The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox

by Stephen Jay Gould

  As secretary of the Royal Society, Britain’s premier scientific institution (incorporated under a royal charter in 1662 by the restored King Charles II), Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712), best known for his early microscopical studies of plant anatomy, prepared a catalog of the Society’s growing collections, published in 1681 under the commodious title Musaeum Regalis Societatis, or a Catalogue and Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society . . . Whereunto Is Subjoyned a Comparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts. (Waste not, want not—so Grew took this opportunity to include the plates and descriptions of his prototypical research project in the new empirical spirit of the Scientific Revolution: careful dissections, and attempts to understand the resulting differences in functional terms, of digestive systems in a wide variety of vertebrates—see figure 3.)

  Figure 3.

  The pugnacious preface of Grew’s catalog clearly designates the “against” within his movement’s particular version of “all observation for or against some view.” Referring to the Royal Society’s collection as “that so noble an hecatombe,” Grew begins by assuring readers that he came to praise this sacrifice of nature’s living bounty by making truthful observations about the skeletons and species so represented, not to bury the plethora of specimens in an old-style Renaissance compendium of promiscuous gobbledygook, arranged only by some scheme of purely human convenience, and not by any natural principle of objective order. He begins by contrasting his taxonomy with the devices of the traditional bugbears, the Renaissance compendiasts Aldrovandi and Gesner: I like not the reason which Aldrovandus gives for his beginning the History of Quadrupeds with the Horse; Quod praecipuam nobis utilitatem praebeat [because its particular utility to us stands out]. [Organisms are] better placed according to the degrees of their approximation to human shape and one to another: and so other things, according to their nature. Much less should I choose, with Gesner, to go by the alphabet. The very scale of the creatures is a matter of high speculation.

  As Grew enumerates the innovations of his scientific colleagues and criticizes the practices of the old compendiasts, the primary theme for this section of my book emerges: the humanistic tradition of the Renaissance had stymied the development of natural history by making the literary claims of ancient writers more important than direct observation of the actual species supposedly under analysis, and by privileging the fables and legends attached to these creatures, largely because such portrayals could be traced to an Aesop or an Aristotle, over new sources of physiological or anatomical information that could explain the biological origin and purpose of observed forms and behaviors.

  Grew begins by explicitly damning Pliny with faint praise or, more accurately, by damning those naturalists so committed to a humanist belief in the superiority and sufficiency of Ancient texts that they spend all their time arguing fruitlessly over Pliny’s short and cryptic remarks, when they could be observing the relevant organisms by themselves, and making proper decisions with their own eyes and minds. Grew and his scientific colleagues would loudly proclaim that the Plinian emperor wore no clothing, and that the little boy of nascent science could do far better by favoring simple observation over slavish obeisance:The curiosity and diligence of Pliny is highly to be commended. Yet he is so brief, that his works are rather a nomenclature than a history: which perhaps might be more intelligible to the age he lived in, than the succeeding ones. But had he, and others, been more particular in the matters they treat of, their commentators had [Grew here uses the old subjunctive mood, equivalent to our modern “would have”] engaged their own and their readers’ time much better than in so many fruitless and endless disquisitions and contests.

  Grew then states his own support for an entirely new approach, contrary to the aims of Renaissance humanism, and within the spirit of developing science. He suggests two guiding rules, each opposite to the thrust and practice of the humanist tradition: (1) make distinctions between true and false claims rather than writing down everything ever said in a complete accounting of all opinions previously expressed; and (2) base these distinctions on direct observation rather than respect for classical pronouncements:It were [another subjunctive, equivalent to our modern “would be”] certainly a thing both in itself desirable, and of much consequence, to have such an inventory of nature wherein, on the one hand, nothing should be wanting, but nothing repeated or confounded on the other. For which, there is no way without a clear and full description of things.

  Grew then adds two further criticisms of the humanist tradition, as expressed by the Renaissance compendiasts Gesner and Aldrovandi, before restating his simple recipe in solution. First, unlike them, he will not clutter his text with the paraphernalia of humanistic footnotes that bear no relationship to the natural history of organisms under observation:After the descriptions, instead of meddling with mystic, mythologic, or hieroglyphic [meaning occult in general, not specifically Egyptian] matters, or relating stories of men who were great riders, or women who were bold and feared not horses, as some others have done, I thought it much more proper to remark some of the uses and reasons of things.

  Grew adds that he will also not waste space showing readers his humanistic erudition and knowledge of classical sources, when such quotations only express obvious points that any person could observe for himself, and therefore add nothing to our knowledge of the animal under description. He specifically criticizes Aldrovandi for stating that sheep belong to the group of cloven-hoofed quadrupeds, not only because one can easily see so for oneself, but because Aristoteles etiam scripto publicavit (Aristotle also said so in his writing). Grew adds: “I have made the quotations not to prove things well known to be true, as one [he then explicitly names Aldrovandi in a footnote] who very formally quotes Aristotle to prove a sheep to be among the Bisulca [cloven-hoofed beasts].”

