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chapter 1

The Comparative Study of Science

The Modernity of Science

In the present world, science and its offshoots appear to be the epitome of modernity. The scientific method of treating every conceivable natural, human, or social malady is everywhere in evidence. If the scientific approach has not been applied to the problem at hand, the treatment and analysis are thought to be either defective or suspect. This state of affairs is not bereft of moral critics who think that science itself has too much power or that the strictly scientific point of view, especially in medicine, claims too much, is overly confident, arrogant, and even capable of reaching false diagnoses. In the Western world there are those who think that science itself is a “social problem.”1 To them the technological products of science – excessive levels of radiation released into the atmos- phere of local communities, the inadequately monitored use of pesticides, the general degradation of the natural environment caused by the dumping of toxic substances, and even global warming – are all to be laid at the door of modern science and technology. Nevertheless, alternative forms of knowledge – those derived from religion, mysticism, or occult sciences such as astrology – must offer their own defenses against the prevailing scientific posture. If they are to be accredited, these alternatives must be shown to produce their results and achieve their effects in ways that are consistent with either scientific ignorance (“about this we have no know- ledge”) or scientific wisdom (“this outcome is perfectly conceivable within expanded parameters of our present scientific knowledge”).2

Appealing to the privileged status of scientific knowledge in the modern world means several things. First, it implies that the knowledge claims of scientific experts are given pride of place in public discussion and, above

1 Sal Restivo, “Modern Science as a Social Problem.” Social Problems 35 (1988): 206–25. 2 Fordiscussionsofthegrowingdominanceofthescientificworldview,seetheessaysinTheKnowledgeSociety: Its Growing Impact on Scientific Knowledge, edited by Gernot Böhme et al. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986).

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all, in matters of health, public and private. Second, expert witnesses, who are reputed to be scientific experts, are permitted to testify in courts of law regarding arcane and abstruse topics that laymen are hard pressed to understand. In such circumstances these experts are permitted to use their scientific knowledge to establish possible facts as well as the probable causes of events. Readers of mystery novels know of forensic experts who, through laboratory techniques, match fragmentary samples of fibers or hair to clothing and possible suspects and thereby link individuals to the scene of a crime. Such scientific knowledge is not based on firsthand observation of the events but is after‑the‑fact knowledge gleaned through the techniques of scientific analysis and inference. In short, the very idea of scientific knowledge has dramatically altered what is considered legitimate evidence and testimony in courts of law.3

Third, we may speak of scientific research as privileged in the sense that the legitimating authority of science grants permission to researchers to observe and even publicly describe those areas of life that are generally hidden from public view out of a sense of privacy or that are ruled off‑limits by moral or religious scruples. For example, physicians are permitted to physically examine disrobed bodies in the most intimate of fashions. This is done in the name of science. Similarly, social scientists as well as press reporters are often permitted

to gain inside information on all aspects of public and private life. For sociologists, political scientists, and social anthropologists, the justification of such unrestricted observation is based on the desire to advance social scientific knowledge about how the social and political worlds work. Thus, a sociologist studying the police of a local community will attempt to observe every aspect of the daily routine of police officers. He or she will not only observe the apprehension and arrest of suspects but also listen in on phone conversations (as a surrogate detective) received by the vice squad from potential informants at police headquarters. This also is done in the name of science.4

But there is another level of privilege that should be noted. This is the privilege granted to researchers to gather evidence and information unhindered and to possess this information free from seizure by political authorities. This is the limited protection granted social scientists and

3 See, for example, Hans Zeisel, “Statistics as Legal Evidence,” International Encyclopedia of Statistics, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 1118–22.

4 See Jerome Skolnick’s defense of all these practices in Justice without Trial, second edition (New York: Wiley, 1976), chap. 2.

The Modernity of Science 11

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journalists to freely gather and dispose of information as they see fit without any obligation to publish it or reveal its sources to political authorities. Likewise, they are free to criticize the social order or segments of it based on their inquiries. But the privilege I would like to emphasize is that which is granted by the courts of law and which establishes the inviolability of the researcher’s right to withhold his knowledge from public scrutiny.5 These, then, are some of the ways in which we may speak of the privileged status of scientific knowledge and inquiry in the Western world. They help to give substance to the view that the insti- tutions of science are among the most important in modern society.6

While we in the West take the scientific point of view as the standard by which all others are to be judged, it often escapes our attention that the scientific point of view had to fight its way to success through many long battles. Beyond that, modern science, as we know it, failed to materialize in the other civilizations of the world (in India, China, the Islamic world, and pre-nineteenth-century Russia), despite the fact that some of them had great cultural and scientific advantages over the West up until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. That realization ought to encourage us to consider the possibility that the arrival of modern science at its destin- ation in the West was in fact the outcome of a unique combination of cultural and institutional factors that are, in essence, nonscientific. In other words, the riddle of the success of modern science in the West – and its failure in non‑Western civilizations – is to be solved by studying the nonscientific domains of culture, that is, law, religion, philosophy, theology, and the like. From such a point of view, the rise of modern

5 I refer here to the case of a sociology graduate student in the early 1980s, Mr. Mario Brajuha at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, who was engaged in a field study of a restaurant on Long Island that subsequently burned down. The circumstances surrounding the fire suggested to police investigators that arson was a strong possibility. Upon discovering that a graduate student had been studying this establishment and recording extensive research notes, an attorney in the case attempted to subpoena the sociologist’s notes in the hope that they might contain clues regarding the fire. After a prolonged court battle, including testimony from a variety of social scientists regarding the importance of protecting such research from undue interference, the court ruled that the sociologist’s notes were in fact protected from unreasonable seizure and that it was not in the interest of society at large to coerce the revelation of the research notes because of the chilling effect such an action would have on future research, which the court believed enriches our knowledge of how social systems operate. See American Sociological Association, Footnotes, Aug. (1984), p. 11, and the New York Times, Apr. 5–6, 1984.

6 The view that science is the most significant modern institution has been suggested, albeit with agnostic affirmation, by Harriet Zuckerman, “The Sociology of Science,” in The Handbook of Sociology, edited by Neil J. Smelser (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1988), pp. 511–74. At p. 511 Zuckerman also cites Derek L. De Solla Price who put the claim more boldly: “It [science] has transformed the life and destinies of more of the world’s peoples than any . . . religious and political event,” above all by controlling economic and military forces as well as the quality of life of the peoples of the world.

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science is the result of the development of a civilizationally based culture that was uniquely tolerated, indeed, protected, and promoted those heret- ical and innovative ideas that ran counter to the grain of accepted religious and theological teaching. Conversely, one might say that critical elements of the scientific worldview were surreptitiously encoded in the religious and legal presuppositions of the European West. It seems paradoxical to suggest that modern science emerged because of

the uniquely humanistic dimensions of Western culture only because we have not considered “those commitments without which no man would be a scientist”7 in their religious, philosophical, and legal guises. Put differently, it might be suggested that the foundations of modern science, both cultural and institutional, are to be found precisely in those areas outside of science where men speculate about the nature of the cosmos in its deepest and most mystical sense, and where the human imagination forges the institutions that allow individuals to perpetually enjoy neutral spaces free from the incursions of political and religious censors. It is the task of this study to explore the legal, philosophical, and institutional origins of such neutral zones.

Science as a Civilizational Institution

Many social scientists have difficulty working with civilizational frames of reference, believing as they do that this abstraction is too global for scientific analysis.8 Only a moment’s reflection, however, is needed to arrive at the observation that modern science – as an ongoing enterprise of self‑correcting investigation – is, above all else, an enterprise that simultaneously engages the attention and participation of groups and individuals scattered across the globe. For the past five hundred years in any particular field, individuals living in diverse societies (though mainly in Europe, Europe‑overseas, and later, the Americas) have made seminal contributions to the advancement of the various sciences. Indeed, there have been fairly constant rivalries between nationals of these countries – Italians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, and

7 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, enlarged edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 42.

8 It is promising, however, that sociologists are now outlining the possibility of “trans-national studies.” See among others, William I. Robinson, “Beyond National-State Paradigms: Globalization, Sociology, and the Challenge of Transnational Studies.” Sociological Forum 13 #4 (1998): 561–94.

The Modernity of Science 13

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others – for the honors and prizes modern science bestows on those who display scientific originality.9

From this point of view, science is and has always been a trans- national activity and product that continues its advance despite, and perhaps because of, linguistic differences and national rivalries. It is, therefore, a preeminently civilizational activity and can be understood in its fullest sociological sense only in a civilizational context. It is a cultural activity carried on by individuals and groups living in 2 + n societies10 across time and space – societies that share certain funda- mental metaphysical assumptions, canons of evidence and proof, as well as rules of etiquette and reciprocity. There is not only an ethos of science (more to follow), but a far larger set of metaphysical assump- tions; as Thomas Kuhn put it, assumptions “without which no man is a scientist.” It is precisely this underlying civilizationally based institu- tional apparatus that makes it possible for the enterprise of science to succeed at all.

One may note, moreover, that modern science has not required either political unity – in the sense of a bureaucratically unified world govern- ment – or linguistic unity. The final success of modern science and its spread in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, paradoxically, occurred virtually simultaneously with the breakdown of linguistic unity (created by the medieval use of Latin for official communication), along with the rise of nationalism based on vernacular languages and local literary symbols. Both in England and Italy, scientists deliberately pub- lished their major works – or translated classic works – into the vernacular so that laymen and disinterested others could be brought into the circle of scientific discourse.11 Despite this apparent nationalizing of science, there

9 Here one can consult the large literature on the awarding of Nobel prizes. See Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States (New York: The Free Press, 1974); Robert K. Merton, “Singletons and Multiples in Science,” in The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, edited by Norman Storer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 343–70; “Priorities in Scientific Discovery.” In ibid., chap. 16; and “Institutional Patterns of Evaluation in Science.” In ibid., chap. 21. For a recent overview of the sociology of science, see Zuckerman, “The Sociology of Science.” In Handbook of Sociology, pp. 511–74.

10 This definition of civilizational phenomena was worked out by Benjamin Nelson; see On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science, and Civilizations. Selected Writings by Benjamin Nelson, edited by Toby E. Huff (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981, reprinted 2012), chaps. 5 and 13. For additional applications, see Huff, “Europe as a Civilization.” Comparative Civilizations Review 69 (2013): 65–86; and Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss “Note on the Notion of Civilization.” Social Research 38, #4 (1971): 809–13; translated by Benjamin Nelson.

