Bethamehi Joy Syiem

B.A. History Hons. – II

Rise of Modern West – II
Assignment submitted to Dr. Sabina Kazmi
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Q. The rise of modern science was conditioned by the contemporary socio-economic

conditions. Discuss.
Up until the 17th century, learning was characterized by the classical style or the Aristotelian
paradigm. However, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, huge advances were made in
scientific knowledge that created an unprecedented understanding of the universe - instead of
just assuming things, intellectuals began to look for specific proof and evidence of the functions
of nature. The theories of ancient scholars were refuted, therefore questioning the very existence
of society and how the universe was created.
In the study of the history of science, these years from Copernicus to Newton, have been known
to constitute “the Scientific Revolution”, because the fundamental changes they instituted in the
conception of nature and the procedures of scientific inquiry effectively terminated a tradition in
natural philosophy that stemmed from Aristotle and marked the birth of modern science. The
history of science was largely created as an intellectual discipline through the study of this
period. These years were marked by a reconceptualization of knowledge and shift in scientific
method. This is what would constitute the rise of modern science.
In the discussion of this period, there is much debate on whether one can call it a ‘scientific
revolution’ or not. Furthermore, while some see it as a coherent “break from the past”, others
saw it as a combination of separate disparate changes. However, while that is important as a
discourse on its own, the primary concern of this essay has to do with the origins of modern
science. The question that remains, “What are the factors and conditions that led to the rise of
modern science?” In the quest for that answer, we place emphasis on various socio-economic
conditions and their contribution to the rise of modern science.
Origins: Social Context of Modern Science
When did modern science arise? This is a question which has received divergent answers. Some
would say that it started in the High Middle Ages (1277), or that it began with the 'via moderna'
of the fourteenth century. More widespread is the idea that the Italian Renaissance was also the
re-birth of the sciences. In general, Copernicus is then singled out as the great revolutionary, and
the 'scientific revolution' is said to have taken place during the period from Copernicus to
Newton. Others would hold that the scientific revolution started in the seventeenth century and
that it covered the period from Galileo to Newton. It might be asked: Was there ever something
like a scientific revolution? Perhaps the term is not well chosen.
Whatever the case, it must be recognized, of course, that there is an enormous gap between the
science of Antiquity and the Middle Ages on the one hand and that of the seventeenth century
onwards on the other. Even without analysing their respective contents, their effects convincingly
show the watershed: on the basis of 'ancient' science one cannot construct locomotives or
aeroplanes; on the basis of 'modern' science this has turned out to be possible.
The beginning of science goes back to the ancient world. The Greeks had shaped knowledge of
science for a very long time. The views of Aristotle in the field of Physics, Ptolemy in astronomy
and Galen in medicine had dominated European thought for centuries. In the medieval period,
scholars studied the world, especially astronomy, based on the conclusions of these classics.
Further on, the Europeans also acquired knowledge of mathematics through the Arabs.
One might justifiably argue that the focal point for studying the rise of modern science ought to
be the evolution and development of the role of the scientist. This perspective tends to put major
emphasis on individual genius with studies focusing on biographies and major discoveries. This
internalist view also tended to explain the origins of modern science as a coherent and
transformative revolution. It was supported by scholars such as Alexander Koyre, Herbert
Butterfield, Koestler and A. Hall. In using phrases like ‘an epic adventure’ or a ‘certain dynamic
quality’ to describe scientific events, Butterfield emphasized on the inexplicable nature of the
origin of science. For Koyre, the scientific revolution was based on a mixture of genius, insight,
delusion and error.
Others such as Thomas Kuhn, M. Clagett and A.C. Crombie work within this internalist
approach but theirs is an evolutionary perspective. According to them, Galileo and other
scientists owed their success to the intellectuals of the ancient and medieval periods. For them,
Aristotelian views were not a hindrance, but rather they were important in the development of
science.
In the following paragraphs, we will discuss the origins of modern science with special reference
to the role of the Renaissance. Following that, we will delve into Marxist historiography that
draws links between the relationship of social needs and the rise of science. Also noted are the
role of the printing press and the causal links drawn between religion, particularly Protestantism
and modern science.
Role of Renaissance
Experimentalism and mathematization were both stimulated by an increasing concern that
knowledge of nature should be practically useful, bringing distinct benefits to its practitioners, its
patrons, or even to people in general. Apart from supporting dubious medical ideas, the only use
to which natural philosophy had been put throughout the Middle Ages was for bolstering
religion. During the scientific revolution the practical usefulness of knowledge, an assumption
previously confined to the magical and the mathematical traditions, was extended to natural
philosophy.
