Science, Religion, and Modernity:

Early Modern Science and the Idea of Moral Progress

Peter Harrison

Preprint. Final version in Donald Yerxa (ed.), British Abolitionism and the Question of
Moral Progress in History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2012).

In his inaugural lectures, delivered at Harvard University in the years 1935-36, pioneer

historian of science George Sarton confidently announced that “The history of science is the only

history which can illustrate the progress of mankind.” “In fact,” he went on to say, “progress has

no definite and unquestionable meaning in other fields than the field of science.”1 For most

historians and philosophers of science this bold view has itself become a victim of the progress

of their respective disciplines.2 Yet Sarton’s contention that science is uniquely progressive—in

contrast to such areas of human endeavour as the arts, literature, religion, philosophy and

ethics—remains remarkably widespread.3 His confidence in the progressive nature of science,

moreover, was by no means unprecedented, and drew on a long tradition that had its origins in

the Enlightenment and which received robust expression in the philosophy of Auguste Comte

(whom Sarton regarded as a kind of founding father of the history of science). Indeed, the

association of science with human advancement is one that goes back even further to the

beginnings of modern science in the seventeenth century. During this period, however, the idea

of scientific progress was not divorced from the more “subjective” realm of moral and religious

values, and “the advancement of learning,” to use Francis Bacon’s expression, was premised on

a particular vision of moral advancement. The broad thesis I shall sketch out in this paper is that

what we encounter in the seventeenth century is both a new conception of science and a new

conception of moral progress, and that these were intimately related. The idea of scientific

advancement that emerges for the first time in the seventeenth century owes something to

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discussions that were taking place in the realm of moral philosophy. Indeed, the social legitimacy

of the new science was dependent to a large degree on the emergence of this new conception of

moral progress.

Natural Philosophy, Science, and Scientia

The current generation of historians of science tends to be scrupulous in its use of actors’

categories for the various approaches to the study of nature in particular periods of history.

Historians typically avoid using the anachronistic term science, when referring to systematic

investigations of natural order in the pre-modern and early modern periods. Instead they use

expressions that contemporaries used to describe their own activities—“natural philosophy,”

along with “natural history,” “mixed mathematical sciences,” astronomy, astrology, alchemy,

physic, and so on.4 While a fastidious insistence on the use of actors’ categories may at times

seem to concede too much to the current trend of anti-Whig history, this practice has been of

enormous importance in providing insights into the intellectual world of the early modern period,

and into the connections between formal approaches to the study of nature, on the one hand, and

other aspects of human endeavor such as religion and ethics, on the other. As a consequence of

these new sensitivities, it has become clear that natural philosophy is very different from modern

science, and that one important difference lies in the role that moral and religious considerations

played in natural philosophy., For example, the English Franciscan philosopher Roger Bacon

(1214-94), contended that natural philosophy ultimately had a moral orientation: “all speculative

philosophy has moral philosophy for its end and aim.”5 (Under the prevailing disciplinary

taxonomy, speculative philosophy comprised theology, mathematics, and natural philosophy.)

We hear echoes of this sentiment four centuries later in Isaac Newton’s observation, set in the

Opticks (1704), that one of the goals of natural philosophy (the activity Newton considered

2
himself to be engaged in) was to enlarge the bounds of moral philosophy and ultimately to shed

light on the nature of the “first cause”—God.6 Considerations of this sort have led historians to

the conclusion that natural philosophy, on account of its religious and moral orientation, differs

significantly from modern science. Cambridge historian of science Andrew Cunningham has

gone so far as to say that the natural philosophy was about “God’s achievements, God’s

intentions, God’s purposes, God’s messages to man.”7

I do not wish to suggest, however, that Roger Bacon and Isaac Newton shared a common

vision of the goals of philosophy, in spite of the continuity implied by their shared use of the

term “natural philosophy” and their insistence on its moral orientation. A key difference lies in

Newton’s confidence that, as he puts it, the bounds of moral philosophy might be “enlarged.”

This suggests, in turn, that he believed moral philosophy to be a cumulative enterprise, and hence

capable of being enlarged. Newton’s idea seems to have been that what makes this possible is

advancement in the auxiliary discipline of natural philosophy. In order to understand the

significance of this difference between Roger Bacon and Isaac Newton, we need to give

consideration to changing conceptions of the nature and goals of philosophy itself.

The past decade has witnessed a growing interest amongst historians of ideas in the

conceptions of philosophy in the classical and medieval periods. One of the more influential

writers on this topic, French intellectual historian Pierre Hadot, has suggested that whereas we

typically imagine ancient and medieval philosophy to have been conducted in a manner broadly

similar to what transpires in the modern university departments of analytical philosophy, in fact

ancient philosophers were primarily concerned with “spiritual exercises” and “a way of life.”

