“Beyond the Copernican Revolution: New Narratives in Early-Modern Science.”
Symposium at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 12 June 2015.
Morning session:
STEVE HINDLE, The Huntington Library.
JAN GOLINSKI, University of New Hampshire.
Opening Remarks
ADAM MOSLEY, Swansea University.
The Non-Copernican Questions: Future Histories of the Science(s) of the Stars
The preoccupation of historians of early modern astronomy with the ‘Copernican Revolution’ has proved
extraordinarily productive, not least in the work of Robert S. Westman. Yet it has also acted as a constraint on the
settings, individuals, problems, genres, chronologies, astronomical products, and disciplinary relations that they
have paid attention to in their work. In my talk, I shall offer some personal reflections on what future histories of
astronomy and astrology could and should look like, as the field advances. Topics covered will include
classifications of knowledge; the relation of astronomy/astrology to cosmography and meteorology; non-elite forms
of astronomical practice and learning; the connection of astronomy/astrology to the study of the past (as well as the
interrogation of the future); and the material culture of the sciences. As my own work has taken inspiration from
Westman’s - from his ‘The Astronomer’s Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study’ as much as the more
recent The Copernican Question - and yet also diverges from it, so too will my reflections. In summary, the takehome message of my paper may be expressed thus: since the issues that exercised those with an interest in the
heavens in the ‘long sixteenth century’ were most often non-Copernican questions, these need more attention from
historians of astronomy if we are to generate a rich and detailed picture of the science(s) of the stars as studied and
pursued in the early modern period.
SACHIKO KUSUKAWA, Trinity College, Cambridge.
Early Modern Astronomical Images
History of science of the early modern period is beset with historiographic pitfalls – even the periodization, ‘early
modern’ has a teleological overtone, as if we should be searching for ‘early’ forms of ‘modernity’. It is a period
with one of the most problematic labels, the ‘Scientific Revolution’, a narrative of an onward march of scientific
triumph over religion, magic, the occult and everything besides that we would now regard as superstitious and nonscientific. Scholarship in the last 30 years has focused on de-centering this picture by demonstrating the historical
significance of magic, alchemy, natural history, prognostication, prophecy, history, museums, patronage,
instruments, commerce, religion, print, manuscript and paper cultures, and the myriad meanings of experience and
observation. Whilst such scholarship has immeasurably enriched our understanding of the period, de-centering has
the tendency to leave the central narrative intact. Westman’s book bravely returns us to the centre of the ‘Scientific
Revolution’ that has been virtually synonymous with the ‘astronomical’ revolution. The historical contexts in which
Westman places Copernicus and his various followers enable those (like myself) who teach history of science of this
period to contextualize astronomy under the major themes of patronage, religion, history and astrology.
PETER DEAR, Cornell University.
Arguments, Reason, and Method: Commanding Assent on Astronomical Claims and Other Things.
One of the more prominent features of the debates over the Copernican Question was their revolution around
dialectical procedures of legitimacy: forms of argument pro and con that adhered to well established norms of
argumentative procedure. Acceptance of those norms did not, of course, mean that controversies were therefore
straightforward, but Descartes, really a peripheral participant in the Copernican Question, displayed something of
how they worked: reason, everyone’s ally (recall Bruno Latour’s play on “Gott mit uns”), had to be guided and
controlled by “method.” Directing reason towards appropriate goals thus employed rules of procedure, resembling
Newton's “hypotheses” or “rules of philosophizing,” that demanded an acquiescence in the auditor to the final
conclusion which was positioned at two removes from that conclusion itself--a protective cordon sanitaire to absolve
the conclusion of the taint of interest.
Afternoon session:
RENÉE RAPHAEL, University of California Irvine.
New Narratives of Early Modern Mechanics?
The disciplines of astronomy and mechanics were central to traditional narratives of a “Scientific Revolution,”
which saw both as culminating in Newton’s Principia. As mixed-mathematical subjects, they also shared many of
the same period practitioners and practices. In this talk, I will consider the extent to which issues raised by
Westman’s Beyond the Copernican Revolution, particularly institutional settings, circulation, and disciplinary
identities, have re-shaped narratives of early modern mechanics. I’ll then consider the limitations of these
transformations, looking specifically at how the assumed connection between astronomy and mechanics has
influenced narratives of the latter. My argument will be for bringing the study of mechanics into a wider context to
situate it more firmly in the field of early modern science as a whole.
BRIAN W. OGILVIE, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Revolting insects: Natural history in Early Modern Science and Culture.
Natural history has not always passed muster with the bouncers at the door of the Scientific Revolution Club. As a
“Baconian science,” it was turned away by Thomas S. Kuhn. When it was admitted, it was for a few reasons: its
“emancipation” from medicine and pharmacy and concomitant development as an independent science; its radical
break with the symbolic, neoplatonic world of the Renaissance episteme into sober rationality; or the development of
biological taxonomy leading up to its final cause and first mover, Linnaeus’s binomial system. Recent scholarship
on natural history has questioned these teleologies, approaching it not as a single entity but as an interconnected set
of activities, pursued by diverse individuals with distinct goals. Natural history collecting, printing and
publishing, illustrating and describing, buying and selling all took place in broader contexts of colonial expansion,
commercial exchange, bioprospecting, political definition, and self-fashioning. I'll give an overview of these
historiographical developments and offer suggestions on how the early modern fascination with insects deepens our
appreciation of how revolutionary early modern natural history was—even if it no longer waits outside the door of
the increasingly deserted club.
LAWRENCE M. PRINCIPE, Johns Hopkins University.
Reformulating Chemistry.
It can plausibly be argued that of all fields within the history of early modern science, the history of chemistry has
undergone the most profound changes in the past generation. Virtually every major narrative structure for the period
1400-1800 has been at least called seriously into question, if not entirely overturned. Alchemy is no longer
considered a “pseudoscience” that had to be cleared away before chemistry could emerge. Its serious experimental
and theoretical content, as well as its place in society, is being better revealed each year. Its continuity with later
chemistry is now so clear that a new word--chymistry--has taken hold for describing the “alchemy and chemistry”
of the early modern period. Even the date for the demise of serious transmutational endeavors has been moved
steadily forward from the late 17th to the late 18th century, and perhaps has further to go. The popular narrative of
an evolution within chemistry from “Paracelsian” to “Cartesian” to “Newtonian” flavors, influentially promoted
around 1930, has also been undermined by studies showing the diversity within chemistry, the fact that neither
Descartes nor Newton had a significant impact on chemistry, and that practical and productive endeavors had a
greater role in directing the course of the discipline than philosophical or theoretical constructs. The well-worn
phlogiston-oxygen/Stahl-Lavoisier narrative for the 18th century has likewise been shown to be wanting, as it leaves
the majority of 18th century chemical innovations, both practical and theoretical, untouched, and Butterfield’s
notion of a “postponed” revolution in chemistry is no longer tenable. This paper will document these developments,
propose new ways for looking at the long history of early modern chemistry, and suggest ways in which this
reformulation of the history of chemistry should influence the broader history of science.
ROBERT S. WESTMAN, University of California San Diego.
Comment on ‘Beyond the Copernican Revolution’.