On the Origins of Modern Science

[This is an essay I wrote nearly a year ago for one of the theology modules (Theology and Science) I took at Cambridge University - my supervisor for this module was Dr Philip Luscombe who enjoyed and praised the essay (although he disagreed on some points, like the Nazis produced good science) - I reproduce it here without any changes. I may put up other essays I wrote for this course in later posts]

Essay Title:Why did science as we know it emerge in the Christian West?

Introduction

In some ways the question of why science as we know it arose in the west is a tautology, much like ‘why are tubes hollow’? Most proponents of the view that a distinctly ‘modern science’ arose in the west “whether consciously or not, look at science in our day and assign the term ‘modern’ to that science without defining modernity, relying only on the sheer fact that it is contemporaneous with us. They then ask which leading centres produced this ‘modern’ science and find them in Europe and, by extension, the United States, or what is ambiguously called the West. From there, it becomes easy to jump to the conclusion that modern science is Western science. Thus, all other cultures, no matter where they are located and at what point in their history they are ‘captured’, if they may be ‘captured’ at all, could not possibly contain the roots of modern science, nor allow modern science to develop, by the mere fact that they are not Western cultures” (George Saliba, 1999).

It is in this vein that we can delineate between what A Rupert Hall calls ‘externalist’ explanations in modern historiography of science and ‘internalist’ explanations. Externalist explanations look for changing sociological and cultural moods that directly or indirectly impact the production of science. Internalist explanations, on the other hand, find a continuity of ideas transported through history, hence the factor of time appeals more than does sociology. On the extreme end, externalist explanations dissociate completely the situation from the past, in effect equating sociology to the science it creates: “sociological history provides principles sufficing to explain that crucial event, the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century” (Hall caricaturing the Merton-Weber thesis).

An additional concept in which to frame these explanations is what AI Sabra (Harvard historian) calls reductionism and precursorism in the ‘kinematic’ approach to the transmission of scientific knowledge. Reuctionism he defines as “the view that the achievements of [previous] scientists were merely a reflection, sometimes faded, sometimes bright, of earlier examples. Precursorism is equally familiar: it reads the future into the past, with a sense of elation”. Sabra, of course, believes both of these to be extremes and seeks a ‘happy medium’. Externalist explanations function within a reductionist kinematics and have found most favour amongst historians of science, albeit not to the extremity of Robert Merton, since modern science is considered a unique break from past science and only a shift in the mood of the practitioners of science could enable this (e.g. H Floris Cohen, 1994). On the other hand, recent investigations of the last few decades has laid the foundations for a new historiography, in that enough empirical evidence has accumulated to produce a Kuhnian shift in modern historiography although there exists “a resistance by the mainstream of Western historians in acknowledging this influence” (Ahmad Y Hassan). Proponents of a reductionist methodology do persist, like Peter Hodgson (2005) and Sune Engelbrektson (1994) who “[jump] from Ptolemy (d. 150) to Copernicus (d. 1543) without even blinking” (Saliba). More common, however, is the view that there was some kind of continuity with medieval science that provided the roots or the foundations to ‘modern science’ but a truly distinct scientific endeavour in the early modern period was underway (e.g. James Hannam, 2008; Christopher Kaiser, 1991). I believe this controversy over methodology can be resolved by considering the empirical evidence which has for a long period been mostly neglected or relegated to a lesser role.

What is modern science?

Most historians equate modern science with the European scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries (e.g. Butterfield, 1997). This seems to entail the coeval nature of early modernity as a historical period and modern science as an intellectual achievement. However, in order to qualify the view that modern science is discontinuous with the past, a singularity or break from earlier science must be proposed. Since it is widely accepted western science advanced greatly during this period, a Eurocentric view of the world would project this advance on all other civilisations. Furthermore, those current within the ‘revolution’, like Francis Bacon (d. 1626) believed themselves to be revolutionaries, inventing a totalising system of knowing and subjugating the world. Alexander Koyre (d. 1964), an influential historian of science and an important mentor of the celebrated Thomas Kuhn, also considered this period a scientific revolution. Hence in order to support the notion of a truly distinct modern science a particularity of that science must be identified. It is this pursuit of a singularity that has governed much of modern historiography of science. As suggested earlier, some sought to find externalist explanations, metascientific and metaphysical assumptions of that age (in particular within theological reforms), that would assist scientific progress; others considered the economic and political policies as a direct or indirect cause. However, explanans are only required when explanandums exist. Certainly true is that ‘Western’ science experienced a revolution of some sort but to suggest science itself underwent a dramatic temporal change would require an honest study of earlier science and knowledge transmitted from other cultures.