Past philosophical activity, on this understanding, was focused less on doctrines and arguments

to do with epistemology and ontology, and aimed instead at moral formation. It follows that

many contemporary historians of philosophy have systematically misconstrued ancient

philosophy by considering philosophical doctrines and arguments to have been the end of

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philosophy rather than a means of personal transformation.8 Others have advanced views similar

to Hadot’s or have elaborated these claims in various ways.9

As a branch of philosophy, natural philosophy may be assumed to have shared some of

the ‘spiritual’ goals of philosophy. In our own age, when science has largely eschewed

questions of meaning and value, it is difficult to image how in the past the study of nature might

have served the ends of philosophical formation. However, if we attend carefully to what past

thinkers said about their “scientific” activities, a case can be made that natural philosophy, no

less than philosophy proper, was addressed to the question of the pursuit of the good life. That

case cannot be made here, but even a cursory consideration of the evidence will, I hope, point to

the plausibility of such a claim. Consider these examples from antiquity. Epicurus recommended

“endless pursuit of the study of nature” because of his conviction that such study “contributes

more than anything else to the tranquility and happiness of life.”10 Epicurean physics was thus

intended to serve Epicurean ethics. The sceptics, both Academic and Pyrrhonic, can also be

understood as engaged in the quest to achieve wisdom of a similar kind. The Pyrrhonic skeptic is

one who, through the suspension of judgment (epoche), attains peace of mind or

“unperturbability” (ataraxia). Natural science, logic, and ethics were studied only because they

contributed to this state of tranquillity.11 In a similar vein, astronomer and mathematician

Claudius Ptolemy contended that study of the mathematical regularities of the heavens “makes

its followers lovers of this divine beauty, accustoming them and reforming their natures, as it

were to a spiritual state.”12

Once we understand the goals of natural philosophy in this light, we gain important new

insights into some of the classic episodes in the history of philosophy and science. The famous

Condemnation of Aristotle, issued by the Bishop of Paris in 1277, has typically been understood

as a reaction against those Aristotelian doctrines that were held to be inconsistent with Christian

teaching. While it is true that a number of such doctrines are identified in the 219 propositions, it

4
can be argued that the primary issue was the Aristotelian conception of the philosophical life and

the claim that it was superior to the prevailing understanding of the Christian life.13 Tellingly, the

very first propositions to be censured are these: “That there is no more excellent state than to

study philosophy,” and “That the only wise men in the world are the philosophers.”14 Similarly,

the revolution in the sciences that took place over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries may be characterized, at least in part, as a series of attempts to revise the goals of

natural philosophy—goals that had previously been subordinated to this broader understanding

of philosophy as a formative process.15 Much of the recent skepticism about the category “the

scientific revolution” has rightly focused on the fact that there was at this time neither “science”

as we understand it, nor a revolution. Yet it is possible to identify a significant change in

conceptions of the goals of philosophy and natural philosophy at this time, and this, it can be

argued, accounts for the common sentiment among seventeenth-century writers that they were

witnesses to a momentous change in the realm of learning. On this understanding, the

Copernican revolution that saw a rejection of the Ptolemaic cosmos was accompanied by a

parallel rejection of the Ptolemaic understanding of the moral goals of mathematical and

philosophical investigation.

Ideas about the formative role of the contemplation of nature were not difficult to

incorporate into a framework of medieval theology which tended to emphasize the priority of the

contemplative life and which held that God’s wisdom and power were evident in the created

order. They were also consistent with a Christianized Aristotelian moral philosophy that had

become dominant from the thirteenth century. In this framework, virtues were understood as

habits or dispositions that were acquired through practice. Aristotle, of course, had known

nothing of the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, but these “theological virtues” were now

added to an existing taxonomy of mental habits that already included moral and intellectual

virtues. One of the latter was “science” (scientia), understood as a personal quality rather than

5
body of knowledge. Bringing together the idea of philosophy as moral formation and a

conception of virtue as an inner disposition acquired by repeated practice, we can see that the

practice of natural philosophy in the Middle Ages had as a primary aim the development of

particular intellectual virtues. Natural philosophy, as one of the three speculative sciences, was

aimed at producing a particular kind of person, namely, one possessed of the intellectual virtues.

Witness Thomas Aquinas on the intellectual virtue scientia:

In like manner, science can increase in itself by addition; thus

when anyone learns several conclusions of geometry, the same

specific habit of science increases in that man. Yet a man's science

increases, as to the subject's participation thereof, in intensity, in so

far as one man is quicker and readier than another in considering

the same conclusions.16

“Science” was thus a mental habit which was gradually acquired through the practice of

scientific demonstration. This basic conception applied to all the sciences, including their queen,

theology. The science of theology, according to John Duns Scotus, produces a habit that perfects

the intellect: “The intellect perfected by the habit of theology apprehends God as one who should

be loved.”17 Scotus’s point was that the science of theology was to be understood as a means of

perfecting the intellect and predisposing it to the act of loving God. These connotations of

scientia were well known in the Renaissance and persisted until the seventeenth century. Thomas

Holyoake’s Dictionary (1676) states that scientia, properly speaking, is the act of the knower,

and secondarily, the thing known. The entry also stresses the classical and scholastic idea of

science as “a habit of knowledge got by demonstration.”18 The progressive nature of science, on

6
this understanding, lies in the fact that through repeated practice, the individual becomes more

proficient at particular mental operations.

