 621 Notes on literature used 634 xix thesixthtransformation:thenewtoniansynthesis 637 The Newton knot 637 Toward the Principia 640 Principia 658 Toward the Opticks 678 Opticks 696 Two fragments and one whole 702 Notes on literature used 716 epilogue:aduallegacy 719 Expanding modern science 722 Science and values 731 Notes on literature used 740 endnotes 743 nameindex 767 subjectindex 779 preface Once upon a time ‘the Scientific Revolution of the 17 th century’ was an innovative and in- spiring concept. It yielded what is still the master narrative of the rise of modern science. The narrative has meanwhile turned into a straitjacket – so often events and contexts just fail to fit in. In the classroom we make the best of the situation; in our researches most of us pre- fer just to drop the concept altogether, regarding it as beset by truly unmanageable complex- ity. And yet, neither the early, theory-centered historiography nor present-day contextual and practice-oriented approaches compel us to drop the concept altogether. Instead, in the present book I provide a narrative restructured from the ground up, by means of a compre- hensive approach, sustained comparisons, and a tenacious search for underlying patterns. Key to my analysis is a vision of the Scientific Revolution as made up of six distinct yet tightly interconnected revolutionary transformations, each of some twenty-five to thirty years’ duration. This vision equally enables me to explain how modern science could come about in Europe rather than in Greece, China, or the Islamic world. In the prologue that follows I set forth all this at greater length, with proper attention given to the present state of the historiography and to the theoretical views that have served me as guidelines for my effort at fresh conceptualization. I began writing this book in 1994. Since then I have been fortunate to receive numerous benefits. Regarding institutions, I owe a great deal to the Dibner Institute, where (under the highly appreciated co-directorship of Jed Buchwald and Evelyn Simha) I was a fellow from Febru- ary through June 1995 ; to the history-of-science group at the University of Twente with its frequent, no-holds-barred but also friendly discussions of work-in-progress; to the Depart- ment of Humanities of Utrecht University for a generous grant and (at the same university) to the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, which under the visionary leadership of Wijnand Mijnhardt has since 2006 provided me with a most congenial working environment. As for individuals who helpfully commented on portions of the book, I beg forgiveness from those I may fail to list against my best intentions. Critical readers of the entire book in its various stages include John Heilbron, John Henry, Peter Pesic, Bert Theunissen, and (last but definitely not least) Bob Westman; also, with her familiar hawk’s eye, Pamela Bruton. I xiv preface further received useful comments on ideas, sections, and chapters from Klaas van Berkel, Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Mario Biagioli, Michel Blay, Rens Bod, Henk Bos, Geoffrey Can- tor, Peter Dear, Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, Mark Elvin, Peter Engelfriet, Moti Feingold, Rivka Feldhay, Dan Garber, Stephen Gaukroger, Penelope Gouk, Jehane Kuhn, Dick van Lente, Da- vid Lindberg, Frans van Lunteren, Nancy Nersessian, Lodewijk Palm, Larry Principe, Jamil Ragep, John Schuster, William Shea, Nathan Sivin, Noel Swerdlow, Edith Sylla, Steve Turner, Tomas Vanheste, John Walbridge, the late Sam Westfall, Catherine Wilson, Joella Yoder, and also, with friendly incisiveness, from Rob Wentholt, who died as this book went to the press. I dedicate it to his memory. Dear friends and colleagues, I am truly grateful for how all of you have helped me in your various ways. Thanks to you, this has become a better book. And thanks to Marita’s loving support, the author has become a better man. prologue solving the problem of the scientific revolution The affairs of the Empire of letters are in a situation in which they never were and never will be again; we are passing now from an old world into the new world, and we are working seriously on the first foundation of the sciences. 