What, Exactly, Is the Scientific Revolution?

32,163 characters2009.01.13

This semester has finally ended~~

The topic of this essay does not particularly satisfy me.

What on earth is the Scientific Revolution?

— A critique of Shapin’s “No Scientific Revolution” claim

“The Scientific Revolution”—referring specifically to that stretch of history around the seventeenth century, “from Copernicus to Newton”—has been the greatest focus of history of science research since Koyré, and the literature commenting on this “Scientific Revolution” from different perspectives and lines of inquiry is so abundant as to be immeasurable. Yet in the opening of his famous book The Scientific Revolution, Steven Shapin drops a bombshell: “There was no Scientific Revolution, and this book is about that.”[1]

So, how exactly does Shapin deny the “Scientific Revolution,” and how does he talk about this “nonexistent” event? What, precisely, is the difference between the “Scientific Revolution” in his account and the “Scientific Revolution” in the accounts of historians such as Koyré and Kuhn?

In my view, Shapin has something of a vulgar appetite for sensation. In fact, what he denies is merely a certain extremely vulgarized and simplified notion of the “Scientific Revolution,” whereas historians of the Scientific Revolution represented by Kuhn have never understood the concept in this way. The various arguments Shapin uses to negate the “Scientific Revolution” are precisely the very things Kuhn and others sought to reveal through this term. The opponents Shapin criticizes may well be the authors of vulgar textbooks and those Whig historians who weave myths about science; and similar criticisms are exactly why Kuhn and others insist on the concept of the “Scientific Revolution.” Yet Shapin, without seriously reflecting on and interpreting the concept of “revolution,” dismisses it too hastily and with contempt, as if historians such as Koyré and Kuhn were no different from those Whiggish myth-makers. This is undoubtedly profoundly unfair.

This essay attempts to offer some assessment of, and response to, Shapin’s critique of the concept of the “Scientific Revolution,” and at the same time to indicate just what the “Scientific Revolution” in the mouths of Kuhn and other historians actually amounts to.

How Shapin Criticizes the “Scientific Revolution”

Shapin continues at the outset: “Historians claim that there was indeed a coherent, dramatic apex event that fundamentally and irreversibly changed people’s understanding of the natural world, changed the ways that people acquired true knowledge of that natural world, and that it was precisely in such a moment that the world became modern as we know it, and all this was a very good thing. This occurred at some point between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. … Koyré praised the conceptual changes brought about by the spirit of the Scientific Revolution as ‘the most profound revolution that the human mind has ever undergone or endured since the ancient Greeks’; its significance was so profound that human culture ‘has not grasped its significance for centuries, and even today it is often underestimated and misunderstood.’”[2]

Here we see that Shapin thinks historians claim the Scientific Revolution was some one “moment.” In later commentary he continues to stress this notion of the “moment”; for example, he notes: “The past did not turn into the ‘modern world’ at any particular moment; we should not be astonished to discover that seventeenth-century practitioners of science were often half-ancient, half-modern in their sensibility, and that their ideas would have to be transformed and redefined by several generations of thinkers before they became ‘our’ ideas.”[3]

But which historians have actually claimed such a thing? Clearly Shapin here has invented an overly naïve target. In fact, it is hard to imagine any serious historian of science who would regard the “Scientific Revolution” as some “moment,” and even the clumsiest Whig historian would hardly do so. The Scientific Revolution generally recognized by historians of science refers to the period from Copernicus to Newton, or more broadly the hundred-plus years, even several hundred years, encompassing roughly the entire seventeenth century. For example, Debus says: “There was indeed a Scientific Revolution, but as a revolution it was a long event. The enormous changes recorded by us occurred over centuries rather than decades.”[4]

Shapin’s criticism is of course correct, but meaningless, because the opponent he criticizes is entirely fabricated. The one passage from Koyré that Shapin cites in his opening says precisely that we “has not grasped its significance for centuries”—isn’t that exactly an emphasis that the Scientific Revolution by no means affected the whole culture in an instant? Shapin later speaks of the fact that “the overwhelming majority of the population in the seventeenth century … were not aware of a scientific revolution taking place.”[5] Had Koyré failed to see this fact? Didn’t Koyré say long ago that even people in the twentieth century had not fully recognized the significance of this Scientific Revolution? Didn’t Shapin himself quote that very sentence? Then why does Shapin keep harping on these obvious banalities? Do these amount to a critique of historians such as Koyré?

