BEYOND THE TWILIGHT OF REASON
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the Scientific Revolution, that gave birth to science as we know it today,
a company that includes Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Bacon, Harvey, Huy–
gens, Boyle, Hooke, and Newton. The great Linnaeus, the systematizer
of nature, declared, "Method [is] the soul of science."
The seventeenth-century founders of our modern science believed
that it was method that differentiated their activity from all antecedent
studies of nature. Hence, the codification of the method was of primary
importance. These founding scientists believed, furthermore, that such a
codification would have two enormous benefits. One was that if the
stages of the method were set forth, then human beings of ordinary intel–
ligence would be able to make the great discoveries that advance our
knowledge of the natural world. They believed that knowledge of nature
could be found by anyone, if only one were armed with a codified true
method.
Accordingly, a stress on method implied that great discoveries could
be made by mortals with average brilliance of mind. The applications of
the method would enable ordinary men and women to push forward the
boundaries of knowledge. Thus Rene Descartes, in his celebrated
"Discourse on Method," explained that he was not endowed with a mind
"in any way more perfect than that of the ordinary man." Indeed, he
added, he often wished he had "as quick a wit, or as sharp and distinct an
imagination, or as ample and prompt a memory as some others." Two
centuries later, Charles Darwin expressed the same idea, remarking in his
autobiography that he had "no great quickness of apprehension or wit,"
that his "power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought [was]
limited," and that his memory was "poor."
The second benefit that the founders of the scientific revolution be–
lieved would follow was also democratizing. They boasted that their
method was a great equalizing force. In the past, the sources of knowl–
edge and authority were the writings of men who had developed a special
insight by dint of years of arduous training and study. The great truths
about nature and the world were found only by learned doctors or by
people who had achieved grace or special divine enlightenment. The new
method proclaimed a very different authority for truth. In the later pithy
phrase of Louis Agassiz, he instructs us, "Study nature, not books."
In the past, if a master told his students that a heavy body falls faster
than a light one, he could cite an Aristotelian source as his authority and
it was not to be questioned. Knowledge exhibited a hierarchical set of
values. But with the new democratizing method, anyone who knew the
method could call upon nature rather than ancient sages. A mere begin–
ner in science could now challenge the greatest authority by actually
