Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
historical thinking was driven by a compulsion to conform fact to form, and
this form demanded an array of facts that would sustain the supposition of a
decisive historical divide, a millenarian division capable of sustaining faith
in progress.
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If Condorcet was displacing the same narrative into which Bacon had
already written the history of science, then it might be safe to predict that he
was supporting rhetorical outcomes similar to those that Bacon manifestly
sought to realize through his
Advancement of Learning
and
New Atlantis
,
namely the public patronage of science. I say outcomes rather than purposes
because, as I pointed out at the onset of this chapter, scientific patronage
was not Condorcet's explicit aim. The
Esquisse
was intended as a theodicy
of progress, a historical treatise that would affirm the advancement of lib-
erty in the face of the irrational turn that now seemed to diminish such
hopes. If progress was rooted in the very notion of historical being, then the
new despotism that was seeking to devour our author was merely a momen-
tary interruption. Science was making the voice of nature audible, and this
assured that convulsive relapses such as those brought on by the ascendancy
of Marat, Robespierre, and Hébert were merely ephemeral. The world could
look beyond the Terror to a future time when
the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their
reason; when tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical
instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage; and
when we shall think of them only to pity their victims and their dupes;
to maintain ourselves in a state of vigilance by thinking on their excesses;
and to learn how to recognize and so to destroy, by force of reason, the
first seeds of tyranny and superstition, should they ever dare to reappear
amongst us.
64
This was certainly not an explicit push for scientific patronage, but it
clearly anticipated what evolutionism now advances. A society that looked
for human emancipation in natural understanding would be greatly dis-
posed to patronize science. Since history arose from nature itself, and since
the natural sciences alone knew how to read it, science was certain to assume
a prophetic role in any liberal democracy that embraced such a narrative. To
attain freedom was to conform to nature. Liberation, Condorcet declared,
began and ended with science:
