The Habermasian Public Sphere and “Science in the Enlightenment”

For recent syntheses, see Donovan Arthur L. (ed.), “The chemical revolution: Essays in reinterpretation”, Osiris, 2nd ser., iv (1988); and McEvoy John G. , “The chemical revolution in context”, Eighteenth century: Theory and interpretation, xxxiii (1992), 198–216.

One such an assessment, with respect to the fate of the kind of natural history practised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, comes at the end of Paula Findlen's Possessing nature: Museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994), 393–407.

Golinski Jan V. , “Science in the enlightenment”, History of science, xxiv (1986), 411–24.

For an excellent example of the sceptical attitude toward a trans-national European Enlightenment that developed in the 1980s, see Porter Roy Teich Mikuláš (eds), The Enlightenment in national context (Cambridge, 1981).

Golinski , “Science in the Enlightenment” (ref. 3), 418–19.

Habermas Jürgen , The structural transformation of the public sphere , transl. by Burger Thomas with Lawrence Frederick (Cambridge, Mass., 1989). For general commentaries on the public sphere, see Jacob Margaret C. , “The mental landscape of the public sphere: A European perspective”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxviii (1994), 95–113; La Vopa Anthony J. , “Conceiving a public: Ideas and society in eighteenth-century Europe”, The journal of modern history, lxiv (1992), 79–116; Goodman Dena , “Public sphere and private life: Toward a synthesis of current historiographical approaches to the Old Regime”, History and theory, xxxi (1992), 1–20; Baker Keith Michael , “Public opinion as political invention”, in idem, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French political culture in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1990), 167–99; Chartier Roger , “The public sphere and public opinion”, in idem, The cultural origins of the French Revolution , transl. by Cochrane Lydia G. (Durham, N.C., 1991), 20–37; Bödeker Hans Erich , “Journals and public opinion: The politicization of the German enlightenment in the second half of the eighteenth century”, in Hellmuth Eckhart (ed.), The transformation of political culture: England and Germany in the eighteenth century (Oxford, 1990), 423–45; and the essays collected in Calhoun Craig (ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).

See “The public and the nation”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxix, no. 1 (1995), and the contributions of Daniel Gordon, David Bell and Sarah Maza in French historical studies, xvii (1992), 882–956. For a stimulating contribution to the discussion of the public sphere and the French Revolution, and one that touches on the history of medicine as well, see Jones Colin , “The great chain of buying: Medical advertisement, the bourgeois public sphere, and the origins of the French Revolution”, American historical review, ci (1996), 13–40.

For this reason, my interpretation differs substantially from Lorraine Daston's use of the republic of letters as a regulative ideal that shaped the practice and discourse of science in eighteenth-century Europe. I do not dispute Daston's claim that such an ideal existed for intellectuals at that time, nor that in a general way the ideal may have guided the behaviour of those who considered themselves members of the republic. Yet there is little in Daston's presentation of the concept that tells what was distinctive about the republic of letters during the Enlightenment. Nor does the model of a republic of letters address what is of central concern for this essay, namely the public authority of science in Enlightenment culture. See Daston Lorraine , “The ideal and reality of the republic of letters in the Enlightenment”, Science in context, iv (1991), 367–86. For the same reasons, the concept of the public developed here differs from the republic of letters described in Anne Goldgar's excellent study, Impolite learning: Conduct and community in the republic of letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven, Conn., 1995). Goldgar herself notes the differences between the republic of letters and a Habermasian “public sphere” on pp. 5–6. See also Goodman Dena , The republic of letters: A cultural history of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), for a comprehensive discussion of the normative codes underlying the eighteenth-century republic of letters.

Simply stated, what I am characterizing as a discourse of theory and practice is the distinctive claims made by physicians, economists, nuclear engineers, and other professionals that: (1) they possess a body of coherent and scientifically validated knowledge about some domain; and (2) this knowledge serves in a fairly direct way as the basis for the practices undertaken by professionals. Obviously not every occupation that we would call a “profession” fits this definition; for a variety of reasons, the law is an important exception. But insofar as I am describing the cultural authority of scientific knowledge here, I am most interested in those professions that claim to possess such knowledge and deploy it in practice. See Broman Thomas , “Rethinking professionalization: Theory, practice, and professional ideology in eighteenth-century German medicine”, Journal of modern history, lxvii (1995), 835–72.