1 Dom Robert Desgabets OSB, 18 September 1676 Around 1600 the pursuit of nature-knowledge was radically transformed. This happened in Europe over the course of a few decades, and our modern science is what grew out of the event. The transformation and its immediate aftermath have for quite some time been known as the Scientific Revolution of the 17 th century. In a book published in 1994 , The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry , I subjected to critical scrutiny some sixty views on the event selected from the vast literature for their boldly creative, interpretive sweep. I now present my own view. It has taken shape in critical dialogue with those sixty and several more-recent interpretations and also with many more narrowly focused studies. In good measure, it also rests upon firsthand familiarity with the subject. In the final chapter of my historiographical book I presented a preliminary sketch of my own budding view. That sketch has served me well as a stepping-stone, but my thinking has taken many a new turn in the meantime. I hereby discard that final chapter, with thanks for the encouragement it once gave me. In tracing over time a range of events which culminated in 17 th-century Europe, I seek answers to two basic questions. The first is: How did modern science come into the world, and (as part of that question) why did this happen in Europe rather than in China or in Islamic civilization? The other question is: Why did this 17 th-century breakthrough in the pursuit of knowledge about nature instigate the as-yet-unbroken chain of scientific growth that we are wont to take for granted in our own time, four centuries later? Why did it not peter out, as every previous period of florescence suggests it very well might have? In short, the questions this book claims to resolve are whence the onset, and whence the original staying power, of modern science ? On the first question, the principal point I shall be concerned to make is that modern science came into the world by way of a threefold transformation. Transformed in revo- lutionary fashion were three mutually very different and also very much separate modes of acquiring knowledge about nature. The mathematical portion of the Greek corpus of solving the problem of the scientific revolution xvi nature-knowledge, after several centuries of reception and enrichment in Islamic civiliza- tion and then in Renaissance Europe, was unpredictably turned by Galileo and by Kepler into the beginnings of an ongoing process of mathematization of nature experimentally sustained. Another portion of the Greek corpus, the speculative, contained four distinct, rival systems of natural philosophy, with Aristotle’s paramount. It was replaced, at the insti- gation of Descartes and other corpuscularian thinkers, by a natural philosophy of atomist provenance that was decisively reinforced by a novel conception of motion broadly similar to Galileo’s. Thirdly, a specifically European-colored mode of investigation intent upon ac- curate description and practical application that had arisen by the mid- 15 th century began to consolidate around 1600 , under the aegis of Francis Bacon’s calls for a general reform of nature-knowledge, into a fact-finding, practice-oriented mode of experimental science. Thus, the onset of the Scientific Revolution yielded three distinct modes of nature- knowledge of a kind that the world had never seen. If we wish to understand how modern science could arrive in the world, we must ask how, around 1600 , these three almost simul- taneous transformations could come about. Most answers to be given here are specific to each distinct case of revolutionary transformation. Insofar as answers pertain to the ques- tion of ‘why in Europe and not elsewhere?’ they hinge on a comparison between Greek and Chinese nature-knowledge and on a historical theory of upswing, downturn, and chances for refreshment yielded by feats of cultural transplantation – all of which I unfold in a foun- dational first chapter. If, next, we wish to understand how kernels of “recognizably modern science” 2 managed to stay in the world once they had arrived there, we ought to note first that their very survival was a close call – by midcentury the revolutionary movement was undergoing a veritable crisis of legitimacy. But, rather than losing momentum for good, a new political climate and the emergence, by the early 1660 s, of an ideology for innovative nature-knowledge allowed the movement to regain pace. Three distinct driving forces pro- pelled it forward. One was a specific dynamics built into the 17 th-century practice of math- ematization of nature experimentally sustained; another was a similar yet characteristically different dynamics built into the 17 th-century practice of fact-finding experimentation. And I shall make a case for a midcentury event that has so far not been conceptualized at all. This is the unprecedented breaking down of barriers between the Galilean, the Cartesian, and the Baconian modes of nature-knowledge, leading in the 1660 s to mid- 1680 s to three more revolutionary transformations marked by hugely productive mutual interaction. In sum, the Scientific Revolution of the 17 th century may fruitfully be regarded, not as one monolithic event, but rather as being made up of six distinct revolutionary transformations, each of some twenty to at most thirty years’ duration. So much by way of an outline of the argument to be unfolded in the present book in the format of an ongoing, chronological narrative To any reader – professional historian of science or not, student or not – the book has a prologue xvii story to