What Is the Connection Between Science and Democracy?
The idea of public knowledge, the free exchange of ideas, the scientific society as a model of reasoned deliberation, and the legacy for modern democratic institutions.
What Is the Connection Between Science and Democracy?
The connection between science and democracy is one of the central inheritances of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. The new natural philosophy of the seventeenth century, with its insistence on public demonstration, free exchange of ideas, and the authority of evidence over the authority of tradition, established a model of reasoned public deliberation that became one of the principal intellectual resources of the modern democratic tradition. The scientific societies of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — the Royal Society of London, the Académie des Sciences in Paris, the many provincial academies of Europe — were in effect laboratories of democratic practice, in which the participants set aside the distinctions of rank and wealth that governed the wider society and deliberated on matters of common concern on the basis of evidence and argument alone. The model of the scientific society, in turn, fed into the political thought of the Enlightenment and into the constitutional practice of the American and French revolutions. The idea of public knowledge — the idea that the proper conduct of public affairs requires that information be freely available to all citizens, and that decisions be made on the basis of evidence and argument rather than on the basis of authority or tradition — is one of the central ideas of the modern democratic tradition, and it is a direct legacy of the new natural philosophy. For a broader account of the political and philosophical legacy of the Scientific Revolution, see Science, Politics, and the Enlightenment. For the influence of the Scientific Revolution on the Enlightenment more broadly, see How Did the Scientific Revolution Influence the Enlightenment?. And for the broader social impact of the revolution, see The Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Society. For the philosophical background, see Bacon and Descartes.
The Idea of Public Knowledge
The new natural philosophy of the seventeenth century was conducted in public. The experiments were performed in front of witnesses, the observations were reported in letters and pamphlets, the conclusions were debated in the lecture halls and the coffee houses, and the results were published in the new scientific journals. The public conduct of the new natural philosophy was a sharp break with the older traditions of natural philosophy, in which the secrets of nature were understood to be the property of the learned few, and the results of investigation were understood to be transmissible only within a closed community of initiates. The insistence on the public character of natural knowledge was one of the most distinctive features of the new science. Francis Bacon, in The Advancement of Learning (1605) and Novum Organum (1620), had insisted that the new knowledge should be made public and applied to the improvement of human life. Robert Boyle, in his public experimental program at Oxford and London, made the witnessing of experiments a regular feature of the conduct of natural philosophy. The Royal Society, in its charter of 1662, made the promotion of “useful knowledge” and the “public good” the principal aims of the institution. The Philosophical Transactions, the first scientific journal, was explicitly designed to make the results of the new science available to a wide audience. The idea of public knowledge, in short, was one of the central ideas of the Scientific Revolution. And the idea, applied to the realm of human affairs, was one of the central ideas of the modern democratic tradition. The idea that the proper conduct of public affairs requires that information be freely available to all citizens, and that decisions be made on the basis of evidence and argument, is a direct legacy of the new natural philosophy.
The Free Exchange of Ideas
The new natural philosophy was also based on the free exchange of ideas. The natural philosophers of the seventeenth century corresponded with one another across national and confessional boundaries, visited one another’s laboratories, attended one another’s lectures, and debated one another’s conclusions. The Republic of Letters — the informal community of educated Europeans who corresponded with one another — was the institutional embodiment of the free exchange of ideas. The free exchange of ideas was made possible by a number of institutional innovations. The improvement of the postal system in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made it possible to send letters across Europe in a matter of days or weeks. The growth of the printed book and the printed journal made it possible to publish and distribute the results of natural philosophy on a wide scale. The growth of the salon and the coffee house made it possible for the educated public to gather and discuss the new ideas in person. The growth of the scientific society and the academy made it possible for the natural philosophers to meet formally and to coordinate their work. The free exchange of ideas, in short, was one of the central features of the new natural philosophy. And the free exchange of ideas, applied to the realm of human affairs, was one of the central features of the modern democratic tradition. The idea that the proper conduct of public affairs requires that citizens be free to express their opinions, to publish their views, and to associate with one another for the discussion of common concerns, is a direct legacy of the reformed philosophy.