11 For the English case, see Christopher Hill, The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1965), chap. 2 and passim. In Italy, see the biographical essays in Galileo: Man of Science, edited by Ernan McMullin (New York: Basic Books, 1967); Stillman Drake, ed. and

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was a movement toward the universalization of scientific discourse, a deliberate turn toward breaking down the barriers between the elite cognoscenti (the initiated) and Everyman (the layman, the uninitiated, one of the masses). This was a dramatically different thrust than was to be found in either Islamic or Judaic culture, where the law and the secrets of God were carefully guarded.12

Given the undeniable civilizational dimensions of science as an ongoing social activity, it is neither ethnocentric nor orientalist to speak of the directive structures and institutions that served as the guiding moral, religious, and legal frameworks for intellectuals in medieval Islamic civil- ization, in China, or in the European West. I am referring to a level of symbolic and intellectual discourse that was relatively institutionalized and shared to a great extent (though by no means perfectly or uniformly) by informed individuals living in widely scattered places across all these civilizations. Modern science is, therefore, not only a civilizational but also an intercivilizational outcome. In the first instance, the contributions that Arabic‑Islamic civilization

made to the development of modern science – its contributions to the fund of knowledge, logical, mathematical, and methodological – prior to its demise after the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were significant, though not decisively redirecting. As we shall see, the eventual transmis- sion to the West of scientific and philosophical knowledge built up and stored in Arabic‑Islamic civilization through the great translation effort of the medieval Europeans had a fructifying effect on the course of Western intellectual development. In that sense, modern science is the product of intercivilizational encounters, including, but not limited to, the interaction between Arabs, Muslims, and Christians, but also other “dialogues between the living and the dead” involving Greeks, Romans, and other Europeans. Indeed, some would say that it was the Greek heritage of intellectual thought, above all its commitment to rational dialogue and decision-making through logic and argument, that set the course for

trans., Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (New York: Doubleday, 1957); and De Santillana’s discussions in The Crime of Galileo (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1955).

12 This is a repeated theme in both medieval Islamic and Judaic thought, as seen in the writings of Averröes and Maimonides. Cf. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973); Albert Hournai, ed. and trans., Averröes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy (London: Lusac, reprinted, 1976); Barry S. Kogan, Averröes and the Metaphysics of Causation (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985), p. 22 where Kogan cites Ibn Rush’s criticism of al-Ghazali by saying that the latter “would know that discussion of such things [as the relationship between religion and science] is forbidden,” p. 22; and Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, edited and translated by Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 2 vols.

The Modernity of Science 15

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intellectual development in the West ever after.13 In whatever manner these standards are articulated, modern science is the end product of several such sustained intercivilizational encounters over the centuries.14

Second, the modern science that emerged in the West became increas- ingly a universal science in that it was available to all peoples of the world. It became, in Joseph Needham’s phrase, “ecumenical science,” and as such it was applied to appropriate conditions and bodies of knowledge throughout the world. Although Arabic‑Islamic (and Chinese15) civiliza- tion resisted an indigenous development of modern science long after its development in the West, there is today little doubt that great numbers of people living in Muslim lands (like others) desperately want access to the knowledge and the benefits that modern science offers.

In short, whatever defects modern science brings in its train, its benefits in terms of modern standards of living, new sources of energy and power, communications, and especially health, are universally acclaimed and universally claimed as the birthright of all peoples whether or not their tribe, country, or community ever made a contribution to that wealth of ecumenical knowledge.

Elements of the Sociological Perspective

In 1904 Max Weber wrote, “The belief in the value of scientific truth is not derived from nature but is a product of definite cultures.”16 Some thirty‑four years later, Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) added the following emendation:

This belief [in scientific truth] is readily transmitted into doubt and disbe- lief. The persistent development of science occurs in societies of a certain order, subject to a peculiar complex of tacit presuppositions and insti- tutional constraints. What is for us a phenomenon which demands no

13 A. C. Crombie, “Designed in the Mind: Western Visions of Science, Nature, and Humankind.” History of Science 26 (1988): 1–12.

14 In SCC (and elsewhere) Needham made many claims for Chinese influence on European science but in virtually all cases no historical evidence for such influence has turned up. More recent such claims, by Arun Bala, The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science (London Palgrave, 2006), seem to be excessive and unsubstantiated. Likewise, John M. Hobson’s claims in The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) seem to me without merit. See Huff, “The ‘Eastern’ Origins of Western Civilization?” Academic Questions 27 #3 (2014): 286–99. For the deficits of Chinese science, see Chapters 7, 8, and 9.

15 See Chapter 8 for a clarification of the ways in which the Chinese resisted all the efforts expended by the Jesuits to bring modern science to China; also Benjamin Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).

16 Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press, 1949), p. 110.

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explanation and secures many self‑evident cultural values, has been in other times and still is in many places abnormal and infrequent. The continuity of science requires the active participation of interested and capable persons in scientific pursuits. But this support of science is assured only by [the existence of] appropriate cultural conditions.17

The suggestion is that the pursuit of science requires the presence of certain cultural and institutional supports if it is to steadily advance. As the philosopher Karl Popper (1902–94) insisted, if theoretical, knowledge‑producing activities are to merit the title of science, they must be progressive, that is, constantly in search of innovation and the elimin- ation of error.18

With these perspectives in mind, we may say that the rise of modern science in the West – and the fact that it did not develop in China, Arabic‑Islamic civilization, and elsewhere – parallels the problem of the rise of modern capitalism (and the fact that it did not develop in the Orient). In 1920 when Weber wrote the introduction to his Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion, he saw his subject as one centered on the history and development of rationality and rationalism. He wrote, “It is. . .our first concern to work out and to explain genetically the special peculiarity of Occidental rationalism, and within this field that of the modern Occidental form.”19

Given the civilizational frames of reference noted above, there are four remaining strands in the sociology of science that must be brought together to yield a workable comparative and historical sociology of science that is adequate to the task Weber set before us. The first of these is the idea of the role of the scientist, which was discussed by Joseph Ben‑David (1904–79) in The Scientist’s Role in Society.20 The second concerns the

17 Merton, “The Normative Structure of Science.” In The Sociology of Science, p. 254. 18 Although I do not attempt to discuss Karl Popper’s ideas about the sources and uses of reason in the

open society, it is apparent that Popper’s thoughts on this subject represent a philosophical counterpart to the sociological thrust of the present study. Popper is aware that in a deep sense the Western belief in reason and rationality is a leap of faith, even an irrational commitment. See Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (New York: Harper and Row, 1945), vol. 2, p. 231, but also 226–7. The idea of an “open society” suggests the importance of societal arrangements conducive to the free exchange of ideas. However, Popper does not go beyond exhorting the value of “criticism” as a mechanism for producing scientific change. For further analysis of Popper and these questions, see my essay, “The Open Society, Metaphysical Beliefs, and Platonic Sources of Reason and Rationality,” in Karl Popper. A Centenary Assessment, edited by Ian Jarvie, Karl Milford, and David Miller (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006) 2: 19–44.

19 Weber, “Author’s Introduction.” [prefaced to] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribners, 1958a), p. 26.

20 Joseph Ben‑David, The Scientist’s Role in Society (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‑Hall, 1971).

The Modernity of Science 17

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social norms of science. These were set out by the young Robert Merton as the ethos of science. The third strand focuses on scientific communities and asks what such communities have in common that makes them work. It was the work of Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that first attempted to answer this question and resulted in the idea of scientific paradigms.

The fourth tradition in the sociology of science is the comparative, historical, and civilizational study of science. Although the comparative, historical perspective is the oldest in the sociology of science – stemming from Robert Merton’s classic dissertation, Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth‑Century England21 – this tradition has been the least developed by sociologists. This is because most of Merton’s students opted to study the reward system in science,22 rather than following the main- stream of Merton’s classic. Likewise, the seventies and eighties have witnessed the growth of an interactional approach to the study of science, and consequently it has become even more ahistorical and further removed from the comparative study of sciences and the cultural and institutional conditions that enable their growth.

With the appearance of Joseph Needham’s monumental study, Science and Civilisation in China (1956–2004), however, and the publication of Needham’s own sociological thoughts about the reasons why Chinese science failed to give birth to modern science,23 a new chapter in this tradition was written. Benjamin Nelson referred to this new development as “Needham’s Challenge,”24 which was precisely the task of going beyond Max Weber and other pioneers in the comparative sociology of sociocul- tural process. Needham’s riddle regarding the uniqueness of the West as an incubator for modern science rightly placed emphasis on the social and cultural conditions that may either speed up or retard the development of science. Early on in his project, Needham promised to address Weberian

21 Robert Merton, Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth‑Century England (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), first published in 1938 in Osiris. For a useful collection of articles debating this thesis, see I. B. Cohen (with the assistance of R. E. Duffin and Stuart Strickland), Puritanism and the Rise of Modern Science (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990).

22 There is now a sizable literature with this focus; see Cole and Cole, Social Stratification in Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973); Norman Storer, The Social System of Science (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966); Jerry Gaston, The Reward System in British and American Science (New York: Wiley, 1978); H. Zuckerman and R. K. Merton, “Age, Aging, and Age Structure in Science.” In The Sociology of Science, pp. 497–559; and Merton’s classic discussion, “The Matthew Effect in Science,” reprinted in The Sociology of Science, pp. 439–59.

23 See Joseph Needham, The Grand Titration (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969); hereafter cited as GT.

24 See On the Roads to Modernity, chaps. 6 and 10.

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questions in the last volume of SCC, but nothing new along those lines appears in that last volume (volume 7, part 2, 2004) “General Conclusions and Reflections.” Those pages are reprints or lightly edited versions of earlier discussions. The four strands that I identify here in the sociology of science have

hitherto developed exclusively without benefit from each other. In the following discussion I will highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses of these perspectives so that they can be recast as a workable comparative and historical sociology of science that would aspire to throw new light on the development and fate of science in the modern world. Perhaps also, after the events of September 11th and the unfortunate allusion to the “clash of civilizations,” more students will turn their attention to this rich field of study.25

The Role of the Scientist

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 is the perspective Joseph Ben‑David adopted in his study.26 The central insight of that perspective is that

the persistence of a social activity over long periods of time, regardless of changes in the actors, depends on the emergence of roles to carry on the activity and on the understanding and positive evaluation (“legitimation”) of these roles by some social group . . . In the absence of such a publicly recognized role, there is little chance for the transmission and diffusion of the knowledge, skills, and motivation pertaining to a particular activity and for the crystallization of all this into a distinct tradition.27

As a first approximation to the problem at hand, this articulation of the importance of the role of the scientist is very suggestive, but a more careful scrutiny of it reveals some defects. The first of these is Ben‑David’s lack of attention to well‑known distinctions in the sociological theory of roles articulated years before by Robert Merton. As Merton puts it, individuals in society are not, by virtue of occupying a single status, called upon to

25 Various discussions of these issues have appeared on the web, along with occasion articles by other writers: Hillel Ofek, “Why Did the Arabic World Turn Away From Science?” The New Atlantis. A Journal of Technology and Society 30 (2011): 3–23. More important would be: Gil, S., John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, and Evan Schafer, Science in the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). It does not, however, acknowledge the singular importance of civilizational differences.

26 Ben‑David, The Scientist’s Role. 27 Ibid., p. 17.

The Modernity of Science 19

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enact a single role, but to participate in a role‑set. That is, “We must note that a particular social status involves, not a single associated role, but an array of associated roles.”28 Social actors are involved in a role‑set that is composed of the “complement of role relationships which persons have by virtue of occupying a particular social status.”29 In that single position the social actor is called upon to interact with multiple others who are part of his role‑set. For example, the school teacher must teach students, work with other teachers, deal with the parents of students, respond to the school principal, and even relate to local school boards and committees. In the interaction with each of these complementary others, a different repertoire of behavioral responses and vocabulary of motives is required, thereby making the status one of multiple dimensions, skills, and attitudes.

We should be careful, therefore, to separate the idea of a role‑set from the vague idea of “multiple roles.” It should be plain, Merton wrote, “that the role‑set differs from the pattern which has long been identified by sociologists as that of ‘multiple roles.’”30 To use Merton’s classic example, the role‑set of the medical student involves regularized interaction with other medical students, with physicians, with nurses, with medical techni- cians, and with social workers, and these role expectations all derive from a single social status, that of medical student. On the other hand, medical students may also be husbands (or wives), fathers (or mothers), brothers (or sisters), and members of political parties and religious beliefs. Those affiliations, however, point to another dimension of social structures.