The point that I wish to extract from all this, without simplifying matters too much, is that

in the ancient and medieval intellectual worlds the primary locus of progress—scientific and

moral—was the individual. The main scope for improvement lay in the progress of the soul,

rather than in the common wheal. The study of nature, as a branch of philosophy, was

subordinated to this end. Much of this was to change over the course of the seventeenth century.

Indeed, as I have already suggested, while the so-called scientific revolution of the seventeenth

century has often been understood in terms of the appearance of new scientific doctrines and

methods, a case can be made that a more fundamental development during the period was the

introduction of a new, and progressive conception of natural philosophy.19

The New Science and Human Progress

The seventeenth century is often identified as the period during which individuals first

entertained the idea of progress in history, although many thinkers were rather ambivalent about

the idea of progress.20 Historians are also divided about whether this was the first appearance of

the idea of progress in the West.21 There can be no doubt, however, that the seventeenth century

witnessed the appearance of a new, progressive conception of natural philosophy. Its first and

indeed, foremost proponent was Francis Bacon. In a number of writings addressed to the reform

of philosophy and the advancement of learning, Bacon challenged the traditional understanding

of philosophy and its goals. Knowledge, he insisted, should be sought “not for the quiet of

resolution but for a restitution and reinvesting (in great part) of man to the sovereignty and power

… which he had in his first state of creation.”22 He was later to write that “The true ends of

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knowledge are not … for pleasure of the mind … but for the benefit and use of life, and that they

perfect and govern it in charity.”23 Two biblical motifs lie behind these contentions about the

goals of knowledge. The first was the idea that Adam’s original vocation in his prelapsarian state

had been to exercise dominion over the beasts. While much of this original power had been lost

as a consequence of Adam’s disobedience, Bacon imagined the goal of natural philosophy to be

that of re-establishing a dominion over things that had been lost because of the Fall.24 (For much

of the Patristic period and the Middle Ages, Adamic dominion had been read as referring to a

control over the “beasts within,” understood as unruly passions and sensual desires. This was in

keeping with both the common practice of allegorical interpretation and the idea of philosophy as

personal transformation.25) A second biblical allusion is to St Paul’s warning: “scientia inflat

caritas vero aedificat” (knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth).26 Bacon wanted to insist that

while some knowledge may well puff up the knower with pride (and he had in mind here the

supposedly contentious, inwardly focused knowledge of the scholastics), this could never be true

of charitable knowledge that was aimed at promoting the good of others. Knowledge may be

perverted, but only “if it be severed from charity, and not referred to the good of men and

mankind.”27 The application of knowledge to human welfare—its promotion of the good of

others rather than just the edification of the individual—was a prophylactic against the first of

the deadly sins, pride.

A second emphasis in the Baconian conception of natural philosophy concerns the

importance of the active life and the need to conjoin action and contemplation. There had been a

long-standing distinction in the West, originating with the Greeks, between the active and

contemplative lives.28 In both Greek and Christian traditions there had been a strong tendency to

favor the contemplative life. Aristotle had contended that the particular excellence of human

beings lies in their capacity for rational reflection, and hence while social life requires some to be

involved in the active life, the true end of human existence lies in contemplation (which is also

8
the sole activity of God). This classical emphasis was reinforced in Christian literature by a

common interpretation of the Gospel narrative of Mary and Martha, in which the contemplative

Mary is deemed to have chosen the better part.29 In addressing this traditional divide, Bacon did

not deny the importance of contemplation, but he was to insist that contemplation must give rise

to action: “the rule of religion, that a man should know his faith by his works, holds good in

natural philosophy too. Science also must be known by works.”30

A third feature of Bacon’s new conception of natural philosophy concerns its corporate

and cumulative nature. The “perfection of the sciences,” Bacon insisted, will come “not from the

swiftness or ability of any one inquirer, but from a succession [of them].”31 Natural philosophy is

not about private contemplation, neither is it a closed fraternity of adepts dealing with secret

information. It is instead a public activity, practiced in a communal setting, and capable of

incremental advance as generations of philosophers add to the store of useful knowledge. There

is clear contrast between this notion of the “increase” of science and Aquinas’s individualistic

conception of how science is cumulative (“science can increase in itself by addition; thus when

anyone learns several conclusions of geometry, the same specific habit of science increases in

that man”).32

In sum, for Bacon, philosophy is no longer understood as a solitary, contemplative

practice that aims primarily at the spiritual formation of the individual, but is instead an active,

outward-looking and corporate enterprise that aims at the mastery and manipulation of nature.

