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W.W. Norton & Company, 1999
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Review
The contemporary world has been variously described as postindustrial,
post-Marxian, postmodernist. It seems we are living in the "Age of
Aftermath." God is dead, or at least rumored to be so; the nuclear family
is on life support; the idea of progress lingers under a cloud of
intellectual doubt.
To this catalog of woe may be added the troubling, widespread belief that we may be headed toward life in a post-scientific age. This disturbing thought provides the counterpoint to Servants of Nature, a perceptive study of science as a collaborative, "standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants" endeavor. Although optimistic about the future of science, the book leaves little doubt that the past has witnessed backward steps and long pauses in the march of human knowledge.
Servants of Nature is fittingly a joint effort of a husband-and-wife team, historians Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson. Pyenson is professor of history and dean of the Graduate School of the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He has written several books about the scientific aspects of European colonialism. His wife, who died in 1998, was the author of Cathedrals of Science, a study of the cultural impact of natural history museums.
Solidly researched and written with a grasp of human feeling, the
Pyensons' book surveys the evolving nature of scientific institutions. By
doing so, they have corrected the biographical emphasis of many
introductory accounts of the history of science. The role of the solitary
genius, peering though microscope or telescope, is balanced by examination of
the influence of the universities, learned societies, and research centers
that have helped make their innovations possible.
Institutions, like individuals, have life cycles of their own. However, corporate entities like the Museum of Alexandria or the Royal Society usually outlive their founders. The continuity essential to experiment, discovery, and transmission of knowledge is thus ensured. As the authors demonstrate, the earliest scientific institutions, the royal observatories of antiquity, amassed impressive inventories of astronomical data based on many generations of scanning the heavens.
Somebody has to pay the bills. In the Islamic world, charitable
endowments, called waqf donations, established institutes of learning. The
waqf was both an act of piety and of public spirit. But the primary aim of
the institutes, or madrasas as they were called, was training teachers
rather than researchers. The universities of medieval Europe, likewise,
promoted the preservation and transmission of existing knowledge. New ideas
and innovations, while not unknown in both cultures, were rare and risky,
given the correlation of the classical cosmology with divine revelation.
The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries assumes a place of special importance in the Pyensons' book. Not only were seminal discoveries made during this period but, thanks to the writings of Francis Bacon, an intellectual framework was created for empirical research and shared knowledge. This led to the establishment of a durable infrastructure for science in the shape of the learned society.
The founding of the Royal Society of London in 1660 "represented a novel departure: for the first time, individuals united together in a public body dedicated to the corporate prosecution of scientific research." The success of this British institution influenced the course of science throughout the Western world. Similar learned societies were founded in other capitals of Europe, followed by provincial cities and even in the colonies, where groups like the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia were actively engaged in important scientific research during the eighteenth century.
The learned societies can be credited with many of the great
accomplishments of the Age of Enlightenment - and held accountable for some
very human defects as well. Bureaucratic formality, institutional inertia,
and class and gender snobbery robbed the learned societies of considerable
dynamism. The eighteenth century was marked, as the authors note, by important
technological advances little connected with the annual volumes of learned
transactions. The great riddle of the age, the search for a solution to
determining longitude, was solved by a Yorkshire carpenter named John
Harrison, rather than an illustrious member of the Royal Society.
Harrison was a driven, secretive innovator. The learned societies, however, failed to make a mark in enterprises where their corporate structure and resources gave them great advantage. The Encylopedie, jewel of the French Enlightenment, was not a project of the Académie des Sciences, characterized by the authors "more as a branch of the French civil service." Instead it was published through the efforts of its editors, Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert. These versatile philosophes wrote and directed the efforts of 135 other contributors in the production of a 28-volume work, which embodied the Baconian scientific ideals. This epoch-making publication was censored by authorities because of its veiled criticism of Christianity, which only added to its allure for a public anxious to understand the natural world and the explosive growth of human artifice.
The mixed results of the eighteenth century learned societies were largely
corrected by the growth of specialist associations, university research
departments, and natural science museums during the Victorian age. Joseph
Banks, president of the Royal Society during the late eighteenth century, viewed
rivals like the Geological Society with alarm, writing that
"these new fangled Associations will finally dismantle the Royal Society
and not leave the old lady a rag to cover her."
Banks's contention was understandable from the standpoint of achieving a sense of unity among the sciences. But it was increasingly irrelevant. In an era of powerful democratic trends and the growing complexity of scientific discovery, not even a prestigious institution like the Royal Society could cope. Science, by the end of the eighteenth century, was too vast a field of study for one group, much less one man, to comprehend and control.
Yet all scientific institutions, regardless of their expertise, are ultimately social organizations. When moral relativism replaces a belief in moral absolutes as the prevailing social creed, then scientists, no less than theologians, have cause for concern. This is the case in our contemporary world, where the very authority and integrity of the sciences are openly questioned.
Skeletons in the scientific closet provide ample ammunition for opponents
who assert that science is fatally flawed. Ranging from Nazi Germany's
"perverted science" to establishment prejudice toward women scientists,
about whom the authors write with considerable flair and detail, the
evidence is seemingly damning. Critics "claim that the ideas and
institutions of modern science are irredeemably sexist; that experiment and
mathematics, applied to the investigation of nature, are little more than
tricks. . ."
As the authors show, such critiques of science are usually made "in the absence of persuasive documentation." In times of contention and ideology, fact-checking is always at a premium. The truth about science is that cumulative research and experimentation, despite the human foibles of scientists, have greatly expanded the mental capacity and material well-being of humankind. Servants of Nature is a worthy testament to the collaborative search for knowledge by people whose dedicated efforts span the gulf of cultures, continents, and centuries.
Ed Voves is a news researcher for Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., publishers of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. For the past twelve years, he has written book reviews, author interviews, and other news articles for both papers.
Pure science has fallen victim, in part, to success. It has become highly dependent on costly technology, so much so that the distinction between science and technology is blurred. Because pure science has resulted in spectacular inventions, we speak today about Research-and-Development in one breath. We imagine that research is indissociable from development, whether for new medicines or new machines. . . . Relativism has driven forward-thinking people away from science and toward technology. Science depends on words, and words have been shown to equivocate. Technology, however, has tangible standards for success.
You may purchase this book (496 pp., hardcover) directly from:
150 Years of Advancing Science: A History of AAAS - a survey of the group dynamics involved in the formation of a specialist scientific association and the social pressures such an organization faces. Extremely insightful and beautifully presented.
American Philosophical Society - modeled after the Royal Society of London, Philadelphia's American Philosophical Society is the oldest learned society in the United States, and still thrives. This excellent site contains a well written and illustrated account of its 250-year history.
Museum of the History of Science - one of the world's leading science museums. Online exhibits of recent exhibitions are an especially noteworthy feature. From Oxford University.
Jesuits and the Sciences: 1540-1995 - reviews the scientific work of the Roman Catholic religious order, which was especially important as a link between Europe and Asia during the 1600s.