The role‑set of the scientist is most typically composed of a college or university professor, a teacher of students, a member of a disciplinary department, a researcher, a writer and author, and, quite possibly, a gatekeeper who referees knowledge claims produced by other scientists. Nor should we ignore the role of the scientist as expositor to the public of authoritative knowledge, above all, when these knowledge claims are published. In that form they purport to carry the imprimatur of the scientific community at large to which the scientist belongs.

In sum, it is an abbreviated view that neglects to observe that every social role entails a complex of associated roles attached to a single status. As a participant in a role‑set, one is always engaged in interaction with multiple others who each may have their own definition of the proper role of the other. For our purposes the implication is that scientists – ancient

28 Merton, Robert K. Social Theory and Social Structure, enlarged edn. (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 423 and 442.

29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., p. 423.

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and modern – are not isolated practitioners sequestered in laboratories, but cultural actors whose very existence depends upon multiple others who (1) provide essential institutional support in the form of teaching and research opportunities, (2) provide vehicles for the publication of scientific results, and (3) provide tacit support for the role of the scientist with its embodied values and worldview. Without these cultural and institutional formations (as has been suggested) there can be no scientific role. The role of the scientist is in fact a construct composed of a complementary array of role performances that are essential and indispensable to the status of the scientist. The formulation of this broader conception of the role of the scientist as

a role‑set should serve to suggest that the various generic elements of the scientist’s position are embedded in an institutional history, and that these elements evolved over time and at different rates. One must also note that there are a great many specialized practitioners – astronomers, astrologers, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, opticians, biologists, physicians, and so forth – who each may claim the title of scientist. Furthermore, each of these scientific specialties emerged and achieved its scientific status at a different point in time. Thus, mechanics and astronomy had reached high levels of precision and theoretical development long before the Middle Ages. Thomas Kuhn reminded us that the ancient works of Archimedes and Ptolemy, that is, Floating Bodies and the Almagest, “can be read only by those with developed technical expertise.”31

The formulation of the problem in this manner helps to shift our attention away from the purely internal aspects of scientific inquiry, that is, on the methods, theories, paradigms, and instrumentation of science, and onto those external cultural and institutional structures that give scientific inquiry a secure place in the intellectual life of a society and civilization. What is more, one is drawn to the historical study of the evolutionary and incremental steps by which each of the components of the role‑set of the scientist came into existence, including the points of friction (very largely philosophical and ideological) that the scientific world- view had to overcome on its way to full institutionalization. Furthermore, it may turn out that many aspects of the scientist’s role are in fact generic modes of thought and inquiry that scientists share with other scholars. As this shift of focus brings into view the limitations on the strictly

internal history of science, it throws into sharp relief the limitations of the

31 Thomas Kuhn, “Mathematical vs. Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7, # 1 (1976): 5.

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view that the scientific role first occurred in England in the seventeenth century.32 To say this is not, however, to challenge the historiographic perspective that situates a great sea change in scientific inquiry between 1550 and 1700. We must delay a sharper delineation of this transformation until our comparative and civilizational analysis has been completed. Nevertheless, Ben-David was unequivocal about this fusion point for the role of the scientist in the seventeenth century. Thomas Kuhn, on the other hand placed the fusion in the mid‑nineteenth century. According to him the anti-mathematical but highly empirical/experimental wing of the scientific movement that was centered in England “had little effect on scientific theory or conceptual structure” until the mid‑eighteenth century,33 and in a later discussion, he pushes the fusion point into the late nineteenth century.34

On the other hand, if one takes the case of medicine, it is evident that there was a very strong empirical and experimental tradition in the study of anatomy stretching back to the thirteenth century. This was based on human dissection, discussed in Chapter 6. The capstone of this line of inquiry – undeniably fusing the empirical and theoretical – was the publication of Vesalius’s masterwork, On the Fabric of the Human Body in 1543, the same year as Copernicus’s great work, The Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres. Vesalius’s work set the stage for, and made imperative, further empirical inquiry into the human body, such as Harvey’s demon- strations of the circular flow of blood from the heart throughout the body.

The point is, however, that while this fusion of intellectual traditions was an essential event in the full emergence of the modern sciences of physics and astronomy, the essentially external or social foundations of modern science – constituted by deeper philosophical as well as insti- tutional underpinnings – were established much earlier. This is to suggest that critical elements of the social and cultural foundations of scientific inquiry were fashioned in the “early modern” crucible of the “long 12th-century” that extended into the early 1300s. These involve the legal and institutional foundations of modern science and open inquiry, but that is to get ahead of this narrative.

If the social role of the scientist is to be the focus of comparative and historical inquiry, to reiterate the point, it must be remembered that the

32 Ben‑David, The Scientist’s Role, p. 17; and Ben-David, “The Scientific Role: The Conditions of Its Establishment in Europe.” Minerva 4, #1 (1965): 15–54 at p. 15.

33 Thomas Kuhn, “Scientific Growth: Reflections on Ben‑David’s ‘Scientist’s Role’.” Minerva 10, no. 1 (1972): 166–78.

34 “Mathematical vs. Experimental Traditions,” pp. 19–27.

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apparent singularity is in fact a multiplicity, and it is very likely that these different aspects of the role‑set of the scientist emerged and became institutionalized at different points in time. In addition, the legitimating cultural values may come from very different cultural spheres, not from a singular source of scientific values. In other words, scientific values and the ethos of science are constructs that emerged over time and out of non- scientific contexts. Furthermore, many elements of scholarly research that are thought to be generically associated with scientific research were well established and widespread before the term scientist came into use in the nineteenth century. The word scientist did not come into use until the first half of the nineteenth century when the Cambridge philosopher of science William Whewell coined the term. Whewell had become aware that the English language had no term to refer collectively to chemists, mathemat- icians, physicists, electrochemists, and those who studied the natural world. When he took it upon himself to invent such a term, that is, the word scientist, his brainchild was at first rejected and then later treated as a barbarous innovation.35 Writing in 1834, Whewell lamented the fact that the English language had no term “to designate the student of the knowledge of the material world collectively.” Whewell says that this fact

was very oppressively felt by the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at their meetings at York, Oxford, and Cambridge, in the last three summers. There was no general term by which these gentlemen could describe themselves with reference to their pursuits. Philosopher was felt to be too wide and too lofty a term . . . savans was rather assuming.36

At that point, he says, “some ingenious gentleman [who was Whewell himself]37 proposed that by analogy with artist, they might form scientist,

35 The story of the multiple invention of this term has now been lucidly told by two writers; see Sydney Ross, “Scientist: The Story of a Word.” Annals of Science 18, #2 (1962): 65–85 (published in 1964); and Robert Merton (1989a), “Le molteplici origini e il carattere epiceno del termine inglese Scientist. Une episodio dell’interazione tra scienza, linguaggio e soceità.” (“The Multiple Origins and Epicene Character of the Word Scientist: An Episode in the Interaction of Science, Language, and Society.”) In Scientia: L’immagine e il mondo (Milano), pp. 279–93. Merton’s account lays heavier stress on the multiple and independent invention of the term, as well as intended and unintended sociological effects.

36 Whewell in The Quarterly Review 51 (1834):58–61, as cited in Ross, “Scientist,” p. 72. The resistance to introducing the term on philological grounds is discussed in both Ross, ibid., pp. 75ff, and Merton, “Le molteplici origini,” pp. 281ff. Such objections continued to be heard to the very end of the nineteenth century.

37 Evidence identifying Whewell as this “ingenious gentleman” is in Ross, “Scientist,” p. 71, n9, and Merton, “Le molteplici origini,” p. 291, n6, and pp. 279–83. Still, at least three more individuals apparently coined the term independently during the nineteenth century. Whewell’s use of the term

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but this was not generally palatable.”38 This suggests that as late as the nineteenth century, the role of scientist as a unitary identity was still in doubt and that it would be anachronistic at best to expect individuals prior to that time to have a completely formed self‑image.

The point made earlier, “that the legitimate cultural values may come from very different cultural spheres,” was carefully articulated by Robert Merton in his new preface to Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England and is a logical extension of the fact, noted above, that individuals are always required to play multiple roles. Merton pointed to a seminal aspect of the comparative and historical sociology, which is

that the socially patterned interests, motivations and behavior established in one institutional sphere ‑ say, that of religion or economy ‑ are interdepend- ent with the socially patterned interests, motivations, and behavior obtaining in other institutional spheres ‑ say, that of science. There are various kinds of such interdependence, but we need touch upon only one of these [for example, between religion and science] . . . The same individuals have multiple social statuses and roles: scientific and religious and economic and political. This fundamental linkage in social structure in itself makes for some interplay between otherwise distinct institutional spheres even when they are segregated into seemingly autonomous departments of life. Beyond that, the social, intellectual and value consequences of what is done in one institutional domain ramify into other institutions . . . Separate institutional spheres are only partially autonomous, not completely so.39

The inability of Ben‑David’s conception of the scientific role to explain why modern science failed to rise earlier in history or in other civilizations is due to its circular reasoning: modern science did not arise because modern scientists did not emerge; this (according to Ben‑David) occurred only in England in the seventeenth century. In Ben‑David’s words, ancient science failed to give birth to modern science “because those who did scientific work did not see themselves . . . as scientists.”40 Accordingly, Ben‑David suggested that the question is “what made certain men in seventeenth‑century Europe and nowhere before, view themselves as scientists.”41 But as we have seen, the term “scientist” did not exist in the

“scientist” has generally been located in the 1840 edition of his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, but the accounts of Ross and Merton clearly place his actual invention of the term in 1834 in his review of the book by Mary Somerville, The Connexion of the Sciences.

38 As cited in Ross, “Scientist,” p. 72, and The Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989), vol. 14, 652. For more on this background, see Laura J. Snyder, The Philosophical Breakfast Club (New York: Broadway Books, 2011).

39 Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth‑Century England, pp. ix–x. 40 Ben‑David, “The Scientific Role,” p. 15. 41 Ibid.

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English language until its invention in the nineteenth century by William Whewell. Without giving the role of scientist and the self‑image of the scientist some specific content, Ben‑David’s argument lapses into tautology and anachronism.

The Ethos of Science

To remedy this latter defect of Ben‑David’s excessively narrow conception of the scientific role, we need to borrow another element from the work of Robert Merton, that is, his description of the ethos of science. According to Merton,

the ethos of science is that affectively toned complex of values and norms which is held to be binding on the man of science. The norms are expressed in the form of prescriptions, proscriptions, preferences, and permissions. They are legitimatized in terms of institutional values. These imperatives, transmitted by precept and example, and reinforced by sanctions are in varying degrees internalized by the scientist, thus fashioning his scientific conscience or, if one prefers, his “superego.”42

Although there are defects and unresolved tensions in Merton’s formu- lation of the social norms of science, his formulation remains the most influential and most promising starting point for the analysis of the ethos of science in comparative perspective. Following Merton’s original formu- lation, there are four sets of “institutional imperatives”43 associated with scientific activity: universalism, communalism,44 disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. Merton later added the norm of originality, while other commentators on the ethos stressed rationality as well as individual- ism, intending to stress the importance for science of the individual’s freedom and autonomy in choosing his own problems. While these norms were intended to identify the social norms of science, Merton also recog- nized that there are methodological canons that are “both technical expedi- ents and moral compulsives.”45 They too can be strong directives regarding scientific behavior, and later discussions raised the question of whether or not these methodological canons and technical rules might not be more important than purely social norms as directives of scientific activity.