The Scientific Society as a Model
The scientific society, in its late seventeenth and eighteenth century form, was in effect a model of democratic practice. The fellows of the Royal Society, the members of the Académie des Sciences, and the members of the many provincial academies across Europe set aside the distinctions of rank, wealth, and birth that governed the wider society, and deliberated on matters of common concern on the basis of evidence and argument alone. The model was not perfectly democratic — women, the lower classes, and the unlearned were largely excluded — but it was a significant departure from the older practices of European life. The model of the scientific society was based on a number of principles. The first was the principle of equality among the deliberators: in the meeting of the Royal Society, the duke and the artisan were on an equal footing, and the quality of the argument was understood to be the only relevant consideration. The second was the principle of public discussion: the meetings of the society were open to the fellows, and the results of the discussions were published in the Philosophical Transactions and other journals. The third was the principle of free criticism: the fellows were encouraged to criticize the conclusions of one another, and the criticisms were published along with the original papers. The fourth was the principle of consensus: the conclusions of the society were understood to be the product of reasoned agreement among the fellows, rather than the pronouncement of an authority. The model of the scientific society, in short, was one of the principal institutional precedents for the modern democratic tradition. The model was not directly transferable to the political realm — the model of a small, learned society deliberating on technical matters is not the same as the model of a large, popular society deliberating on political questions — but the principles of equality, public discussion, free criticism, and consensus were eventually to become central principles of modern democratic practice.
The Influence on the Democratic Revolutions
The model of the scientific society, and the ideas of public knowledge and free exchange of ideas, fed into the political thought of the Enlightenment and into the constitutional practice of the American and French revolutions. The American revolutionaries, who were familiar with the political philosophy of the Enlightenment and the institutional practice of the scientific societies, established in the United States Constitution (1787) and the Bill of Rights (1791) a set of institutions that embodied many of the principles of natural philosophy: the public character of government, the free exchange of political ideas, the protection of minority rights, and the system of checks and balances. The French revolutionaries, similarly, established in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) a set of principles that embodied many of the same ideas: the freedom of expression, the freedom of the press, the right of assembly, and the principle of equality before the law. The French Revolution was more turbulent than the American Revolution, and the democratic principles were not always observed in practice, but the principles themselves were a direct legacy of the new philosophy and the Enlightenment. The long-term influence of the reformed philosophy on the democratic tradition was thus substantial. The modern democratic state — with its commitment to public knowledge, free exchange of ideas, reasoned public deliberation, and protection of minority rights — is, in significant part, a legacy of the Scientific Revolution. The connection is not a simple one — many other influences shaped the modern democratic tradition, including the English constitutional tradition, the classical republican tradition, the Protestant religious tradition, and the immediate political circumstances of the late eighteenth century — but natural philosophy was an important and distinctive influence.
The Legacy for Modern Democratic Institutions
The legacy of the Scientific Revolution, in its democratic dimension, is still visible in the modern world. The modern democratic state is based on a number of principles that are direct legacies of the new philosophy: the commitment to public knowledge, the protection of free expression, the principle of reasoned public deliberation, the protection of minority rights, and the accountability of government to the governed. The modern scientific community, similarly, is based on a number of principles that are direct legacies of the reformed philosophy: the commitment to public demonstration, the free exchange of ideas, the principle of peer review, and the principle of international cooperation. The connection between science and democracy, in short, is not just a historical curiosity. It is a living connection, with deep roots in the Scientific Revolution and important implications for the present. The defense of science, in the modern world, is in significant part a defense of the principles of public knowledge, free exchange of ideas, and reasoned public deliberation that natural philosophy established. The defense of democracy, similarly, is in significant part a defense of the principles of public knowledge, free exchange of ideas, and reasoned public deliberation that the new philosophy established. The two defenses, in other words, are part of a single project, and the project has its roots in the seventeenth century.
The Limits of the Connection
The connection between science and democracy is not, of course, a simple matter. The new natural philosophy, in its seventeenth-century form, was not democratic in the modern sense — it excluded women, the lower classes, and the unlearned. The democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth century, in their turn, did not always respect the principles of public knowledge and free exchange of ideas that the reformed philosophy had established. The French Revolution, in particular, descended into the Terror, in which the principles of reasoned public deliberation were abandoned in favor of the principle of revolutionary justice. The connection between science and democracy is, in short, a complicated one. It is not a simple story of science leading to democracy, or of democracy following automatically from science. It is a story in which the principles established by natural philosophy were applied, in a long, contested process, to the realm of human affairs, with results that were sometimes admirable and sometimes not. The connection is one of the principal inheritances of the Scientific Revolution, and it is one of the most important parts of the legacy of the Enlightenment. See How Did the Scientific Revolution Influence the Enlightenment?. The broader political and philosophical legacy of the revolution is set out in Science, Politics, and the Enlightenment. And the broader social impact of the revolution is set out in The Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Society.