Page 366 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

science—overview 1667

that one tells what happened and the other what might happen. For this reason poetry
is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give
general truths while history gives particular facts. • Aristotle (384–322 bce)

theories about the nature of reality are offered in most pean conquerors, whose ideas undermined existing
forms of religion. Inductivist and falsificationist argu- knowledge systems as effectively as their diseases and mil-
ments cannot prove the truth of science; at best they high- itary technologies undermined existing power structures.
light the pragmatic fact that scientific theories work As the scale of human information networks widened,
because they are based on a larger body of observational attempts to integrate knowledge into coherent systems
evidence than any earlier knowledge systems and are also required the elimination of culture-specific explanations
subject to exceptionally rigorous truth tests. and encouraged reliance on abstract universals that could
That line of argument suggests that we examine mod- embrace larger and more diverse bodies of information
ern science’s place in human life historically, seeing mod- and that could appeal to more diverse audiences. As the
ern science as one of many different human knowledge sociologist Norbert Elias (1897–1990) wrote in an ele-
systems that have evolved in the course of world history. gant account of changing concepts of time, “The double
From this perspective, it is striking how, over time, human movement towards larger and larger units of social inte-
knowledge systems have had to incorporate more and gration and longer and longer chains of social interde-
more information, and how the task of distilling that pendencies . . . had close connections with specific
information into coherent theories has required ever cognitive changes, among them the ascent to higher lev-
more stringent testing of ideas and yielded theories that els of conceptual synthesis” (Elias 1998, 179). The
were increasingly universal and abstract in their form change can be seen clearly in the history of religions. As
though increasingly elaborate in their details. Perhaps, religious systems embraced larger and larger areas, local
then, the main distinguishing feature of modern science gods were increasingly supplanted by universal gods
is its scale. claiming broader and more general powers and behaving
As Andrew Sherratt puts it: “’Intellectual Evolution’ . . . in more lawlike and predictable ways than the local
consists principally in the emergence of modes of think- gods they displaced. Eventually, the gods themselves
ing appropriate for larger and larger human groupings began to be displaced by abstract, impersonal forces such
. . .This transferability has been manifested in the last five as gravity that seemed to work in all societies, irrespective
hundred years in the growth of science, with its striving of local religious or cultural beliefs.
for culture-free criteria of acceptance.... ” Because it is
the first truly global knowledge system, modern science The Emergence and
tries to explain a far greater volume and variety of infor- Evolution of Science
mation, and it subjects that information to far more strin- The knowledge systems of the animal world are individ-
gent truth tests than any earlier knowledge system. ualistic; each individual has to construct its own maps of
This approach may help explain the two other dis- reality, with minimal guidance from other members of its
tinctive features of modern science: its astonishing capac- species. Humans construct their knowledge systems col-
ity to help us manipulate our surroundings and rigorous lectively because they can swap information so much
avoidance of anthropomorphic explanations. For most of more effectively than other animals.As a result, all human
human history, knowledge systems were closely linked to knowledge systems distill the knowledge of many indi-
particular communities, and as long as they provided viduals over many generations, and this is one reason
adequate explanations of the problems faced by those why they are so much more effective and more general in
communities, their credibility was unlikely to be chal- their application than those of animals.
lenged. But their limitations could be exposed all too eas- This means that even the most ancient of human
ily by the sudden appearance of new problems, new knowledge systems possessed in some degree the quali-
ideas, or new threats.This was what happened through- ties of generality and abstraction that are often seen as
out the Americas, for example, after the arrival of Euro- distinguishing marks of modern science. Frequently, it