tell. Between ancient Greece and Newton’s Principia and Opticks it covers the major episodes and the major figures (also numerous minor ones). I take pains to avoid jargon and to present successive issues as clearly and simply as I can. Details not directly relevant to the story line (e.g., biographical data that go beyond the brief characterization or the telling anecdote) are left out. Even so, the book builds its message up from a long concatenation of topics, and my detailed treatment of certain issues may tax the patience of the nonprofes- sional. For over and above its providing a story, this book is meant to be an argument . It is directed in the first place at convincing my co-professionals in the history of science that the conception here unfolded of how modern science came into the world is worth considering in earnest. In view of how history-of-science writing has developed over the past decades, this may not be an easy task – it runs up against an ingrained skepticism concerning the very questions I now claim to have resolved. the historiography of the Scientific revolution: Past and present state The concept of the Scientific Revolution was coined in the 1930 s, as one product of a major historiographical overhaul that took place between the mid- 1920 s and the early 1950 s. It was meant to identify a period in European history that covers roughly the second half of the 16 th and almost all of the 17 th century (i.e., between Copernicus and Newton) as marking a uniquely radical, conceptual upheaval out of which modern science emerged essentially as we still know it. This view quickly began to be articulated in the budding profession of historians of science. It did so in ways that turned the previously customary listing of one heroic scientific achievement after another into the careful reconstruction of such concep- tual knots as those individuals who brought the Scientific Revolution about actually faced and strove to disentangle. Out of the concept-focused mode of history writing thus emerging came a range of pathbreaking narratives. These shared, at a minimum, a focus on how the once self-evident conception of our Earth as a stable body at the center of the cosmos gave way to the core of the modern worldview – the Earth and the other planets placed in a solar system, itself a tiny portion of an infinite universe. The major vehicle to bring about this fundamental reversal, along with several other major, closely related accomplishments (a new conception of mo- tion; deliberate creation of void space), was held to be a quickly expanding process of ‘math- ematization of nature’. By this was meant the subjection of increasing ranges of empirical phenomena to mathematical treatment in ways suitable as a rule to experimental testing. Key figures in the process were held to be Copernicus, as the man first to compute down to the required detail planetary trajectories in a Sun-centered setting; Kepler, as the man first to turn Copernicus’ setup into a previously unthinkable ‘celestial physics’ leading to his discov- solving the problem of the scientific revolution xviii ery of the planets’ elliptical paths; Galileo, as the man first to mathematize with success a sig- nificant terrestrial phenomenon (falling and projected bodies) in an effort to counter major objections to Copernicus’ setup; Descartes, as the man first to conceive of the universe and of the particle-governed mechanisms at work in it mathematically; Newton, as the man to cap the whole development by uniting terrestrial and celestial physics in his mathematically exact, empirically sustained conception of universal gravitation. Not that these men and their principal accomplishments were taken to represent all there really was to the Scientific Revolution. Still, for decades historians were inclined to treat other noteworthy attainments of a modern-scientific nature, such as Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood or Boyle’s chemical-testing procedures, as by-products, somehow, of the major development. Starting in the 1960 s, a range of perspectives was introduced that led to a widening of this ‘master narrative’. Our history-of-science forebears unreflectively identified the present- day definition and classification of scientific disciplines with their apparent 17 th-century counterparts. This habit has been given up in favor of a still-increasing awareness that what we now call ‘mechanics’, for example, scarcely had a counterpart in the early 17 th century, so different, and differently aligned, was the intellectual context in which problems of motion used to be considered from the ancient Greeks onward. Even ‘science’ as a general expression is on its way out. It carries too many associations far removed from 17 th-century realities (e.g., the professional identity of ‘scientist’ is a term of the 19 th century, not earlier). Further, research subjects and/or people previously left wholly or partly