42 Merton, “The Normative Structure of Science,” in The Sociology of Science, pp. 267–80 at p. 268f. 43 Ibid., p. 270. 44 Merton originally called this the norm of communism, but as this term implies a political and

economic theory, it seems best to use the term communalism. Bernard Barber, in Science and the Social Order (New York: Free Press, 1952), p. 130, proposes the term communality.

45 Merton, in The Sociology of Science, p. 268.

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Nevertheless, Merton (in the early 1940s) thought it both appropriate and possible, “in only a limited introduction to a large problem, [that is,] the comparative study of the institutionalized structure of science,”46 to focus on “the mores with which [the methods of science] are hedged about.”47

“For the mores of science possess a methodologic rationale but they are binding, not only because they are procedurally efficient, but because they are believed to be right and good. They are moral as well as technical prescriptions.”48 In short, one might consider these norms and mores with which the practice of science is hedged about to be essential components of the role of the scientist, components that Ben‑David overlooked. As I review these elements of the ethos of science, I invite the reader to keep in mind comparative, historical, and civilizational perspectives in which the Mertonian norms might not be so readily assented to.

(1) Universalism: This norm suggests two imperatives: first, that know- ledge claims should be judged impersonally according to standard criteria and without regard to the personal characteristics of the researcher; and second, that all persons, regardless of ethnic or kinship ties, or religious knowledge, should be freely admitted into the universe of scientific discourse.49

(2) Communalism: According to this imperative, the actual findings of research belong to the community at large and are not to be secreted or appropriated solely by the researcher. One is enjoined to make results available through publication as soon as normal cautions regarding error and precision are taken.

(3) Disinterestedness: According to this norm, the scientist is expected to display a dispassionate pursuit of the truth through publicly available means and to forgo all forms of personal gain and aggrandizement.50

(4) Organized skepticism: This institutional imperative enjoins “tempor- ary suspension of judgment and the detached scrutiny of beliefs in terms of empirical and logical criteria,” and the application of this attitude toward all knowledge claims, even those issuing from other well‑regarded institutions.51

One may remark that this norm is particularly volatile and that trad- itional (or late‑developing) societies are especially sensitive to criticism and questioning directed at their central and sacred values. This attitude prevails today among Muslims who are reluctant to allow any form of

46 Ibid., p. 270. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., p. 276. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., p. 276. 51 Ibid., p. 271.

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public skepticism, fictional or scientific, regarding the Prophet Muham- mad or his teachings (on which more in Chapter 4). With the publication of his seminal paper, “Priorities in Scientific

Discovery,”52 Merton raised his earlier discussion of the competition for recognition in science through the pursuit of originality to a fifth norma- tive element of science. Here the imperative is the clear injunction to seek all rewards in science through displays of originality, with the highest reward being the eponymous naming of a scientific discovery after the researcher. I shall leave it for later discussion to decide whether or not this outline

of the ethos of science fully or adequately articulates the unique value system of science. Several critics have suggested that organized skepticism and in fact, all the norms together, “may well be characteristic of the Western academic community in general.”53 However, given the fact that modern science arose only in Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this does not appear to be a criticism. Nevertheless, in 1942 when Merton first published this piece on the

ethos of science, he asserted that “the institutional imperatives” of science, which enjoin “the extension of certified knowledge,” derive from “the goal and the methods” of science.54 But this appears to be a tautology. I would argue that insofar as we can speak of a specific institution of science, its normative imperatives are derived from a far more general cultural ambience and, above all, rely upon religious and legal presuppositions that long antedate the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century.

Paradigms and Scientific Communities

The third strand of theory and research in the comparative sociology of science that should be considered is that initiated by Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, probably the most influential book regarding the sociology of science in the second half of the twentieth century. It was the appearance of this work that led many critics of Merton’s

scientific ethos to suggest that it is “the body of established knowledge,”55

52 Merton, in The Sociology of Science, pp. 286–324, originally published in 1957. 53 Michael Mulkay, “Some Aspects of Cultural Growth in the Natural Sciences.” Social Research 36

(1969): 22–52, at p. 27. S. B. Barnes and R. G. A. Dolby say that they “are non‑specific to science,” in “The Scientific Ethos: A Deviant Viewpoint.” European Journal of Sociology 11 (1970): 3–25 at p. 14.

54 Merton, in The Sociology of Science, p. 270. 55 Mulkay, “Some Aspects of Cultural Growth,” p. 22.

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“the technical norms of paradigms,” not social norms, which generate the “cohesion, solidarity, and commitment” of scientists and their commu- nities.56 It is a paradoxical turn of events, therefore, that sociologists took up so enthusiastically the Kuhnian position, which strongly suggests that it is the internal (technical and intellectual) history of science that provides the key to understanding revolutions in science.57 This was largely because Kuhn attempted to locate his internalist discussion within “the sociology of the scientific community.”58

This perspective places a high premium on the internal, conceptual, and theoretical elements; it makes sense only in the context where scientific inquiry is already established, and when students of nature do not have to worry about religious and political censors such as the Ming and Ch’ing Chinese did.

Hence we must remind ourselves that Kuhn’s book presupposes the existence of such communities and that his question is the following: If communities of scientific practitioners can be identified, what do they have in common that allows them to maintain such intense and relatively full communication about their research? His answer to that question was paradigms: “those universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners.”

At first glance this appears to be a strong thesis that establishes the basis for writing a truly internal history of science. That is, if we accept Kuhn’s thesis that normal science begins with the acquisition and development of a paradigm, then students of the history of science would be well advised to study the history of the specialized sciences precisely from the point of view of the development and overthrow of paradigms. Such a view suggests that the main story in the history of science is just such an internalist story, which focuses on the technical, theoretical, and instrumental applications of a particular paradigm. It is such features that establish a universally agreed upon solution to a longstanding set of scientific problems that give a new and coherent focus to scientific inquiry in any field. However, if that perspective is transported to China, then the ruling “paradigm” is centered on neo-Confucian natural philosophy (outlined in Chapter 7). That means

56 Barnes and Dolby, “The Scientific Ethos,” p. 23. 57 See Barry Barnes, Scientific Knowledge and Sociology Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

1974), chap. 5, for an overview of the internal/external debate. A selection of papers discussing these issues can be found in George Basalla, ed., The Rise of Modern Science: Internal or External Factors? (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1968).

58 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. vii.

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that subjects like alchemy were deeply embedded in the neo-Confucian belief in yang and yin, ch’i, and the five elements (wu tsing).59 Yet that system was not overthrown from within, but was displaced only in the nineteenth century with the arrival of modern European chemistry. At the same time, Kuhn himself did not reject external factors as

influences on science. While he alerted readers of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to the fact that he said nothing “about the role of technological advance or of external social, economic, and intellectual conditions in the development of the sciences,”60 he was quite prepared to acknowledge such factors, since “one need . . . look no further than Copernicus and the calendar to discover that external conditions may help to transform a mere anomaly into a source of acute crisis.”61 The analysis of external factors “would surely add an analytic dimension of first‑rate importance for the understanding of scientific advance.”62 This suggests that both dimen- sions (conceptual/theoretical, and sociocultural) have to be considered simultaneously. Kuhn’s subsequent use of the term paradigm in the book often

expanded to include all the “accepted rules” of a scientific commu- nity.63 For example, he writes that close “historical investigation of a given specialty at a given time, discloses a set of recurrent and quasi‑standard illustrations of various theories in their conceptual, observational, and instrumental applications. These are the community’s paradigms, revealed in its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory exercises.”64 At the same time, Kuhn admitted that identifying a shared paradigm for a scientific commu- nity does not result in identifying all the shared rules. In fact, he deliber- ately expanded the concept of rule to encompass many other items beyond the paradigm. For example, there are rules that take the form of “explicit statements of scientific law and about scientific concepts and theories.”65

In addition, “At a level lower or more concrete than that of laws and

59 See Nathan Sivin, “The Theoretical Background of Elixir Alchemy.” In SCC 5/4 (1983): 210–322. Also Dagmar Schafer, The Crafting of the 10,000 Things, where the neo-Confucian philosophy of nature is taken for granted.

60 Ibid., p. x. 61 That sense of “crisis” might be exaggerated; see Owen Gingerich, “‘Crisis’ versus Aesthetic in the

Copernican Revolution,” in Copernicus. Yesterday and Today, Proceedings of the Commemorative Conference in Honour of Nicolaus Copernicus, edited by Arthur Beer and K. Aa. Strand (New York: Pergamon Press, 1975a), pp. 85–95.

62 Kuhn, ibid. 63 For the many different meanings of the term in Kuhn’s study, see Margaret Masterman, “The

Nature of a Paradigm,” in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 59–89.

64 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 43, 54. 65 Ibid., p. 40.

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theories, there is . . . a multitude of commitments to preferred types of instrumentation and to the ways in which accepted instruments may legitimately be employed.”66

Moreover, there are “the higher level, quasi‑metaphysical commit- ments” of scientists and these are “both metaphysical and methodo- logical.”67 For example, in the seventeenth century, “most physical scientists assumed that the universe was composed of microscopic cor- puscles and that all natural phenomena can be explained in terms of corpuscular shape, size, motion and interaction.” These assumptions, as metaphysical commitments, “told scientists what sort of entities the uni- verse did and did not contain.” As a methodological injunction, this set of commitments “told [scientists] what ultimate laws and fundamental explanations must be like: laws must specify corpuscular motion and interaction, and explanations must reduce any given natural phenomenon to corpuscular action under these laws.”68

Finally, Kuhn identified a still higher set of commitments, those “with- out which no man is a scientist.”69 By this means Kuhn elaborated a picture of constantly evolving, but also shifting and reconstituted, commu- nities of scientific practitioners who are held together by the “existence of this strong network of commitments – conceptual, theoretical, instru- mental, and methodological.” But this network of commitments also contains a large set of metaphysical commitments. In effect, this litany of scientific commitments far exceeds the bounds of technical and instru- mental considerations and surely stretches the usual connotation of the term scientific. The richness of Kuhn’s description of science and its practice clouded the distinctions between paradigms, rules, and other commitments, some of which would be accounted external and nonscien- tific, since they are in the nature of philosophical speculations. But having mentioned that domain of commitments “without which no man is a scientist,” Kuhn remained silent on the issue throughout his work. No doubt much of the difficulty in seeking to specify those commitments stems from the fact that during the course of history many sorts of commitments – religious, philosophical, metaphysical, and political – have been held by those who have made lasting contributions to the history of science. It is imperative, nevertheless, to consider the nature of the meta- physical commitments that were operative during the rise of modern science. Here again, perspective on this problem can only be gained by