Shapin’s critique of the concept of the “Scientific Revolution” is in many respects based on a critique of the “moment.” He says: “No house is ever built of entirely unused materials and according to a design bearing no resemblance to an old style, and likewise no culture ever wholly rejects its past—these things go without saying. Historical change is not that kind of total change, and most ‘revolutions’ do not bring about total change as they proclaim, or as people proclaim on their behalf.”[6]

But the problem remains: which historian of science is actually claiming that the Scientific Revolution brought about “total change”? This is probably still a target invented by Shapin. Koyré’s From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe ranges from the Middle Ages all the way to Newton, and in the end points out that Newton’s ideas would also, after Newton, be gradually understood in ways Newton himself could not accept. Kuhn, in The Copernican Revolution, states even more explicitly: “Major changes in the basic concepts of science are always gradual. … The range of innovations any individual can introduce must necessarily be limited, because each individual must use in research the tools learned in traditional education, and he cannot possibly replace all those tools in a lifetime. … Only one who tries to discover in this book named for the Copernican Revolution the whole Copernican Revolution finds De revolutionibus discordant; such an attempt stems from a mistaken understanding of how new patterns of scientific thought emerge. The limitations of De revolutionibus may rather be seen as the essential, typical characteristic of all revolutionary books.”[7]—Koyré, Kuhn, and others are all very attentive to emphasizing the conservatism of inherited ideas within the Scientific Revolution, and this, too, is portrayed as a basic feature of the “Scientific Revolution.” Shapin here has not added anything at all.

Another of Shapin’s criticisms concerns the participants in the Scientific Revolution. He says: “If only a very small number of people took part in these changes, if they really mattered at all, in what sense can we speak of a Scientific Revolution, say that it brought about a dramatic change in ‘our’ ways of observing the world, say that it was the moment that produced the modern world as ‘we’ know it?”[8] Later he criticizes: “People say Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy marked the peak of the Scientific Revolution and changed the way ‘we’ think about the world, but among Newton’s contemporaries fewer than a hundred could read the book through in any general sense, and only a few of them could understand it.”[9] But haven’t other historians of science noticed this point? In fact, Kuhn’s entire The Copernican Revolution is aimed at understanding “how solutions by scientists to apparently trivial, highly technical problems can sometimes fundamentally alter people’s attitudes toward the basic questions of daily life.”[10] Kuhn had already made clear that the Scientific Revolution arose from a very small and highly specialized domain, and the sharp contrast between the narrowness of its point of origin and the far-reaching scope of its effects is precisely what characterizes the Scientific Revolution. Here again Shapin has produced nothing new.

Shapin’s main criticism of the concept of the Scientific Revolution is most explicitly formulated as a rejection of “essence.” He repeatedly stresses that seventeenth-century science had no definite mainstream, and that each new claim failed to gain consensus at the time—“I do not believe there is such a thing as the ‘essence’ of seventeenth-century science, or even of seventeenth-century scientific change. Therefore there is no single coherent story that can capture all aspects of science, or scientific change, that are of interest to us at the end of the twentieth century. I cannot imagine any feature traditionally regarded as the essence of the early modern Scientific Revolution that did not then exist in a markedly different form, or that was not then being criticized by practitioners who were also described as ‘modernists’ and as revolutionary.”[11]