The timing of the emergence of the public sphere depends on the national setting. Habermas believed it developed first in England in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, and then later on in places like the Netherlands and France. Most historians have agreed with him; see, for example, Jacob , “The mental landscape of the public sphere” (ref. 6), 96; Pincus Steve , “‘Coffee politicians does create’: Coffeehouses and restoration political culture”, Journal of modern history, lxvii (1995), 807–34, on English coffee-house political culture after 1688; and Goodman , The republic of letters (ref. 8), 15–52, which discusses the migration of the French republic of letters from its seat in the learned academies founded during the reign of Louis XIV to institutions such as the Encyclopédie and the salons of Paris by the mid-eighteenth century. The public sphere in German-speaking Central Europe is routinely thought to have formed after the Seven Years War, during the 1760s and 1770s.

Habermas , Structural transformation (ref. 6), 1–26.

Smith Adam , An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, ed. with an introduction, etc., by Edwin Cannan, i (1976 repr. of London, 1904), 26.

Hegel Georg W. F. , The philosophy of right , transl. with notes by Knox T. M. (Oxford, 1979), 123. I certainly do not want to be understood as claiming that Hegel and Smith held identical concepts of civil society, or that they used them in similar ways. I cite both merely to demonstrate a continuity between them that includes: (1) the primacy of production and exchange in constituting society; and (2) the role of individual actors (as opposed to guilds, corporations, or feudal orders) in the social order.

Goodman , “Public sphere and private life” (ref. 6), 14.

Habermas , Structural transformation (ref. 6), 1–26.

In places, Habermas himself seems to think that the absolutist state creates civil society. “Civil society”, he writes at one point, “came into existence as the corollary of depersonalized state authority” (ibid., 19). But it might be pointed out that it also makes historical sense to suppose that “the State” is an ideological tool deployed by sovereigns and the commercial and professional middle classes in a struggle for political power against the hereditary aristocracy.

Goodman , The republic of letters (ref. 8); Pincus , “‘Coffee politicians does create’” (ref. 10); Jacob Margaret C. , Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and politics in eighteenth-century Europe (New York, 1991); Reinalter Helmut (ed.), Aufklärung und Geheimgesellschaften: Zur politischen Funktion und Sozialstruktur der Freimaurerlogen im 18. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1989); and van Dülmen Richard , Die Gesellschaft der Aufklärer: Zur bürgerlichen Emancipation und aufklärischen Kultur in Deutschland (Frankfurt, 1986).

As Paul Wood has acutely pointed out, it is a conspicuous absence in Habermas's account that he makes no room in his model for scientific discourse in the genesis of the public sphere, even though scientific knowledge was undoubtedly central to the culture of the Enlightenment. Wood Paul , “Science, the universities, and the public sphere in eighteenth-century Scotland”, History of universities, xiv (1994), 99–135, p. 120.

Goodman , “Public sphere and private life” (ref. 6), 14–20. See also Vopa La , “Conceiving a public” (ref. 6), 113–15.

Golinski Jan , Science as public culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992); and Stewart Larry , The rise of public science: Rhetoric, technology and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992). The relevance of science for the new commercial and industrial élites in Britain is discussed in Porter Roy , “Science, provincial culture and public opinion in Enlightenment England”, British journal for eighteenth-century studies, iii (1980), 20–46. The wellspring for much of the recent scholarship on the commercialization of British cultural and intellectual life is Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and Plumb J. H. , The birth of consumer society: The commercialization of eighteenth-century England (Bloomington, Ind., 1982).

Wood , “Science, the universities, and the public sphere” (ref. 18).

The same goes for two other treatments of the public for science in the eighteenth century, Steven Shapin's discussion of the audience for science in eighteenth-century Edinburgh and Simon Schaffer's influential essay on natural philosophy as public spectacle. See Shapin , “The audience for science in eighteenth-century Edinburgh”, History of science, xii (1974), 95–121; and Schaffer , “Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century”, History of science, xxi (1983), 1–43.

Wood , “Science, the universities, and the public sphere” (ref. 18), 122.