Knowledge becomes common stock and accumulates over time as a consequence of the

cooperative endeavors of individuals who are guided by a set of established methods. The

growing body of knowledge that results is applied to the material problems of human welfare.

This was not totally divorced from earlier ideas about self-improvement, for what Bacon was

attempting in all of this was to connect the classical and medieval ideals of spiritual formation

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with the goal of the improvement of the human estate—in Bacon’s succinct summary: “The

improvement of man’s mind and the improvement of his lot are one and the same thing.”33

This new conception of philosophy attracted both imitators and detractors. A number of

scientific societies that sprang up in the seventeenth century self-consciously modeled

themselves on Baconian principles. These included the French Académie Royale des Sciences,

the Italian Accademia della Tracia and, closer to home, the Royal Society. Individual natural

philosophers articulated a similar ideal of natural philosophy as scientific knowledge

accumulated over time and directed towards the public good. René Descartes, for example,

complained that Aristotelianism was distinguished only by the fact that it had remained virtually

unchanged for millennia. “The best way of proving the falsity of Aristotle's principles,” he

argued, “is to point out that they have not enabled any progress to be made in all the many

centuries in which they have been followed.” By way of contrast, those who followed Cartesian

principles were supposed to progress incrementally towards a perfect philosophy. As Descartes

modestly described it, “moving little by little from one truth to the next, they … in time acquire a

perfect knowledge of all philosophy, and reach the highest level of wisdom.” This was not

merely a matter of personal fulfillment, but of social progression.34 Like Bacon, Descartes

espoused a communal and cumulative philosophical program:

And I judged that the best remedy [for the ills of philosophy] was to

communicate faithfully to the public what little I had discovered, and to

urge the best minds to try and make further progress by helping with the

necessary observations, each according to his inclination and ability, and

by communicating to the public everything they learn. Thus, by building

upon the work of our predecessors and combining the lives and labours of

10
 many, we might make much greater progress working together than

anyone could make on his own.35

Descartes’ contemporary Blaise Pascal, who disagreed with his compatriot on much else,

gave eloquent expression to this new progressive philosophical ideal. In his Preface to the

Treatise on the Vacuum, in an argument for the progress of the sciences, Pascal asks the reader to

envisage the commonwealth of learning as in some ways analogous to the older model of the

individual scholar. Imagine, he writes, “the whole succession of men, during the course of many

ages … as a single man who subsists forever and learns continually.”36 Henceforth, knowledge

will not be limited to the capacity of the single mind, but will be a public commodity to which all

may contribute and from which all may benefit.

In England, fellows of the newly-formed Royal Society spoke in similar terms of the new

philosophy. In an essay on the “usefulness” of experimental natural philosophy, Robert Boyle

rehearsed a number of the arguments first advanced by Bacon. The new approach to nature, he

argued, both increased the individual’s devotion to God and enabled the performance of

charitable works on a much larger scale. In the finding of natural philosophy, there are “divers

things deliver'd, which may tend to enlarge Man's power of doing Good: By them, in the whole,

both our Honour to God, and our Charity to our Neighbors.” Experimental philosophy, he

opined, encompasses “the Substantial part of all the most Noble, not only Human but Christian

Vertues, both Speculative and Practical.”37 Another early fellow of the Society, the Anglican

divine Joseph Glanvill, published in 1668 the apologetic Plus Ultra which bore the subtitle: “The

Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the Days of Aristotle.” Aristotle’s philosophy,

he complained, was “inept for New discoveries; and therefor of no accommodation to the use of

life.”38 In an essay “Modern Improvements of Useful Knowledge” he went on to note that the

Royal Society was founded on the Baconian premise: “that Nature being known, it may be

master’d, manag’d, and used in the Services of Humane Life.”39

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 While the merit of projects to reorient philosophical activity towards practical and public

goods may in retrospect seem obvious, at the time they were not uncontroversial. One example

of this was the dispute that erupted in England during the second half of the seventeenth century

over the “usefulness” of the new philosophy.40 Works such as Glanvill’s Plus Ultra aroused the

ire of supporters of Aristotelianism and of the more traditional, virtue-based idea of

philosophical advancement. The classicist Meric Casaubon was one who expressed serious

doubts about the usefulness of the new style of philosophizing. The best effect of philosophy,

Casaubon insisted, was to “promote virtue and godliness” and to “moralise men.” In general, he

wrote, those activities that “promote the goodness in the soul are to be lauded above those who

promote material welfare.” He mockingly pointed out that the Baconian aims of the Royal

Society—to provide for the conveniences of the present life—were better achieved by brewers

and bakers than by natural philosophers, who by implication should concern themselves with

more elevated matters.41 While Casaubon and those who shared his views are now often

portrayed as conservative reactionaries vainly attempting to hold back the inevitable tide of

progress, when we consider them in the light of the traditional understanding of natural

philosophy, we can see that in fact they represent a serious and long-standing view about the

ultimate goals of human knowledge, and one that should not be lightly dismissed.42 As for the

controversy itself, it points to a divide that in the nineteenth century would become a permanent

feature of the culture of the West—the partitioning of intellectual territory between the sciences

and the humanities.