Rather than considering changes in social structure during that period a concept much closer to home would shed light on the definition of science, that is, not the assumptions of science, but the foundations on which it functions. In other words, the epistemological foundations of science during the revolution or a method of scientific activity that produced authentic knowledge could better be used as a sound measure of ‘modern science’. Historians and philosophers of science are acutely aware of the epistemological foundations of modern science which can be summarised as acquired knowledge founded on experience and observation, with a particular importance given to the experimental method, informed by theories argued for in strict terms of mathematical and logical procedures (induction and deduction) and by a healthy attitude of scepticism and questioning of authority (Gutas, 2002). Many aspects of these ‘methods of enquiry’ were thought to be fundamental (and unique) to the scientific revolution, for example Boyle (d.1691) is famous for his use and support of experimentation and Francis Bacon (d. 1626) was unreservedly critical of the inherited Aristotelian “science”. If this method of enquiry is found within a particular circumstance it constitutes modern science. By equating modern science with its epistemological foundations, the undesirable circularity in previous historiography is done away with since we can now objectively judge which elements of science are present or absent within scientific activities throughout time and whether an objective modern science ever existed before Bacon, Galileo and Kepler.

Reductionism v. Precursorism

A valuable way of characterising the two extremes of reductionism and precursorism is as the stagnancy thesis and the continuity thesis. Stagnancy or a static scientific enterprise favours a reductionist model whereas continuity, where past ideas not only feed into later developments but also are in some way their cause, favours to some degree precursorism. Empirical evidence can add weight to either stagnancy or continuity, depending on how often discontinuities and breaks from past science arose. The more regular ‘revolutions’ we find, the more support we have for the continuity thesis. In the following I will briefly consider the failure of recent externalist explanations for ‘modern science’, in particular that of Robert K Merton and more recently Toby E Huff. Next, I will argue the best interpretation of the data is a disjunction of science from the web of culture, society, language, and nationality; rather a continuity of ideas based on the common epistemological basis of true science as outlined above transcended these boundaries to create science as we know it today beginning from the tenth century AD. The discussion will centre around three prominent individuals involved in the interpretation of the history of science: Robert K Merton, Toby Huff and George Saliba in ascending history.

Towards a New Historiography

According to Robert K Merton’s thesis which he developed in the 50s and 60s, English Puritianism and Prussian Pietism, two similar branches of the Protestant Reformation, gave rise to the scientific revolution. Max Weber, the celebrated ‘father of comparative religion’, also made the same observation. Robert Merton based his thesis on two grounds: that ‘value-orientation’, or Protestant ethics, corresponds strongly with the assumptions and motives of science and secondly that there is a statistical relationship between practitioners of science during the revolution and ascetic Protestantism. The values generally proposed to have been the motivators for science are the belief that nature is essentially good and has the potential to reveal God’s glory; the rationality of the universe and the ethical nature of social welfare or utilitarianism. Merton adduces writings from Boyle, John Ray and Francis Bacon (who had a puritan mother) as support for these elements within their science. In sum, empiricism and utilitarianism as elements of ‘value-integration’ between science and theology were proposed. As empirical evidence, Merton showed there was a statistical bias of puritans in the Royal Society, as evidenced in the writings of Thomas Sprat, and among scientists in general. For the German Pietists, Merton proposed Francke as an ideal example of Pietistic rationalism that advanced science within the leading centre of German learning in the seventeenth century, the University of Halle.

In some sense, as sociologist George Becker observed, Merton’s thesis is unfalsifiable as it assumes an indirect ‘value-integration’ of Puritan ethics and modern science, which fits any empirical data. This may account for why Merton refused to recant his theory in spite of later evidence shown to him. Nonetheless, Merton did use empirical evidence to support his case which was later shown to have been over selective and in some instances false (George Becker, 1984). Becker demonstrated that the very standard of Pietistic rationalism Merton used, Francke, was opposed to Christian Wolff a leading enlightenment rationalist on the basis that it would distract from religion. Furthermore, most Protestants reformers, Calvin and Luther included, were ambivalent, circumspect or even hostile to science. Nor was English Puritanism entirely hospitable to science: Richard Baxter and John Cotten, tended to be highly critical of science as an endangerment to Christianity. It is true however that Puritanism did support the harmony of religion and science as demonstrated by the similitude of the two books of God gaining increasing popularity in the seventeenth century, but this did not exceed that of other denominations including Catholicism. Merton, strangely, extends Puritanism to include other groups like Anglicanism, Quakerism and Presbyterianism. It seems therefore, the increased European emphasis on science was not restricted to one particular sociological influence and was perhaps unconnected to sociology. It may have been that the particular period in history itself was conducive to the new western science. Medieval western science was hindered by the same Franckian attitude of the seventeenth century of holding science subservient to religion and not on par or separate from it. From the conflicting attitudes of medieval theologians Siger, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas and Bonaventure as to the relationship between Aristotelian science transmitted in the 12th century into the Latin west, only Magnus’s attitude provided some scope for the ideological laissez-faire required for the advancement of science but that did not seem to have been very popular.