And yet, in Kuhn’s case, the same facts are precisely the “essential” features that make the Scientific Revolution a Scientific Revolution! I shall return to this point shortly. For now it is enough to note that the plurality of seventeenth-century scientific thought, or more precisely the fact that different scientists at the time were full of inconsistencies, is obviously something already well known to, and strongly emphasized by, historians such as Kuhn. For example, Kuhn notes: “The transformation of astronomy was not the whole meaning of the revolution. After the publication of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus in 1543, other radical substitutions followed in man’s understanding of nature. These innovations culminated a century and a half later in Newton’s concept of the universe, and many of them were not anticipated by Copernican astronomy. Copernicus’ proposal that the earth was moving was intended as an effort to improve the techniques used to predict the astronomical positions of celestial bodies. For other sciences his suggestion readily raised new problems, and before those were solved the astronomical conception of the universe was at odds with the other sciences. Throughout the seventeenth century the reconciliation of these other sciences with Copernican astronomy was a major source of the general intellectual ferment now called the Scientific Revolution.”[12] The main thread Koyré offers in describing the development of ideas “from the closed world to the infinite universe” is likewise a series of examples of “controversy,” ending with the dispute between Newton and Leibniz; he never says that any one idea was uncontested among seventeenth-century scientists. Shapin still has not offered anything new.

Finally, Shapin’s critique of the Scientific Revolution involves the concept of “science” itself. He believes that the existence of “science” as a single coherent entity in the seventeenth century is questionable, and therefore there can be no revolution of this “science.” He says: “Since our understanding of seventeenth-century science has changed in recent years, historians have become increasingly uncertain about the concept of the ‘Scientific Revolution’ itself. Even the rationality of each word making up the phrase has come under dispute. Many historians are no longer satisfied with the view that there was a single, discrete event bounded by a certain time and place and called ‘the’ Scientific Revolution. These historians now even refuse to recognize that there was a single coherent cultural entity called ‘science’ which underwent revolutionary transformation in the seventeenth century. On the contrary, there existed a multitude of different cultural practices devoted to understanding, explaining, and controlling nature, each with its own different characteristics and patterns of change.”[13]

And yet this is still something Kuhn had long since emphasized—we know that in Kuhn, the “Scientific Revolution” is an extraordinary period in contrast to “normal science”; in Kuhn, only during normal periods does science appear as an independent whole, enabling a demarcation between science and non-science. In extraordinary periods, the boundaries of science are unclear, and what is called the Scientific Revolution refers precisely to such periods: that is, a period in which there is no “single coherent cultural entity” called science. It is precisely the facts of constant disagreement and proliferating factions that prove this really is, without a doubt, a period of the “Scientific Revolution.” Kuhn points out that “in a mature science,” there are few “competing schools”[14]; a condition of lacking authority and mainstream, with all manner of schools competing against one another, is precisely the hallmark of the Scientific Revolution. The diversity of seventeenth-century scientific views and scientific methods repeatedly emphasized by Shapin throughout the book is in fact the strongest support for—and not a refutation of—the claim that the seventeenth century was indeed a bona fide Scientific Revolution period in the Kuhnian sense.

In short, Shapin’s criticism seems utterly lacking in novelty. The arguments he marshals against the concept of the “Scientific Revolution” have not only long been noticed by earlier historians, they often serve precisely as evidence for the “Scientific Revolution.” Shapin carries out a criticism that is vaporous and insubstantial. If what he is refuting are merely straw men of his own invention or the most naïve vulgar opinions, then he should not keep aiming his arrows at so-called “historians”; as a scholar, such a manner is profoundly unserious.

How Shapin Supports the Scientific Revolution

So, since we already know the arguments Shapin uses to rebut the “Scientific Revolution,” why do Kuhn and other historians still talk about the concept?

For Shapin, the Scientific Revolution is also a concept that can and should be discussed. He offers two main reasons. First, in the seventeenth century there really were people who believed they were carrying out some kind of fundamental transformation, and they made conscious, large-scale attempts to alter people’s worldviews and ways of acquiring knowledge: “a book about the Scientific Revolution has reason to tell the story of these attempts.”[15] Second, “the idea of the Scientific Revolution itself is at least in part an expression of ‘our’ interest in our forebears,”[16] in other words, the “Scientific Revolution” can be a reconstruction of history by contemporary people.

In addition, Shapin also acknowledges that “the debate over whether the mechanical model and the experimental model were appropriate, and the attempts to ‘mechanize’ nature and the ways of knowing nature, did indeed capture much that is worth understanding about the cultural changes of the age. … I have argued that the Scientific Revolution has no essence, yet pragmatic standards have from time to time compelled me to offer an orderly account of the distinctive changes in natural knowledge.”[17]

This approach, apart from being expressed somewhat more cautiously, seems no different from that of other historians of science. Koyré too admits that the “full history” of the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution is “many-sided and complex,” and that what he has grasped is nothing more than “this aspect” of the revolution “insofar as its main line is concerned”[18]. Koyré never says that the so-called “from the closed world to the infinite universe” is the “essence” of the Scientific Revolution, still less that the entire Scientific Revolution is “nothing but” that. What he does is merely to sort out, artificially as it were, a “main line.” Compared with Shapin’s own use of phrases such as “the machine metaphor was very central in the important components of the new science”[19] and “the core idea of modern natural science”[20], Koyré’s rhetoric does not appear any more grandiose. Koyré’s “main line” can also be understood as “a very ‘core’ line of inquiry.” Here again Shapin has not provided anything more.

Yet in interpreting the “Scientific Revolution,” Kuhn provides more than Shapin does. We shall see that Kuhn’s conscious deployment of the concept of the “Scientific Revolution” contains more reflection and a deeper intention.

We note that the word “revolution” more readily calls to mind political revolution. As Cohen says: “Within a scientific context, the appearance of the word ‘revolution’ always reflects both some popular theories about political and social revolutions and some recognition of actual revolutions that have already occurred. So my reflections on each of the scientific revolutions discussed here are set against a background knowledge of social and political revolutions.”[21]

Shapin also noticed the connection between the Scientific Revolution and political revolution. He pointed out that the word “revolution” originally meant only turning over and cyclical return, without the sense of irreversible linear development. He noted that “the idea of revolution as epochal, irreversible change was probably first applied in a systematic way to scientific events, and only later to political events.”[22] But that is not the key issue. In fact, the idea of linear time permeates not only the word “revolution,” but also such words as “development,” “evolution,” and even “history” — this is another issue, with no direct connection to whether the term “scientific revolution” is appropriate. And Kuhn was obviously not choosing to use the concept of “scientific revolution” because of the idea of linear time embedded in the word “revolution”; on the contrary, it was precisely Kuhn’s interpretation of “scientific revolution” that, to some extent, broke with the notion that scientific development is linear, one-way progress.

Kuhn’s adoption of the concept “scientific revolution” was also prompted by reflection on, and affirmation of, its political implications. When Kuhn discussed the legitimacy of the term scientific revolution, the question he was reflecting on was precisely this: whether scientific revolution and political revolution share certain important commonalities, and this commonality is what Kuhn called the “essence” of scientific revolution.

Kuhn asked: “By ‘scientific revolution’ here I mean those non-cumulative episodes in which an older paradigm is displaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one. Yet a further discussion is inevitably confronted by the substantive question that ensues: why should paradigm change be called revolution? In what analogous respects do the developmental episodes of politics and science exhibit the characteristic that justifies the label revolution for both?”[23]

He then consciously used the characteristics of political revolution to explain scientific revolution, and the inevitability of political revolution to argue for the inevitability of scientific revolution.

First: “Political revolutions are usually initiated by a growing sense, among some segment of the political community, that the existing institutions have ceased adequately to respond to the problems posed by an environment that they in part have created. In much the same way, scientific revolutions are initiated by a growing sense, again often restricted to a segment of the scientific community, that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature, to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way. In both political and scientific development the sense of malfunction that can lead to crisis is prerequisite to revolution.”[24]

This analogy explains the cause of the “scientific revolution,” namely “crisis.” Shapin also noticed that there really was a crisis in the European intellectual world before the seventeenth century: “the discovery of new objects in nature by Europeans … the traditional inventory of things in the world proved inadequate, unreasonable …”[25] “The entities recently observed became troublesome problems for existing philosophical systems …”[26] The traditional system of institutions could not effectively adapt to the new situation — that is precisely the background against which political or scientific revolution could be nurtured.