in the margins have come to be included in the narrative. Examples are subjects that (at the time) were non- mathematical and chiefly descriptive, like magnetism and illness; subjects that are scarcely practiced anymore, like musical science, and/or are held under grave suspicion, like alche- my; but also previously neglected contributors not of the first or even quite the second rank (e.g., hosts of ably experimenting Jesuits). Most important of all, the goal of putting the history of scientific ideas in institutional and other sociocultural contexts has become a fixture of most articles and books on the subject. History writing in the vein of ‘this major thinker brought this particular concep- tual breakthrough about, then that thinker that one’ has not come to an end, but a sense has emerged that a proper understanding of scientific accomplishment requires an aware- ness of how it was situated in time and place. In this way, for example, we have learned of the considerable extent to which practitioners depended upon Europe’s patronage market. Also, an influential argument has been made for a constitutive link between the contested viability of instrument-aided experimentation per se as articulated in Boyle’s and Hobbes’ early- 1660 s dispute over the void and the politics of the Stuart Restoration. As a result, local particularity has in recent decades been gaining the upper hand over the universal validity claimed with ever diminishing vigor for the most seminal outcomes of the Scientific Revolu- tion. One genuine accomplishment of this context-oriented approach is a greater concern prologue xix for the day-to-day practice of experimental research and for the trustworthiness of results so attained. Another has been a heightened sense that there is room for contingency in the story – not everything that happened was bound to happen, or was bound to happen the way it did happen. Historians of science have further become aware that there were more significant reasons for contemporary perceptions of modern-science-in-the-making as in- nately strange and disturbing than sheer backwardness and/or superstition. With regard to the concept of the Scientific Revolution, the net effect of this plurality of mostly productive, novel viewpoints has been resignation. What numerous historians of science have in the meantime given up is not, to be sure, the ongoing production of novel in- terpretations of episodes in 17 th-century science but the very idea that, deeply underneath the surface of individual events, something identifiable holds so complex a series of events together And it is certainly true that a once-enlightening yet too one-sided formula like ‘Scientific Revolution = mathematization of nature’ can no longer be accepted. But is this conclusion tantamount to giving up the quest for underlying coherence altogether? In everyday practice, it surely is. True, publishers keep inviting authors to produce texts for the classroom. The dozen or so up-to-date surveys to result from such requests are of as great a use to the students taught therefrom as they are vital for the health of the profession. But inevitably they obey a format that precludes a concentrated effort to seek an underlying coherence. The reigning atmosphere of skeptical resignation does not, to be sure, stem solely from the manifold perspectives brought to bear upon the Scientific Revolution over the past de- cades or solely from a despair-inducing sense of the ever more apparent complexity of the event. Resignation stems in perhaps equal measure from the apparent elusiveness of all those big ‘why?’ questions once raised about the origins of modern science. The causal adventure, enthusiastically embarked upon in the 1930 s, has ended in failure and disillusion. Starting in the 1980 s it has gradually petered out. But should it have? The difficulty with much causal debate at the time rested neither in its vivacity nor in the vital nature of the questions asked but rather in the peculiar habit historians of science acquired to investigate them. Efforts at explanation almost invariably took shape as a thesis, usually named after the historian to put it forward, about the one and only, all-encompass- ing cause of the Scientific Revolution. The Zilsel thesis explained the Scientific Revolution through an alleged, early- 17 th-century closing of the perennial gap between scholars and craftsmen. The Merton thesis was made by adherents and opponents alike to explain the Sci- entific Revolution through the contemporary adoption of Puritan values in a capitalist set- ting. The Yates thesis explained the Scientific Revolution as the next step both extending and opposing a magical worldview of Hermeticist origin. The Duhem thesis explained the Scien- tific Revolution as a 14 th-century revolt against Aristotle. The Eisenstein thesis explained the Scientific Revolution through Europe’s move from script to print. And such piling up of ex-