This book was born out of a sense that for the most part, and with some honourable exceptions, historians of science were not doing their subject justice.i I do not expect them to agree with this assessment of their profession; it will, inevitably, seem to them to be based, at best, on a misunderstanding. Nevertheless, my greatest debt is to those with whom I disagree. In the words of Alexandre Koyré, ‘Human thought is polemic; it thrives on negation. New truths are foes of the ancient ones which they must turn into falsehoods.’1 Without disagreement, sometimes sharp disagreement, there would be no thriving.
But I have not sought either disagreement or novelty for their own sake; rather, I have come to a difference of opinion slowly and reluctantly, and only because crucial features of science and of the Scientific Revolution are (as it seems to me) overlooked or dismissed in the accounts that now pass for sound scholarship. As Pascal said when he announced that nature was indifferent to the existence of a vacuum, ‘[I]t is not without regret that I abandon opinions so generally received. I only yield to the compulsion of truth. I resisted these new ideas as long as I had any reason for clinging to the old.’2
It will be apparent that my own intellectual development owes a great deal to Lucien Febvre. His The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century (1942) is still the most important book on the transition from medieval to modern ways of thinking; I spent the first decade of my academic career attacking that book, and so it is a nice example of the complicated way in which we struggle with our predecessors that I now find myself, years later, defending it.3 Another book from the same era that has provided me with a model of how to think is Bruno Snell’s The Discovery of the Mind (1946).
But old books are not my only source of inspiration. I have learnt from Ian Hacking and Lorraine Daston how to practise historical epistemology; from Jim Bennett that the Scientific Revolution is not many revolutions but one, for the simple reason that the inspiration for all the different revolutions that make it up came from the mathematicians; and I have taken particular encouragement from Larry Laudan, ‘Demystifying Underdetermination’ (1990), Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (1995) and John Zammito, A Nice Derangement of Epistemes (2004).
Chapter 7 first appeared in public as the 2011 Emden Lecture at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and then as an interdisciplinary lecture at the University of Sheffield and as a lecture to the York Philosophical Society. The core arguments of the book have been presented in the 2014 Aylmer Lecture at the University of York and in a lecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Some arguments, particularly from Chapters 3 and 7, were first trialled in review essays for the Times Literary Supplement: I am grateful to my editors there for the opportunities they have given me. I also owe a great debt to my department and students at the University of York: my department for allowing me to concentrate on history of science for the past decade, and my students for being both clever and industrious.
A number of friends and colleagues – Jim Bennett, Sabine Clark, Michael Kubovy, Rachel Laudan, Paolo Palmieri, Klaus Vogel, Tom Welch – have read parts of the book and have made helpful criticisms. Alan Chalmers, Stephen Collins, Christopher Graney, John Kekes, Alan Sokal and Sophie Weeks read a draft right through and out-argued me on crucial issues. John Schuster has, with extraordinary generosity, read more than one draft, and provided a perfect mixture of encouragement and criticism. Julia Reis has provided invaluable help, particularly with German texts. A large number of individuals have provided me with guidance and saved me from error: Fabio Acerbi, Adrian Aylmer, Mike Beaney, Marco Bertamini, Pete Biller, Ann Blair, Stuart Carroll, H. Floris Cohen, Stephen Clucas, Simon Ditchfield, Toby Dyke, John Elliott, Mordechai Feingold, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Pierre Fiala, Arthur Fine, Mary Garrison, Alfred Hiatt, Mark Jenner, Stephen Johnston, Harry Kitsikopoulos, Larry Laudan, Steven Livesey, Michael Löwy, Noel Malcolm, Saira Malik, Adam Mosley, Jamie Newell, Eileen Reeves, Chris Renwick, Stuart Reynolds, Richard Serjeantson, Alan Shapiro, Barbara Shapiro, William Shea, Mark Smith, Shelagh Sneddon, Rick Watson, Nick Wilding, Albert van Helden, David Womersley. I want particularly to thank Owen Gingerich and Michael Hunter, who read the book for the publishers: an author could not wish for better readers, and I have come back to them again and again with queries.
The original project for this book was constructed in close collaboration with my marvellous agent, Peter Robinson. Stuart Proffitt at Allen Lane has given the book the exquisite care and attention for which he is justly famous – it is a much better book than it would have been without him. It is also much longer: from the beginning he wanted a big book and somehow or other he has managed to get one. At the same time, pulling in the opposite direction, my American agent, Michael Carlisle, and publisher, Bill Strachan, have been keen to see me actually finish; and at last I have. Susannah Stone has done a wonderful job sourcing illustrations. Sarah Day has been a lynx-eyed copyeditor. The index is, as an index on this scale should be, signed by its author. I have used Mellel as my wordprocessor and Sente as my bibliography programme: I cannot praise them enough.
None of the above bears any responsibility for my errors and omissions.
As before, my thinking developed during conversations with Matthew Patrick. Above all, I am indebted to Alison Mark, without whom nothing, with whom everything.
Theddingworth, Leicestershire
Spring 2015