Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
From the moment when the genius of Descartes gave men's minds that
general impetus which is the first principle of a revolution in the desti-
nies of the human race, to the happy time of complete and pure social
liberty when man was able to regain his natural independence only after
having lived through a long series of centuries of slavery and misery,
the picture of the progress of the mathematical and physical sciences
reveals an immense horizon whose different parts must be distributed
and ordered if we wish to grasp the significance of the whole and prop-
erly observe its relations.
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This is a statement that captures the very essence of scientism as a category of
social knowledge. By linking the evolution of liberty to the evolution of sci-
ence, Condorcet had made scientific knowledge something that had a social
as well as a natural substance; thus it came to define the whole framework
of human experience. A polity inspired by such an understanding of his-
tory would certainly wish to make itself in the image of science. It would be
inclined to regard its way of life as an extension of the scientific way of life.
My story cannot end with Condorcet for one simple reason. While the
potential of such thinking for building scientific patronage is obvious, there
is no direct line of causality leading from scientism to public support for the
natural sciences. A society or movement steeped in scientism can always be
counted on to support science in general ways, as Joseph Ben-David has so
ably illustrated, but not necessarily in ways conducive to the interests of its
professional practitioners.
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In this regard, while Condorcet's vision antici-
pates the kind of scientific self-validation that now makes evolutionism
attractive, it also illustrates the rhetorical shortcomings of such a general-
ized scientism that would soon make evolutionism an attractive alternative.
In making Descartes' mapping of the ways of reason the event which had
founded this new world, Condorcet constructed a version of scientism that
took the authority of scientific method as its ground. It was the certainty of
knowing how to find nature's truth that guaranteed social progress. In this
view, the natural sciences did not directly drive evolution. Scientific achieve-
ments were historical signs that certified the applicability of its methods to
all human endeavors, but this did not necessarily suggest that the advance-
ment of the physical sciences assured progress. This distinction may seem
subtle, but in the decades following Condorcet's death, its concrete impli-
cations would become manifest in France as social science began to usurp
the place of the natural sciences. In the end, the society brought to life by
the French Enlightenment, in spite of its creative leadership in establishing
