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17th-century science: a commercial tale?
DISSECTING ROOM
17th-century science: a commercial tale? Ingenious pursuits: building the scientific revolution Lisa Jardine. London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999. Pp 444. $25·00. ISBN 0316 647527. he great 19th-century German historian, Leopold von Ranke, insisted that the job of the historian was to look into the past and to tell his or her contemporaries “how it really was”. The trouble with this admirable pursuit of objectivity is that we cannot help writing accounts of the past that reflect our own current preoccupations and attitudes. Lisa Jardine’s excellent new survey of the social world of 17thcentury English scientists provides a very clear example of this. There was a time not so long ago, when a book like this, written by a distinguished professor of history, would have concentrated on the developing theories of a Robert Boyle, or on the way Issac Newton “with his prism and his silent face sailing on strange seas of thought alone” discovered the universal principle of gravitation. It would, in short, have given its readers a history of men of genius working in ivory towers, and it would have been written by a man (probably) proud of his own genius (equally probably), working in the ivory towers that universities once were. Political and economic forces have recently compelled universities to bulldoze their ivory towers, however, and to replace them with modern buildings that reflect the corporate image of the university or of the major supplier of funding for the construction. What’s more, these buildings are all capable of doubling-up as conference centres, hospitality suites, or some other sort of “marketing space”. Similarly, the academics now working in the universities can hardly fail to feel the pressure of market forces. Historians who can do all the research they need to do by sitting in a library or an archive somewhere are no longer regarded as serious scholars. Serious scholars bring in research grants from non-university agencies, and they
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do so by persuading the agency that their research will be practically useful in some way. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Professor Jardine’s account of how early modern science really was, emphasises the need for its proponents to show the practical utility of what they were doing, and the marketable potential of their researchers. Where once the origins of the Scientific Revolution were understood in terms of the aesthetic and philosophical concerns of a Copernicus or a Kepler (who were both appalled that the standard astronomy of their time was nothing but a mathematical system which made no sense in physical terms), in Jardine’s version astronomers and cartographers join forces with “joint stock companies to their mutual advantage”. Where once the origins of the experimental method were explained in terms of a realisation that ancient authorities, and especially Aristotle, could frequently be wrong and so it was safer to examine the world for oneself, Jardine points to the “productive partnership” between “various types of group interests and the new technological sciences”. Where earlier accounts might have considered the niceties of the theoretical problems which engaged 17th-century natural philosophers, Jardine tells us of their concern with “lucrative spin-offs”, and their sensitivity to new marketing demands, such as for exotic fruits and menagerie animals, or graphic depictions of new large-scale technological schemes (even where the schemes themselves failed). Scholars before Jardine have explained Renaissance developments in natural history as a result of the discovery of new plants and animals never mentioned by the ancient Greeks, nor ever discussed in Judaeo-Christian legend or lore. The complete absence of any tales of symbolic significance for these newly discovered creatures led, per force, to perfectly factual and empirical accounts of such flora and fauna, and this in turn led to more factual accounts of the pelican, the mandrake, and other creatures of the medieval herbals and bestiaries that had once been inextricably entangled in superstition. Jardine
overlooks these accounts and presents a story of the new natural history as a “survey of commercial opportunities”. Sir Hans Sloane, for example, made such a fortune out of marketing the first milk chocolate drink that he was able to be “proactive” in his passion for collecting, thus enabling him to locate in any part of the world yet more “luxury commodities that could be exploited commercially”. The resulting book is undeniably engaging and illuminating. It will certainly appeal to all those who enjoyed Dava Sobel’s best-selling Longitude, since it gives a similar account of the nature of science and technology and their interactions in the period before Sobel’s story, and has the advantage of a much broader canvas, depicting far more than attempts to improve time-keeping and navigation. For this reader, however, raised in an earlier age when ivory towers could still be seen against the skyline, there seemed to be a lot missing from the story. Jardine’s cast of characters do not seem to be men of ideas at all and very little is said about the major theoretical developments in the sciences and how they were achieved. Jardine herself seems to be aware of this and tries to justify it at one point by suggesting that “the physics, astronomy and mathematics we associate with the birth of modern science today was a minor, specialist interest, regarded with a certain distaste.” After all, Jardine points out, when Newton died he was succeeded as President of the Royal Society by Sir Hans Sloane, collector and entrepreneur. It is easy to dismiss this suggestion. A comparison of Newton’s colossal fame and intellectual impact on the Continent with Sloane’s quickly reveals that in those days at least, the great mathematical genius, seemingly capable of explaining the way the world works, elicited far more admiration and awe than the man who invented potable milk chocolate. The sad fact that, if a poll of great contributors to civilization were conducted today, Neils Bohr would come way below whoever invented Coca-Cola tells us more about the change in the nature of the world than it does about the nature of science. The mass market is now as pervasive a force as gravity and consequently there are now such things as mass audiences. For me, yearning for halcyon days in my ivory tower, Lisa Jardine has anachronistically written a history of science as though marketing and the concerns of a mass audience were as powerful in the 17th century as they are today.They weren’t. John Henry Science Studies Unit, Department of Sociology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9LN, UK
