Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
to position the scientific evolution he is about to chronicle. His goal is to
show that
nature has set no term to the perfection of human faculties; that the
perfectibility of man is truly indefinite; and that the progress of this per-
fectibility, from now onwards independent of any power that might wish
to halt it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which
nature has cast us.
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As traditionally constructed, perfection implies intent and foresight. And
so, while Condorcet's claim that “nature has set no term” to progress might
mean that there is nothing in its known laws that would seem to preclude
perpetual advancement, grammatically he has planted the seeds of teleologi-
cal intentionality by depicting nature as a volitional agent. His readers, as
members of a culture already steeped in that drama of historical perfection
in which God is the protagonist and his obedient servants are his instru-
ments, are likely to read this narrative in an analogous way. This clearly
works to the author's rhetorical advantage. Were Condorcet merely willing
to say that the power to achieve continuous improvement lay at the com-
mand of human nature, progress would be tainted by the appearance of
self interest. But by aligning progress with the transcendent purposes of a
selfless providence, he could do much more to sustain the special heroism
of science.
Just as Isak Dinesen's heroine did not need to be explicitly identified
with the Christ of the Bible in order to speak for the messianic promise of
art, Condorcet's did not need to be directly identified with God in order to
achieve a similar outcome. Babette's messianic significance arises from the
similarity her great sacrifice bears to that of Christ. To make science his-
tory's protagonist in the
Esquisse
, its author did not need to say this in any
explicit way; he only needed to plot its relationship to nature by analogy to
a sacred narrative that already communicated a similar meaning.
Universalism
If the providential features of Condorcet's narrative work to relate the quest
for scientific knowledge to a transcendent purpose, its universal features
signify the eternal scope of such labors. In the explicitly Christian view of
history that Collingwood discusses, universalism means that the historical
process is “everywhere and always of the same kind, and every part of it
is a part of the same whole.”
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Since history's unity of purpose manifests