  Finally, Grew defends his own procedure. He will work by observation, favoring his own studies of living organisms. And he will also provide basic data of weights and measures:In the descriptions given, I have observed, with the figures of things, also the colors, so far as I could. . . . And I have added their just measures, much neglected by writers of natural history.

  To indicate that Grew expressed a consensus among the early scientists of Newton’s circle, and did not state his criticisms as an angry and idiosyncratic Miniver Cheevy, pouring his vitriol upon the world, we should also return to John Ray (1627–1705), the preeminent British naturalist of this founding generation. (Linnaeus himself, in the first edition of his Systema Naturae [1735], the work that initiated modern taxonomy, singled out “Clariss, Rajum” [the most famous Ray] as the very best of his predecessors.) Ray, a man of humble background (his father was a blacksmith in the rural town of Black Notley in Essex), managed to parlay his intellectual gifts into a degree from Cambridge. For more than a decade he pursued his work in natural history under the patronage and partnership of a wealthy fellow Cantabrigian, Francis Willughby. The two friends traveled together throughout Europe during the mid-1660s, and then developed plans for a lifetime of work in publishing comprehensive joint volumes on the taxonomy of all organisms, plants as well as animals. But Willughby died in 1672, at age thirty-seven, and the disconsolate Ray, with steadfast loyalty and constant invocation of his friend’s memory and intellectual contribution, soldiered on alone. Ray wrote nearly all of their two great joint volumes on birds (1676) and fishes (1686), but the funding, and a good share of the basic observation, represents the long hand of Willughby’s generous legacy.

  Their beautiful book on birds, illustrated with seventy-eight engraved plates (see figures 4 and 5 for an example of their art, and for the cover page, from my collection, of the 1678 English translation from the Latin original), begins with a preface, written by Ray, that restates, even more forcefully than Grew had done, but to the same effect and purpose, the embattled feeling of naturalists in these early years of the Scientific Revolution. Grew and Ray insisted that the literary and non-observationa
l traditions of Renaissance humanism had built an intellectual barrier that must be breached before a properly empirical science of taxonomy and natural history could be formulated.

  Figure 4.

  Ray begins by proclaiming the new and different methods that he and Willughby had rigorously followed. He then, and at greater length, forcefully criticizes the older practices that must now be abandoned. Above all, personal observation must replace ancient testimony as the primary ground of information:

  Figure 5.

  We did not, as some before us have done, only transcribe other men’s descriptions, but we ourselves did carefully describe each bird from the view and inspection of it lying before us.

  Again, Gesner and Aldrovandi symbolize the bad old way of Renaissance compilation, and their techniques of promiscuous reporting and description, based primarily upon other writings and with special dignity accorded to Greek and Roman sources, must now be replaced:As for the scope and design of this undertaking, it was neither the author’s [that is, Willughby’s], nor is it my intention to write pandects of birds, which should comprise whatever had been before written of them by others, whether true, false or dubious—that having already been abundantly performed by Gesner and Aldrovandus, nor to contract and epitomize their large and bulky volumes, lest we should tempt students to gratify their sloth.

  In his strongest statement, Ray contrasts the geometrically opposite patterns of Renaissance compendia and modern scientific treatises. Gesner and Aldrovandi, by including everything and imposing no selective criterion of veracity, compiled works of constantly increasing size and scope. He and Willughby, by insisting upon factual accuracy, preferably validated by their own eyes, would employ the opposite standard of whittling and excision, distinguishing the true from the false, the relevant from the incidental, and then publishing only the bare bones of dependable factuality. Ray also explicitly identified the omitted material as part of “humane learning” and endowed the good stuff, now separated and retained, with the honorable name of “natural history”:We shall further add that we have wholly omitted what we find in other authors concerning homonymous and synonymous words, or the divers names of birds, hieroglyphics, emblems, fables, presages, or ought else appertaining to divinity, ethics, grammar, or any sort of humane learning; and present him [the reader] only with what properly relates to natural history. Neither have we scraped together whatever of this nature is anywhere extant, but have used choice, and inserted only such particulars as ourselves can warrant upon our own knowledge and experience, or whereof we have assurance by the testimony of good authors, or sufficient witnesses.

  Finally, in a statement ending with a first sign of forthcoming troubles that have grown with the centuries and have led to the circumstances surrounding the composition of this book and others of its genre, Ray explicitly brands as unworthy of much scientific attention the chief Renaissance goal of trying to link each modern bird with its ancient name. I raise no objection to this judgment, but Ray then appends a slightly gratuitous rebuke to the humanists—imbued with more than a whiff of the Philistine—ridiculing their undue attention to literary style, whereas good scientific prose only requires clarity, and need not fret about quality:4 For to what purpose is it eternally to wrangle about things, which certainly to determine is either absolutely impossible, or next door to it? Especially seeing if by immense labor it might at last be found out by what names every species was known to the Ancients, the advantages that would thence accrue would not countervail the pains. About the phrase and style we were not very solicitous, taking greater care to render the sense perspicuous than the language ornate.

