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Religion, the Royal Society, and the Rise of Science1

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 6; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14746700802206925

1474-6719

Peter Harrison,

Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

Abstract Abstract Accounts of the role of religion in the rise of modern science often focus on the way in which religion provided the intellectual foundations for scientific enquiry, motivated particular individuals, or provided the substantive content of approaches to nature. These relate to the origins of science and assume that, once established, modern science becomes self-justifying. However, seventeenth-century criticisms of science—attacks on the Royal Society being one example—suggest that science remained a marginal and precarious activity for some time. The rise of science to cultural prominence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was possible only because science was eventually able to establish itself as a religiously useful enterprise. Religion thus played a key role not only in the origins of modern science, but in providing the ongoing social sanctions that ensured its persistence and rise to prominence. Key words: LegitimationRoyal SocietyRobert BoyleFrancis BaconScientific revolutionPhysico-theology Notes 1 This paper is the edited text of an Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 14 May 2007. 2 Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, ed. William Bray, 4 vols. (London: H. G. Bohn, 1862), vol. 2, 43–44. 3 Charles S. Smith, "Wren and Sheldon,"The Oxford Art Journal, vol. 6 (1983): 45–50; The Works of the Hon. Robert Boyle, 6 vols., ed. Thomas Birch (Hildesheim: Olms, 1965–1966), vol. 6, 459. 4 James Harrington, The Prerogative of Popular Government (London: 1658), Epistle Dedicatory. Robert South, quoted in Margery Purver, The Royal Society: Concept and Creation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967), 71. On South's opposition to the Royal Society, see Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 6. See also J. R. McCulloch, ed., Early English Tracts on Commerce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), 357; Samuel Butler, "Paedants," in Satires and Miscellaneous Poetry and Prose, ed. R. Lamar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), 166. 5 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Feb. 1, 1663/4, 11 vols., ed. R. Latham and W. Matthews (London: Bell, 1971), vol. 5, 33. 6 Thomas Shadwell, The Virtuoso (London: 1676), iii, 49; v, 84. For unflattering literary representations of the virtuosi, see Barbara M. Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 46–51. 7 Jonathan Swift, Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World (London, 1726), pt. III, chap. 5. 8 See, for example, Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 111; Stephen Gaukroger, "Science, Religion and Modernity,"Critical Quarterly, vol. 47 (2004): 1–31; Peter Harrison, "The Fashioned Image of Poetry or the Regular Instruction of Philosophy?: Truth, Utility, and the Natural Sciences in Early Modern England," in Science, Literature, and Rhetoric in Early Modern England, eds. D. Burchill and J. Cummins (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 15–36; R. H. Syfret, "Some Early Critics of the Royal Society,"Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, vol. 8 (1950): 20–64. 9 These modes of interaction are based on those identified by John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 19–33. 10 Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210–1685 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 18. 11 Marquis de Condorcet, Progress of the Human Mind, quoted in David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 356. 12 John Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1875); Andrew Dickson White, History of The Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1896). See also George Sarton, "Introductory Essay," in Science, Religion and Reality, ed. Joseph Needham (New York: George Braziller, 1955), 3–22. 13 In certain respects, the well-known "Merton thesis" offers a similar argument for natural philosophy in the English context. See Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Harper, 1970); Bernard Cohen, ed., Puritanism and the Rise of Modern Science: The Merton Thesis (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Steven Shapin, "Understanding the Merton Thesis,"Isis, vol. 79 (1988): 594–605. 14 Indeed, even in the present there are those who have expressed major reservations about the value of science. Consider, for example, the relatively recent observations of the distinguished Oxford philosopher Michael Dummett, who asks: "What sane man, magically given the ability, in 1900, to foresee the nuclear weapons which it would make possible, would not have opted, if given the power, to prohibit all future research in physics?" (Michael Dummett, "Ought Research to Be Unrestricted?,"Grazer philosophische Studien, vols. 12/13 (1981): 291). 15 John Evelyn, Sylva, Or a Discourse of Forest-Trees (London, 1679), 3rd ed. sigs. Ar-v. 16 Meric Casaubon, A Letter of Meric Casaubon, D.D. &c. to Peter du Moulin D.D., concerning Natural Experimental Philosophie (Cambridge, 1669), 31. 17 Ibid., 6. 18 Henry Stubbe, Campanella Revived (London, 1670), 14. 19 Ibid., 13. 20 Henry Stubbe, Plus Utra reduced to a Non Plus, in Legends no Histories: or a Specimen of some Animadversions upon the History of the Royal Society … together with the Plus Ultra reduced to a Non-Plus (London, 1670), 13. 21 Thomas Hobbes, Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, etc.[1680], in Works, 11 vols., ed. William Molesworth (Aalen: Scientia, 1962), vol. 4, 436f. 22 C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959). 23 Bacon, Novum Organum II, §52, in The Works of Francis Bacon, 14 vols., eds. James Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas Heath (London: Longmans and Co., 1857–1874), vol. 4, 247–248. Cf. Valerius Terminus, Works, vol. 3, 222. On Bacon's motivations, see Peter Harrison, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Stephen A. McKnight, The Religious Foundations of Bacon's Thought (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2006); Steven Matthews, "Apocalypse and Experiment: The Theological Assumptions and Religious Motivations of Francis Bacon's Instauration," Ph.D. thesis, University of Florida, Gainesville, 2004. 24 Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975). 25 Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society (London, 1667), 62, 438, 349f. 26 Johannes Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum, trans. A. M. Duncan (Norwalk, Conn.: Abaris, 1999), 53. 27 Boyle, Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, in Works vol. 2, 62f. Cf. Henry Power, Experimental Philosophy in Three Books (London, 1664), 192f. 28 Isaac Newton, Opticks, Query 31 (New York: Dover, 1962), 405. 29 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, I. 3 (Johnston edn., p. 8); Essays, Works, vol. 6, 403. 30 Boyle, Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, vol. 2, 63, 2. Preface written by Roger Shorrock. 31 Joseph Glanvill, "Usefulness of Real Philosophy to Religion," in Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion (London, 1676), 25. 32 Ibid., 38f. See, for example, Sprat, History, 322f; John Edwards, A Demonstration of the Existence and Providence of God (London, 1696), pt. I, 206–215, pt. II, 150. 33 Frank Turner, "The Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion: A Professional Dimension,"Isis, vol. 49 (1978): 356–376; Brooke, Science and Religion, 5, 50. 34 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (London: SPCK, 1978), 51. 35 For a more general description of this process of reification, see Peter Harrison, "Religion" and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 36 Robert Boyle, The Christian Virtuoso, in Works vol. 5, 531, 538. 37 Joseph Glanvill, Philosophia Pia (London, 1671), 84. Cf. Bernard Nieuwentijdt, The Religious Philosopher: Or the Right Use of Contemplating the Works of the Creator, 3 vols., trans. J. Chamberlayne (London, 1718), vol. 1, vii, lxi. 38 Anon, "Crombie's Natural Theology,"Quarterly Review, LI, no. 101 (March, 1834): 216, 217. 39 Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1970 [1872–1873]), I, 1,§5, §6 [9–17]. 40 Blaise Pascal, Pensées,§418. 41 On some of the difficulties with this view, see John Cottingham, The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 18–36. 42 For a more developed account of some of the ideas in this section, see Peter Harrison, "'Science' and 'Religion': Constructing the Boundaries,"The Journal of Religion, vol. 86 (2006): 81–106.