KOYRÉ´S INTERNALIST APPROACH

In almost all his major works on the scientific revolution Koyré used a very unique mechanism. This mechanism consisted in discussing the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century by first identifying and analysing the content of its major constituents before attempting an explanation of its historical occurrence. The reason for this method was because of his priority in showing the changes in the way human being reason through the study of the history of science. In this way, he tried to distinguish active science (scientific inquiries) from applied science. His approach is largely successful search for legitimation of the new science than its applicability.

He writes thus,

I do not see what the scientia activa has ever had to do with the development of the calculus, nor the rise of the bourgeoisie with

111Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800, p.16 112Ibid., p. 1

that of the Copernican, or the Keplerian, astronomy. And as for experience and experiment—two things which we must not only distinguish but even oppose to each other—I am convinced that the rise and growth of experimental science is not the source but, on the contrary, the result of the new theoretical, that is, the new metaphysical approach to nature that forms the content of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, a content which we have to understand before we can attempt an explanation (whatever this may be) of its historical occurance.¹¹³

What Koyré demonstrated here is a total disapproval of any explanation of scientific thought that threatened to undermine the autonomy of its internal development as a process guided above all by an inherent logic all its own. This does not mean that he is totally against the externalist explanations in the history of science. Such externalist explanations investigate, mainly, the social-cultural conditions that made the emergence of early modern science possible. However, he sought to reject such unguided social reductionism of the scientific ideas. In a similar vein, Mary Hesse also criticised such reductionism. She argued that a proper historical perspective neither involves uncritical accumulation of ever minor writing of forgotten figures, nor is it necessarily vitiated by the imposition of our standards of rationality on an alien age.¹¹⁴

The imposition of our standards of rationality to other historical periods is, perhaps, what defines the efforts by some authors to create continuous link between the science of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with those before them. However, Koyré illustrated that the arguments for the historical continuity depreciate the ´decisive mutation.´¹¹⁵ There is no logical justification in establishing continuity between the medieval physics of the Parisian precursors of Galileo with the classical physics issuing from the thought of Galileo and Descartes.¹¹⁶ Contrary to the appearances of historical continuity demonstrated by Pierre Duhem, Koyré argued that the precursor and inspirer of classical physics was neither Buridan nor Nicole Oresme. This is because the

113Alexander Koyré, Newtonian Studies, p.6

114Mary Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science, p. 20 115Alexander Koyré, Galileo Studies, p.3

116Ibid

medieval physics operated on a different terrain unlike the classical physics which operated on a terrain that could be defined as Archimedean. If any precursor of Galileo is to be mentioned then, it has to be Archimedes not Buridan or Oresme. However, thanks to the ambitious works of Pierre Duhem many insightful scientific progresses are now known of the medieval scientific thought.

2.3 ´CONTINUIST´ HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE DUHEM THESIS

Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (Jun.1861 - Sept.1916) strongly defended a thesis of continuity between medieval and early modern science. In arguing for the absence of abrupt discontinuities between medieval and early modern science he highlighted the positive role played by religion in the development of science in the Latin West and the cumulative nature of the history of physics. His work in the field of medieval science was originally prompted by his research into The Origins of Statics (1905–06) in which he first makes case for the existence of the medieval science. In the preface to the work he states thus,

the mechanical and physical science of which we are well within our rights proud in modern times flows, by an uninterrupted series of scarcely sensible improvements, from the doctrines professed in the heart of the schools of the Middle Ages; the intellectual revolutions alleged have not been, most often, but slow and long-prepared evolutions; the self-proclaimed renaissances but reactions frequently unjust and sterile; the respect of tradition is an essential condition of scientific progress.¹¹⁷

It was while writing The Origins of Statics in 1904 that Duhem came across an unusual reference to a then-unknown medieval thinker, Jordanus de Nemore. Jordanus de Nemore was recognised by Ferrari as the pioneer scientist to determine the apparent

117 See Pierre Duhem, Les origines de la statique, 2 vols., (Paris: Hermann, 1905–06). See the English Translation, Pierre Duhem, The Origins of Statics, trans. Grant F. Leneaux, Victor N. Vagliente, and Guy H. Wagener (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991)

weight of a body posed on an inclined plane thereby claiming the invention for such geometer of the 13^th Century for him. Duhem pursuit of this reference, and the subsequent research to which it led, has been widely acknowledged to have created the field of the history of medieval science. Thereafter came the three-volume Etudes sur Léonard de Vinci¹¹⁸ and the ten-volume Le Système du monde¹¹⁹, in which his thesis of the continuity of late medieval and early modern science was fully displayed.