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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2016

Toby E. Huff
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
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Summary

For the past five hundred years in the West, the pursuit of science has been more or less unfettered. If, in the light of more recent assessments of the freedom of thought and inquiry that existed in the universities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we add another three hundred years, then we may say that the pursuit of science in the West has been carried on undiminished for nearly nine hundred years. This flight of the imagination, if you will, was both sponsored by and motivated by the idea that the natural world is a rational and ordered universe and that man is a rational creature who is able to understand and accurately describe that universe. Whether or not men and women can solve the riddles of existence, so this view goes, they are able to advance human understanding mightily by applying reason and the instruments of rationality to the world we inhabit.

The breakthrough that allowed freedom of scientific inquiry is undoubtedly one of the most powerful intellectual (and social) revolutions in the history of humankind. As the paradigmatic form of free inquiry, science has been given a roving commission to set all the domains of thought aright. Science is thus the natural enemy of all vested interests – social, political, and religious – including those of the scientific establishment itself. For the scientific mind refuses to let things stand as they are. The organized skepticism of the scientific ethos is ever present and always doubtful of the latest (and even the long-standing) intellectual consensus.

Given this intellectual commission to investigate all forms and manner of existence, science is especially the natural enemy of authoritarian regimes. Indeed, such regimes can exist only if they repress or otherwise subvert those forms of scientific inquiry that reveal the true nature of the social – economic, political, and medical – consequences of their rule. We must be careful here not to confuse journalism and the press with science.

Type
Chapter
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The Rise of Early Modern Science
Islam, China and the West
, pp. 1 - 7
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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  • Introduction
  • Toby E. Huff, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
  • Book: The Rise of Early Modern Science
  • Online publication: 05 June 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316257098.004
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  • Introduction
  • Toby E. Huff, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
  • Book: The Rise of Early Modern Science
  • Online publication: 05 June 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316257098.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Toby E. Huff, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
  • Book: The Rise of Early Modern Science
  • Online publication: 05 June 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316257098.004
Available formats
×