66 Ibid. 67 Ibid., p. 41. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., p. 42.

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adopting comparative and civilizational frames of reference, as will be set out in the next two sections on Needham and Benjamin Nelson. In the meantime, it should be noted that when Kuhn wrote the

postscript to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he took pains to clarify the conceptual muddle that had overtaken some of his earlier discussions. He did this by acknowledging that at least two main senses of the term paradigm are operative in his book. In one sense, the idea of a paradigm “stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given [scientific] community.”70 This formulation Kuhn calls the sociological sense. In contrast, there is the sense that “denotes one sort of element in that [sociological] constellation, the concrete puzzle‑solutions which, employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science.”71

Although Kuhn believed that this second meaning of paradigm is philosophically deeper, I would suggest that, at least for comparative sociological purposes, a focus on the larger constellation of commitments entailing the larger philosophical and metaphysical commitments is crit- ical. Such metaphysical elements remain vague, yet they are capable of infinite permutation and transformation. Conversely, paradigmatic exem- plars can be overthrown and, in the event, are relegated to the category of “once respectable, now forgotten errors” of scientific history. Likewise, it might be suggested that among the elements of this constellation of commitments constituted by the sociological sense of paradigm are those commitments referred to above as the ethos of science. In reformulating the sociological sense of paradigm, however, Kuhn introduced the term disciplinary matrix and suggested that this is the broad rubric under which we should consider those commitments that a community of practitioners have in common. In the first instance, this includes symbolic generaliza- tions, which are those law-like statements such as f = ma.72 A second component of this matrix consists of metaphysical paradigms or the metaphysical part of paradigms. These, according to Kuhn, serve to “supply the group with preferred or permissible analogies and metaphors.” When these elements are also referred to as models, we see once again that this array of symbolic commitments within the scientific community ranges from technical rules to quite abstract and rule‑of‑thumb approxi- mations whose actual moorings are in philosophical and metaphysical commitments. Nevertheless, Kuhn sought to separate values from this

70 Ibid., p. 175. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., p. 184.

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previous set of disciplinary factors.73 In this revised formulation, Kuhn uses the term values to refer to preferences regarding the nature of predictions (whether they are quantitative or qualitative), as well as criteria used in judging the virtue of theories under various test conditions. Such criteria would include standards such as consistency, simplicity, and plausibility. When new explanations and experimental results emerge they will be judged in terms of their internal consistency as well as their plausibility vis‑à‑vis existing fact and theory. And those theoretical formulations that are more parsimonious will be preferred over those that are less so. While value standards such as these may be differently interpreted, Kuhn suggests that during periods of scientific crisis, when the prevailing para- digms are overwhelmed by anomalies, researchers do “resort to shared values rather than to shared rules” and these provide a stable basis for deciding research outcomes.

It is evident, then, that in this reformulation of the way values, norms, rules, and paradigms affect normal science, Kuhn attempted to abstract a domain of values that would be inherently scientific and speak to the issue of when to reject, when to accept, and when to remain neutral regarding theoretical and empirical claims that stand as candidates for canonization as received scientific wisdom. To some degree such notions as consistency, simplicity, and plausibility are offshoots of the rules of logic and math- ematics, but only in a vastly extended sense of those terms. Conversely, such standards doubtless apply to the social sciences, to the science of linguistics, possibly even to literary criticism, as well as law. Such values are not, however, of the same order as those norms of science that Robert Merton sought to identify in the ethos of science. Kuhn’s values seem much more technical and seem to occupy some intermediate zone between social norms, on the one hand, and methodological rules on the other.

Finally, Kuhn attempted to narrow the concept of a paradigm to that of an exemplar, a “concrete problem solution” that “students encounter from the start of their scientific education, whether in laboratories, on examin- ations,” or in textbooks.74 These, Kuhn claims, “provide the fine‑structure of science.” By studying these exemplars or, more precisely, working through similar problems using the exemplar as a model solution, the aspiring scientist learns “to see a variety of situations as like each other.”75 In effect, this is a means of learning “tacit knowledge,” which, Kuhn seems to suggest, is not the same as learning rules.76 A very suggest- ive example of this is one that Kuhn originally used in the first edition

73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., p. 187. 75 Ibid., p. 189. 76 Ibid., p. 191f.

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of the book. It concerns the use of a set of legal rulings in law as a paradigm. A paradigm, once learned, serves as a model for future cases and teaches students how to see new cases as similar to old ones. Hence by studying the paradigmatic cases, “like an accepted judicial decision in the common law,”77 one learns how to solve future cases. This example of the role of exemplar in the law will be a useful parallel for later discussion. There is, however, another contribution to the history of science that

Kuhn has made and which we should consider before turning our attention to a sketch of Joseph Needham’s outline of a universal history of science. That contribution is to be found in Kuhn’s probing of the empirical versus the mathematical traditions in the Western scientific revolution. Kuhn’s suggestion is that these two types of science – the one practical and experi- mental, the other more mathematical and abstract – remained separate enterprises well into the nineteenth century, and in some cases into the early twentieth. Thus, if we distinguish between Baconian and classical traditions and ask how the two traditions interacted, Kuhn says, “not a great deal and often with considerable difficulty . . . Into the nineteenth century the two clusters, classical and Baconian, remained distinct.”78 “Excepting chemistry, which had found a variegated institutional base by the end of the seventeenth century,” he writes, “the Baconian and classical sciences flourished in differ- ent national settings from at least 1700.”79 While practitioners of both can be found on the Continent and in England, England was home to the Baconian sciences, while the Continent, especially France, was the home of the mathematical sciences according to Kuhn. Furthermore, Kuhn points out that the French Academy of Sciences did not have a section on experi- mental science (physique experimentale) until 1785, “and it was grouped in the mathematical division (with geometry, astronomy, and mechanics).”80

In fact, there were few experimentalists among the Academy members. Considering “the 18th century as a whole, the contributions of academicians to the Baconian physical sciences were minor compared with those of doctors, pharmacists, industrialists, instrument makers, itinerant lecturers, and men of independent means.” In England the situation was the reverse, which is to say that the Royal Society was composed chiefly of amateurs, “men whose careers were first and foremost in science.”81 In addition, Newton’s apparent participation in both traditions (in the classical via the Principia, and in the experimental via his Optiks) was unique. Kuhn suggests that the readers of the Optiks found a “non‑Baconian use of experiment,”

77 Ibid., p. 23. 78 Kuhn, “Mathematical vs. Experimental Traditions,” p. 16. 79 Ibid., p. 25. 80 Ibid., p. 20. 81 Ibid., p. 21.

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which was “a product of Newton’s deep and simultaneous immersion in the classical scholastic tradition.”82 In short, Newton’s points of reference were mostly Continental and his work seems much more at home there.83

This division was made sharper by the fact that the classic sciences had been made part of “the standard curriculum of the medieval universities,” whereas for the experimental sciences “the universities had no place [for them] before the last half of the nineteenth century.”84 Consequently, it is not so surprising that it was not until the 1840s that a common term, scientist, was found acceptable to describe all those engaged in the study of the natural world.

In sum, Kuhn’s suggestion is that the experimental and mathematical traditions fused much later than the putative time of the rise of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This fusion, following Kuhn’s account, was achieved in the mid‑nineteenth century, and for some sciences, not until the twentieth century. Indeed, Kuhn further suggests that it was the unique ability of the German universities to modify the institutional arrangements of their classic and medieval foundations85

that gave them an edge in the early twentieth‑century development of modern physics.86 This account suggests that something other than experimentalism was the new driving force of modern science and that, whatever it was, it was something triggered prior to Galileo. It therefore suggests that the origins of the classical tradition that culminated in Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton had sources much deeper and earlier than the seventeenth century.87

By accentuating the notion of metaphysical commitments and pointing out their role in the history and practice of science (e.g., in seventeenth-century corpuscular theory), Kuhn highlighted the centrality of philosophies of nature and their importance for the history of science. In this regard there are affinities between the ideas of Kuhn and those of Joseph Needham regarding the role of philosophy of nature in Chinese science.

82 Ibid., p. 18. 83 Kuhn, “Scientific Growth,” p. 173f. 84 Ibid., p. 19. 85 For an overview of this transformation, see William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the

Research University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 86 Ibid., p. 31. 87 Speaking of the early successes of the mathematical wing of the scientific movement, Kuhn says:

“This movement, which centers on the Continent, is responsible for virtually all the early‑modern achievements in the mathematical and physical sciences, including analytic geometry and calculus, heliocentric astronomy, the new optics and mechanics. Newton was perhaps its only first‑rank British representative, and his sources, colleagues and rivals (excepting the idiosyncratic Boyle) were all Continentals.” Kuhn, “Scientific Growth,” p. 174.

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Comparative Civilizational Sociology of Science: Joseph Needham (1900–1994)

Without doubt Joseph Needham’s monumental study, Science and Civilisation in China,88 did more than any other work in the twentieth century to draw attention to the need for a comparative, historical, and socio- logical study of the rise of modern science. The need for such a study, as I noted earlier, had been broached by Weber in 1920 when he wrote the introduction to his Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion.89

That introduction was later translated by Talcott Parsons and published as the “Author’s Introduction” to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.90 However, in his study of the religion of China (published in 1916), Weber spoke of the failure of “systematic and naturalistic thought” to mature in China,91 though it is clear that Weber’s sources of infor- mation were meager in that period of time.92 Yet it remains true that Chinese science did not “mature” into modern science (more on this in Chapters 7, 8, and 9). Consequently, Weber’s suggestions and insightfulness on many scores

remain. The fact that Weber says “there was no rational science,”93

however mistaken it may appear, does in fact point to an actual difference between the science of China and that of the West all the way to the seventeenth century. For example, Needham pointed out on many occa- sions that Chinese physical thought was so weak as to be non-existent, for there were no systematic thinkers like the precursors to Galileo (see Chapter 8). Likewise, a similar disarray appears to characterize biology. Comment-

ing on the amorphous status of the “sciences” in China, Needham points out “that for medieval and traditional China ‘biology’ was not a separated and defined science. One gets its ideas from philosophical writings, books on pharmaceutical natural history, treatises on agriculture and

88 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (7 volumes in parts), (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1956–2004), hereafter SCC.

89 Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Tübingen: J. C. Mohr, 1920–1), 3 vols., most of which have been translated into English separately.

90 Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (1958a) first translated in 1930. 91 Weber, The Religion of China, trans. Hans Gerth (New York: Free Press, 1951), p. 150. 92 This is a point made by Nathan Sivin in “Max Weber, Joseph Needham, Benjamin Nelson: The

Question of Chinese Science,” in Civilizations East and West: A Memorial Volume for Benjamin Nelson, edited by E. V. Walter et al. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1985), pp. 37–49, at p. 46.

93 The Religion of China, p. 151.

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horticulture, monographs on groups of natural objects, miscellaneous memoranda and so on.”94 Similarly, Nathan Sivin says:

The sciences were not integrated under the dominion of philosophy, as schools and universities integrated them in Europe and Islam. [The] Chinese had sciences, but no science, no single conception or word for the overarching sum of all of them. Words for the level of generalization above that of the individual science were too broad. They referred to everything that people could learn through study, whether of Nature or human affairs.95

Put differently, the specifically theoretical sciences were scarcely developed at all in China, very different from Arabic‑Islamic civilization, which had the benefit of access to the ancient Greek sciences that had been more fully developed than Chinese science (on which more in Chapter 3).

Although Needham does not refer to Max Weber’s comparative and historical writings, it is clear from everything he wrote about the social aspects of Chinese science that Weber’s concerns were never distant from Needham’s explorations. Indeed, Needham had structured his volumes so that the Weberian social questions would be fully explored in the last volume of the series, but that did not happen.