Beginning from the 80s and 90s, a greater appreciation for non-western science (mostly Chinese and Arabic science), began. The earlier approach of viewing early science under the framework of ‘modern science’ and the projection of Western history on other cultures provided only a truncated description of these activities. Since this approach was challenged and the science of earlier civilisations was studied for its own sake, our knowledge of their influence grew rapidly. In 1993 Toby Huff’s The Rise of Early Modern Science was published, which attempted to explain in the light of new data why modern science arose in the west. Huff provided new evidence from historians of Arabic science Otto Neugebaur, Edward Kennedy, Noel Swerdlow, Harner and most prominently George Saliba that Copernicus may have not only been prefigured centuries earlier but indeed had borrowed much of his learning from Arabic sources. Huff as well as Joseph Needham in his Grand Titration also popularised the importance of Chinese science. Both Huff and Needham, however, saw the need to answer specifically the question of why modern science arose in the west. Both Needham and Huff take it as a given that science arose specifically in the west, and based on that assumption they attempt to show reasons why it did not arise in Arabic and Chinese cultures. It is in this vein, that AC Graham observed “It is not altogether easy to break the habit of thinking of history as blindly groping toward a goal that the West alone was clever enough to reach”. In his review of Huff’s work Saliba aptly reveals the defunct nature of such a premise: “Although superficially quite reasonable and legitimate, this manner of formulating the question of why modern science arose in the West, rather than in culture ‘X’ or ‘Y’, hides further theoretical pitfalls. Chief among them is the circularity embedded in this kind of argumentation. For, in order to answer the question, one must exhibit yet another culture, ‘Z’, that followed the same route as the West―whatever that route may have been―and managed to produce modern science in the same way that the West did. Otherwise, the argument quickly collapses.” Saliba demonstrates this circularity in the quote provided in the opening paragraph of this essay. Huff seeks externalist sociological and political explanations for the rise of modern science and attempts to find a combination of these factors present in the west absent elsewhere. Such a methodology has obvious flaws, least of which is ignoring the question of what exactly constitutes ‘modern science’. Saliba also shows that some of Huff’s sociological explanations like “science is especially the natural enemy of authoritarian regimes” fail in the light of the light of empirical evidence, for instance the tremendous achievements of the Nazi and Soviet regimes in the most technically sophisticated sciences.

In the following I will attempt to defend Saliba’s continuity thesis. In doing so, two premises must be confirmed, that the scientific revolution of the west was largely a result of input from elsewhere (just like the medieval flourishing of the 12th and 13th centuries) and that earlier scientists were practicing science in our sense of the term. Saliba does not demonstrate the latter although others like Dimitri Gutas (2002) and AI Sabra (1987, 1996) do.

Avenues of Transfer

George Saliba’s present work involves finding connections between Renaissance and Arabic science. He argues three 19th century assumptions must now be done away with: first, that Arabic science was merely a preservation of Greek learning; second, that the transport of Arabic science into the Latin west ended in the thirteenth century and third, that Renaissance science was discontinuous and was an attempt to regain the sciences of antiquity. His work essentially involves proving wrong the second assumption and consequently concluding the third is false. As Saliba observes “When we learn, for example, that the most innovative mathematical and astronomical ideas that were employed during the European Renaissance were themselves borrowed from Islamic/Arabic or Chinese civilizations through many circuitous routes that are now being investigated, then one is forced to ask about the very roots of modern science and whether they should be placed within the parameters of Western culture or the other cultures where those innovative ideas originated”.

Circumstantial evidence of transfer is not sufficient evidence to support foreign influence. Saliba investigated manuscripts in European libraries published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which were translations or commentaries of Arabic texts. For example, Saliba found a translation of Alhazen’s (d. 1040) Elevation of the Pole published in 1543. One of Rhazes’ (d. 925) works was translated in London in 1766 which provided a distinction between measles and small pox, unknown to the Greeks. Andrea Alpago retranslated Avicenna’s renowned Canon in the sixteenth century and significantly he translated works by Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288). Ibn al-Nafis was the first to propose pulmonary circulation (before William Harvey) and the first to theorise connections between veins and arteries (prefiguring Malpighi) in his polemic against Galenic and Avicennan physiology. It was about the time of Alpago’s translations that Severtus also proposed the view of pulmonary circulation (as opposed to the Galenic “irrigation” and “pulsation” model) apparently for theological reasons; this appears to have been a direct influence of Ibn al-Nafis. Later Columbus and Harvey either directly or indirectly relied on Ibn al-Nafis to further advance this model.