The requirement that knowledge be practically useful was also in keeping, however, with the
claims of the Renaissance humanists that the vita activa (active life) was—contrary to the
teachings of the Church—morally superior to the vita contemplativa (contemplative life) of the
monk because of the benefits an active life could bring to others. The major spokesman for this
new focus in natural philosophy was Francis Bacon, one-time Lord Chancellor of England.
Bacon promoted his highly influential vision of a reformed empirical knowledge of nature that
he believed would result in immense benefits to mankind.
Humanism, by nature, was intensely concerned with the establishment of the exact words of the
author, with the correction of scribal errors and the restoration of doubtful passages. The
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century scientist was in complete sympathy with these ideas, imbued as
he was with humanist ideals: hence his concern with "returning to" Galen or Ptolemy. This return
to the original enforced a more serious consideration of what Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen and
Ptolemy had actually said, and this in turn involved recognition of the truth, error, fruitfulness or
uselessness of the contributions the great scientists of the past had made. This constituted a first
step towards scientific advance.
Marie Boas Hall was the first to coin the term, ‘Scientific Renaissance’ as she examined the
Copernican revolution and the anatomical work of Vesalius and his contemporaries, the impact
of chemical medicine and the efforts of the Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus. Other
scholars believed that the renaissance was an early stage of the coming scientific revolution.
However, it is also important for us to note that not all acknowledged links between science and
the renaissance. Lynn Thorndike was one of the critics who categorically stated that science took
a backseat during the renaissance.
Early Capitalism & Navigation
It is mainly the Marxist writers that argue that the developments of the Scientific Revolution
arose in direct response to the needs of early capitalism, especially trade and navigation. R.
Hooykaas emphasised that the process of the discovery of the New World started by the
Portuguese explorers came out of a process of discovery. And it was these discoveries which in
turn fueled, scientific development. Rejecting the conception that scientific knowledge was
confined to the domain of science alone.
When the Portuguese seafarers discovered that the tropical regions were habitable and inhabited,
that there was much land south of the equator, that there was more dry land on the globe than had
been taught them, that Southern India protruded much farther into the 'Indian Sea' than Ptolemy
had told them and that the shape of West Africa (the Gulf of Guinee) was widely different from
what ancient maps indicated—all this gave a severe shock not only to them but to the learned
world as well. Ptolemy, the great authority in astronomy throughout the later Middle Ages and
(since the recent discovery of his 'Geographia') the greatest authority in geography, too, now
turned out to be not wholly reliable. He might be a great mathematician, but his 'natural history'
was not so good. The same was the case with all those writers of Antiquity who had described
peoples, animals and plants. There were many things whose existence they had not known and
also many things they had 'known' wrongly. Their knowledge was incomplete and often
erroneous. With these simple seafarers a new natural history arose. They discovered, as Pedro
Nunes (1537), following Policiano (1491) put it: 'new islands, new countries, new seas, new
peoples and what's more, new heavens and new stars'.
In the competition between Reason and Experience, the precedence was now reversed. The
pioneers of discovery, who were not hindered by learned prejudices, did not make their decisions
whether a certain fact was true by arguments pro et contra: for them observation was enough,
and facts must be accepted in spite of any apparent 'absurdity'. Both the scholastic philosophers
and the humanists, who tenaciously clung to ancient traditions, were deeply shocked, and at first
they tried to save the honour and authority of the Ancients by various exegetical tricks. This
marks the beginning of a new, empiricist, non-rationalistic trend in science: problems are solved
by reasoned experience and not by scholastic discussions, which— however clever and logical
they might be—brought forth only armchair physics.
Mechanism
Like the philosophers of Antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca), many of their humanist
followers looked down upon the mechanical arts and those who cultivated them, the 'mechanical'
workers, engineers, chemists, metallurgists, sailors, etc. The liberal arts, which did not require
manual labour, were the only ones befitting a free citizen and a philosopher. However, the
Renaissance period saw a slow penetration of mechanistic procedures and ideas into more
philosophical and scholarly works, as a consequence of a closer contact between the two groups.
Mechanical experiments and mechanistic interpretations (even of natural phenomena) became
more common. Mechanicians always showed a tendency to make models of natural things and
events (globes, planetaria, models of volcanoes).
