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).

The Philosophes and the Cultural Elevation of Science

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.

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).

Newton, Natural Philosophy, and Theology

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.

It is important to stress that, within the Enlightenment period, science did not necessarily have the reputation of being religion's enemy. Sir Isaac Newton is thought of as the father of modern physics, and his numerous contributions — in optics, gravitation, and calculus — mean that Newtonian science represents the largest single intellectual leap of the Enlightenment period. Thomas Kuhn, in his famous study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Third Ed., 1996), credits Newton with providing a complete paradigm shift — one that would hold until Einstein. "By the early eighteenth century those scientists who found a paradigm in the Principia took the generality of its conclusions for granted, and they had every reason to do so" (p. 30).

Yet it comes as something of a surprise to those familiar with today's physicists — like Stephen Hawking — or earlier twentieth-century figures to realize that, as Mamiani (2002) notes, Newton authored numerous "theological manuscripts…concerned principally with two subjects: the interpretation of the prophecies of the Apocalypse and Daniel, and the history of the early Church," with his commentary on Daniel alone running to one million words (p. 387). It is only by contemporary standards that this seems contradictory. Israel (2006) notes flatly that scientific research in the Enlightenment period was conveniently held up as proof of God's handiwork: "Claiming Sir Isaac's science as the best way to demonstrate divine providence, Newtonians built a highly integrated physico-theological system encompassing not only science, religion and philosophy but also history, chronology, Bible criticism, and moral theory which became vastly influential throughout eighteenth-century Europe and America" (p. 203).

Karen O'Brien (2009) notes the basic pattern by which religion was seen as part of the overall scientific conception during the Enlightenment period: "understanding of man's aspiring mind in turn leads to an inductive knowledge of God's existence, itself the highest form of rational self-awareness, and it is this higher 'science' that acts as the motivational force behind all material and artistic progress" ("These Nations," p. 294). Stewart (2004) further notes that Newton was consistently involved in religious issues, even more so than his own "natural philosophy" (as he termed his scientific activities), which he considered secondary — or possibly identical to it. Stewart remarks upon "Newton's own pronouncement in 1713, in the second edition of his Principia…that 'God does certainly belong to the business of experimental philosophy'" (p. 236).

It is also worth noting that Newton made no significant contribution to scientific method as distinct from scientific achievement. His experiments — such as the refraction of light by a prism — proved very difficult for contemporaries to replicate. Newton's own method was derived from the earlier English Renaissance figure of Bacon: his milieu, in the description given by Rogers (1996), was "much coloured by the programme for the investigation of nature that Bacon had advocated in the early part of the century" (p. 36).

Conclusion: Historical Continuity and the Legacy of Enlightenment Science

It is worth noting that these different aspects of the birth of the scientific method in the Enlightenment — which may alter our standard depiction of the period — are well in line with historical trends that had been building substantially before the Enlightenment itself. Sir Isaac Newton famously claimed that, if he had seen farther than most in his scientific work, it was only because he was "standing on the shoulders of giants." Indeed, the long trail of the past links most Enlightenment trends — including the contradictory implications for religion highlighted above — with much earlier phenomena.