Science as Philanthropy

The term “philanthropy” first entered the English lexicon at the turn of the seventeenth

century. It should now come as little surprise that the term was coined by Francis Bacon.43 While

12
the word was familiar to readers of Greek, Bacon thought it worth appropriating and investing

with new meaning:

I take goodness in this sense, the affecting of the weal of men, which is

that the Grecians call philanthropia; and the word humanity (as it is used)

is a little too light to express it. Goodness I call the habit, and goodness of

nature, the inclination. This of all virtues, and dignities of the mind, is the

greatest; being the character of the Deity.44

Interestingly Bacon retains an emphasis on the interior habitus, but supplements it with

the outward looking reference to the good of the commonwealth. We may wonder why, given

the comprehensive taxonomy of virtues already available to Bacon, he thought it necessary to

introduce one more, particularly since he later equates philanthropy with “the theological virtue

Charity.”45 One plausible explanation would be that Bacon wanted an expression that would

convey something of a new philosophical program that was oriented towards human welfare. In

retrospect we might judge Bacon’s neologism to have been unnecessary, for “charity” is now no

longer understood primarily as the first of the Christian virtues but refers instead to public

beneficence or, as a noun, to welfare organizations. In fact, the gradual shift in the meaning of

“charity” is emblematic of a more fundamental change which also saw the virtue scientia reified

into “science”—now a body of doctrines arrived at through the application of a particular

method. For Bacon an important new justification for the pursuit of natural philosophy was that

if it were prosecuted correctly, benefits would flow to the human race. In essence, his model of

natural philosophy was that it was a philanthropic activity. Moral and scientific progress, in his

scheme of things, were one and the same thing.

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 It must be said, in conclusion, that this broad narrative about how changing conceptions

of the goals of philosophy were related to the emergence of a new progressive understanding of

science is at best a partial account. There are at least two other, perhaps better known, narratives

that intersect with this one. One of these concerns the gradual demise of an ethics of virtue in the

modern period and its replacement by what we would now call consequentialist, emotivist, and

deontological alternatives. The story of the decline of virtue ethics, as compellingly related by

Alasdair MacIntyre, is usually not thought to be directly relevant to the history of science.46 In

the light of the preceding discussion, it seems that the history of moral philosophy is something

that historians of science can profitably learn from. It is also worth pondering whether the

emergence of some kind of consequentialist moral framework is a necessary prerequisite for a

conception of moral progress in history.

A second missing narrative concerns the more conventional history of ideas of progress.

A key ingredient of the Baconian science of the revolutionary period in England was a

millenarian vision of history and a strong belief that the effluoresence of scientific activity was a

necessary prelude to the end of the world.47 While this strong chiliastic understanding of history

became less popular after the Restoration, there were still significant associations between the

idea of scientific advancement and providential conceptions of history. It was commonly

asserted, for example, that the reformation of religion was destined by Providence to be

accompanied by a reformation in the realm of learning.48 When the eighteenth-century

philosophes appropriated the idea of progress and integrated it into their account of human

enlightenment, they tended to be silent about the religious motivations and goals of the earlier

pioneers of the new science. Indeed, the most prominent Enlightenment prophet of progress, the

Marquis de Condorcet, posited a negative relation between progress and religion, identifying

religion as an obstacle to the advancement of the human spirit.

14
 The grain of truth in these later interpretations is that the progressive understanding of

natural philosophy that made its appearance in the seventeenth century did involve a rejection of

certain aspects of the classical-Christian philosophical ideal. But for most of the key agents, this

rejection was motivated by what they saw as a more genuinely Christian vision of the aims of

philosophy. The “rise of science” as a progressive enterprise involved the attempted liberation of

both ethics and natural philosophy from their thraldom to “pagan” Aristotelianism, and the

replacement of this putatively corrupt medieval model with a more authentic understanding of

the Christian vocation. It was the capacity of the new philosophy to present itself as a legitimate

form of Christian life, rather than its self-evident “scientific” superiority to previous systems of

philosophy, or its technological benefits, that accounts for its unique status in the modern West.