Kuhn then pointed out that “… the analogy has another and deeper significance as well … The object of a political revolution is to change political institutions in ways these institutions themselves forbid. Their success therefore necessitates the partial abrogation of some institutions and the transfer of loyalties to others; and in the interim, society is not fully ruled by institutions at all. Initially, it is the revolutionary situation that puts the institutions out of place.”[27]

This analogy shows that “scientific revolution” is a destructive overthrow of tradition: it abolishes some ways of thinking and methods that had been recognized within the tradition as reasonable, and replaces them with new models that the tradition did not permit. Shapin certainly also noticed that such transformations did indeed exist in the scientific development of the seventeenth century. For example, he pointed out that in the seventeenth century the traditional Aristotelian mode of teleological explanation was abolished and replaced by a mechanistic framework of thought[28].

Kuhn then noted: “… as more and more individuals become alienated from political life and begin to behave in unusual ways, the political solution breaks down. As the crisis deepens, many of these individuals will commit themselves to some concrete program for the reform of institutions, leading them into a political movement for the reconstruction of society. Society is then divided into competing camps or parties, one seeking to preserve the old institutions while others attempt to construct new ones.”[29]

This analogy shows that the emergence of a scientific revolution will take the form of a state of anarchic proliferation of parties: the struggle between the new and the old, and the competition among different new camps, are the basic pattern of the scientific revolutionary period. Shapin’s description of this pattern of coexistence of the old and the new, of plural parallelism, runs throughout the book. For example, he points out: “‘New’ and ‘old’ views of nature coexisted, and their supporters occasionally clashed over who was to be the modern or the ancient. …”[30] “Because seventeenth-century modernists disagreed on what constituted a proper empirical interpretation and philosophical role, they also disagreed over the methods by which knowledge of nature was to be obtained.”[31]

Kuhn then said: “And once these polarization effects appear, the political solutions to the crisis can no longer be found. Since the various parties’ notions about the institutional framework through which political change is to be achieved and assessed are different, and because they do not accept any standards beyond that framework by which their differences may be resolved, they must finally resort in the conflicts of revolution to the techniques of mass mobilization, frequently including force. Though revolution is of vital importance in the evolution of political institutions, this is precisely because revolution is not a wholly political event, one confined to institutions alone.”[32]

This analogy shows that, during a scientific revolution, no higher neutral standard of judgment can be found among the competing schools, and the ultimate arbiter often has to appeal to the masses. Shapin also confirmed all this. For example, he mentioned that Newton’s and Boyle’s two different conceptions of science were like two different sets of rules for a game, with no higher rule by which to adjudicate which was superior[33]. Shapin also mentioned the significance for scholarly debate at the time of public scientific communication[34] and activities such as “gatherings of the eminent”[35].

In addition, the analogy between political revolution and scientific revolution can also easily answer some of Shapin’s other trivial objections to scientific revolution. For example, if the number of people who initiate a revolution is so small compared with the population of the whole world, how can it be called a revolution? But if we think about the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and so on, the populations that directly set those revolutions in motion were probably also exceedingly small. Of course, Shapin might further argue that “there is no such thing as a political revolution at all,” but at the very least we should acknowledge that revolutions initiated by only a small clique can, in fact, fundamentally alter the structure and direction of the entire world.

In short, we see that Kuhn’s emphasis on the concept of “scientific revolution” was based on his conscious analogy between political revolution and scientific revolution, and these analogies help to intuitively indicate many important features of scientific revolution. Most of these features were confirmed by Shapin. But why, then, does Shapin single out “scientific revolution” for denial? The reason may only be this: he did not take Kuhn and the other serious historians of science seriously enough. When he launches his criticism, what he is confronting is not great scholarly opponents of comparable caliber, but merely loose and sweeping critiques that satisfy themselves with vulgar understandings. Shapin turned Scientific Revolution into a popular book with almost no citations, and that is entirely fitting; for if it were really written as a serious academic monograph, those sensational and crowd-pleasing pronouncements would not bear scrutiny.

