Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises and Sensibilities

Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises and Sensibilities
Lewis Pyenson

Susan Sheets-Pyenson

‘Highly readable, subtle and thought-provoking scientific history’ ScotsmanIn this penetrating work, Pyenson and Pyenson identify that major advances in science stem from changes in three distinct areas of society: the social institutions that promote science, the sensibilities of scientists themselves and the goal of the scientific enterprise. Servants of Nature begins by examining the institutions that have shaped science: the academies of Ancient Greece, universities, the growth of museums of science, technology and natural history, botanical and zoological gardens, and the advent of modern specialized research laboratories. It is equally comprehensive when it analyses changing scientific sensibilities — for example, the relationship between religion and science, or the interplay between the growth of democracy and the growth of scientific knowledge.The final section of this book is on the changing nature of the scientific enterprise and considers how the goals of science have evolved. It is an indispensable account of how science, perhaps above all other human endeavours, has shaped, and been shaped by, the world we inhabit today.

SERVANTS OF NATURE

A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises and Sensibilities

LEWIS PYENSON

and

SUSAN SHEETS-PYENSON

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_022ed320-a668-5202-b8b0-e6e7cc5e0ea0)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 1999

Copyright © Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson 1999

Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson have asserted the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780006862178

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN 9780007394401

Version: 2016-01-08

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PRAISE (#ulink_a29328d2-b217-5758-9ead-32b44af56678)

‘A considerable achievement.’ CASPAR HENDERSON, New Scientist

‘At best a heroic visionary, at worst a megalomaniac Frankenstein: either way triumphant individualism is taken for granted in the stereotypical scientist. So too is the disinterested purity of research conducted under lab conditions, all external considerations excluded like so many bacteria from a sterile vessel. Yet the reality has always been quite otherwise: the world refuses to stop at the laboratory door, and that has led to some of science’s greatest breakthroughs as well as its worst abuses. This highly readable, subtle and thought-provoking scientific history goes beyond whistle-blowing to consider more subtle and ultimately perhaps more interesting questions of how a changing institutional context has constrained the content and direction of we too unquestioningly take to be ‘pure’ science.’

Scotsman

CONTENTS

COVER (#u8fa3c998-0d74-5000-82a1-980c5ff77a45)

TITLE PAGE (#ude1ffb8f-a46d-5cbf-b38d-cbf63053997a)

COPYRIGHT (#u5b27a626-ae89-57e0-bb8d-3f9945c3c79c)

PRAISE (#u13726a68-057a-5463-bd45-52d26cd52f8f)

PREFACE (#u619734da-bd70-5df8-bd70-9e6bd19eeed8)

INTRODUCTION: Science and Its Past (#ufcd945ce-0fc0-5e62-af5a-8cbce40d909d)

The discipline of history of science (#ulink_dfea8495-000c-5b98-9cf6-ec4e326e5790)

Inspiration and method (#ulink_5a70df60-65aa-51d5-8f03-c558a457f8e5)

The end of science (#ulink_f8f02c5e-cc34-5af8-b93f-d40a012c6b86)

PART I: INSTITUTIONS (#u689bedf0-acf6-5d87-9f4d-c4acbb24a1db)

1 Teaching: Before the Scientific Revolution (#u0609ad4f-5c8f-5980-a8aa-a3213c94e304)

The Mediterranean world (#ulink_cf7c3eff-af04-5149-9f30-1d30857007be)

Eastern cultures (#ulink_5181388c-ebaf-56fc-b423-97409eef932e)

Islam (#ulink_abf74a6b-dfc4-5c5a-9812-46c8927da84e)

The Middle Ages (#ulink_215f9138-329f-5c2f-8065-8d929d5bd957)

2 Teaching: From the Time of the Scientific Revolution (#ubc9315aa-147d-5057-ba8a-86b785225aa3)

The Scientific Revolution (#ulink_25d3b881-f1d9-516a-9472-5b3ead9779e6)

The rise of the German university (#ulink_1fb52fe5-635f-51c5-8b7d-80a2d1147b51)

The German research university in context (#ulink_b27430e2-f035-53c2-a105-16bf12e4a015)

Universities elsewhere (#ulink_60fa271e-738d-5004-a7d6-1cb27260f7f8)

3 Sharing: Early Scientific Societies (#u6cfd73be-6042-5a36-a5eb-79d8de12bf9c)

Engines of the Scientific Revolution (#ulink_ebddd381-f95a-5686-965e-9d04f2c76d9b)

The rise of the scientific correspondent (#ulink_a657c80c-bf4b-5d0a-8649-01f5ef6a5988)

Eighteenth-century expansion (#ulink_309bc8ec-ebaa-5926-9ff9-5d58bd7c0749)