THE LANCET • Vol 355 • April 29, 2000
17th-century science: a commercial tale? Ingenious pursuits: building the scientific revolution Lisa Jardine. London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999. Pp 444. $25·00. ISBN 0316 647527. he great 19th-century German historian, Leopold von Ranke, insisted that the job of the historian was to look into the past and to tell his or her contemporaries “how it really was”. The trouble with this admirable pursuit of objectivity is that we cannot help writing accounts of the past that reflect our own current preoccupations and attitudes. Lisa Jardine’s excellent new survey of the social world of 17thcentury English scientists provides a very clear example of this. There was a time not so long ago, when a book like this, written by a distinguished professor of history, would have concentrated on the developing theories of a Robert Boyle, or on the way Issac Newton “with his prism and his silent face sailing on strange seas of thought alone” discovered the universal principle of gravitation. It would, in short, have given its readers a history of men of genius working in ivory towers, and it would have been written by a man (probably) proud of his own genius (equally probably), working in the ivory towers that universities once were. Political and economic forces have recently compelled universities to bulldoze their ivory towers, however, and to replace them with modern buildings that reflect the corporate image of the university or of the major supplier of funding for the construction. What’s more, these buildings are all capable of doubling-up as conference centres, hospitality suites, or some other sort of “marketing space”. Similarly, the academics now working in the universities can hardly fail to feel the pressure of market forces. Historians who can do all the research they need to do by sitting in a library or an archive somewhere are no longer regarded as serious scholars. Serious scholars bring in research grants from non-university agencies, and they
T
1470
do so by persuading the agency that their research will be practically useful in some way. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Professor Jardine’s account of how early modern science really was, emphasises the need for its proponents to show the practical utility of what they were doing, and the marketable potential of their researchers. Where once the origins of the Scientific Revolution were understood in terms of the aesthetic and philosophical concerns of a Copernicus or a Kepler (who were both appalled that the standard astronomy of their time was nothing but a mathematical system which made no sense in physical terms), in Jardine’s version astronomers and cartographers join forces with “joint stock companies to their mutual advantage”. Where once the origins of the experimental method were explained in terms of a realisation that ancient authorities, and especially Aristotle, could frequently be wrong and so it was safer to examine the world for oneself, Jardine points to the “productive partnership” between “various types of group interests and the new technological sciences”. Where earlier accounts might have considered the niceties of the theoretical problems which engaged 17th-century natural philosophers, Jardine tells us of their concern with “lucrative spin-offs”, and their sensitivity to new marketing demands, such as for exotic fruits and menagerie animals, or graphic depictions of new large-scale technological schemes (even where the schemes themselves failed). Scholars before Jardine have explained Renaissance developments in natural history as a result of the discovery of new plants and animals never mentioned by the ancient Greeks, nor ever discussed in Judaeo-Christian legend or lore. The complete absence of any tales of symbolic significance for these newly discovered creatures led, per force, to perfectly factual and empirical accounts of such flora and fauna, and this in turn led to more factual accounts of the pelican, the mandrake, and other creatures of the medieval herbals and bestiaries that had once been inextricably entangled in superstition. Jardine
overlooks these accounts and presents a story of the new natural history as a “survey of commercial opportunities”. Sir Hans Sloane, for example, made such a fortune out of marketing the first milk chocolate drink that he was able to be “proactive” in his passion for collecting, thus enabling him to locate in any part of the world yet more “luxury commodities that could be exploited commercially”. The resulting book is undeniably engaging and illuminating. It will certainly appeal to all those who enjoyed Dava Sobel’s best-selling Longitude, since it gives a similar account of the nature of science and technology and their interactions in the period before Sobel’s story, and has the advantage of a much broader canvas, depicting far more than attempts to improve time-keeping and navigation. For this reader, however, raised in an earlier age when ivory towers could still be seen against the skyline, there seemed to be a lot missing from the story. Jardine’s cast of characters do not seem to be men of ideas at all and very little is said about the major theoretical developments in the sciences and how they were achieved. Jardine herself seems to be aware of this and tries to justify it at one point by suggesting that “the physics, astronomy and mathematics we associate with the birth of modern science today was a minor, specialist interest, regarded with a certain distaste.” After all, Jardine points out, when Newton died he was succeeded as President of the Royal Society by Sir Hans Sloane, collector and entrepreneur. It is easy to dismiss this suggestion. A comparison of Newton’s colossal fame and intellectual impact on the Continent with Sloane’s quickly reveals that in those days at least, the great mathematical genius, seemingly capable of explaining the way the world works, elicited far more admiration and awe than the man who invented potable milk chocolate. The sad fact that, if a poll of great contributors to civilization were conducted today, Neils Bohr would come way below whoever invented Coca-Cola tells us more about the change in the nature of the world than it does about the nature of science. The mass market is now as pervasive a force as gravity and consequently there are now such things as mass audiences. For me, yearning for halcyon days in my ivory tower, Lisa Jardine has anachronistically written a history of science as though marketing and the concerns of a mass audience were as powerful in the 17th century as they are today.They weren’t. John Henry Science Studies Unit, Department of Sociology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9LN, UK
THE LANCET • Vol 355 • April 29, 2000