Selected Bibliography

Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, translated by Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe, Peking University Press, 2003

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, translated by Wu Guosheng, Zhang Donglin, and Li Li, Peking University Press, 2003

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension, translated by Fan Dayan, Ji Shuli, et al., Peking University Press, 2004

Cohen, Revolutions in Science, translated by Lu Xudong, Zhao Peijie, and Song Zhenshan, Commercial Press, 1999

Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, translated by Zhang Butian, 2nd ed., Peking University Press, 2008

A. G. Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissance, translated by Zhou Yanling, Fudan University Press, 2000

January 13, 2009

[1] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 1 (translation adjusted)

[2] Ibid., p. 1

[3] Ibid., p. 7

[4] A. G. Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissance, translated by Zhou Yanling, Fudan University Press, 2000, p. 163

[5] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 7

[6] Ibid., p. 64

[7] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, translated by Wu Guosheng, Zhang Donglin, and Li Li, Peking University Press, 2003, p. 178[183]

[8] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 4

[9] Ibid., p. 121

[10] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, translated by Wu Guosheng, Zhang Donglin, and Li Li, Peking University Press, 2003, p. 4[4]

[11] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 9

[12] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, translated by Wu Guosheng, Zhang Donglin, and Li Li, Peking University Press, 2003, pp. 1~2[1]~[2]

[13] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 3

[14] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, translated by Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe, Peking University Press, 2003, p. 187[209]

[15] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 5

[16] Ibid., p. 6

[17] Ibid., p. 11

[18] Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, translated by Zhang Butian, Peking University Press, 2008, p. 2[2]

[19] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 29

[20] Ibid., p. 160

[21] Cohen, Revolutions in Science, translated by Lu Xudong, Zhao Peijie, and Song Zhenshan, Commercial Press, 1999, p. iii[ix]

[22] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 3

[23] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, translated by Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe, Peking University Press, 2003, p. 85[92]

[24] Ibid.

[25] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 18

[26] Ibid., p. 19

[27] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, translated by Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe, Peking University Press, 2003, p. 86[93]

[28] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 29

[29] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, translated by Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe, Peking University Press, 2003, p. 86[93]

[30] Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, translated by Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Education Publishing House, 2004, p. 65

[31] Ibid., p. 88

[32] [U.S.] Thomas Kuhn: *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*, trans. Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe, Peking University Press, 2003, p. 86 [93]

[33] Steven Shapin: *The Scientific Revolution*, trans. Xu Guoqiang, Yuan Jiangyang, and Sun Xiaochun, Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press, 2004, p. 114

[34] Ibid., p. 103

[35] Ibid., p. 132

Latest Comments

Xingkong
2009-01-17 00:16:33 Anonymous 124.205.78.253

Friendly criticism:
I didn’t expect you to write such a big topic, either. Much bigger than the one I wrote. According to your formulation, this topic can not only be written into several papers, but can even yield several monographs; in fact, there are already quite a few monographs on it.
And yet your article in fact does not discuss “what the Scientific Revolution is.” Because you neither carry out a philosophical analysis of the concept of the Scientific Revolution, nor review the historical content of the Scientific Revolution. It would be better to use the subtitle in place of the main title; that would fit your main text more closely.
I suggest posting it to the forum. I’m ready to criticize it hard. It’s not convenient to exchange ideas here, and criticism here is less satisfying.
Gūchī
2009-01-17 00:57:06

The subtitle is a completion of the main title. When the main title is very empty and very broad, the subtitle takes on the role of delimiting it.
A paper has only one topic. The main title and subtitle together make one title, not two titles.
I don’t want to tangle with you any further. If you want to criticize it, criticize it here. Afterward I’ll move the whole thing to BBS.
Gūchī
2009-01-17 01:25:10

Actually, it’s a bit freer to criticize here. On the forum I wouldn’t dare say it so directly. To be honest, I feel that you simply have not learned what writing a paper is……
In middle school, when learning argumentative essays, you were told “thesis, evidence, argumentation.” A paper should first of all have a center, namely, the “thesis.” This center can be the posing of a question, or it can be the giving of a certain conclusion.
The main title often succinctly sets out the thesis. Because this paper is a critique, its thesis is not very good, but the central issue around which the critique revolves is “what is the Scientific Revolution,” and so that serves as the main title. The meaning of the subtitle is to supplement or modify the main title, and absolutely not to be another title; it is a specific delimitation of the main title, such as “studied with … method,” “taking … as an example,” and so on. Main title and subtitle together constitute one topic; that is to say, “within the scope delimited by the subtitle, discuss the issue raised by the main title.” Even with subtitles of the form “and also on …,” it must still mean that, in the discussion of the topic, certain questions are incidentally or simultaneously brought out. In short, the subtitle is a supplement to the main title; don’t get this wrong.
If there were no subtitle, then I’d have to write a book like Kuhn’s. But the subtitle allows me to restrict myself to Shapin’s before-and-after context, and to discuss the concept of the Scientific Revolution in this context.
You really ought to imitate other people’s papers carefully.
Gūchī
2009-01-17 01:41:33

