8 - Science and the Enlightenment: God's order and man's understanding

Summary

The Creator doubtless did not bestow so much curiosity and exquisite workmanship and skill upon his creatures, to be looked upon with a careless or incurious eye, especially to have them slighted or condemned; but to be admired by the rational part of the world, to magnify his own power, wisdom and goodness throughout all the world, and the ages thereof…my text commends God's works, not only for being great, but also approves of those curious and ingenious enquirers, that seek them out, or pry into them. And the more we pry into and discover of them, the greater and more glorious we find them to be, the more worthy of, and the more expressly to proclaim their great Creator.

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin were all of the same colour. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt in eight years more, that he should be able to supply the Governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers. I made him a small present, for my Lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.

Science is today probably the most powerful force in twenty-first-century culture. It determines our potential for technological control of the environment, many of our cultural and intellectual assumptions, and our economic, technological and agricultural base. In the twentieth century almost all science receives some form of public funding, and scientific practices and assumptions have also heavily influenced much current thinking about the way governments should be run. None of this was the case in the eighteenth century. The intellectual status of science was contested, its institutional organisations often weak, and certainly thin on the ground, and the nature of its relations with the economy and with government often tenuous.