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12 - Science and the book

from LITERATURE OF THE LEARNED

By
Adrian Johns
Edited by
John Barnard  and
D. F. McKenzie
With
Maureen Bell
Adrian Johns
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
John Barnard
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
D. F. McKenzie
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Maureen Bell
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Summary

Books and things

The period covered by this volume saw the most profound transformation in natural knowledge ever to take place in Britain. At the beginning of Elizabeth I’s reign, Aristotelianism held sway, and natural philosophy was a largely contemplative enterprise pursued at universities. A century and a half later, scholasticism had been eclipsed for good. The intervening years saw the flourishing of mechanical and mathematical approaches to creation, the invention of experimental philosophy, the advent of the Royal Society, and the achievements of Francis Bacon, William Harvey and Robert Boyle. The greatest of all works of natural knowledge, Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (‘Mathematical principles of natural philosophy’, 1687), had just appeared, and its enormous influence was beginning to be felt. If this was not quite a ‘scientific revolution’ – because what emerged from it was not yet modern science – it was nonetheless a change out of all recognition from anything that had gone before. What this dramatic transformation owed to the contemporary culture of the book, and what, if any, consequences it held for that culture, are the questions addressed in this chapter.

Many of those involved in creating the new philosophy of the period, and until recently most of their historians, would not have hesitated to answer these questions in dismissive terms. What was so admirable about the new philosophy, they were given to insisting, was that it abandoned the culture of the book altogether. It repudiated words in favour of things. Proponents called for the wholesale rejection of ‘bookish’ learning and its replacement by practical knowledge gained through direct experience.

Keywords

mathematical sciencesmedicinebook tradeHalley's investmentLondonnatural history
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
, pp. 274 - 303
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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