As historian of science Stephen Gaukroger has perceptively remarked in his recent book on the

rise of science in the West: “Christianity took over natural philosophy in the seventeenth century,

setting its agenda and projecting it forward in a way quite different from that of any other

scientific culture, and in the end establishing it as something in part constructed in the image of

religion.”49

1
George Sarton, The Study of the History of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1957), p. 5. [1st edn. 1936]
2
For representative discussions of progess in science, see Larry Laudan, Progress and Its
Problems: Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1977); Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity
without Illusions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Thomas S. Kuhn, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); I.
Niiniluoto, Is Science Progressive? (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984); A. Jonkisz and L. Koj,
eds., On Comparing and Evaluating Scientific Theories (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000);
Rom Harré, ed., Problems of Scientific Revolutions: Progress and Obstacles to Progress
in the Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); J. L. Aronson, R. Harré, and E.
C. Way, Realism Rescued: How Scientific Progress is Possible (London: Duckworth,
1994).
3
For the perspective of scientists, see Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New
York: Vintage, 1994); Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (New York: Vintage, 2000);

15
John Maddox, What Remains to be Discovered (New York: Touchstone, 1998); John
Horgan, The End of Science (New York: Broadway, 1997).
4
See, for example, Andrew Cunningham, “How the Principia got its Name: Or, Taking
Natural Philosophy Seriously,” History of Science 28 (1991): 377-92; Peter Dear, “The
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy: Toward a Heuristic Narrative for the
Scientific Revolution,” Configurations 6 (1998): 173-93; Margaret Osler, “Mixing
Metaphors: Science and Religion or Natural Philosophy and Theology in Early Modern
Europe,” History of Science 35 (1997): 91-113; Christoph Luthy, “What to do with
Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy? A Taxonomic Problem,” Perspectives on
Science 8 (2000): 164-95.
5
Roger Bacon, Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, tr. Robert Burke, 2 vols., (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), vol.1, 72. Under the Aristotelian classification,
natural philosophy, along with mathematics and theology, made up the speculative
sciences. Bacon’s point may also have been related to controversies about this
classification, and specifically whether theology was a practical or speculative science.
6
Isaac Newton, Opticks, Query 31, 405.
7
Cunningham, “The Identity and Invention of Science,” 384. For discussions of
Cunningham’s views see Edward Grant, “God and Natural Philosophy: The Late Middle
Ages and Sir Isaac Newton,” Early Science and Medicine 6 (2000): 279-98; Peter Dear,
“Religion, Science, and Natural Philosophy: Thoughts on Cunningham’s Thesis,” Studies
in History and Philosophy of Science 32A (2001): 377-86; Andrew Cunningham, “A
Response to Peter Dear’s ‘Religion, Science, and Philosophy,’” Studies in History and
Philosophy of Science 32A (2001): 387-91; Peter Harrison, “Physico-Theology and the
Mixed Sciences: The Role of Theology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy,” in Peter
Anstey and John Schuster, eds., The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century
(Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 165-83.
8
Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2002); Philosophy as a Way of Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
9
Beroald Thomassen, Metaphysik als Lebensform: Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der
Metaphysik im Metaphysikkommentar Alberts des Grossen (Munster: Aschendorff,
1985); Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to
Foucault (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Martha Nussbaum, The
Therapy of Desire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); John Sellars, The
Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2003); Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian
Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); John Cottingham, Philosophy and
the Good Life (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and The Spiritual
Dimension: Religion, Philosophy, and Human Value (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2006); H. Hutter, “Philosophy as Self-Transformation,” Historical
Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 16, nos. 2 & 3 (Summer and Fall 1989): 171-98; R.
Imbach, “La Philosophie comme exercice spiritual,” Critique 41 (1985): 275-83.

16
10
Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent
Philosophers, 10.24.
11
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism I, viii-ix.
12
Ptolemy’s Almagest, tr. G. J. Toomer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998),
37.
13
Davie Piché, ed., La condemnation parisienne de 1277. Texte latin, traduction,
introduction et commentaire, (Paris: Vrin, 1999). For alternative interpretations, see John
F. Wippel, “The Condemnations of 1270 and 1277 at Paris,” The Journal of Medieval
and Renaissance Studies 7 (1977): 169-201; John E. Murdoch, “Pierre Duhem and the
History of Late Medieval Science and Philosophy in the Latin West,” in Gli studi di
filosofia medievale fra otto e novecento, ed. Alfonso Maier and Ruedi Imbach (Rome:
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1991), 253-302; Edward Grant, “The Condemnation of
1277: God's Absolute Power, and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages,” Viator 10
(1979): 211-44.
14
In Piché, La condemnation.
15
Peter Harrison, ‘Was There a Scientific Revolution?’, The European Review 15:4
(2007): 445-57.
16
Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae 1a2ae. 52, 2. See also Summa theologiae 1a2ae.
54, 4; 1a. 89, 5; 1a2ae. 50, 4; 53, 1; 54, 4; Summa contra gentiles I.61; II.60; II.78; On
the Virtues in General, A. 7, Obj. 1.
17
John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio prol.5.1-2, nn. 314, 332 Opera Omnia, ed. C. Balíc et al.,
(Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950- ), 1:207-8, 217, qu. in Richard Cross,
Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
18
“Scientia … Knowledge, learning, skill, cunning, properly the act of him that knoweth,
secondly the state of the thing known, … thirdly an habit of knowledge got by
demonstration, Arist 7. Ethic. 3. fourthly any habit of the understanding.” Thomas
Holyoake, A Large Dictionary in Three Parts (London, 1676), s.v. scientia
(unpaginated). A longer, but similar definition is given in Eustachio e Sancto Paulo,
Summa Philosophiae Quadripartita, (Paris: Chastellain, 1609) I, 230-31, in Étienne
Gilson: Index Scholastico-Cartésien (Paris, 1912; reprinted New York, Franklin, 1964),
§408. See also Charles Lohr, “Metaphysics,” Cambridge History of Renaissance
Philosophy, ed. C. Schmitt & Q. Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988), 632; Heiki Mikkeli, An Aristotelian Response to Renaissance Humanism. Jacopo
Zabarella on the Nature of Arts and Sciences (Helsinki: The Finnish Historical Society
1992), 27-9.
19
“Scientific revolution” has become a contentious category, partly because it assumes a
revolution in science rather than natural philosophy. For arguments that a new conception
of natural philosophy emerges at this time, see Stephen Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and
the Transformation of Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University