This point demands a bit of elaboration. For reasons based on the political project implied in Structural transformation and elaborated in his later work, Habermas presented the British public sphere as the “model” European public sphere and the French and German versions as variants. He did this despite the fact that his understanding of the public sphere owed a considerable debt to Kant. See Vopa La , “Conceiving a public” (ref. 6), 101–2. From our perspective, it makes little sense to elect one or another candidate as the “real” public sphere. Rather, there is good work to be done by paying attention to the significant differences that characterized the public sphere in different national contexts — The position of London and especially Paris as dominant cultural centres in their countries, for example, and the complete lack of an equivalent in Germany — While not ignoring the commonalities between them.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of pure reason, transl. by Smith Norman Kemp (New York, 1965), 9.

See Roger Chartier's comments on Kant's distinction between public and private in “The public sphere and public opinion” (ref. 6), 24–26.

Kant Immanuel , “What is enlightenment?”, in Beck Lewis White (ed.), Kant on history (Indianapolis, 1963), 5–6. The reference to scholars in the quote displays Kant's belief that in a society undergoing enlightenment (as opposed to a fully enlightened society), certain individuals would serve as an intellectual vanguard by providing the example of how others can eventually free themselves from their “self-imposed tutelage”. I will return to the role of scholars in the public sphere toward the end of the essay.

On the emergence of literary criticism in the eighteenth century, see Hohendahl Peter Uwe , “Literary criticism and the public sphere”, in idem, The institution of criticism (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), 44–82, esp. pp. 47–58; Berghahn Klaus , “From classicist to classical literary criticism, 1730–1806”, in Hohendahl Peter Uwe (ed.), A history of German literary criticism (Lincoln, Neb., 1988), 13–98; and Bender John , “A new history of the Enlightenment?”, Eighteenth-century life, xvi (1992), 1–20.

Lessing Gotthold Ephraim , “Laocoon, or On the limits of painting and poetry”, in Nisbet H. B. (ed.), German aesthetic and literary criticism: Winckelmann, Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Schiller, Goethe (Cambridge, 1985), 58–133, pp. 58–59.

Archiv für die Physiologie, i/1 (1795), 4.

With respect to the continual cycle of exchange between readers and writers manifested in the Archiv, it might be noted that Reil published in the early volumes a scattering of letters from readers, commenting on topics Reil had raised in his own writings. Reil meanwhile became a reader himself in his capacity as book reviewer. Most issues contained a section of reviews, in which Reil offered a synopsis of a book's contents interspersed with his own critical appraisals.

Journal der Erfindungen Theorien, und Widersprüche in der Natur- und Arzneywissenschaft, Stück 1 (1792), 17.

Journal der Erfindungen, Stück 3 (1793), p. iv.

The ALZ's Intelligenzblatt was a brilliant innovation because it deflected away from the publisher some of the normal costs of producing a periodical. Whereas typically a publisher paid contributors to a periodical on the basis of the length of the contribution, the items appearing in the Intelligenzblatt were essentially advertisements paid for by the people who posted them. Therefore, the publishers of the ALZ made money twice from the publication of the Intelligenzblatt: Once from the original submissions, and again from the sale of copies of the ALZ to the public, copies made all the more saleable by the spicy news one could expect to find in the Intelligenzblatt. For an early history of such publications, see Lindemann Margot , Geschichte der deutschen Presse, Teil I, “Deutsche Presse bis 1815” (Berlin, 1969), 248–55. I am currently conducting research on this and other aspects of the economics of the public sphere in eighteenth-century Germany.

For a perceptive critique of the gender implications in Habermas's concept of the public sphere see Fraser Nancy , “What's critical about critical theory? The case of Habermas and gender”, in idem, Unruly practices: Power, discourse, and gender in contemporary social theory (Minneapolis, 1989), 113–43.

I have made this point at greater length in Broman , “Rethinking professionalization” (ref. 9). See also Cook Harold J. , “Good advice and little medicine: The professional authority of early modern English physicians”, Journal of British studies, xxxiii (1994), 1–31.

Berghahn Klaus L. , “Das schwierige Geschäft der Aufklärung: Zur Bedeutung der Zeitschriften im literarischen Leben des 18. Jahrhunderts”, in Wessels Hans-Friedrich (ed.), Aufklärung: Ein literaturwissenschaftliches Studienbuch (Königstein, 1984), 32–65.

“Ueber die Medicin: Arkesilas an Ekdemus”, Der neue teutsche Merkur, August 1795, 337–78, p. 338.

Ibid., 340.

Ibid., 344–6, 352–8.

