Scientific Naturalism: The Spread of Newtonian Standards of Science

Enlightenment ideal: Reason and Nature

1. Salon culture and writings of Fontenelle, d'Alembert, Voltaire, Turgot, Diderot's Encyclopédie
2. value of reason, science, and education
   • rational analysis of politics and culture
   • vision of an ideal society: the individual, reform, and optimism
   • critiques of tradition and the Church's secular role
     • constructing the heroic image of Galileo vs. the Church
3. religion and science
   • Newtonian science and Anglican theology
   • "Newtonian" conception of God : Natural Theology's search for rational Design (Paley's Natural Theology, 1802)
   • Deism: dependence on reason and the nature of things
   • skepticism: questioning on philosophical and historical principles (Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, 1779)
   • atheism: questioning evidence and function of religion
   • lingering objections to new rationalism (e.g., Berkeley)
     • concern with excessive mechanism
     • defense of revelation and doubts of the abilities of human reason
     • promotion of animistic, interconnected cosmos, rather than the objective observer of a detached universe
     • challenge to authority of Newtonians within the moral domain
4. Analyses of nature and society, incorporating humans into nature
   • "man's place in nature" and a biological vision of "human nature"
   • racial categories and the social hierarchy
   • political philosophy and the "natural state" of human society
   • Physiocrats (Quesnay, Turgot) on natural laws and optimal society
   • new social sciences anthropology of progressive "stages" of social development
   • economics of order and optimal management

Social conditions for the growth of science

1. gentlemanly culture of empirical knowledge
2. available monetary support (patronage, salon culture, fashion for collecting)
3. open communication, public knowledge (philosophical societies)
4. cultivated virtues of honesty, priority, pure knowledge, openness
   • Merton's "normative structure" or ethos of science that solidified in the 1700s
   • universalism, communality, disinterestedness, organized skepticism, originality, humility
5. competition and the "marketplace of ideas"
6. application and value for industry and empire
7. expanding European world of trade and colonies
8. natural theology’s vision of Design and Law, and inspiration to study
   • fascination with ingenious, tiny details inspired detailed studies.
   • stress on observation fostered knowledge and deductions about the working of the system of nature.
   • concept of harmony and equilibrium provided an model for "Nature's Economy".
   • promoted the idea of Unity in the multiplicity of nature.
   • provided a new grand vision of nature.

© 2018 Dr. William Kimler