Deconstructing the "science wars" by reconstructing an old mold

Science

Volumn 287, Issue 5451, 2000, Pages 253-261

  Gould, Stephen Jay ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANATOMY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE; PRIORITY JOURNAL; RESEARCH; REVIEW; TAXONOMY; THEORY; ANIMAL; ARTICLE; FOSSIL; HISTORY; HUMAN; PALEONTOLOGY; SCIENCE;

ANIMALS; FOSSILS; HISTORY, 16TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; PALEONTOLOGY; SCIENCE;

EID: 0033958931     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5451.253     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. This public and self-conscious struggle culminated in the late 1600s, as older Renaissance convictions about the acme of achievement and textual authority of classical authors ceded to the acknowledgment that newer empirical methods (now called "science") could transcend ancient understanding. In 1704, Jonathan Swift wrote the most famous commentary on this debate, a wickedly satirical essay called "The Battle of the Books," featuring a war in a deserted library between "ancient" and "modern" volumes.
2. This favored late 19th-century dichotomy (still persisting today) viewed social and technological progress as the outcome of a "warfare" between science and theology, and received a "semiofficial" status in two contrasting and phenomenally successful volumes: J. W. Draper's History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion (1874) and A. D. White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Draper, a vehement anti-Catholic who hoped that liberal Protestant theology might live in peace with science, had presented the speech (on "the intellectual development of Europe considered with reference to the view of Mr. Darwin") that unleashed the famous "debate" between T. H. Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1860. White, as the first president of Cornell University and a dedicated and ecumenical theist, hoped to persuade his fellow believers that the beneficial and unstoppable advances of science posed no threat to genuine religion but only to outmoded dogmas and superstitions.
3. This favored late 19th-century dichotomy (still persisting today) viewed social and technological progress as the outcome of a "warfare" between science and theology, and received a "semiofficial" status in two contrasting and phenomenally successful volumes: J. W. Draper's History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion (1874) and A. D. White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Draper, a vehement anti-Catholic who hoped that liberal Protestant theology might live in peace with science, had presented the speech (on "the intellectual development of Europe considered with reference to the view of Mr. Darwin") that unleashed the famous "debate" between T. H. Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1860. White, as the first president of Cornell University and a dedicated and ecumenical theist, hoped to persuade his fellow believers that the beneficial and unstoppable advances of science posed no threat to genuine religion but only to outmoded dogmas and superstitions.
4. C. P. Snow, a scientist by training and a novelist and university administrator by later practice, delivered his famous talk on "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" as the Rede Lecture at Cambridge University in May 1959. He spoke of the growing gap between literary intellectuals and professional scientists, noting for example how "one found Greenwich Village talking precisely the same language as Chelsea, and both having about as much communication with M.I.T. as though the scientists spoke nothing but Tibetan."
5. The great American sociologist of science Robert K. Merton wrote an entire book on pre-Newtonian uses of this image to make the serious point, with a wonderfully light touch, that supposed personal inventions (not claimed by Newton in this case but attributed to him by later commentators) often reflect long and complicated social settings and previous uses. See R. K. Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants - A Shandean Postscript (The Free Press, New York, 1965). See also my appreciation of Merton's book: S. J. Gould, "Polished pebbles, pretty shells: An Appreciation of OTSOG," in Robert K. Merton: Consensus and Controversy, J. Clark, C. Modgil, S. Modgil, Eds. (Falmer Press, New York, 1990), pp. 35-47.
6. The great American sociologist of science Robert K. Merton wrote an entire book on pre-Newtonian uses of this image to make the serious point, with a wonderfully light touch, that supposed personal inventions (not claimed by Newton in this case but attributed to him by later commentators) often reflect long and complicated social settings and previous uses. See R. K. Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants - A Shandean Postscript (The Free Press, New York, 1965). See also my appreciation of Merton's book: S. J. Gould, "Polished pebbles, pretty shells: An Appreciation of OTSOG," in Robert K. Merton: Consensus and Controversy, J. Clark, C. Modgil, S. Modgil, Eds. (Falmer Press, New York, 1990), pp. 35-47.
7. F. Darwin, Ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter (John Murray, London, 1888), vol. 1, p. 83.
8. Darwin's intellectual journey toward the theory of natural selection is brilliantly described, along with a transcription of two key notebooks, in H. E. Gruber and P. H. Barrett, Darwin on Man (Dutton, New York, 1974).
9. F. Darwin, Ed., More Letters of Charles Darwin (D. Appleton, New York, 1903), vol. 1, p. 195.
10. All the following quotations from Bacon come from his preface to the Great Instauration, translated (from the original Latin) by Gilbert Wats: Francis Bacon, On the Advancement and Proficiencie of Learning: or the Partitions of Science (Thomas Williams, London, 1674), pp. 17-21.
11. O. Worm, Museum Wormianum seu Historia rerum rariorum [Elsevier (already selling books at high prices!), Leiden, 1655], p. 84.
12. C. Depéret, The Transformations of the Animal World (Kegan Paul, London, 1909), pp. 4-5.
13. At least three 17th- and early 18th-century museum catalogs describe Fracastoro's views. The earliest reference I can find comes from Andrea Chiocco, Musaeum Francisci Calceolari Veronensis (Angelo Tamo, Verona, 1622), p. 407.
14. The 1755 figure of hysteroliths shown with a stalactite resembling male genitalia appears on plate 7 of Dezallier D'Argenville, L'histoire naturelle éclaircie dans une de ses parties principales, l'Oryctologie (De Bure, Paris). Linnaeus's accurate picture of 1753 comes from his famous catalog of the collection of Count Tessin: Museum Tessinianum (Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm), plate 5.
15. The 1755 figure of hysteroliths shown with a stalactite resembling male genitalia appears on plate 7 of Dezallier D'Argenville, L'histoire naturelle éclaircie dans une de ses parties principales, l'Oryctologie (De Bure, Paris). Linnaeus's accurate picture of 1753 comes from his famous catalog of the collection of Count Tessin: Museum Tessinianum (Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm), plate 5.