The Rise of Early Modern Science

This fascinating study examines the reasons why modern science arose only in the West and not with the civilisations of Islam and China, and its analysis carries weight in attitudes to open critical questioning within these cultures even today. Toby Huff considers the various cultural contexts - religious, legal, philosophical-theological and institutional - within which science was practised in these civilisations.

Central to his argument is the definition and role of reason and rationality within law, philosophy and theology. Huff explains that within Islam a view arose that stressed the inherent limits of man and reason - typified by Al Ghazzali - while the West, represented by the likes of Abelard, proclaimed their confidence in reason and its 'capacity to resolve contradictions of faith and doctrine'. Interestingly, Al-Ghazzali's conclusions arose from his pursuit of infallible knowledge, and anyone making claims for the autonomy of reason was a heretic. This brings us to the nub of the issue: the hegemony of traditional religious authority (in China this authority was more politically based). Islamic law reinforced the theological conclusion of the need to circumscribe the use of unfettered reason.

We now reach what is perhaps the most interesting part of Huff's thesis, namely that changes in the law in the 12th and 13th centuries provided the context within which modern science would eventually flourish. This involved both individual structures of autonomy and the definition of entities as independent corporate bodies, a status that came to be applied to the newly established universities of Europe. Thus universities provided a neutral space where issues could be debated and decided without undue state or ecclesiastical interference (although this emancipation from the influence of the Church was not complete until well after the Enlightenment). Legal reforms also reinforced tendencies towards universalism, impartiality and the free exercise of reason and conscience.

These are reflected in the emerging assumptions of scientific enquiry: 'Insofar as science is concerned, individuals must be conceived to be endowed with reason, the world must be thought to be a rational and consistent whole, and various levels of universal representation, participation and discourse must be available'. By contrast, Arabic civilisations failed to develop this kind of universalism or the necessary autonomous corporate bodies; nor was there the necessary ethos of disinterestedness and organised scepticism.

Some of the same patterns emerge in Huff's analysis of China, but additional factors include the nature of Chinese law, an education system based around the memorisation of material for examinations, and the lack of a concept of mathematical proof as developed by Euclid. Nor was there any establishment of the kind of naturalistic framework to be found in Aristotle and later in Lucretius and Epicurus. The overthrow of traditional authority so characteristic of the Western scientific revolution was made possible by the legal establishment of universities as autonomous neutral spaces. Huff's last chapter describes in some detail the rise of early modern science and the triple revolution in cosmology, methodology and church authority. After many centuries of subjection to ecclesiastical authority, these same places now assert the authority of scientific materialism and are suspicious of any evidence that might be seen to undermine it. This book is essential reading for those interested in the origins of science.