If you really want to “imitate,” then just go look at the papers other people write. See how they use main titles and subtitles. If you had truly learned consciously, you couldn’t possibly have come here and said something so naïve!
I’ll just casually pull up a few titles for you from the hps library:
Huang Ruixiong, What Exactly Is Scientific Knowledge? — An Analysis of Polanyi’s “Faith-based View of Scientific Knowledge”
Li Shuhua: How Is Scientific Originality Possible? — Einstein’s Philosophical Thought and Cosmic Religious Feeling
Li Sanhu: Science and Language Games — Lyotard’s Postmodern Philosophy of Science
Zhou Chao: The End of Philosophy of Science — A Review of Bloor’s Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Han Pugeng, Liu Kui: The Predicament of Contemporary Philosophy of Science and the Breakthrough of Naturalism — A Review of Armstrong’s Reconstruction of Scientific Realism
Ren Dingcheng: An Excellent Example of the Cognitive Turn in Philosophy of Science — On Paul Thagard’s Computational Theory of the Mechanism of Chemical Revolution
Guo Jiezhong, Liu Li: Scientific Interpretation and Critique — A Comparison of Kuhn’s and Roth’s Philosophical Thought on Science
Chen Xiaoping: Complementary Logic and Dialectical Logic — Also on Relation Realism [
Chen Jian: Beyond Realism and Anti-realism — On A. Fine’s Natural Ontological Attitude
Ye Chusheng: Can Naturalized Epistemology Be Normative? — A Review of H. I. Brown’s Defense of Naturalized Epistemology
Xingkong
2009-01-17 17:04:19 Anonymous 124.205.78.253

“‘I don’t want to tangle with you any further…… to be honest, I feel that you simply have not learned what writing a paper is.’”
Little Gū, those two sentences of yours really wound our revolutionary friendship. If you think I have not reached the level you have, and am not qualified to criticize your article, or even not worthy of speaking with you, then I’ll shut up right now and guarantee I won’t say another word from now on.
Heartbroken…
Xingkong
2009-01-17 17:10:29 Anonymous 124.205.78.253

Finally, I can’t help saying one more thing: Shapin’s *The Scientific Revolution* was written for the general public to begin with; the part written for experts is the index section at the back, and there are more viewpoints later on. Making a serious critique of the front part instead lowers your standing.
Gūchī
2009-01-17 18:26:37

Of course you have the right to criticize my article; your problem is not a matter of higher or lower level.
Actually, I especially like talking with friends in the lower years of undergraduate study. Philosophy ought to be plain and straightforward; the lower undergraduate years are enough to enter into discussion. Your problem is not a matter of higher or lower level.
Recently I’ve looked at some first-year students’ papers, and they’re all quite interesting. Some are very creative in terms of ideas; some are superficially rather like the real thing. Your problem is not a matter of higher or lower level.
The form of my paper is comparatively casual; it’s not good. Many of the papers written by juniors and seniors are more presentable than mine. My technique for writing papers is actually rather average. But I say whatever I want to say. Even when it comes to the professors who appear on the Science of Science forum, if they’re unreliable I’ll criticize them hard without hesitation, let alone you? If you insist on thinking that I am self-important, arrogant, and trampling on revolutionary friendship, then there’s nothing to be done.
Finally, what you said is quite right: the reason I said “the choice of topic in this article does not especially satisfy me” is that I felt there was no point in getting entangled with Shapin. But in any case, in the parts aimed at the general public, Shapin also repeatedly and directly points his criticism at other “historians” since Koyré, which is not appropriate.