Commerce and Science in The Scientific Revolution
May 7, 2008 at 5:48 pm (The Development of Science: Professor Ian Slater)
Tags: acquaintance, anatomy, Apothecaries, chocolate, coffee, colonial, commercial, contradictory, database, discourse, dissections, economic needs, exotics, folk, folk traditions, foreign spices, global commerce, global trade, hunting, inner workings, intellectual, knowledge, life sciences, local, manorial, medicine, middle class, natural, objects, occupations, personal, pharmaceuticals, pharmacy, powerful, practice, realistic painting, Renaissance, reports, reunited, scholars, social standing, substances, tea, tobacco, tradesmen, tradition, transactions, travelers, wealthy
Introduction
- Science and economic needs, other commercial inputs to science
Objectivity and the Growth of Science
- Descriptions of natural objects, personal acquaintance
- Scientific revolution occurred during the “first age of global commerce”
- Medicine and the life sciences, “folk” traditions of local knowledge
- “Head and the hand” reunited in the Renaissance
- Knowledge from tradesmen and common people, not just scholars
- Reports/specimens from travelers: sailors, tourists, doctors, merchants, diplomats
- European middle class, dominant personal, intellectual and economic interests
- Global trade in foreign spices, tobacco, chocolate, coffee and tea
- Collecting strange objects, cabinets of curiosities, elaborate gardens
- Colonial holdings and the “data base” of science, local knowledge
- Manorial production in Low Countries, middle class and other occupations
- Holland, Portugese, trade with East and resource extraction from the Americas
Commerce and Knowledge
- Descriptive knowledge of objects and economic transactions
- Methods for handling objects, trades, science and medicine
- Purchase of objects, knowledge, good taste and social standing
- Knowledge by acquaintance, not scholarly knowledge
- Objectivity: knowledge related to the detailed acquaintance with objects
- Realistic painting
- Early Modern preference for acquaintance over discourse
- Discoveries in new world and renewed exchange with East, questioning of ancients, importance of personal acquaintance
Pharmacy and Medicine
- Apothecaries “hunting” for substances, medical practice
- Hippocratic tradition of detailed descriptions of disease symptoms
- “Pleasure gardens” local and foreign plants, botanical gardens for pharmaceuticals
- Exotics, “cabinets of curiosity” wealthy and powerful
- Anatomy, dissections, direct knowledge of the inner workings of the body
Natural History
- Existing tradition of inquiry nature, natural history
- Pliny the Elder, complex and contradictory work
- Religious tradition of natural history
Scientific Growth
- We have seen a number of arguments that science improves under certain conditions
Science grows in a democracy (Greece)
Science grows when spurred on by economic demands (Bernal)
Science grows when there is a “free space” for inquiry (Huff)
Science grows when commerce increases (Cook) - Open inquiry, abstract theoretical knowledge, knowledge of objects
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