Ideas

by Peter Watson

  51. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 432.

  52. Ibid., page 440.

  53. Sir Thomas More went so far as to say that Henry had more learning ‘than any English monarch ever possessed before him’. Manchester, Op. cit., page 203.

  54. Ibid., page 203.

  55. McGrath, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible, Op. cit., page 72, for the exact dates of the translation.

  56. Manchester, Op. cit., page 204.

  57. Ibid. McGrath, Op. cit., page 72, for the rediscovery of the Cologne sheets.

  58. McGrath, Op. cit., pages 75–76, for the quality of the English.

  59. Manchester, Op. cit., page 205.

  60. Bamber Gascoigne, The Christians, London: Jonathan Cape, 1977, page 186.

  61. Ibid., page 186. Volterra was always known afterwards as ‘the breeches maker’.

  62. MacCulloch, Op. cit., page 226.

  63. Michael A. Mullet, The Catholic Reformation, London: Routledge, 1999, page 38.

  64. Ibid., pages 38–39.

  65. Ibid., page 40.

  66. Ibid., page 45.

  67. Ibid., page 47.

  68. Ibid., page 68. See Jacque le Goff, ‘The time of Purgatory’, in The Medieval Imagination, Op. cit., pages 67–77.

  69. The effects of Trent: to begin with, the struggle against Protestantism was viewed by the church as a fight with heretics, with break-away sects, as had happened with the Cathars in the twelfth century. For example, the Duke of Alva, who led the reign of terror deemed necessary to keep the Low Countries safe for Catholic Spain, had his portrait painted showing him as a Crusader. No less a figure than Vasari was commissioned to paint two pictures in the Vatican, depicting two episodes of the 1570s, ‘as if they were equally important Catholic victories’. They were the battle of Lepanto, where the Turkish navy was defeated; and the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre, where ‘numberless’ Protestants in Paris were snatched from their beds and murdered in the streets. Such was the Catholic joy at this grisly ‘victory’ that a commemorative medal was struck, which actually showed the Huguenots being slaughtered. Gascoigne, Op. cit., page 187.

  70. Ibid., page 185. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 419.

  71. Gascoigne, Op. cit., page 419.

  72. Ibid., page 186.

  73. Ibid., page 189.

  74. Moynahan, Op. cit., pages 558ff, for Xavier in Japan.

  75. Gascoigne, Op. cit., pages 192–193; and Moynahan, Op. cit., pages 560–561 for the crucifixions.

  76. MacCulloch, Op. cit., page 586.

  77. Ibid., page 587.

  78. Ibid., page 589.

  79. Ibid., page 651.

  80. Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy: 1600–1750, London: Penguin, 1958/1972, page 1.

  81. Ibid.

  82. Germain Bazin, The Baroque, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1968, page 36, for the religiosity of famous artists.

  83. Wittkower, Op. cit., page 12.

  84. Much of the coloured marble for St Peter’s was taken from ancient buildings. Wittkower, Op. cit., page 10.

  85. Peter and Linda Murray, Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists, Op. cit., page 38.

  86. Wittkower, Op. cit., page 17.

  87. Bazin, Op. cit., pages 104–105.

  88. Wittkower, Op. cit., page 18.

  CHAPTER 23: THE GENIUS OF THE EXPERIMENT

  1. Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800, New York: Free Press, 1949, revised edition 1957.

  2. Margaret J. Ostler (editor), Rethinking the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000, page 25.

  3. J. D. Bernal, Science in History, Op. cit., page 132.

  4. Ibid., page 133. See also: MacCulloch, Reformation, Op. cit., page 78. And: Richard H. Popkin, The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992, page 102.

  5. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science in Islam, China and the West, Op. cit., page 73.

  6. Ibid., pages 57ff.

  7. Ibid., page 226. See also: Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, volume 1, Language, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953, pages 230–243.

  8. Bernal, Op. cit., page 134.

  9. Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy and the Development of Western Thought, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1957/1976, page 156.

  10. Ibid., page 157.

  11. Ibid., page 159.

  12. Though its introduction was suppressed by a fearful editor. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 435.

  13. Kuhn, Op. cit., page 160.

  14. Ibid., page 166.

  15. Ibid., page 168.

  16. Moynahan, Op. cit., for Galileo’s attitude to the Bible: ‘Not a scientific manual.’

  17. Leonardo had drawn the first musket in the West. Kuhn, Op. cit., page 174.

  18. Ibid., page 183.

  19. Boyer, A History of Mathematics, Op. cit., pages 326–327.

  20. Michael White, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, Op. cit., page 11.

  21. Kuhn, Op. cit., page 189.

  22. Boyer, Op. cit., page 393. For Wordsworth see: Boorstin, The Seekers, Op. cit., 296.

  23. Boyer, Op. cit., page 391.

  24. Kuhn, Op. cit., page 192.

  25. Boyer, Op. cit., page 333.

  26. Ibid., page 317; and Boorstin, Op. cit., page 161.

  27. Boyer, Op. cit., pages 310–312.

  28. Ibid., page 314.

  29. White, Op. cit., page 205.

  30. Boyer, Op. cit., page 398.

  31. J. D. Bernal, The Extension of Man, Op. cit., page 207.

  32. Ibid., page 208. See Moynahan, Op. cit., page 439, for the different attitudes to scripture as between Galileo and Newton. Unlike Galileo, Newton did not feel ‘confined’.

