Essay Review: Writing off the Scientific Revolution: Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution

Skinner's Quentin “Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas”, History and theory , viii (1969), 3–53, is an early and much discussed protest against the various manifestations of what I have called attributive anachronism. As the subsequent debate has shown, questions concerning unintended consequences of past actions and openness of texts to unintended readings render an embargo on attributive anachronism problematic in application.

The historical distortions imposed by what I have called “evaluative anachronism” are emphasised in Wilson A. Ashplant T. , “Whig history and present centred history”, The historical journal , xxxi (1988), 1–16.

For articulations of these commitments by one of the architects and finest exponents of the new historicism see Pocock J. G. A. , “The state of the art”, Introduction to his Virtue, commerce and history (Cambridge, 1985), and “The concept of a language and the métier d'historien: Some considerations on practice”, in The languages of political theory , ed. by Pagden A. (Cambridge, 1987), 19–38.

For a striking example see the passage from Roeslin's Helisaeus De opere Dei Creationis , 1597, cited in Jardine N. , The birth of history and philosophy of science , rev. edn (Cambridge, 1988), 282.

On the history of the concept of revolution see Bender K.-H. , Revolutionen (Munich, 1977); Cohen I. B. , Revolution in science (Cambridge, Mass., 1985).

On science as a nineteenth-century creation see, for example, Cannon S. F. , Science in culture: The early Victorian period (New York, 1978); Bellone E. , A world on paper: Studies on the second Scientific Revolution , transl. by M. and Giacconi R. (Cambridge, Mass., 1980).

Information, not always reliable, on Early Modern classifications of the arts and sciences is to be found in Flint R. , Philosophy as scientia scientiarum and a history of classifications of the sciences (Edinburgh, 1904). On Early Modern encyclopedic and utopian schemes see Schmidt-Biggemann W. , Topica universalis: Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft (Hamburg, 1983), and Dierse U. , Enzyclopädie: Zur Geschichte eines philosophischen und wissenschaftstheoretischen Begriffs , Part I (Bonn, 1977).

For a lively and forceful protest against anachronism with respect to science see Cunningham A. R. , “Getting the game right: Some plain words on the identity and invention of science”, Studies in history and philosophy of science , xix (1988), 365–89.

Pocock himself treats linguistic disunity in texts as the norm, insisting that postulates of linguistic unity and coherence require “evidence that the author both intended the production of a coherent text and understood what would constitute its coherence” (“The state of the art”, 24–25).

In addition to the evidence cited by Westman it should be noted that in the first half of the sixteenth century, dedicatory prefaces remain a distinctively humanist genre: See Schottenloher K. , Die Widmungsvorrede im Buch des 16. Jahrhunderts (Munster, 1953).

On the crucial roles of questions of genre and generic propriety in sixteenth-century writing and reflection on reading and writing see Rosalie Colie's marvellous The resources of kind: Genre-theory in the Renaissance , ed. by Lewalski B. K. (Berkeley, 1973).

See the standard work on humanist persuasive strategies: Vasoli C. , La dialettica e la retorica dell'Umanesimo (Milan, 1968).

Kuhn T. , The Copernican Revolution , chap. 5. I have argued that the illusion of incoherence within Book 1 is further dispelled by taking account of the tradition of natural philosophical commentary on theoricae planetarum in which Copernicus writes (“The significance of the Copernican orbs”, Journal for the history of astronomy , xiii (1982), 168–94).

See, e.g., Kelley D. R. , Foundations of modern historical scholarship: Language, law and history in the French Renaissance (London, 1970); Jardine , The birth of history and philosophy of science , chap. 8; Kemp A. , The estrangement of the past: A study in the origins of modern historical consciousness (Oxford, 1991).

Jardine , ibid.; Jardine N. , The scenes of inquiry: On the reality of questions in the sciences (Oxford, 1991).