  4

  The Mandate of Magister Medice: The Threat of Suppression

  IN CONTROVERTING THE RENAISSANCE PROGRAM FOR RECOVERING THE wisdom of Antiquity, rather than winning novel insights and explanations by observation and experiment, the initiators of the Scientific Revolution worked to clear away the passive impedimenta of old beliefs. Breaking through the inertia of ages is no easy task, for incumbency brings enormous advantages both in politics and intellectual life. But active suppression poses far more serious problems, including actual danger to life and limb—and the avatars of the Scientific Revolution also faced (or at least often thought they faced, leading to a psychological burden that should not be underestimated, whatever the actual danger) a more than merely hypothetical threat of suppression or mayhem from reigning secular powers of the time.

  Our simplistic renderings of Western history, as previously mentioned, tend to depict any struggle between science and secular power as part of a “warfare between science and theology,” or as “science versus religion”—but I strongly reject this harmful and simplistic dichotomy (see pages 85–89 for more detail on this false model of history). Secular or state power did, at least in a few crucial episodes, actively suppress the spread of scientific methods and conclusions. Given the entanglements among major institutions at the time, the ideological basis for squelching a scientific claim usually found expression in religious terms—with arguments condemned (as in Galileo’s canonical case) because they supposedly violated religious precepts that struck secular leaders as important in justifying their continued right to hold the reins of power.

  In chapter 2 I reproduced a parody of a Catholic imprimatur, with the vice president of the Royal Society standing in for the official censor—a secular “blessing” for John Woodward’s naturalistic effort in the physics of world-making in 1695. Figure 6 shows another example, also passed by the Royal Society, but this time preceding Grew’s commissioned catalog of their collections, as discussed in chapter 3. To show the real McCoy, I now depict (figure 7) a genuine Catholic imprimatur, as printed in an important Renaissance treatise in natural history by a key figure in this book’s preceding chapter (figure 8, from my copy of Ulisse Aldrovandi’s 1639 edition of his first volume on mammals, De quadru-pedibus solidipedibus [four-footed beasts without cloven hooves], printed posthumously, and including chapters on horses, unicorns, rhinoceroses, and elephants).

  Figure 6.

  Figure 7.

  The wording of the imprimatur, passed by two readers and then approved by the Inquisitor of Bologna, strikes our modern ears as more than a bit chilling. The first censor approves, citing the conventional claim that he found therein nihil contra sanctae fidei dogmata, vel probatos mores (nothing against the dogmas of the sacred faith or accepted morals). The second reader, a bit more florid in his approval, finds nothing offensive either to the ears of pious people or to the rules of the Church. The mandate then proclaims imprimatur igitur (therefore let it be printed).

  Figure 8.

  I don’t mean to exaggerate the chilling effect of such pronouncements. All books published under Catholic auspices at the time had to receive this official sanction. I doubt that such a famous and uncontroversial character as Aldrovandi waited with bated breath; and the printed permissions, however contrary to modern ethics and sensibilities, tend to be formulaic and repeated from book to book, thus representing the boilerplate of their age—somewhat akin, perhaps, to packages of food passed by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, or those old mattress tags that seemed to threaten death to any intrepid tamperer.

  But I chose this particular example of a genuine imprimatur for a quite different, if adjacent, reason. If we flip the page of the imprimatur, we find on the other side, reproduced in figure 9, a symbolically chilling statement that sent a shiver up my spine because I wasn’t expecting this further reminder of the true dangers of suppression, potentially including incarceration and bodily harm. Aldrovandi’s dedication, printed on this page, reads: Maffaei Card. Barberini nunc Urbani VIII Pont. Max.—to Cardinal Maffeo Barbarini, now Pope Urban VIII. (I recently saw a copy of this volume’s first edition, published a few years earlier, and before Urban’s promotion. The dedication then included only the first line of type, praising the cardinal, not yet elevated.) Catholic intellectuals invested great hope in Maffeo Barbarini, a
n apparent friend of science, and of liberal learning in general. Galileo himself called Urban’s election to the papacy a mirabel congiuntura (great conjuncture) that would strongly foster the respect and approval of science. But the same Urban VIII, ten years later, in 1633, sponsored Galileo’s trial before the Roman Inquisition, and forced his recantation (followed by a life of house arrest) for daring to advocate the heresy of a central sun!

  Since the desired alternative of respect and independence does not seem generally available as a realistic option, perhaps intellectuals should wear the suspicion or opposition of secular powers as a badge of honor. At least they seem to fear us (or, at minimum, to regard us as worthy of monitoring), even though our actual weapons rarely extend beyond the pen, or its recent reconfiguration as the electronic keyboard. This second legitimate fear that science felt in its infancy (and that has not become entirely extinct today, even with science in powerful maturity)—suppression by the politics of secular power, usually stated in overtly religious (in the past) or moral (today) terms—often reaches well beyond any explicitly scientific content in the work under scrutiny.5