As Benjamin Nelson pointed out in his long commentary on Needham and Weber, Needham had in many respects gone beyond Weber in probing the social, cultural, and ontological groundings of Chinese science and civilization.96 For Nelson this was most evident in Needham’s protracted discussion of the idea of law and laws of nature in Chinese civilization.97

Furthermore, there are many areas of Chinese thought and philosophy in which Needham’s command of the original sources reaps rich new descriptions of Chinese intellectual, philosophical, and religious life that significantly surpass Weber’s.

While Needham is deeply appreciative of Chinese science and technol- ogy and their achievements, he was acutely aware of the weaknesses of Chinese science as a theoretical endeavor. Indeed, Needham’s sensitivities to these very weaknesses seem to have contributed to his puzzlement

94 SCC 5/2: xxii. 95 Sivin, “Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China – or Didn’t It?” in

Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences, edited by Everett Mendelsohn (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 531–54 at p. 533.

96 This is a point made by Nathan Sivin in “Max Weber, Joseph Needham, Benjamin Nelson: The Question of Chinese Science,” in Civilizations East and West: A Memorial Volume for Benjamin Nelson, edited by E. V. Walter et al. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1985), pp. 37–49, at p. 46.

97 Nelson, “Sciences and Civilizations, ‘East’ and ‘West.’” In On the Roads to Modernity, pp. 152–200.

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regarding the failure of Chinese science to give birth to modern science. That puzzlement led him to articulate the central question: Given China’s scientific traditions and its putative technological superiority over Western Europe up until the seventeenth century,98 how is it that it “failed to give rise to distinctively modern science,” especially as it had “been in many ways ahead of Europe for some fourteen previous centuries.”99 It should be noted in this context that it is only in the domain of technology that Needham could claim a superiority for China (tentative as it was), for in virtually all fields of the natural sciences, that is, astronomy, optics, the physics of motion, etc., Chinese science was not a peer to Arabic or European science either before or after the thirteenth century. Second, Needham equates modern science with the apparent mathe-

matization of nature associated with the work of Galileo, when in fact astronomy had been geometrized as far back as Ptolemy (first century AD). The same was true of optics under the command of Ibn al-Haytham’s pioneering work (eleventh century.) It was in the optical tradition pion- eered by al-Haytham that an indispensable experimental tradition emerged that was forwarded almost simultaneously by various European opticians, showing a universalizing tendency back in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Nevertheless, Needham proclaimed that until science “had been uni-

versalized by its fusion with mathematics, natural science could not become the common property of all mankind”:

When we say that modern science developed only in Western Europe at the time of Galileo in the late Renaissance, we mean surely that there and then alone there developed the fundamental bases of the structure of the natural sciences as we have them today, namely the application of mathematical hypotheses to Nature, the full understanding of the experimental method, the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, the geometrization of space, and the acceptance of the mechanical model of reality.100

98 Needham’s turning point for modern science has consistently been +1600; but China’s technological superiority, if it was that, disappeared by the mid‑1400s. Needham’s last assessment of the relative achievements of Western and Chinese technology is his “Provisional Balance Sheet” in SCC 4/2: 222–5. As we shall see, there are many reasons for rejecting Needham’s chronology.

99 Needham, SCC 5/2: xxii; and GT, p. 16. I must mention at this juncture that the distinguished historian of Chinese science Nathan Sivin takes a rather different view than Needham regarding the utility of raising the questions that Needham raises, and he challenges the assumption of the universality of modern science (“Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China,” p. 537). I shall leave further consideration of Sivin’s perspective for later.

100 GT, p. 15.

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Throughout his writings Needham refers to this episode as the birth of the “new, or experimental, philosophy,”101 and while he does not wholly dismiss the significant continuity between the science of Galileo and that of his medieval predecessors, Needham tends to place an acute stress on the experimental elements of the new philosophy and to neglect the larger intellectual, philosophical, and metaphysical contexts of European thought in which the new science was embedded. It must be said, however, that in the course of Needham’s writings, especially his lectures and occasional essays, he has dealt with virtually every aspect – social, cultural, linguistic, geographical, and technological – that might conceivably have a bearing on the question of the rise of modern science.

These factors include the inherent structural properties of the Chinese language, the geographic isolation of China, the need for large irrigation networks, philosophies of nature, time, and the cosmos (especially the unique influences of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the Mohists), the presence or absence of mathematical ideas and symbolisms, the use of the experimental method, the absence of the idea of a creator God and the idea of laws of nature along with the overwhelming dominance of the Chinese bureaucracy. In several places Needham treats these factors as “facilitating” and “inhibiting” factors.102 In other places he groups them as four sets of factors: geographical, hydraulic, social, and economic.103 Insofar as social factors are concerned, Needham’s analysis is very eclectic and lacking in focus, despite its brilliance. For example, he never clearly defines the nature of social factors, though he is convinced that social and economic forces, had they been present in China, would have overcome whatever defects existed in Chinese science, thus allowing it to gestate modern science.104

Surprisingly, Needham wants to dismiss altogether the role and influ- ence of Confucianism in Chinese civilization. He writes: “All explanations in terms of the dominance of Confucian philosophy . . . may be ruled out at the start, for they only invite the further question, why was Chinese civilization such that Confucian philosophy did dominate.”105 Yet, con- versely, no one would dismiss explanations regarding Christianity and Christian philosophical ideas as irrelevant in the West and propose to raise

101 For example, SCC 3:156; and “The Evolution of Oecumenical Science: The Roles of Europe and China.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 1, no. 3 (1976): 202–14, at p. 202.

102 A good outline of these factors is provided by Sal P. Restivo, “Joseph Needham and the Comparative Sociology of Chinese and Modern Science,” in Research in Sociology of Knowledge, Science, and Art, edited by Robert A. Jones (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1978), 2: 25–51.

103 GT, p. 150. 104 SCC 3: 167–8. 105 GT, p. 150.

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the further question of why Christian ideas and doctrines (rather than Judaic, Islamic, and so forth) still dominate the West. In brief, Needham’s unabashed commitment to the principle “that the vast historical differ- ences between the cultures can be explained by sociological studies”106 is biased toward a Marxist and materialist account. From such a point of view, cultural, ethnic, and cognitive differences are mere ideological ephemera attached to economic structures. This leads Needham to under- value cultural factors and indigenous idioms. On the other hand, Needham has much to say in scattered places about

Chinese bureaucracy and its impact on Chinese life and thought. Surely Confucianism had much to do with the shaping of this social factor and both Confucianism and bureaucracy ought to be central subjects of inquiry in this connection. The point here, however, is that Needham affirms that the bureaucracy “absolutely prevented the rise of the mer- chants and the coming of capitalism,”107 but he does not systematically follow up the implication of this conclusion for the development of the role of the scientist and the rise of modern science, for his argument would apply just as strongly to the (inhibited) pursuit of science. He further argued that “so long as ‘bureaucratic feudalism’ remained

unchanged, mathematics could not come together with empirical natur- e‑observation and experience to produce something fundamentally new.”108 In the same vein, he asserted that “there cannot be much doubt . . . that the failure of the rise of the merchant class to power in the state lies at the base of the inhibiting of the rise of modern science in Chinese society,”109 and it was the Chinese bureaucracy that “absolutely prevented the rise of the merchants” and the coming into being of capitalism: “Whoever would explain the failure of Chinese society to develop modern science had better begin by explaining the failure of Chinese society to develop mercantile and then industrial capitalism.”110 In other words, whether or not one considers the direct effect of the bureaucracy on the development of science (above all, its near monopoly of many domains of scientific practice), or whether one considers the indirect effects of the bureaucracy (through its influence on the merchant class as a carrier of modern science), in either case the bureaucracy must be treated as an independent factor, and in this case, according to Needham’s own analysis, it was an overwhelming inhibiting factor vis‑à‑vis the rise of modern science. But this is not the conclusion that Needham chose to emphasize.

106 Ibid., p. 191. 107 Ibid., p. 152. 108 Ibid., p. 212. 109 Ibid., p. 186. 110 Ibid., p. 186.

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Given the all‑pervasiveness of the Chinese bureaucracy, it would seem that Needham has in fact put together (in separate places) a social explan- ation of the arresting of modern scientific development in China that has little to do with capitalism and a great deal to do with the bureaucratic nature of Chinese society, education, and scientific practice. Such insights ought logically to induce a study of the motives (and processes) whereby the bureaucratic elite prevented the rise of autonomous social collectivities, that is, cities and towns, (legally autonomous) guilds, colleges, and univer- sities. Such a study might also suggest that the Chinese bureaucracy created a reward system that, by rewarding classical, ethical, and literary scholarship, systematically deflected scholarly pursuits away from natural philosophy and scientific inquiry. As we shall see, all of these “bureau- cratic” inhibitory influences were a direct product of neo-Confucianism and its legal system that created an iron grip on Chinese thought and science. It seems odd, but in most cases students and commentators on China’s trajectory have not separated out the overweening influence of China’s legal system as distinct from the broad tag of “bureaucacy.”

Insofar as the European context is concerned, there is much recent research on the history of medieval science, as well as Arabic science, that would require the reformulation of many of Needham’s assumptions. The pursuit of natural science in medieval Europe was far more advanced and sophisticated than Needham’s account generally concedes. Consider- able research on Chinese science has also been done since the publication of Needham’s early volumes in the 1950s, though clearly Needham and his collaborators continued the work into the first decade of the twenty- first century.

Needham’s case for the superiority of Chinese science before the Galilean revolution rests on the highly contested claim that no meaningful distinction can or should be made between science and technology in history. Conversely, many historians of technology would argue the con- trary, claiming that it was only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that science and technology were intimately connected.111 In the past, knowledge of the principles of the natural world generally lagged far behind technology, whereas today knowledge of the principles of mechan- ics, motion, hydraulics, thermodynamics, chemistry, genetics, and

111 Melvin Kranzburg and Carroll Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization (New York: Oxford, 1967), 2 vols.; Sivin, “Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China,” p. 532, also doubts the integration of science and technology in earlier history. Likewise, Nelson rejects Needham’s claims regarding the affinity between science and technology; see Nelson, On the Roads to Modernity, chap. 10.

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microparticle forces, is frequently the source of technological innovations. The idea that technology is applied science could only exist where there was a firsthand knowledge of fundamental scientific principles that could be applied to the manipulation of the natural world. Failure to separate the two in this case may seriously blur our inquiries since our attention must be directed toward the development of the systems of ideas and the groups of practitioners who were uniquely identified with the cultivation and development of these new symbol systems. In Europe, however, the leading edge of scientific advance from which “applied science” could be derived, probably existed by the mid-seventeenth century. On the other hand, the claim that Chinese technology remained super-

ior to that of the West from the second to the mid‑fifteenth century poses its own problems – namely, whether or not technology per se has any intrinsic relationship to science and, if it does, why that putatively superior technology (in China) did not spawn the growth of modern science but began itself to stagnate after the sixteenth century. At the same time, it should be noted that specialists in medieval European technology are doubtful regarding Needham’s claims of superior Chinese technology in that period.112

There is one additional lacuna in Needham’s social account. Although Needham was among the first in the history of science to stress the potential importance of such metaphysical and extra-scientific factors as cultural ontologies and images of law, he did not focus attention on the corres- ponding images of man that all societies and civilizations contain. Is generic man, for example, in a particular time and civilization, thought to be rational and hence fully capable of discovering, decoding, and explaining the mysteries of nature? Or is humankind thought to be too weak in intellectual powers to divine the secret and unknown processes and mechanisms of Nature that the naked eye can rarely see? Is the individual permitted to speak openly and possibly critically about the wisdom of the ages or about the official and standard accounts of nature and its processes? In what forums may these dissenting thoughts be expressed, and can they be freely expressed, discussed, and publicly passed on to wider audiences? These are matters central to an anthropology of man and deserve the highest consideration in the context of the rise of modern science.

112 See Lynn White, Jr, “Review Symposia” (on vols. 1–5 of Science and Civilisation in China). Isis 45 #1 (1984): 172–9; and idem, Medieval Technology and Social Change (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), and “The Iconography of Temperantia and the Virtuousness of Technology.” In Medieval Religion and Technology, pp. 181–204 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).

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They are also central to any examination of the institutional location of scientific practice. This angle of vision is generally submerged even by those who are otherwise sympathetic to the idea of exploring indigenous philoso- phies of nature. For example, Nathan Sivin comments that although one may find probing theoretical discussions in Chinese science that affirm the usefulness of such inquiries, “their authors did not believe that empirical investigations integrated by theory could completely explain physical phenomena . . . [The] texture of reality is too fine and too subtle to be completely apprehended.”113 This perspective on the human condition is valuable and we ought to consider how these conceptions of man’s reason and rationality contribute to (or inhibit) the conduct of scientific inquiry.

Needham’s writings display a great reluctance to deal with these themes, and one feels that this is due to both Needham’s Marxist commitments and his great fear that consideration of such culturally located differences would lead to racist characterizations. However that may be, no account of the rise of modern science can be complete without a corresponding analysis of the theories of man, of mind, soul, psyche, and conscience that have animated and authorized men over the centuries to speak freely their deepest thoughts about the world and its ontologies. Inevitably, such discussions must focus on the social institutions that legitimate and standardize such viewpoints. These taken for granted official (and fre- quently legal) structures shape intellectual discourse and place limits on the public sphere.

Despite these difficulties in Needham’s volumes, he has prepared the way for a comparative and historically grounded sociocultural analysis of the rise of modern science in civilizational perspective. He has done this, in the first instance, by undertaking a monumental history of the natural sciences and technology in China, with a constant eye on similarities and divergences from European development. More importantly, his work has shifted the focus from internal factors to external factors that encompass ideas about nature, time, cosmology, natural laws, and cultural ontologies, as well as patterns of conduct and institutional structures. At the same time he has not neglected internal dialogues within China’s own indigenous scientific traditions. He has done so with the abiding faith that there is “only one unitary science of nature” and the belief that someday “we shall have an historical account which will allow us to trace an absolute continu- ity between the first beginnings of astronomy and medicine in Ancient Babylonia, through the advancing natural knowledge of medieval China,

113 Sivin, “Max Weber, Joseph Needham, Benjamin Nelson,” p. 46.

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India, Islam, and the Classical Western world, to the breakthrough of late Renaissance Europe, when, it has been said, the most effective method of discovery was itself discovered.”114

Unfortunately, Needham passed on before his remaining powers of concentration could fully address these many social and cultural factors vital to the pursuit of science.115

Benjamin Nelson: Universalization and Wider Spheres of Discourse

Further insights into the importance of Needham’s work can be gained by considering the contributions to the comparative sociology of science made by Benjamin Nelson (1911–77). During the last decade of his life, Nelson became increasingly focused on the problem of the origins and development of modern science. In part this was a product of his training as a medieval historian, and in part was an expression of his abiding interest in philosophy and its interaction with theology, law, and science. These interests were further solidified by his ongoing friendships with such philosophers of science as N. R. Hanson, Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, Stephen Toulmin, and others. In the 1960s and 1970s many philosophers and historians of science

believed that Catholic Christianity had a great deal to do with the character of Western intellectual thought during the Middle Ages. It was further thought that because the church officially condemned Galileo in 1616 and in 1633 because of Galileo’s defense of Copernicus’s heliocentric hypothesis,116 there must have been something fundamentally wrong with medieval Catholic intellectual life, which might also have tainted university studies.

114 Needham SCC 5/5: xxvi. Given the vast literature in the philosophy of science that has emerged in the last half century and its scrutinizing of all sorts of scientific episodes, it seems doubtful that we have uncovered “the method of discovery” itself.

115 In his comments on Needham and his project back in the 1970s, Derek J. de Solla Price hinted that Needham was beginning to feel that the effort to deal with this summing up of the social and economic background might take another lifetime, and thus it seemed equally far off. See Price, “Joseph Needham and the Science of China,” in Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition, edited by S. Nakayama and N. Sivin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973), p. 16.

116 The first censure stemmed from Galileo’s “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina” (1615), and the second for publishing his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Translated with revised notes by Stillman Drake; Berkeley: University of California Press. 1967). For further details, see Maurice A. Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

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Furthermore, many people were under the spell of Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who championed a “new instauration,”117 a new beginning of scientific inquiry based on a “new” experimentalism. Bacon himself was not a keen student of science and he knew relatively little of the actual scientific practice of his era, though he knew Galileo’s work. He apparently knew nothing of William Gilbert’s painstaking electrical research that resulted in the first scientific textbook establishing the existence of electric charges in nature that were fully supported by experimental results. This landmark study, On the Magnet (De Magnate) was published in 1600.

There was a great deal more that Bacon did not know about the science of his time and the spontaneous rise of experimentalism across Europe. Nevertheless, he tagged previous generations with faulty thinking and obscurantism, laying considerable blame on the “schoolmen” of the past.

A third factor in the general outlook of the history of science was the appearance of Robert Merton’s Science, Technology and Society in 17th Century England, of which we spoke earlier.118 Although Merton was careful not to exaggerate inhibitive influences within Catholic thought prior to the Reformation, one of the salient themes of Merton’s book was the claim that Puritanism “was the spur” that galvanized the upsurge in scientific experimentalism in seventeenth-century England. This, as other researchers knew, was also the era when scientific societies began to be founded across Europe, both on the Continent and in England. Although the Royal Society of London has received a great deal of attention, there were other scientific societies founded before the chartering of the Royal Society in 1661.

This was the context in which Nelson began writing about Galileo and the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Given that background it was easy to imagine that the Reformation had unleashed “Protestant lifeways” and that these contributed to the unfet- tered rise of modern science.

Because of his training in medieval history, Nelson knew that during the high Middle Ages, the seminal thinkers of the West were well versed in

117 For the background related to this as it applies to Bacon and Merton’s thesis, see Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1670 (New York: Homes & Meier, 1976).

118 Although Merton’s classic study was published in 1938 in Europe, it was not reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology due to WW II until 1970 when it was reissued in paperback, and Nelson reviewed it. For the many issues and controversies regarding Merton’s thesis see I. B. Cohen (with the assistance of R. E. Duffin and Stuart Strickland), Puritanism and the Rise of Modern Science (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990).

44 The Comparative Study of Science

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such fields as natural philosophy, metaphysics, theology, and even canon law. They were experts and university teachers, many of whom were architects of the new mechanics that was being fashioned out of an intense dialogue with Aristotle’s physics.119 Furthermore, from his knowledge of the seminal debates of that era, Nelson knew that the debates regarding the permissibility of arguing questions concerning a “new sci- ence” associated with the names of Copernicus and Galileo had little to do with the central issues at stake in the Reformation. Yet here again, from a social and political point of view, one could see the outlines of two movements challenging the authority of the Catholic Church. On the one hand, the new scientific cosmology challenged the Church’s belief in a geocentric world. On the other, the Reformation cut to the core the whole legitimacy of the Church, its biblical grounding, and its authority over matters of faith. But it turns out that the scientific debate regarding the new mathema-

tical‑cosmological model of the universe was an indigenous conflict: that is, the new theory, put forth by a Catholic parish administrator, Copernicus, was a revolutionary idea born in Catholic culture areas and obviously preceded the Reformation.120 Consequently, Nelson was keen to rectify the impression that Max Weber’s thesis regarding religion and the rise of capitalism (the Protestant ethic thesis) ought to be extended (as Weber seemed to hint in his closing pages) to explain the scientific revolution; for as we noted, that revolution was embedded in cultural roots antedating the Reformation and predating the scientific movement that became so strong in England in the seventeenth century. With his historical training, it was natural for Nelson to have a broader

view of the issues and debates surrounding the Continental scientific revolution than those who took a narrow and positivist view of the matter, assuming that the rise of modern science was just the triumph of reason over superstition. The assumption in some quarters was that the rise of modern science was the more or less direct process of rejecting all meta- physics and religiously grounded conceptions and replacing them with the unequivocal method of experiment.121 The slogan of the Royal Society

119 See M. Clagett, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959).

120 See On the Roads to Modernity, chaps. 7, 8, and 9. 121 This is a longstanding view among nineteenth‑ and early twentieth‑century historians and

historians of science; see, for example, W. E. H. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, rev. edn. (New York: Appleton, 1871), and even George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science (Baltimore, Md., Williams and Wilkins, 1927–48), 3 vols. in

Benjamin Nelson 45

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became Nullius in verba, “take no one’s word for it,” meaning all truth must be demonstrated by experiment.

In contrast to such a view, Nelson argued that the road to modern science was paved with stepping‑stones fashioned in the argot of Christian theology and Western philosophy (a mix of Aristotle, Plato, and even Averröes), as well as by uniquely Western legal conceptions. The idea, for example, that the world is a rational and coherent order, that the world is a machine, that a divine being created the world according to “number, weight and measure,” are all medieval themes enunciated by Christian clerics cum natural philosophers, theologians, and canonists.122 Indeed, the idea of laws of nature had Judeo‑Christian groundings far stronger than any purely scientific arguments available at the time. In addition, Nelson was captivated by the Christian theological idea that all men have an inner moral agency that allows them to arrive at right reason. From his point of view, there was little doubt but that Copernicus and Galileo were com- mitted to a realist interpretation of the world, and that this commitment was founded on the theological conceptions that men have reason and conscience, which empower them to arrive at subjective certitude beyond objective demonstration, and that this is acceptable in the sight of God as well as man.123 In brief, Nelson’s entré to the sociology of science and the special question of the rise of modern science requires that one take all the symbolisms – theological, natural, and mathematical – equally ser- iously in unraveling the unique success of modern science in the West. The deficiencies of other civilizations with regard to the development of science, Nelson believed, were not matters of scientific technique in the narrow sense, but rather deficiencies in the symbolic technologies of the sociocultural domain. They were deficiencies in the cultural structures and institutions, which either opened up wider spheres of public discourse or placed undue limitations on such openings.

It is at this point that Nelson’s concern for the fashioning of new universal structures – social, intellectual, and political – comes into view. From his earlier study, The Idea of Usury,124 Nelson had argued that a very important dynamic of Western civilization was the pursuit of universal

five parts. Due to the work of historians of science during the last twenty years or so, this view is largely outmoded, though it would be too strong to say that the sociological view has triumphed.

122 Nelson, “Certitude and the Books of Scripture, Nature, and Conscience.” In On the Roads to Modernity, especially pp. 158–9.