  33. J. D. Bernal, Extension Op. cit. page 209.

  34. Schmuel Shanbursky (edited, introduced and selected by), Physical Thought from the Presocratics to the Quantum Physicists, London: Hutchinson, 1974, pages 310–213.

  35. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., page 212.

  36. Shanbursky (editor), Op. cit., pages 269 and 302. G. MacDonald Ross, Leibniz, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984, page 31, for the division of the calculus into differentiation and integration.

  37. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., page 217.

  38. For an excellent, edited version of Newton’s work on ‘opticks’, see Shanbursky (editor), Op. cit., pages 172 and 248; see also R. E. Peierls, The Laws of Nature, London: Allen & Unwin, 1955, pages 24 and 43.

  39. There was another–very different, rather more prosaic–reason for interest in the prism. The quality of cut glass was improving all the time and as a result there was a boom in chandeliers. Among their other attractions, they glittered in different colours. Alan Macfarlane says that the scientific revolution would not have happened as it did, but for the development of glass. Fifteen of the great experiments could not have been performed without glass. Times Higher Educational Supplement, 21 June 2002, page 19.

  40. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., page 221.

  41. Shanbursky (editor), Op. cit., page 312.

  42. Wightman, The Growth of Scientific Ideas, page 135. The next step forward was the realisation that light also travelled in waves. Christiaan Huygens, who made this particular breakthrough, was helped in his observations by means of a ‘magic crystal’, known as Iceland spar. Put a crystal of Iceland spar on the page of an open book, slide it over the paper, and you will observe that the print appears double. Moreover, as you slide the crystal around, the two images move relative to one another. Huygens was the first to grasp that the explanation lay in assuming that light is a wave. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., pages 225–227.

  43. James Gleick, Isaac Newton, Op. cit., page 15.

  44. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., pages 235–236.

  45. William A. Locy, The Growth of Biology, London: G. Bell, 1925, pages 153–154.

  46. Carl Zimmer, The Soul Made Fle
sh: The Discovery of the Brain and How It Changed the World, London: Heinemann, 2004, page 19.

  47. Locy, Op. cit., page 155.

  48. In the High Middle Ages, the church remained hostile to the dissection of human bodies, but this resistance was not always what it seemed. For example, in his bull, De Sepultis, issued by Pope Boniface in 1300, dissection of cadavers for scientific purposes was prohibited, but the primary purpose of the bull was to put a stop to the dismembering of Crusader bodies, which made them easier to carry home, but added to the risk of disease. Locy, Op. cit., pages 156–157. For Vesalius’ drawings, see Charles Singer, A History of Biology, London and New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1959, page 103.

  49. Ibid., pages 82ff.

  50. Locy, Op. cit., page 160

  51. Zimmer, Op. cit., page 20.

  52. Locy, Op. cit., page 168.

  53. Ibid., pages 169ff. See also William S. Beck, Modern Science and the Nature of Life, London: Macmillan, 1958, page 61, for the fall of Galenism.

  54. Locy, Op. cit., page 174. See also Zimmer, Op. cit., page 21, for how all this changed ideas about the soul.

  55. Locy, Op. cit., pages 175–176.

  56. Arthur Roch (editor), The Origins and Growth of Biology, London: Penguin, 1964, pages 178 and 185; and Zimmer, Op. cit., page 66.

  57. Locy, Op. cit., page 184. Roch (editor), Op. cit., page 175, has an extract on Harvey’s motives in publishing his book.

  58. He also refers twice to a magnifying glass.

  59. Locy, Op. cit., page 187.

  60. Ibid., page 188; and Zimmer, Op. cit., page 69.

  61. Though see Zimmer, Op. cit., page 69, for some mistakes of Harvey.

  62. Locy, Op. cit., page 196.

  63. Ibid., page 197.

  64. Roch (editor), Op. cit., pages 100–101.

  65. Locy, Op. cit., page 201.

  66. Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982, page 138.

