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The Origins of Modern Science
From Simon & Schuster, Herbert Butterfield's The Origins of Modern Science chronicles the history of contemporary scientific theory.
In The Origins of Modern Science Professor Herbert Butterfield argues that past scientific achievements cannot be viewed through the filter of 20th century eyes, but can be understood only in the historical and political context of an era.
In The Origins of Modern Science Professor Herbert Butterfield argues that past scientific achievements cannot be viewed through the filter of 20th century eyes, but can be understood only in the historical and political context of an era.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
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About the author
Herbert Butterfield
74 books31 followersSir Herbert Butterfield was a British historian and philosopher of history who is remembered chiefly for two books—a short volume early in his career entitled The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) and his Origins of Modern Science (1949). Over the course of his career, Butterfield turned increasingly to historiography and man's developing view of the past. Butterfield was a devout Christian and reflected at length on Christian influences in historical perspectives. Butterfield thought individual personalities more important than great systems of government or economics in historical study. His Christian beliefs in personal sin, salvation, and providence heavily influenced his writings, a fact he freely admitted. At the same time, Butterfield's early works emphasized the limits of a historian's moral conclusions, "If history can do anything it is to remind us that all our judgments are merely relative to time and circumstance."
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 12, 2009
A terrific introduction to changes in paradigm. Changes in paradigm deals basically with what it takes to completely change how we think about something very basic that is the foundation of our thought. I have been obsessed with this study for years and this book really nailed the coffin shut on that obsession. I discovered this book through a history prof in college. If you like this topic, the next step after this book is Thomas Kuhn.
December 5, 2013
This series of lectures illuminates the changes in science and the concomitant change in society. A fascinating read that I need to add to my library. I checked this out of the library and one of the pages was uncut, which leads me to suspect that I'm the only person to have read it in the 40+ years from the library's original purchase. I suppose I should be grateful that it didn't get purged from the shelves because no library should be without this seminal book.
December 11, 2018
A good book which may deserve 4 stars if we take only the chapters about the history of science into account. Butterfield gives exciting insights into the way people thought before modern scientific advances, and also into how changes came to be. A couple examples:
- Aristotelian physics: People believed that constantly applied force resulted in uniform motion. That's because when thinking about uniform motion, Aristo imagined a horse cart, a sensible example in his own time. But later, when projectiles became commonplace, people saw that this wasn't the case.
- Elements: People thought that water and air were irreducible elements and this prejudice postponed the scientific revolution in chemistry, because it wasn't easy to break it down. Conservative scientists could always dodge inconsistent experiment results with a new explanation. In hindsight these explanations may seem stupid, but back then they couldn't have known this.
- Ptolemaic system: Copernicus did not actually break down this system completely. He actually simplified the system by putting the sun in the middle and thus reducing the necessary number of spheres. Although this is a big step, it still had many relics from the past: the fixed stars, an even greater obsession with circles and spheres, planets being attached to spheres etc.
The problematic chapter is Chapter 10, which is terribly eurocentric and Islamophobic. The hatred Butterfield has for "Muslim invaders" and his bias for the West and Christianity clearly shows in many parts of the text. Some examples:
"It was they [Mongol and Turkic invaders] who hung as a constant shadow over the East and eventually turned the eastern Mediterranean lands into desert; and they put an end to the glory of Baghdad. [...] for centuries they had had tormented us and carried their depredations as far as the Atlantic coast" -Citation definitely needed...and his bias is out of the charts.
"[...] which ought to be placed -along with the exile of the ancient Jews or the building-up of the universal empires of Alexander the Great and of ancient Rome- amongst the epic adventures that have helped to make the human race what it is." -I'm sure the exile of the Jews played no significant part in "making the human race what it is". Butterfield is just being extremely biased again.
"The scientific revolution we must regard, therefore [because according to him there wasn't any sign that the ancient world was moving towards anything like the scientific revolution], as a creative product of the West -depending on a complicated set of conditions which existed only in western Europe [...]" -Interesting, care to list those conditions and give sources which prove your claim?
"That is why, since the rise of Christianity, there is no landmark in history that is worthy to be compared to this [scientific revolution]." -Yeah, let's just disregard Islam completely!
Last but not least, a very big problem is the complete lack of citations and sources. This obviously reduces the trustworthiness and the argumentative power of his arguments dramatically. This is especially true when Butterfield is writing on controversial topics, like in Chapter 10.
- Aristotelian physics: People believed that constantly applied force resulted in uniform motion. That's because when thinking about uniform motion, Aristo imagined a horse cart, a sensible example in his own time. But later, when projectiles became commonplace, people saw that this wasn't the case.
- Elements: People thought that water and air were irreducible elements and this prejudice postponed the scientific revolution in chemistry, because it wasn't easy to break it down. Conservative scientists could always dodge inconsistent experiment results with a new explanation. In hindsight these explanations may seem stupid, but back then they couldn't have known this.