17
Press, 2001); Peter Harrison, “Was there a Scientific Revolution?” and the contributions
of Harrison and Gaukroger in The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe, ed. C. Condren,
S. Gaukroger, and Ian Hunter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

20
While such expressions as “new philosophy,” a “new astronomy,” or a “new physic” were
common, new philosophical doctrines were often presented as revivals of ancient models.
Hence the new atomic and corpuscular theories were described as “Epicurean,” the Copernican
model as “Pythagorean,” and so on. Whole systems of philosophy, such as those of Descartes,
could even be described as the recapitulation of an ancient Judeo-Christian wisdom first
elliptically set out by Moses in the book of Genesis. Rather than describing their innovations as
revolutionary, proponents of novel ideas often used such terms as “revival,” “reformation,” and
“instauration.”

21
Sydney Pollard, The Idea of Progress: History and Society (London: Watts, 1968), ch. 1;
Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1981); E. L. Tuveson,
Millennium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress, 2nd ed. (New
York: Russell and Russell, 1964); John Passmore, The Perfectability of Man, 3rd edn. (Liberty
Fund: Indianapolis, 2000), ch. 10. On progress in antiquity, see Ludwig Edelstein, The Idea of
Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1964); E. R. Dodds, The Ancient
Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1973).

22
Bacon, Valerius Terminus, in The Works of Francis Bacon, 14 vols., ed. James
Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas Heath, (London, 1857-74), III, 222.
23
Bacon, Great Instauration, Preface, Works IV, 21.
24
“For man by the fall fell at the same time from this state of innocency and from his
dominion over creation. Both of these losses however can even in this life be in some part
repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and sciences. For creation was
not by the curse made altogether and forever a rebel, but ... is now by various labours ...
at length and in some measure subdued to the supplying of man with bread; that is to the
uses of human life.” Bacon, Novum Organum, Bk. 2, §52, Works IV, 247.
25
Peter Harrison, “Subduing the Earth: Genesis 1, Early Modern Science, and the
Exploitation of Nature,” The Journal of Religion 79 (1999): 86-109; “Reading the
Passions: The Fall, the Passions, and Dominion over Nature,” in S. Gaukroger, ed., The
Soft Underbelly of Reason: The Passions in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge,
1998), 49-78.
26
I Corinthians. 8.1 (Vulgate/Authorised Version).
27
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, I. 3 (Johnston edn., 8).
28
D. C. Butler, Western Mysticism: The Teaching of Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on
Contemplation and the Contemplative Life, 2nd edn. (New York: Haskell House, 1966);

18
M. E. Mason, Active Life and Contemplative Life: A Study of the Concepts from Plato to
the Present (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1961).
29
Luke 10:38-42. Augustine, Sermon 104, ‘Discourse on Martha and Mary, as
representing two kinds of life.’ Works of St. Augustine, 20 vols., ed. John Rotelle (New
York: New City Press, 1991- ), III/4, 83; The Trinity I.iii.20-21. See also Anne-Marie La
Bonnardière, “Les deux vies. Marthe et Marie (Luc 10, 38, 42),” in Saint Augustin et la
Bible, ed. Bonnardière, (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986).
30
Bacon, Redargutio Philosophiarum (1608), in B. Farington, The Philosophy of
Francis Bacon (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1964), 92f.; Bacon, Advancement,
Works III, 294.
31
Bacon, De sapientia veterum, Works IV, 753. Cf. Parasceve, Works IV, 252.
32
Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1a2ae. 52, 2. Cf. 1a2ae. 54, 4.
33
Bacon, Redargutio Philosophiarum (1608), in Farington, Philosophy of Francis
Bacon, 93. This contention parallels, in some respects, the idea expressed by Renaissance
humanist Francesco Piccolomini, that while the spiritual perfection of man lay in
contemplative philosophy, the perfection of society required a philosophical engagement
with civil science that could bring about a corresponding perfection of society. As James
Hankins has expressed the general proposition, “the purpose of polity is to perfect human
nature by maximizing the scope for virtue and rationality.” See Heiki Mikkeli, An
Aristotelian Response to Renaissance Humanism: Jacopo Zabarella on the Nature of the
Arts and Sciences (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1992), ch. 2; Nicholas Jardine,
“Keeping Order in the School of Padua,” in Method and Order in the Renaissance
Philosophy of Nature, ed. Eckhard Kessler, Daniel Di Liscia and Charlotte Methuen
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 183-209; James Hankins, ed., Renaissance Civil Humanism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Introduction, 9. Bacon makes a similar
claim for natural philosophy rather than polity.
34
René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, in The Philosophical writings of Descartes,
tr. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1984),
1, 188, 180.
35
Descartes, Discourse on the Method, in Philosophical Writings I, 143.
36
Blaise Pascal, Minor Works, tr. O. W. Wright, Harvard Classics, vol. 48 (New York,
Collier, 1909-14), www.bartleby.com/48/3/. The analogy was commonplace in the
seveteenth century, but dates back to the Roman historian L. Annaeus Florus (fl AD100)
and may also be found in Augustine, City of God 10.14. See William Freedman, “Swift’s
Strulbuggs, Porgress, and the Analogy of History,” Studies in English Literature: 1500-
1900, 35 (1995): 457-72. The image was later used by John Draper and Auguste Comte,
who views influenced Sarton.