George Saliba’s research before finding these links was as a historian of Arabic astronomy, and as such he and others during the 60s, 70s and 80s found direct links between Copernicus and Arabic astronomers from the Maragha Observatory in Iran. The planetary and lunar models in contrast to Ptolemy’s which Copernicus identified had been taken from al-Tusi (d. 1274), Mu’ayyad al-Din al-Urdi (1266) and Ibn al-Shatir (1375). Copernicus’ proof for the ‘Tusi couple’ used the exact designators of the Latin alphabet as did Tusi in Arabic, indicating Copernicus had some access to al-Tusi. Saliba argues Copernicus’ source had been the French translator Guillaume Postel (d. 1581). Copernicus’ originality was not his heliocentricism but the anti-Ptolemaic empirically-based mathemetised models of planetary motion. Heliocentricism did not have any evidentiary value until gravity was discovered a century later; instead it seems to have been a philosophical manoeuvre on Copernicus’ part borrowing from the old Neoplatonic model. The mathematical modification required of Copernicus after the Maragha discoveries was merely inversing a vector (see: Saliba, 1998).

Other historians of Arabic science like Ahmad Y Hassan and Donald Routledge Hill demonstrate the extensive range of technological and scientific transfer during this period across Spain, Sicily, Italy, Toledo and Byzantium. Arabic was a compulsory part of the curriculum in Italy until the seventeenth century. Mehmet Bayrakdar also showed during the 80s how Darwin was linked to a precursor of the 9th century. Although this link had been suggested before (e.g. in Der Darwinismus im X und XIX Jahrhundert of Fr. Dieterici (Leipzig, 1878)), we now know with some certainty some of the intermediate links. Al-Jahiz (d. 870), although not the first to produce a theory of the transmutation of species, provided the most complete empirically-based theory of evolution at that time in his Book of Animals, which borrowed extensively from the zoology of al-Asma‘i (d. 831). Al-Jahiz advanced survival of the fittest and natural selection as the force guiding evolution; although instead of mutations within DNA, he suggested God’s direct intervention or the Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics were responsible for novel variation (Darwin himself was unaware of the cause of increased variation). Bayrakdar presents some works of Al-Jahiz’s students which contained copious amounts of information from The Book of Animals which were translated in seventeenth century Europe by Abraham Echellensis and D’Herblot which influenced Darwin’s direct precursors. Dawud al-Antaki (d. 1600) may have been an important taxonomist who influenced C. Linnaeus. Ibn Khaldun (d. 1332) a fourteenth century sociologist (and Yvest Lacostes’ words “If Thucydides is the inventor of history, Ibn Khaldun introduces history as a science”) was being discussed during the seventeenth century by d’Herblot and had proposed many economic and sociological theories before Adam Smith and Karl Marx (for example, the labour theory of value). Joseph Schumpeter, the famed economist, considered Ibn Khaldun the closest forerunner to modern economics. Many other examples exist of not only theorising “later” developments but indirectly influencing those developments; these examples include: the correct explanation of the rainbow (Kamal al-Din al-Farisi before Kepler), Newton’s laws of motion (Alhazen, Biruni and Avicenna before Newton), uniformitarianism in geology (Avicenna before Hutton and Lyell) and optics (Alhazen before Newton). In fact, serious historians of science believe a revolution in optics, physics and experimental psychology occurred in the eleventh century (AI Sabra and Omar Khaleefa), while a revolution in astronomy in the Maragha school occurred during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (George Saliba).

Delimiting Modern Science

Though the above is evidently not extensive and more examples can be adduced as empirical support for the continuity thesis, we must ask if what the earlier scholars were doing can actually be called science, and if a different type of activity began in the modern period, for if this is not addressed we may be engaging in anachronism. Although most scientists in the medieval west and the early modern period saw science as an ancillary to theology, many Arabic scientists appear to have had truly scientific interests, although some can be found to have had similar interests to the medieval theologians of the West. The tenth century Biruni explicitly confirmed that his science was not impeded by his religious convictions unlike “the Indians” and Ahmad Dallal (Georgetown University) observes Qur’anic commentators assisted the advancement of science by “assigning it to a separate and autonomous realm of its own”.

