In his 1990 article “Miracles,
Experiments, and the Ordinary Course of Nature,” Peter Dear expands on the
discussion previously propagated by Robert Merton and Thomas Kuhn dividing
scientific methodology in early Modern Europe between Catholic and Protestant
countries. According to the standard narrative, during early seventeenth
century, scientific practices split between mathematical and experimental
traditions. Though there was some overlap with figures like Newton, scientists
from a Protestant, particularly English tradition practiced “experimental
philosophy,” where scientists on the continent instead focused their attention
on mathematical traditions. Dear argues that the behaviors associated with
handling miracles in French life, absent in the Protestant belief in the
cession of miracles, valued the same inferential practices of universalized
experiences found in mathematical sciences ahead of the singular experiences
found in English experimental philosophy.
According to Dear, the dominant
theory of natural knowledge in the early seventeenth century involved the
assumption that true knowledge was sharable through common experience rather than
coming from a contrived situation. Therefore when mathematical practitioners
such as Pascal performed experimental practices, they discussed them in terms
of behavior that happened routinely. For example, when Pascal carried a
partially inflated bladder up Puy de Dome, rather than referring to the results
as a single experiment contrived by him on that particular volcano, he referred
to it generally as a universalized knowledge true on any “five hundred fathom”[1]
mountain. The English experimental tradition, in contrast, usually involved
recorded experiments in the first person, the circumstances under which it was
performed and who witnessed it. For English Protestants, since nothing occurred
“outside the laws of nature,” anything thing could be observed in a contrived
experiment. However, this was not the case for their Catholic contemporaries. According
to a traditional theory of miracles, a miracle was a singular event which
occurred outside of “the laws of nature.” It could only occur via divine mandate
and life English experiments, in order to be validated, required many witnesses
and specific details.
Dear’s account of English experiments
and French miracles in seventeenth century Europe shows how religious and
cultural attitudes towards miracles shaped scientific dialogue and methodology.
In the English tradition, where miracles were non-existent, the most valued
form of science was based on a singular artificial experience with several
witnesses. In the French tradition, where miracles were regular occurrences of
events unexplainable by science, the most valuable scientific truth was that
which was universal and shared by any person. His explanation successfully
shows how cultural perception of certain phenomena changed scientific practice
and theory for French and English scientists in Early Modern Europe.