  67. Locy, Op. cit., page 208.

  68. Ibid., page 211.

  69. Mayr, Op. cit., page 321.

  70. Locy, Op. cit., page 213.

  71. Roch (editor), Op. cit., pages 80ff.

  72. Locy, Op. cit., page 216.

  73. Ibid., page 217.

  74. He later observed the same phenomenon in the webbing of a frog’s foot, and in the tails of young fishes and eels.

  75. Mayr, Op. cit., page 138. Marcello Malpighi in Italy and Nehemiah Grew in England brought the microscope to bear not on animals but on plants. An interest in plants had been stimulated by the exotic species brought back from the New World (and Africa) by explorers. Ibid., pages 100–101. Both men published superbly illustrated books on the anatomy of plants and, by an extraordinary coincidence, on the very day that Grew’s book was delivered from the printer, Malpighi’s manuscript was deposited at the Royal Society in London. Ibid., page 387. In Malpighi’s book Anatome plantarum, the cells which make up the various structures are named utriculi. He observed different kinds of cells within plants–those that carry air, sap, and so on, and the same is broadly true of Grew in his book The Anatomy of Plants. Ibid., page 385. But, although he observed cells, referring to them as ‘bladders’, Grew did not explore them any further either (others later called cells ‘bubbles’). Neither man realised that the cell was the basic building block of life, from which all more complex organisms are constructed. The idea was not developed for more than two centuries.

  76. Mayr, Op. cit., pages 100 and 658–659.

  77. Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, Op. cit., page 272.

  78. Ibid., page 273; see also Boorstin, Op. cit., pages 155 and 158.

  79. Tarnas, Op. cit., page 274.

  80. Robert Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England, Bruges, 1938, chapter 15.

  81. Boyer, Op. cit., page 336.

  82. Ibid., page 337; and Boorstin, Op. cit., pages 166–167.

  83. Cartesian geometry is now synonymous with analytical geometry.

  84. Tarnas, Op. cit., page 277. Boorstin, Op. cit., page 164. Popkin, Op. cit., pages 237–238.

  85. Tarnas, Op. cit., pages 280–281.

  86. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., pages 183–184.

  87. Bernal, Science in History, Op. cit., page 462. Zimmer, Op. cit., pages 183ff, for the very first meeting; he says that originally there was a list of forty potential members.

  88. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 182. Zimmer, Op. cit., page 95, says there was another early Oxford group: the Oxford Experimental Philosophy Group.

  89. Zimmer, Op. cit., page 184.

  90. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 185; see also Zimmer, Op. cit., pages 96 and 100.

  91. Lisa Jardine, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution, New York: Doubleday, 1999; see also Zimmer, Op. cit., pages 185–186. Lisa Jardine, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man who Measured London, London: HarperCollins, 2003.

  92. Mordechai Feingold, The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England: 1560–1640, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pages 6, 122 and 215.

  93. Ibid., page 215.

  94. Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot, Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 2000, 45.

  95. Ibid., page 103.

  96. Ibid., page 135.

  97. Ostler (editor), Op. cit., page 43.

  98. Ibid., page 44.

  99. Ibid., page 45.

  100. Ibid., page 49. Carl Zimmer’s point, about the Oxford Experimental Philosophy Group (note 88 above), underlines this aspect.

  101. In Ostler (editor), Op. cit., page 50.

  CHAPTER 24: LIBERTY, PROPERTY AND COMMUNITY: THE ORIGINS OF CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM

  1. Schulze, States, Nations and Nationalism, Op. cit., page 17.

  2. John Bowle, Western Political Thought, London: Cape, 1947/1954, page 288.

  3. Schulze, Op. cit., page 28.

  4. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 28.

  5. Allan H. Gilbert, The Prince and Other Works, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941, page 29.

  6. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 31.

  7. In particular, for example, he thought that religion, by which he meant Christianity, hindered the development of a strong state, because it preached meekness. At the same time he thought that some form of religion was desirable, because it acted as a social ‘glue’ that kept people together. But this too was new, in that it was the first time anyone had (openly, at any rate) conceived religion as a coercive rather than as a spiritual force. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 34; Boorstin, Op. cit., page 178.

  8. Schulze, Op. cit., page 30.

  9. Ibid., page 31.

  10. N. Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Peter Whitshome (1560), reprinted 1905, chapter 18, page 323.

  11. Boorstin, Op. cit., page 178.

  12. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 36.

  13. Ibid., page 32.

  14. Bowle, Op. cit., pages 270–272.

  15. Allied with its national character, Protestantism laid the spiritual/psychological basis for a political sovereignty based in the people. Calvin’s insistence on the pre-eminence of individual conscience, which even allowed for tyrannicide against Catholic rulers on confessional grounds, became the forerunner of the right of rebellion, which was to become such a characteristic of later times. Taken together, these elements would lead eventually to the democratic theory of the state. The purpose of the state, for the early Protestants, was to protect the congregations within it, not in itself to provide the spiritual development of the people. ‘The best things in life are not in the state’s province at all.’ Bowle, Op. cit., pages 280–281.

  16. Ibid., pages 281–282.

  17. Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits: Mission, Myths and Historians, London: HarperCollins, 2004, pages 148–149.

  18. Bowle, Op. cit., page 285.


  19. Ibid.