A Social History of Truth, Civility, and Science in Seventeenth-Century England.

Steven Shapin is professor of sociology and science studies at the University of California, San Diego. His lengthy study leads to a significant conclusion: the so-called experimental objectivity of the new science of the Royal Society is shown to be bound up with the value of being a gentleman, one whose word is trustworthy. There is an irony here, for the English "moderns" reacted very much against appeals to authority and claimed to trust only in empirical evidence. The old quip - "It's not what you know that counts, but whom you know" - applies even to holy science.

Shapin's major interest is clearly in the grounds of scientific knowledge. The social construction of science - the ways in which local accounts are agreed upon, by the locals, to offer a true description of reality - is a popular topic these days. One laudable aspect of Shapin's work is the detailed historical research he presents to argue what can, in some hands, become an exercise of opinions and prejudices. What we have here, then, is a very interesting historical narrative written with an eye on social structures, designed to make a point about science: the way we secure factual knowledge rests on a lot more than just experimentation, and in particular it rests upon reliability of testimony.

Shapin's chief argument is that "all people living and working in a collective state are obliged to address and practically to solve a range of problems about relations between self and others, subjects and objects, knowledge and the moral order." The "moral order" includes, in particular, the necessity of trusting the goodness of another if a body of knowledge is to be established. Knowledge is not only a practical collective activity, but also a prerequisite of coherent living. Initiation into a publicly recognizable virtue sounds like a kind of ritual, though Shapin does not take the thesis that far.

The most interesting and astonishing parts of the narrative are the second and fourth chapters, respectively, on Gentlemen and Robert Boyle, the celebrated model of the virtuous scientist, if a rather odd character. The Royal Society solved its problem of marking trustworthiness by restricting its circle to "gentlemen": those who were honorable by birth or by virtue, without a particular ax to grind, and beyond corruptibility. The self-important idleness and detachment of the gentry is seen not to disqualify them from being arbiters of the truthfulness of descriptions of the real world, but rather to enhance their scientific vocation. Merchants, women, servants, papists (particularly Jesuits), and foreigners in general were, of course, excluded from this status, though with some notable exceptions.

Shapin makes an excellent point about the role of "conversation" in gentlemanly circles, even prior to the rise of science, as a habit of dealing with controversial questions without creating conflict or confrontation and thus moving toward the most probable solutions. Here he offers a hint of the answer to that perplexing question about the difference between European (mathematical) science and British (experimental) science: the absoluteness of mathematics brooks no finesse, whereas experiments remain matters for revision and discussion, Certainty rests as much on civility as it does on mathematical proof and experimental evidence.

The author is sensitive to criticisms he is likely to receive from historians and philosophers of science, and defends his interests successfully. He is also sensitive to the criticism that the rise of science went far beyond the green and pleasant fields of England, and therefore that his study is very limited. He is modest in his project, offering a detailed investigation into one piece, and a major piece at that, of the jigsaw that is modern science. He is merely making "a claim about the origins of the practice known as English experimental philosophy" and he admits that "we still know relatively little about the complex processes through which the seventeenth-century practices were successively transformed into those of the present day."

This is a beautifully presented book, thoroughly researched, and clearly set out. The focus seems at times rather narrow: all sorts of other questions are but touched on in passing. One such issue is the exclusion of women from science. Shapin pays little attention to recent feminist critiques of the masculine rites of science, which make the strange lives of Boyle and Newton and others more easily understood as well as demanding that their science be open to revision. What is lost from a science that excludes so many? Second, can science ever be detached and gentlemanly, and can it proceed without a passionate commitment, without a relentless intuition? Third, can empirical science today fruitfully serve a community that has lost - through the vaunted claims made about this very science - an interest in truth, virtue, and other transcendentals? This study provokes a series of such unanswered questions, a sure sign of a good text. Authors should not be castigated for not having written a different book and Shapin is entitled to stick to his thesis, though often one wishes he might have cut back on the evidence and ventured further in speculation. Nonetheless, his informative research renders a simple yet significant argument attractive. The rewards are an interesting though not dazzling read, for the price of thoroughness is a slow-moving text. Here we have a work that is compassionate more than it is confronting: the work, indeed, of a gentleman.

Shapin brings his study to a close with some reflections on modernity, and in particular on the shift in the locus of credibility from individuals to institutions. He is, I think, too sanguine about the virtues of scientific institutions, making no comment on the role of government and industry and establishments in the funding and monitoring of science.

Whom do we believe? And why? And do we comprehend what they say? Many of us have ceased to believe what we read in the papers and see on television; yet many others are, on the other hand, persuaded. But why should you take any notice of what I have to say? Deep questions about the nature of truth and faith cannot be shelved forever. Once more we are confronted with facing the mystery and moral integrity of the "subject," the one who tries to know, in the establishing of objectivity about what we know.