Dimitri Gutas wrote in his conclusion to surveying the activities of some Arabic scientists: “Tallying the results, it is possible to distinguish between the [Arabic] scholars whose purposes and methods were scientific even in our sense of the term [e.g. Ibn Yunus, Biruni, Alhazen, Ibn al-Shatir, Shirazi and al-Tusi], and those who had other aims - personal, theological etc. [e.g. Fakhraddin al-Razi]. In the former case - and these are the scholars we should be investigating - we see that their epistemological foundation was not very different from that of scientists everywhere: applied science resting on experience and observation - and we even get hints that they understood the basics of the experimental method - informed by a theory that was argued for in strict terms of mathematical and logical procedures and by a healthy attitude of skepticism and questioning of authority...The great advances of Arabic science could not be explained in any other way” [emphasis mine]. Both Biruni and Alhazen introduced scientific methods that involved experimentation and peer-review. Alhazen himself was very keen on the experimental faculty and experimented widely on lenses, mirrors, reflection and refraction and is widely acclaimed as the inventor of the pinhole camera. As such, I think we can accurately conclude as did Bradley Steffens (2006) that Alhazen was the first true scientist and modern science began at the turn of the first Christian millennium.

The real question that requires explaining is not why modern science arose in the west but why production of scientific knowledge occurs in some places at the expense of others. Why was the leading culture of science from the eighth to the sixteenth century the Islamic civilisation, and why was it the west from the sixteenth century? Both George Saliba and Dimitri Gutas argue economical affluence of a state invariably results in the immediate production of science: “The immense influx of resources following the ‘discovery’ of the New World at the end of the fifteenth century, the subsequent Age of Discovery and ensuing colonial and imperial adventures almost certainly enriched European courts to an exceptional degree and permitted them to patronize European scientists, artists, philosophers and so on at an unprecedented level” (Saliba). Gutas does, however, suggest that the ideological laissez-faire of Sunni Islam as compared to the medieval west allowed for the advancement of science; the Islamic civilisation harboured scientists from various religious backgrounds and even atheism (e.g. the celebrated Rhazes (d. 925) was an atheist and the physician Hunayn b. Ishaq (d. 873) was a Christian).

Conclusion

The nature of scientific activity is familiar, but its motivating factors are not completely certain to the modern historian of science. Hence I think we can successfully distinguish between what is science on epistemological grounds and once delineated we may consider common sociological themes in climates that produced science. These themes seem to have been correctly identified with economy and state policy on freedom of thought.

Although the above situates modern science under an epistemological framework, it may just as well be presented under the framework of institution, autonomy and sociological impact. The nineteenth century created a new environment for science, giving it a new autonomy. This was the result of the efforts of men like Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, John Tyndall, and of course the simplistic conflict thesis created by Draper and White. But science as a process did not change. Nonetheless its sociological impact and authority did. As Gutas observes “In [the] climate [of Arabic science], scientific "truths" would have no more authoritative voice, within society as a whole, than any other view championed by whatever group, scientific or not. And not only common people, but also rulers and the elite would have no reason to embrace scientific truth more than anybody else's truth other than considerations of expediency or self-interest”. I believe the authoritativeness of science, propelled by rhetoric and the sheer prowess of empiricism, to be the cause of the massive acceleration of science during the twentieth century; and as such a good argument can be made for ‘modern science’ having begun during the nineteenth century, although I think science is better described as an activity or process than as a global truth initiative.

Selective Bibliography

H Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, 1994
Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, 1997
James Hannam, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, 2008
CA Russell, Science and Religious Beliefs, 1973 (Esp. Chapters by Robert Merton and A Rupert Hall)
George Becker, Pietism and Science: A Critique of Robert K. Merton's Hypothesis, 1984
Peter Hodgson, Theology and Modern Physics, 2005
Christopher Kaiser, Creation and the History of Science, 1991
JH Brooke, Science and Religion
George Saliba, Rethinking the Roots of Modern Science: Arabic Manuscripts in European Libraries, 1998
Seeking the Origins of Modern Science? 1999
Dimitri Gutas, Comments of the Epistemological Foundations of Medieval Arabic Science, 2002
AI Sabra, The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalisation of Greek Science in Medieval Islam, 1987
Situating Arabic Science: Locality Versus Essence, 1996
Mehmet Bayrakdar, Al-Jahiz and the Rise of Biological Evolutionism, 1983
Omar Khaleefa, Who Is the Founder of Psychophysics and Experimental Psychology? 2008
Ahmad Dallal, The Search for a Qur’anic Paradigm of Science, 2007
John West, Ibn al-Nafis, the Pulmonary Circulation and the Islamic Golden Age, 2008
Ahmad Y Hassan, Transfer of Islamic Technology to the West, 2005