The social changes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries went together with a philosophical
change: mechanical methods and models inevitably led to mechanistic explanations of
phenomena. The organistic world view (which sought to understand all things by analogy with
living beings) was penetrated and eventually replaced by a mechanistic world view, which
tended to consider even living beings, as far as possible, as analogous to mechanisms.
A prime example from the early seventeenth century, the physician Angelo Sala (1617)
synthesized copper vitriol. He interpreted his artificial product as a mechanical structure, an
'apposition of particles' of the ingredients he had used. This led him to the idea that natural
vitriol, having the same properties as the artificial product, must also be 'an apposition of
particles'. But sea-salt, which he could not synthesize, he considered as a 'unity', perfectly
homogeneous, existing under its own specific Form. In the case of this chemist, then, the old
philosophy was abandoned only in so far as the facts compelled him to do so. Such mechanistic
explanations inevitably undermined the old, organistic, world view. For those natural events
which can be artificially reproduced, knowledge of their 'nature' could now be obtained by
experiment. Here, we see the beginning of 'experimental philosophy'.
Scientific Developments and the Needs of the Bourgeois Class
Marxist historiography is important to note because it has provided a solid social interpretation
of modern science. Boris Hessen’s “The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s ‘Principia’”
(1931) and Henryk Grossmann’s “The Social Foundation of Mechanistic Philosophy and
Manufacture” (1935) are the classic programmatic examples of Marxist historiography of
science. The positions they develop overlap and complement one another. They have enough in
common that the enlarged thesis that emerges from their work may be called the
“Hessen-Grossmann-Thesis.”
The crux of Hessen-Grossman interpretation is that certain economic demands or needs are
correlated with certain technical problems or developments, which in turn are correlated with
fields of scientific study. Economics is said to present demands, which pose technical problems,
which generate scientific problems. Thus, there is a correlation between technological and
scientific endeavors. Essentially, scientific development came as a response to needs of the
bourgeois class at the time. It should be stressed here that the Hessen-Grossmann thesis attempts
to explain the determination of the horizon of empirical scientific inquiry, not the horizon of the
scientific imagination or speculation.
Furthermore, Marxist scholars also argue that science should be seen in the context of
contemporary social change. F. Engels stated that science met the technical needs of the society
and that there was no place for individual genius in the materialistic interpretation of history.
Edgard Zilsen is one of the most important contributors to the idea that modern science was the
product of a changing society. He recognized origin of science as a sociological phenomenon
greatly influenced by needs of capitalistic society. He argues that the emergence of early
capitalism was connected with a change in both the setting and the bearers of culture.
To him, science could not have developed in a feudal society that had a rural setting wherein
individuals were bound by tradition and the mode of production was largely stagnant. In the
period of early capitalism, towns became the cultural centres and economic success began to
depend on the spirit of emterprise and competition. The individualism of the new society is a
presupposition of scientific thinking. Urban society needed the knowledge of mathematics for
keeping accounts and calculations to understand the laws of mechanics. Thus, a capitalistic
society provided the necessary conditions for the rise of scientific spirit.
However, the Marxist interpretation is not without criticism either. Hugh Kearney stated that
much of the scientific developments of the time were abstract and theoretical. Therefore, they
could not applied in capitalistic society. Furthermore, common to most criticisms of Marxist
interpretations, the Marxists are accused of adopting a reductionist view that ignores several
other important factors besides economic demands or modes of production.
Modern Science and Protestant Ethics
Another important link that has been drawn is that between natural and experimental science
with Protestantism. Espousing the hypothesis suggested by Max Weber about the significant
influence of Calvinist puritanism, the ideal typical expression of "Protestant ethic", on the
development of science and technology, R.K. Merton has examined the growth of science in the
seventeenth century England. Through content analysis of various documents, he established that
interest in scientific study was theological writings in the seventeenth century England. Then he
tried to explain this phenomenon by showing integration between sciences.
Merton came to the conclusion that Puritanism embodied the values of rationalism, empiricism,
utilitarianism, secularism, skepticism and free inquiry. All these values of Puritanism were
obviously in harmony with the institutional values of science. However, this shows only a certain
probability of the connection between Puritanism and science. But it is not a sufficient
verification. Therefore, Merton sought the crucial test of his hypothesis in the following
behavioural evidence:
- The norms of Puritanism were deeply internalized and consciously expressed in their
writings and behaviour by Puritan scientists like Robert Boyle, John Ray, John Wilking,
John Wallis, William Oughtred, etc.