19
37
Robert Boyle, The Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, Works, III, 193. Later in this
work p. 270) Boyle will quote Bacon directly on charity in relation to natural philosophy.
See also Boyle, The Christian Virtuoso I, Works 11, 292f.
38
Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing, (London, 1661), 178.
39
Glanvill, Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion (London,
1676), 36.
40
Michael Heyd, “The New Experimental Philosophy: A Manifestation of ‘Enthusiasm’
or an Antidote to it?”, Minerva 25 (1983): 423-40; Ian Stewart, “Books and How to Use
Them,” History of Science 40 (2002): 233-44; Richard Serjeanston, ed., General
Learning: A Seventeenth-Century Treatise on the Formation of the General Scholar by
Meric Casaubon (Cambridge: Renaissance Texts from Manuscript Publications, 1999),
Introduction.
41
Meric Casaubon, A Letter of Meric Casaubon, D.D. &c. to Peter du Moulin D.D.,
concerning Natural Experimental Philosophie (Cambridge, 1669), 31, 5f. Similar
remarks may be found in Henry Stubbe, Legends no Histories: or a Specimen of some
Animadversions upon the History of the Royal Society… together with the Plus Ultra
reduced to a Non-Plus (London, 1670), and Campanella Revived (London, 1670). See
James R. Jacob, Henry Stubbe, Radical Protestantism and the Early Enlightenment
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
42
For Casaubon as a reactionary see M. R. G. Spiller, “Concerning Natural
Experimental Philosophie:” Meric Casaubon and the Royal Society (Heidelberg:
Springer-Verlag GmbH, 1980); Cf. Michael Hunter, Science and the Shape of
Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain (Woodbridge, UK:
Boydell Press, 1995), ch. 11.
43
For the history of the term, see Marty Sulek, “Philosophia and Philanthropia – A
Cultural History of the Inter-relations between Philosophy and Philanthropy, from the
Pre-Socratics to the Post-Moderns,” MA Thesis, Indiana University, 2006.

44
Francis Bacon, “Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature,” Essays, Works VI, 403. The
Vulgate edition of the bible translated the Greek philanthropia as humanitas, hence
Bacon’s reference to the fact that ‘humanity’ was an inadequate translation.
45
Bacon, Essays, Works VI, 403. For Bacon’s treatment of charity in relation to good
works, also see his Meditationes Sacrae, Works, VII, 244. On Bacon’s philanthropy, see
Brian Vickers, “Bacon’s so-called ‘Utilitarianism:’ Sources and Influences,” in Marta
Fattori, ed., Francis Bacon: Terminologia e Fortuna nel XVII Secolo (Rome: Edizione
dell’Ateneo, 1984), 281-314; Masao Watanabe, “Francis Bacon: Philanthropy and the
Instauration of Learning,” Annals of Science 49 (1992): 163-73.
46
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1981).

20
47
Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626-1660
(London: Duckworth, 1975); R. G. Clouse, “Johann Heinrich Alsted and English
Millenarianism,” Harvard Theological Review 62 (1969): 189-207; Howard Hotson,
Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588-1638: Between Renaissance, Reformation, and Universal
Reform (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000); Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in
Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Christopher
Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth Century England (London: Oxford University Press,
1971).
48
For a good overview of early modern conceptions of history and their relation to
natural philosophy see Rob Iliffe, “The Masculine Birth of Time: Temporal Frameworks
of Early Modern Natural Philosophy,” British Journal for the History of Science 33
(2000): 427-53.
49
Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping
of Modernity, 1210-1685 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 23.

21