The Scientific Revolution

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 619 will applaud Rosenberg’s challenges to economic orthodoxies in sev­ eral areas. They may also feel that Rosenberg still has things to learn from their literature. JoAnne Yates Dr. Yates is associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. She studies the use of communication and informa­ tion systems and technologies in American business. The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry. By H. Floris Co­ hen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Pp. xviii+662; notes, bibliography, index. $75.00 (cloth); $26.95 (paper). This tome, clearly the product of many years’ labor, addresses the issue of the “scientific revolution” on a number of separate levels, each carefully labeled by part, chapter, section, and subsection. I confess to having been deeply absorbed throughout the earlier sec­ tions of the book, then increasingly disenchanted as I waded to the end. My criticisms have to do with the questions the book asks, rather than with the particular answers—almost always proferred in a tenta­ tive and undogmatic way—that Cohen suggests. Ultimately, the reac­ tion of readers to this book will depend on their position vis-à-vis its questions. Bravely grand in its scope, the book seems to deepen the gulf between those who are looking for Causes in History and those who want to explore localized meaning in context. It does this pre­ cisely by minimizing the methodological issues that divide these two approaches, while at the same time opting for the search for causes. The best part of this book is the first, a lengthy study ofthe histori­ ography of the “birth of early modern science” and of the concept of the scientific revolution itself. The analysis begins with Immanuel Kant, William Whewell, and Ernst Mach and includes detailed dis­ cussions ofthe thought ofPierre Duhem, Anneliese Maier, E.J. Dijksterhuis , Alexandre Koyré, and E. A. Burtt. It continues with discus­ sions of the work ofHerbert Butterfield, A. R. Hall, Marie Boas Hall, and Thomas Kuhn. A subsequent chapter deals with “the new sci­ ence in a wider setting’’ and touches on the Yates thesis as well as on issues concerning rationality, experiment, and the role ofpatronage, among others. This summary and analysis of a rich historiography is extremely valuable, both as a general introduction and as an over­ view for those who may be more familiar with some of its aspects than others. The subject of the second part of the book is “the search for causes of the scientific revolution.” By now, Cohen has changed the meaning of the “scientific revolution” from a concept developed particularly in early-20th-century historiography to an event that took place in the l7th century or somewhere thereabouts. Increas­ ingly, he seems to abandon historiography in order tojoin issue with 620 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the questions that past historians have asked. Some of these ques­ tions jolt. For example, “Why did the scientific revolution not take place in ancient Greece?” (p. 241), elaborated in part by “Some Principal Shortcomings of Greek Science” (p. 243). Similar ques­ tions come to center stage later in the book as the reader is treated to lengthy expositions on why western science did not emerge in Islamic or Chinese cultures. Some historians, myself included, will question whether such queries can be fruitful or meaningful. Why not ask, “Why didn’t the French Revolution occur in 9th-century Mayan culture?” or “How come Confucianism didn’t develop in 16th-century France?” A chapter on the emergence of early modern science from events in the history of western Europe includes extended discussions of another group of historians—R. Hooykaas, Robert Merton, Leon­ ardo Olschki, Boris Hessen, and Edgar Zilsel, among others who explored the influence of technological and craft traditions—and of their critics, especially A. R. Hall and Koyre. I would question the necessity for the polemically hostile tone Cohen adopts toward Hessen, and would point as well to the omission of Gideon Freudenthal ’s Atom and Individual in the Age ofNewton: On the Genesis of the Mechanistic World View (trans. Peter McLaughlin [Hingham, Mass.: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986]), a study that correlates New­ ton’s philosophical

Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Historiography · Index (typography) · Meaning (existential) · Media studies · Political science · Scope (computer science) · Sociology · Computer Science · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Philosophy