- Ptolemaic system: Copernicus did not actually break down this system completely. He actually simplified the system by putting the sun in the middle and thus reducing the necessary number of spheres. Although this is a big step, it still had many relics from the past: the fixed stars, an even greater obsession with circles and spheres, planets being attached to spheres etc.
The problematic chapter is Chapter 10, which is terribly eurocentric and Islamophobic. The hatred Butterfield has for "Muslim invaders" and his bias for the West and Christianity clearly shows in many parts of the text. Some examples:
"It was they [Mongol and Turkic invaders] who hung as a constant shadow over the East and eventually turned the eastern Mediterranean lands into desert; and they put an end to the glory of Baghdad. [...] for centuries they had had tormented us and carried their depredations as far as the Atlantic coast" -Citation definitely needed...and his bias is out of the charts.
"[...] which ought to be placed -along with the exile of the ancient Jews or the building-up of the universal empires of Alexander the Great and of ancient Rome- amongst the epic adventures that have helped to make the human race what it is." -I'm sure the exile of the Jews played no significant part in "making the human race what it is". Butterfield is just being extremely biased again.
"The scientific revolution we must regard, therefore [because according to him there wasn't any sign that the ancient world was moving towards anything like the scientific revolution], as a creative product of the West -depending on a complicated set of conditions which existed only in western Europe [...]" -Interesting, care to list those conditions and give sources which prove your claim?
"That is why, since the rise of Christianity, there is no landmark in history that is worthy to be compared to this [scientific revolution]." -Yeah, let's just disregard Islam completely!
Last but not least, a very big problem is the complete lack of citations and sources. This obviously reduces the trustworthiness and the argumentative power of his arguments dramatically. This is especially true when Butterfield is writing on controversial topics, like in Chapter 10.
September 14, 2019
Butterfield's Origins was presented in class by one of my lecturers in Cambridge as a rather abominable work, indicative of a misguided historiography that depicts the new science of the 16th and 17th century as humanity's highest cognitive achievement. The claim was that Butterfield betrayed his own historical credentials when adopting an evaluative (i.e. pro-modern science) perspective. Butterfield, of course, coined the term Whiggism in his attempt to criticise triuamphalist historiographical narratives. Thus, it is rather ironic that he became a Whig historian himself. As I was told, the only good thing that this book ever did was to enable historians of science to find jobs in departments of history (!).
Having now carefully read the book, it appears that Butterfield wrote a history of science that, although mired by the occasional triumphalist statement and its obvious scorn towards the alchemical and magical currents of the time, remains knowledgeable and charitable in its depiction of superseded scientific traditions (Ptolemaic astronomy, Aristotelian physics, Phlogiston chemistry) and is deeply reflective from a historiographical standpoint (periodisation, historical continuities/discontinuities, integration of 'science' in a wider cultural context, the question of progress). In short, Butterfield's history has rather little in common with the caricatured version presented to me (and, I presume, future historians of science) by an esteemed present-day scholar in the field.
Having now carefully read the book, it appears that Butterfield wrote a history of science that, although mired by the occasional triumphalist statement and its obvious scorn towards the alchemical and magical currents of the time, remains knowledgeable and charitable in its depiction of superseded scientific traditions (Ptolemaic astronomy, Aristotelian physics, Phlogiston chemistry) and is deeply reflective from a historiographical standpoint (periodisation, historical continuities/discontinuities, integration of 'science' in a wider cultural context, the question of progress). In short, Butterfield's history has rather little in common with the caricatured version presented to me (and, I presume, future historians of science) by an esteemed present-day scholar in the field.
February 28, 2025
The clarity and concision of his work in delineating what we call science paradigms - sort of distinct blocs of understanding - is exceptional. The author had been a reader at his university in England is perhaps the reason why. These are the tough foot soldiers of the profession there, sometimes declining full professorship in exchange for more (thought) freedom.
His outlines of what e.g. Descartes covered in his meditations and First Principle axioms in the times they occurred is clear and vivid (for example, William Harvey's investigations in anatomy, a thing very much of a "mechanistic" concern of Descartes). No less than 12 paradigmatic occurrences and shifts are described in context with the times of their happening, from "Copernicus's conservatism" to evolution - including why strides in chemical researched lagged in the 1600s.
As with the science histories that, to me, matter, there is no historicist mysticism tied to these thought blocs; no soiling by the ancient notion that thought exists independently of the human mind in Nature and are controlled by or part of inevitable historical "laws" outside of human experience.
His outlines of what e.g. Descartes covered in his meditations and First Principle axioms in the times they occurred is clear and vivid (for example, William Harvey's investigations in anatomy, a thing very much of a "mechanistic" concern of Descartes). No less than 12 paradigmatic occurrences and shifts are described in context with the times of their happening, from "Copernicus's conservatism" to evolution - including why strides in chemical researched lagged in the 1600s.