123 On the Roads to Modernity, chapters 7 and 9. 124 Benjamin Nelson, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood, second

enlarged edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).

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communities of discourse and participation. His study of the fate of the idea of usury revealed in the Old Testament – whereby usury was forbid- den among Jews but allowed between Jews and others – demonstrated that there had been a progression “from tribal brotherhood to universal otherhood,” whereby each person became equally an “other” rather than a “tribal brother.” Nelson saw this new ethic worked out most clearly in the nexus between Christian theology and law, above all in the writings of John Calvin. Calvin’s argument in favor of the permissibility of usury was that now, in the Christian era, all men were equally brothers in Christ, and therefore usury was permissible provided that one always remembered to temper the practice of lending with Christian charity. Hence, a new level of universalism was achieved by transposing a religious commitment into a legal principle, a principle whereby all are equally “others” and the rule applies to all regardless of one’s denomination. The study of movements toward such universalisms captured Nelson for

the rest of his life. When he turned to the question of the rise of modern science, he therefore saw it as a paradigmatic setting within which we might see yet another passage from an elitist and exclusive discourse to a freely open and public discourse. Modern science could then be seen as the result of an emerging universalistic mode of discourse that is in the service of a completely open and unending intellectual quest for new knowledge. It was such a point of view that led him to assert that in the comparative and historical sociology of science an “indispensable reference point . . . will be found in the study of the factors working to promote and those working to retard the forging of new types of universalities and universa- lizations necessary for the institutionalization of innovation in the ‘advancement of science.’”125 Joseph Needham’s acute stresses on the idea of ecumenical science represented a meeting of two minds, for this was the formulation that Nelson was seeking in his inquiries regarding the devel- opment of modern science. If we take that ecumenical view as the reference point, then a consider-

ation of the breakthrough to modern sciences (and the realization of “the highest levels of universalization”) ought to focus on three interrelated sets of issues. The first concerns the processes by which the “bars to freedom of entry and exit from the communities of learners and partici- pants in the communities of discourse” can be overcome and “inherited invidious dualisms” transcended; second, attention must be given to the means and mechanisms by which “incentives to produce and distribute

125 On the Roads to Modernity, p. 11.

Benjamin Nelson 47

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warranted knowledge, including new [theoretical] mappings and innova- tive procedures” are produced; and, third, attention ought to be given to the processes by which “blocks to the achievement of ever‑higher levels of generality in the language structures – written and spoken” have been, and can be, surmounted.126 This last entails the creation of new, more abstract and universal symbolisms that allow the resolution of longstanding tech- nical and conceptual puzzles blocking social and intellectual advancement. Nelson was fully persuaded that the high road to cultural and civilizational advancement depended upon the continuous creation of new translocal and transnational symbolisms, which open up new freedoms of discourse and participation. From a sociological point of view, the study of legal structures and formalisms would also be indispensable, for legal formalisms serve to institutionalize patterns of behavior. The study of the rise and development of modern science ought to be viewed from this point of view, in addition to the more narrowly technical and mathematical. For, from a civilizational point of view, Nelson wrote,

it is not nearly so important whether in any given science a given people did or did not actually make an advance upon the Greeks in respect to one or another discipline ‑ for example, chemistry, optics, and mathematics. The fundamental issue is whether there did occur a comprehensive break- through in the moralities of thought and in the logics of decision which open out the possibility of creative advance in the direction of wider universalities of discourse and participation in the confirmation of improved rationales.127

The advancement of science, from this point of view, is not just a technical question of new mathematical solutions, greatly refined experiment and observation, or new theoretical formulations. It is the result of intellectual breakthroughs that allow thinkers to apply the new symbolisms and new conceptions that break the bounds of traditional wisdom and association, as well as the inherited logics of decision. Such breakthroughs allow the fashioning of new and expanded neutral spaces, wherein people are free to express their individual and collective wills, to freely exchange ideas with others, and to openly argue for new scientific, legal, ethical, and theological conceptions. Only by such means can public discourse work toward the uncoerced realization of individual and collective aspirations. And only by such means can the highest levels of creativity be realized. One can find, as we shall see later, impressive expressions of scientific daring and innovation

126 Ibid., p. 111f. 127 Ibid., pp. 98–9.

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among all the cultures and peoples of the world, but for these innovations to mature and yield modern science, new social and institutional forums of discourse and participation must be fashioned. In Nelson’s view, the early modern revolution in science and philosophy

of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was precisely this kind of struggle: “The founders of modern science and philosophy,” he argued, “were anything but skeptics. They were instead committed spokesmen of the new truths clearly proclaimed by the Book of Nature which, they supposed, revealed secrets to all who earnestly applied themselves in good faith and deciphered the signs so lavishly made by the Author of Nature.”128

In the case of Galileo and the Copernican theory, these new truths “challenged the dominant fictionalism [of the Church] [and] evidently raised questions about the more or less accredited interpretations of scriptural passages by the theologians.”129 Here, one might say, was a classic confrontation between the accepted logics and official interpret- ations that reoccur in history and have often come out badly for the people involved. In this case, Galileo was only politely confined to his villa. But what was at stake was an important question. “The fundamental issue at stake in the struggle over the Copernican hypothesis was not whether the particular theory had or had not been established but whether in the last analysis the decision regarding truth and certitude could be claimed by anyone who was not an officially authorized interpreter of revelation.”130 Although this was indeed a dramatic confrontation, a show- down between official authority and the freedom of the individual with many ramifications, it was in fact the last gasp of a restrictive ideology, which no longer had the power to regulate such questions. The earlier architects of Christian theology, canon law, and the universities had created the dynamic structures and processes that virtually guaranteed the continuing expansion of the realms of the mind despite the Condem- nation of 1277 that attempted to restrict philosophical ideas, especially notions of causality.131

In addition, given the significance of the Reformation for political and intellectual life, no central authority in Western Christendom could any longer adjudicate the fundamental issues of intellectual life as practiced in science. But this is to get ahead of our story.

128 Nelson, “The Early Modern Revolution,” in On the Roads to Modernity, p. 132. 129 Ibid., p. 133. 130 Ibid. 131 On this see Ed Grant, “The Condemnation of 1277, God’s Absolute Power and Physical Thought

in the Late Middle Ages.” Viator 10 (1979): 211–44.

Benjamin Nelson 49

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Benjamin Nelson’s pioneering exploration of these questions – building on the insights of Weber, Needham, Henry Sumner Maine, Durkheim, and many others, especially medieval legal and ecclesiastical historians – yielded a powerful new alternative means for exploring questions in the comparative historical sociology of science: above all, in civilizational perspective. It is on the basis of these insights that I shall consider the development of science in Arabic‑Islamic as well as Chinese civilization.

Conclusion: The Issues at Hand

It may now be said that, with limited exceptions, the comparative histor- ical sociology of science was neglected throughout the twentieth century.132

A few rich and suggestive works have been written, though these achieve- ments have been realized in almost complete isolation from each other. The masterly work of Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth‑Century England, first published in 1938, did not result in others following his path,133 though his study was the subject of a long list of scholarly publications and served to clarify many issues. This was especially true of the monograph by Charles Webster.134

Conversely, Merton’s students turned to studies of the reward system in science.135 Others went in the direction of the “social studies of science,” examining “laboratory talk,” scientific “discourse,” and occasionally femi- nist studies of science, all increasingly remote from comparative and historical concerns.136

132 In her impressive review of the state of the sociology of science in the 1980s, Harriet Zuckerman did not even attempt an overview of the comparative and historical sociology of science.

133 Some thoughts about this can be found in my review of Merton’s The Sociology of Science in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 14, # 1 (1975): 70–2, and in Nelson’s review of the reissue of Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth‑Century England (in 1970) in the American Journal of Sociology 78, # 1 (1972): 233–31; reprinted in Varieties of Political Expression in Sociology, edited by Howard Becker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).

134 Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1670; and for a review of the scholarly literature on Merton’s thesis, see B. Cohen, Puritanism and the Rise of Modern Science.

135 See earlier footnote. 136 Among numerous others, Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Studies of Science, edited by

Karin D. Knorr and Michael Mulkay (Beverley Hills, CA: Age Publications, 1983); Bruno Latour, “Give me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World,” in ibid; and idem, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry, 30 #2 (2004), pp. 225–48; and Donna Harraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 149–81. A recent reader has at least attempted to provide a comparative and historical context; see The Post Colonial Science and Technology Reader, edited by Sandra Harding (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

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On the other hand, the one person who undertook to study the origins and development of the role of the scientist, Joseph Ben‑David, neglected Merton’s work on the ethos of science, as well as Merton’s theoretical discussion of roles and role‑sets. He also neglected religious and legal history, as well as the available materials describing the rich tradition of medieval science located in the universities of the West. Although Ben‑David went back to the Greeks, he completely omitted any reference (much less discussion of) the nature of scientific practice and its insti- tutional location among the Arabs during the intervening thousand years. His analysis provides no insights as to why science suddenly took off in the West when, conversely, scientific theory and practice among the Muslims, Christians, and Jews of the Islamic Middle East outshone that of Europe until the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries (as we shall see in the next chapter). By bringing together the insights of Merton, Ben‑David, Kuhn,

Needham, and Nelson, we shall have a broader and more multidimen- sional approach to the origins and development of modern science. Even in the writings of the most internalist of these figures, Thomas Kuhn, we discover a whole array of values and metaphysical commitments that are part and parcel of scientific paradigms. One cannot adequately understand the rise of modern science as an idea system, or the rise of the role of the scientist, without consideration of such factors. Similarly, scholars such as Joseph Needham and Benjamin Nelson who

cast an eye to other civilizations found it necessary to consider such matters as philosophies of nature, conceptions of law and natural law, as well as images of man and human rationality. The deeper one digs into such questions and specialized histories, the more one becomes impressed with the web of social, cultural, and legal conceptions that intervened in earlier efforts to engage in scientific inquiry. Unquestionably, institutional and legal structures blocked access to the open society and efforts to open new spheres of discourse and the free flow of information. At the same time, this kind of focus provides a reminder that insti-

tutions are ideas that have been given concrete realization through the use of legal devices. It is astonishing in retrospect that the Chinese invented movable type printing (as well as paper) four hundred years before the West, yet neither in China where this invention first appeared nor in Arabic‑Islamic civilization (which had the most direct access to the new print technology) was there anything like the social and intellectual revo- lution that occurred in the West in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries or later. Indeed, Arabic‑Islamic civilization placed a ban on the use of

Conclusion: The Issues at Hand 51

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printing until the early nineteenth century (with a brief interlude of toleration in the early eighteenth century), and in both civilizations (Islamic and Chinese), the new and more advanced Western print tech- nology of the fifteenth century was introduced in the nineteenth century as if printing had never existed before.137 The path to modern science is the path to free and open discourse. Understanding how cultural and insti- tutional structures were fashioned in the West, compared to elsewhere, remains a major puzzle for which the sociological imagination is required.

137 For the invention and use of printing in China, see SCC 5/1; Paper and Printing by Tsien Tsuen‑hsuin; as well as T. F. Carter, The Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward, rev. edn. by L. C. Goodrich (New York: Ronald Press, 1955), especially chap. 15, “Islam as a Barrier to Printing.” On printing in Islam, see Johannes Pedersen, The Arabic Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); and for the Western case, Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformation in Early Modern Europe, 2 vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

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