- The Puritans had greater prospersity for science and technology as against Catholics in
proportion to their total population. For instance (a) out of the ten initial members of the
'invisible college', the prototype of the Royal Society of London, seven were decidedly
Puritans; only one was non-Puritan and about two no information was available regarding
their religious orientations and (b) these Puritan scientists played a very important role in
the Royal Society of London
- The inclination of the Puritans for science and technology was likewise manifested in the
type of education introduced and fostered by them. They established new universities and
academies with a pronounced stress on realistic, utilitarian and empirical education.
Therefore, Merton evidence Merton has cogently demonstrated that the ethos of Protestantism
induced its members to form socially favour able attitudes for science, and thereby enhance the
growth of scientific knowledge. There was also a strain of thought that highlighted the optimism
of millenarianism led to the optimism of the scientific revolution. Rodney Stark saw the
scientific revolution as a product of Christian thinking. R. Hooykaas stated that Christianity was
instrumental in the rise of modern science. S.F. Mason and Christopher Hill also wrote
extensively on the links between the protestant faith and science.
However, it is important to note that this theory has been severely criticized as well. Many
scholars have gone on to say that one cannot link science and religion so simplistically. In fact,
even Luther himself was a major critic of Copernicus, who is seen as the face of the beginnings
of modern science. T.K. Rabb was one of the leading critics who went on to highlight that many
scientific discoveries happen under Catholic regime. Furthermore, Merton’s understanding of
Puritanism is seen to be narrow and while some characteristics of Protestant ethos can be linked
to scientific spirit, not all strands can be drawn into this simple causal link. Lotte Mulligan,
another major critic, challenges the views of Merton and Hill who believed that the Royal
Society of London had a Puritan basis. Based on statistical analysis, she concluded that the Royal
Society was indifferent to religion. Thus, it was neither Puritan nor Catholic.
Role of the Printing Press
Science was not solely a scholar's concern, but was truly a part of the popular learning of the age,
even if not the main point of emphasis. The printing-press undoubtedly had a twofold influence
on science: first, by making texts more readily available, it sowed knowledge by providing a
wider audience than could ever have been the case without printing, while serving as well to
emphasize the authority of the written word. Secondly, it peculiarly influenced the development
of the biological sciences, by making possible the dissemination of identical illustrations.
Much fifteenth- and sixteenth-century work in anatomy, zoology, botany and natural history
depended for its effect primarily on illustrations, which enormously aided identification (as well
as standardization of technical terms); accurate illustrations could only be produced in quantity
through printing. With the co-operation of contemporary artists, books of astonishing beauty, as
well as technical competence and importance, poured from the presses, and again increased the
popularity of science. The printing-press also made easier the progress of science: it became
increasingly normal to publish one's discoveries, thus assuring that new ideas were not lost, but
were available to provide a basis for the work of others.
Scientific advance was not dependent on the printed word: indeed, many scientists, like
Copernicus (1473-1543), withheld their work from the press for many years, or like Maurolyco
(1494-1577) and Eustachius (1520-74) failed to publish important works in their lifetimes; but
this attitude was increasingly rare. Publication enormously facilitated dissemination, and it is
generally true that scientific work not printed had very little chance of influencing others the
work of Leonardo da Vinci being the most notable case in point. In this, as in so much else, the
situation was only stabilised in the course of the sixteenth century, but the late fifteenth century
prepared the way. Just as the invention ofthe printing-press immensely furthered the spread of
past knowledge, so too it furthered an interest in the new knowledge which resulted from the
great age of exploration and discovery.
Conclusion
In conclusion, one can effectively say that the rise of modern science cannot be attributed to any
one cause. Rather, it was a culmination of various processes which arose from the prevailing
social and economic conditions of the time, along with a drive from preceding thoughts and
conventions that drew from Ancient knowledge of the Classic. The great change (not only in
astronomy or physics, but in all scientific disciplines) occurred when, not incidentally but in
principle and in practice, the scientists definitively recognized the priority of Experience over
Ancient Knowledge. It led to a reform of all scientific disciplines—(not only of the
mathematical-physical)—because it influenced the method of all the sciences. Further, links are
also drawn between early capitalism, navigation, religion and technology with the rise of modern
science.

Bibliography
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