Ibid., 346.

Ibid., 358–9.

Hufeland Christoph Wilhelm , “Ein Wort über den Angriff der razionellen Medicin im N. T. Merkur. August 1795”, Der neue teutsche Merkur, October 1795, 138–53, pp. 138–9.

Ibid., 139.

Ibid., 145–6.

Variations on this list were a staple in handbooks of medical practice. For examples, see Vogel Samuel Gottlieb , Kurze Anleitung zum gründlichen Studium der Arzneywissenschaft (Stendal, 1791), 109; and Hecker August Friedrich , Therapia generalis oder Handbuch der allgemeinen Heilkunde, 2nd rev. edn (Erfurt, 1805), 153–62.

Hufeland Christoph Wilhelm , Enchiridion Medicum, oder Anleitung zur medizinischen Praxis (Berlin, 1836), 7.

Hufeland , “Ein Wort über den Angriff” (ref. 43), 144–5.

“An Hrn. Rath D. Hufeland in Jena, über dessen Wort im N.T. Merkur 1795. 10. St. S. 168. Vom Verf. des Arkesilas”, Der neue teutsche Merkur, January 1796, 76–92, p. 76.

Ibid., 81.

Kant , “What is enlightenment?” (ref. 27), 4. Kant in fact does not explicitly assign the vanguard position to the individuals he labels “scholars”. But I think the overall thrust of his discussion makes this equation a reasonable one.

Erhard addressed the connection between theory and practice in “Ueber die Möglichkeit der Heilkunst”, Magazin zur Vervollkömmnung der theoretischen and practischen Heilkunde, i (1799), 23–83. Quite by coincidence, Kant had written a short essay on the relationship between theory and practice only a couple of years previously. However, Kant had addressed the issue in terms of the application of his categorical imperative (a general moral principle given by the faculty of reason) to practical situations in ethics, politics, and the law. Thus he framed the issue in terms of the traditional meaning of praxis. Aside from a few passing remarks, Kant did not address theory and practice in medicine. More's the pity, for undoubtedly he would have had interesting things to say about it. See “Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig seyn, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis”, in Kant's gesammelte Schriften, viii (Berlin, 1912), 273–313.

On the monopolization of professional discourse by university-based departments, see Larson Magali Sarfatti , “In the matter of experts and professionals, or How impossible it is to leave nothing unsaid”, in Torstendahl Rolf Burrage Michael (eds), The formation of professions: Knowledge, state and strategy (London, 1990), 24–50.

Of course, one might ask whether the public sphere in the eighteenth century was not already subject to the same “corrupting influences”. As indicated by my remarks about the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung above (ref. 34), I suspect it was, and indeed ineluctably so. Along the same lines, Colin Jones (ref. 7) has recently reminded historians of the public sphere that they have too readily divorced the public sphere from the history of capitalism, in spite of the prominence given by Habermas to the role of capitalism in its emergence.

Hufbauer Karl , The formation of the German chemical community (1720–1795) (Berkeley, Calif., 1982).

I have elaborated on this subject in Broman Thomas H. , “J. C. Reil and the ‘journalization’ of physiology”, in Dear Peter (ed.), The literary structure of scientific argument (Philadelphia, 1991), 13–42.

Shapin Steven , A social history of truth (Chicago, 1994), 409–17, quoted on p. 413.

Ibid., 415.

See his comments on Giddens's concept of “access points”, ibid., 416.

Some readers may bridle at the admixture of Foucault in an article about Habermas's public sphere, recalling a famous “debate” they began to have in the 1980s about the public sphere, before Foucault's death cut it short. Let me point out here that their disagreement was over Habermas's conviction that a communicative space like the eighteenth-century public sphere could serve as the basis for an authentic form of liberal democracy in the modern world. Foucault, who zealously criticized any such forms of philosophical foundationalism, refused to believe that critical theory, as represented by Habermas, could find an Archimedean fulcrum for mounting its liberal-democratic critique of power. Therefore, their disagreement had nothing to do with whether the public sphere might exist as a discursive structure, just over its ultimate foundations. See the numerous contributions by the two principals, along with commentaries, in Kelly Michael (ed.), Critique and power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas debate (Cambridge, Mass., 1994).

Foucault Michel , The archaeology of knowledge, transl. by Smith A. M. Sheridan (New York, 1982), 31–76.