Enlightenment Science: Method, Religion, and the Science of Man

Introduction: Science and the Enlightenment Project

Robert Hollinger, in his essay "What is the Enlightenment?," notes the centrality of science to the "Enlightenment project," as he defines it, offering as one of four basic tenets that constitute the "basic ideas of the Enlightenment" the view that "only a society based on science and universal values is truly free and rational: only its inhabitants can be happy" (Smith, 1998, p. 71). As Smith (1998) says generally about the Enlightenment period, "Scientific knowledge came to be seen as an instrument for securing control over the human condition and for making it better" (p. 56).

But to what degree did the Enlightenment have an actual effect on science and its practice? This essay examines three areas — the philosophes, the "science of man," and Deist religion — in order to define how Enlightenment culture affected the development of the scientific method.

The Philosophes and the Cultural Elevation of Science

Smith notes that Diderot's plan to codify knowledge in a single encyclopedia was the beginning of the systematization of knowledge, an attempt to make it universally available. Henry (2004) credits Diderot and the philosophes with first making central claims on behalf of science as a cultural force in the way we are accustomed to hearing today: "…it was the Enlightenment philosophes who took up the science of the preceding age and helped to establish it as the dominant force in Western culture" (p. 10).

To a certain degree, this represented a covert form of revolt against established religion. In Diderot's France, this meant the Roman Catholic Church, of whom his fellow philosophe Voltaire would frequently remark "Écrasez l'infâme!" (roughly, "Destroy this infamous institution"). Jimack (1996) notes the anticlerical stance of Diderot and the philosophes: "the Church came to be seen by many philosophes as the arch enemy of mankind, and in the articles of the Encyclopédie (as well as in many other works of the period), it was often represented not just as an obstacle to progress, but as a powerful agent of repression and restriction, an instrument of the forces of darkness which had for centuries sought to submerge the forces of enlightenment" (p. 188).

To the degree that earlier science had often been hampered — as with Galileo — by the interference of religious authorities, this may be seen as real progress and encouragement for the establishment of science.

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