{"id":18680,"date":"2017-02-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=403"},"modified":"2017-02-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T00:00:00","slug":"when-science-went-modern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/02\/when-science-went-modern\/","title":{"rendered":"When Science Went Modern"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

W<\/span>riting in the Hedgehog Review<\/a><\/em> (Fall 2016), Lorraine Daston identifies 1890-1914 as the \u201cmoment when science went modern\u201d (20). Going modern here involves an acceleration in the pace of discovery and invention: <\/p>\n

For the scientists, the realization that progress might have its dark side had been germinating since the mid-nineteenth century, when they noticed with consternation that their publications were no longer read after a decade or so and that it had become necessary to revise university curricula and textbooks several times a generation. Last year\u2019s scientific truths, they noted with alarm, were becoming obsolete almost as rapidly as last year\u2019s fashion in millinery. By the 1890s, the pell-mell accumulation of novelties on both the theoretical and empirical fronts threatened to bury the scientists like an avalanche and to undermine the foundations of even the most stable sciences, astronomy and physics\u201d (20-1). Scientists had to rethink \u201cthe relationship of science to history in the broadest sense: not just the past, but also the present and the future (21).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Drawing on writings of scientists, historians and philosophers c. 1900, Daston assesses the effects of modernity on scientists. She observes that \u201cscientists themselves seemed sickened by the speed of it, and to have lost their nerve.\u201d Confidence in scientific progress waned; some turned cautious, some \u201cascetic,\u201d some melancholy (25). They all had to face the \u201cnightmare of scientific progress: The truths of today would become the falsehoods\u2014or at least the errors\u2014of tomorrow\u201d (26). Scientists prided themselves on being heirs of \u201cmartyrs to truth\u201d like Galileo; they had to settle for being \u201cmartyrs to progress\u201d (26), an inglorious martyrdom.<\/p>\n

Postmodern revulsion at modernity isn\u2019t anti-modern. The revulsion was there at the creation.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing in the Hedgehog Review (Fall 2016), Lorraine Daston identifies 1890-1914 as the \u201cmoment when science went modern\u201d (20). Going modern here involves an acceleration in the pace of discovery and invention: For the scientists, the realization that progress might have its dark side had been germinating since the mid-nineteenth century, when they noticed with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[653,1780,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modernity","category-progress","category-science"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen Science Went Modern<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Writing in the Hedgehog Review (Fall 2016), Lorraine Daston identifies 1890-1914 as the \u201cmoment when science went modern\u201d (20). 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