As with the science histories that, to me, matter, there is no historicist mysticism tied to these thought blocs; no soiling by the ancient notion that thought exists independently of the human mind in Nature and are controlled by or part of inevitable historical "laws" outside of human experience.
October 22, 2024
History if it is all about circumstances, we cannot give justice to it from our present perspective. Ptolemaic astronomy, Aristotelian physics, Phlogiston chemistry if all were history of Greeks or Greco-Roman thoughts then modern science is referred as transformation of "Natural Philosophy" as they failed on answering the motion of heaven, question about elementary particles, evolutionary basis of life, and many. The book follows "Scientific Revolution" as claimed due to "European Renaissance and the Enlightenment" and neglected the influence of others on Greeks, Romans, and European on "fast-forwarding history in a millennium scale".
Today, what we call, modern science is struggling with its own question of "sustainability" even sometimes of Homo sapiens or human species and is in search of "Traditional and indigenous knowledge". If so "History of Science" is inevitable department for: What did human unremembered or forgot on course of evolution- "missing history"- of science? #प्रश्न_गरौँ_उत्तर_खोजौँ
The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800
Herbert Butterfield
Today, what we call, modern science is struggling with its own question of "sustainability" even sometimes of Homo sapiens or human species and is in search of "Traditional and indigenous knowledge". If so "History of Science" is inevitable department for: What did human unremembered or forgot on course of evolution- "missing history"- of science? #प्रश्न_गरौँ_उत्तर_खोजौँ
The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800
Herbert Butterfield
August 11, 2021
The oldest of old fashioned history of science.
November 18, 2024
Excelente presentación de una pequeña porción de la historia del pensamiento. No es tan solo un historiador de las ciencias, sino un buen filósofo.
June 30, 2009
This book was seminal in my understanding of the emergence of science in the mental history of mankind. Fascinating and eye opening. A must read if you wish to understand the foundations of scientific method. Remarkably, we now take this method for granted as if it were hard-wired, while this book reminds us it was a hard-won lesson.
December 21, 2018
not possible to rate this seminal work too highly. this i think is pretty much the origin of modern history of science. lectures on theory of inertia, galileo, Bacon and Descartes, and his very original notion of those whose genius was to pick up the bundle of sticks from the other end, which Thomas Kuhn crystallized with the Paradigm Theory of historical development.
March 8, 2012
This is a must read. Published shortly before Kuhn's "Scientific Revolutions", Butterfield say the same thing Kuhn says, but with a different style.
August 14, 2012
A must for grad students.
April 26, 2017
This is a clearly-written text on the science of the period, done by a clear-minded English academic. This clarity is missing nowadays. He was a reader at Cambridge University.
I give points on the clarity and ease of reading: something woefully missing in such writers and thinkers normally (I include myself in this rogue's gallery of long sentences and tendentiousness). I also love treatments of Copernicus that remove him from some kind of Kuhnian-theory construct that are in themselves stumbling blocks to learning what Copernicus meant, as they tie them to things that they did not mean or do and, rather, to something concocted in the epistemology of the Kuhnian. It is rarely understood that Copernicus literally resurrected Aristarchus's theory of a heliocentric solar system, which the Greek composed well around 1,000 years before the Pole lived. It is also never understood that Copernicus merely simplified Claudius Ptolemy's 80 epicycles of a clockwork universe (solar system) to a precious few. Another was Butterfield's intelligent summary as to why chemical research suffered a delayed birth - even given Boyle's sheer brilliance: one reason given is the mundane but believable construct that the medieval belief system that one could manufacture precious metals using the alchemist's approach was held onto, mainly due to avarice. Avarice is known - in case you were just born - to cloud judgement.
A must read in the history of science. My copy is a cast-off from Southern Methodist University. Its rareness is a pity in a world filled with epistemological theorists who ineffectually try to tell us how science evolved or even works.
I give points on the clarity and ease of reading: something woefully missing in such writers and thinkers normally (I include myself in this rogue's gallery of long sentences and tendentiousness). I also love treatments of Copernicus that remove him from some kind of Kuhnian-theory construct that are in themselves stumbling blocks to learning what Copernicus meant, as they tie them to things that they did not mean or do and, rather, to something concocted in the epistemology of the Kuhnian. It is rarely understood that Copernicus literally resurrected Aristarchus's theory of a heliocentric solar system, which the Greek composed well around 1,000 years before the Pole lived. It is also never understood that Copernicus merely simplified Claudius Ptolemy's 80 epicycles of a clockwork universe (solar system) to a precious few. Another was Butterfield's intelligent summary as to why chemical research suffered a delayed birth - even given Boyle's sheer brilliance: one reason given is the mundane but believable construct that the medieval belief system that one could manufacture precious metals using the alchemist's approach was held onto, mainly due to avarice. Avarice is known - in case you were just born - to cloud judgement.
A must read in the history of science. My copy is a cast-off from Southern Methodist University. Its rareness is a pity in a world filled with epistemological theorists who ineffectually try to tell us how science evolved or even works.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews