Technology, Industry, and the Useful Sciences
The long link from scientific knowledge to industrial application — instruments, mining, the steam engine, and the shift from speculative to practical knowledge.
Technology, Industry, and the Useful Sciences
The relationship between the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution is one of the central questions in the history of modern technology. Did the new science of the seventeenth century make possible the factory, the steam engine, and the railway? Or were the industrial technologies of the late eighteenth century the work of practical craftsmen with little or no connection to natural philosophy? The historical record, examined carefully, supports a more interesting answer than either of these simple alternatives. The Scientific Revolution did not directly cause the Industrial Revolution, but it created the conceptual, institutional, and instrumental conditions without which the industrial transformation would have been impossible. The diffusion of precision instruments, the culture of measurement, the practical engagement of natural philosophers with mining and metallurgy, the growth of the steam engine, the emergence of applied chemistry, and the slow shift in cultural values from speculative to useful knowledge were all parts of the long bridge between the natural philosophy of the seventeenth century and the industrial society of the nineteenth. This section examines that bridge. The story of how the new science fed into industry is told in How Did Science Drive the Industrial Revolution?. The catalogue of the key inventions produced by the Scientific Revolution itself is given in What Inventions Came From the Scientific Revolution?. And the broader social impact of the revolution is set out in The Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Society. For the instruments that made the new science possible, see The Telescope and Microscope.
The Long Bridge from Science to Industry
The long bridge from the Scientific Revolution to the Industrial Revolution has three principal spans. The first, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, was the growth of the new instruments — the telescope, the microscope, the barometer, the air pump, the pendulum clock, the thermoscope, the calculating machine. These instruments were not only tools of natural philosophy; they were also the prototypes of the precision instruments on which the Industrial Revolution would depend. The workshops that produced them — the lens-grinders of Middelburg and Amsterdam, the clockmakers of London and Paris, the instrument makers of Nuremberg and Augsburg — were the training grounds of the precision-engineering industry of the nineteenth century. The second span, in the eighteenth century, was the engagement of natural philosophers with the practical problems of mining, metallurgy, navigation, and military engineering. This engagement was driven partly by the new patronage relationships between science and the state, and partly by the practical needs of an increasingly commercial and militarized Europe. The result was a series of applied sciences — applied chemistry, applied mechanics, applied optics — that bridged the world of the natural philosopher and the world of the craftsman. The third span, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was the establishment of the research-based industrial firm. The first chemical industries (Leblanc’s soda process, 1791; the chlorine bleaching process, 1799; the contact process for sulfuric acid, 1831), the first precision-engineering firms (Boulton & Watt, Maudslay & Field, the Krupp works), and the first research-based pharmaceutical firms (Merck, Bayer, Squibb) all rested on the foundation of the Scientific Revolution. The Industrial Revolution, in its mature form, was the application of the new science to industrial production.
The New Instruments
The new instruments of the seventeenth century were, in part, the tools of a new kind of natural philosophy. The telescope, the microscope, the barometer, the air pump, and the vacuum pump made it possible to investigate realms of nature that had been entirely inaccessible to the unaided senses — the moons of Jupiter, the cells of plants, the weight of the atmosphere, the properties of the vacuum. The thermometer, the hygrometer, the rain gauge, and the wind vane made it possible to measure atmospheric phenomena with a precision that had been impossible before. The pendulum clock and the spring-driven watch made it possible to measure time with an accuracy that transformed astronomy, navigation, and the social organization of urban life. The slide rule, the calculating machine, and the table of logarithms made it possible to perform calculations that would otherwise have taken weeks of tedious labor. Each of these instruments required, for its production, a level of precision that had not previously been attainable. The lens-grinders of the Netherlands, who produced the first telescopes and microscopes, had to develop new techniques for the grinding and polishing of glass. The clockmakers of London, Paris, and the Hague had to develop new techniques for the cutting of gears, the balance of springs, and the compensation of pendulums for temperature. The instrument makers of Nuremberg and Augsburg had to develop new techniques for the production of barometers, thermometers, and air pumps. The workshop skills developed for these instruments were directly transferable to the precision-engineering industries of the nineteenth century. The full list of the new instruments, and the chain of connections from natural philosophy to industry, is given in What Inventions Came From the Scientific Revolution?. For the growth of the optical instruments, see The Telescope and Microscope.
The Culture of Measurement
One of the most important legacies of the Scientific Revolution was the establishment of a culture of measurement. In the medieval and early modern periods, measurement was a local and inconsistent affair. The English inch, the French pouce, the German Zoll, the Italian pollice, and the various other “inches” of Europe were all different, and the weights and measures used in commerce varied from town to town. The introduction of the metric system in revolutionary France in 1795 — explicitly modeled on the methods of the new natural philosophy — was the culmination of a long process by which the new science established standardized units of length, mass, time, and temperature. The culture of measurement also extended to the calibration of instruments, the standardization of procedures, the publication of tables, and the comparison of observations made by different observers. The Royal Society in London, from the 1660s onward, set new standards for the precision and reproducibility of experimental work. The Philosophical Transactions, founded in 1665, published detailed accounts of experimental procedures, so that the work could be replicated and verified. The establishment of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1675, with the specific aim of improving navigation, was a major step in the growth of a culture of measurement on an industrial scale. The practical consequences of the culture of measurement were enormous. The standardization of parts, the calibration of instruments, the use of statistical quality control, the growth of interchangeable manufacturing — all of these depended on the culture of measurement that the Scientific Revolution had established. The Industrial Revolution, in its mature form, was a measured revolution. The world of measurement and standardization that the new learning had made possible was a necessary condition for the world of mass production and global trade.
Mining, Metallurgy, and the Engagement with Practical Problems
The engagement of natural philosophers with the practical problems of mining and metallurgy in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was one of the most important ways in which the seventeenth-century science fed into industry. The mining industry of central Europe — particularly the silver mines of Saxony, Bohemia, and Hungary, the copper mines of Sweden, and the tin mines of Cornwall — faced a series of practical problems that required the methods of the new natural knowledge: the ventilation of deep mines, the drainage of water, the identification of ores, the improvement of smelting techniques. The new science addressed these problems in several ways. The growth of the barometer and the air pump, both products of seventeenth-century natural philosophy, was directly relevant to the problem of mine ventilation. The work of Georgius Agricola on mining and metallurgy, published in De re metallica in 1556, was the standard reference for the next two centuries and was the work on which many of the new applied scientists built. The work of Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and Denis Papin on the properties of air and the vacuum was directly relevant to the design of pumping engines for the drainage of deep mines. The first practical steam engine, the fire engine of Thomas Savery (1698) and the atmospheric engine of Thomas Newcomen (1712), was developed specifically to pump water out of the Cornish tin mines. The growth of the Newcomen engine, with its later improvements by James Watt, was the direct ancestor of the steam engines that powered the Industrial Revolution. The engagement of natural philosophers with practical problems was institutionalized in a number of ways. The establishment of the Royal Society’s Committee on Mines and Minerals in the 1660s was one early example. The founding of the Freiberg Mining Academy in 1765, under the direction of Abraham Gottlob Werner, was another. The establishment of the École des Mines in Paris in 1783, of the Royal School of Mines in London in 1851, and of similar institutions across Europe was the culmination of the long engagement of this new approach with the practical problems of industry.
The Steam Engine and the New Physics
The steam engine is the most famous case of the long bridge from natural philosophy to industrial application. The principle of the engine — that the pressure of steam can be used to do mechanical work — was understood in principle from the time of the Newcomen engine of 1712, but the practical development of the engine depended on a detailed understanding of the physics of steam, of the properties of materials at high temperatures, and of the geometry of cylinders and pistons. The new physics, established by Galileo, Torricelli, Boyle, Hooke, Newton, and their successors, provided the conceptual basis for the growth of the steam engine. The principle of atmospheric pressure, established by Torricelli and his successors, was the principle on which the Newcomen engine operated. The laws of motion, established by Newton, were the laws on which the dynamics of the engine depended. The study of heat, developed in the eighteenth century by Black, Lavoisier, and Watt himself, was the science that made possible the design of efficient steam engines. The study of the strength of materials, developed by Galileo, Hooke, Mariotte, and Coulomb, was the science that made possible the design of boilers and pistons that would not fail catastrophically under pressure. The growth of the Watt engine, with its separate condenser, its double-acting cylinder, and its centrifugal governor, was the work of an inventor who had absorbed the reformed natural philosophy and applied it systematically to the practical problems of the engine. Watt, trained as an instrument maker, had read his Newton and his chemistry, and he was in regular correspondence with the leading natural philosophers of his day. The Watt engine, in other words, was not the work of a craftsman working in isolation from natural philosophy; it was the work of a scientifically trained inventor working at the intersection of theory and practice.
The Culture of Useful Knowledge
The cultural value of practical, useful knowledge was one of the most important legacies of the Scientific Revolution. In the medieval and early modern periods, the dominant view, inherited from Aristotle, was that the highest form of knowledge was the contemplation of eternal truths — the most noble activity of the most noble part of the human soul, in Aristotle’s famous phrase. The useful arts were the work of the lower classes, of the craftsmen and the merchants, and were ranked below the contemplative life of the philosopher and the theologian. The new science gradually displaced this hierarchy. Francis Bacon, in The Advancement of Learning (1605) and Novum Organum (1620), made the project of useful knowledge the central program of the new natural philosophy. The Royal Society, in its earliest manifesto, declared that its aim was “to promote the study of useful knowledge.” The Académie des Sciences, in its reformed program of the 1690s, was explicitly organized around projects of practical value to the French state. The publications of the experimental science — the Philosophical Transactions, the Journal des sçavans, the Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences — gave prominent place to reports on practical applications of the new knowledge. The cultural shift was slow, and it was contested. The Aristotelian tradition, with its hierarchy of the contemplative over the practical, remained influential in the universities well into the eighteenth century. The natural philosophers themselves sometimes disdained the practical applications of their work, and there was a long-running tension between the “natural philosophers” who pursued knowledge for its own sake and the “virtuosi” who pursued it for its practical applications. But the cultural shift was real, and by the late eighteenth century the pursuit of useful knowledge had become one of the central values of European culture. The cultural value of useful knowledge, in turn, was one of the principal drivers of the Industrial Revolution.
The Role of the New Scientific Institutions
The new scientific institutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — the Royal Society, the Académie des Sciences, the academies of Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Bologna, the new universities — played a central role in the growth of the practical applications of the new philosophy of nature. The Royal Society established committees on agriculture, on mining, on navigation, and on the improvement of manufactures, and it served as a clearinghouse for practical information from across Europe. The Académie des Sciences, in its reformed program of the 1690s, was organized into working groups on the practical problems of the French state, and it provided the technical expertise on which Colbert’s program of state-led economic development depended. The new institutions also provided the trained personnel on which the new applied sciences depended. The first generation of industrial chemists, from Lavoisier to Dalton, was trained in the new chemistry of the late eighteenth century. The first generation of industrial engineers, from Watt to Maudslay, was trained in the workshops of the precision-instrument makers. The first generation of industrial physicists, from Coulomb to Ohm, was trained in the new physics of the eighteenth century. The training of these personnel, in turn, depended on the reformed universities and the specialized technical schools that the Scientific Revolution had made possible.
The Slow Development of Applied Chemistry
The applied chemistries of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries — the chemistry of dyes, of bleaches, of acids and alkalis, of metals and alloys, of glass and ceramics, of soap and tallow — rested on the theoretical chemistry that Lavoisier and his successors had developed in the late eighteenth century. The Lavoisierian revolution in chemistry, which replaced the phlogiston theory with the oxygen theory of combustion, was the chemical equivalent of the Newtonian revolution in physics, and it made possible the systematic development of applied chemistry. The first major industrial chemical process, the Leblanc process for the production of soda ash (1791), was developed by Nicolas Leblanc on the basis of the new chemistry. The chlorine bleaching process, developed by Berthollet in 1786 and applied industrially by 1799, was similarly based on the new chemistry. The contact process for sulfuric acid, developed by Peregrine Phillips in 1831, was another application of the new chemistry. The first research-based pharmaceutical firms, established in the mid-nineteenth century, were the culmination of the long development of applied chemistry. By the late nineteenth century, applied chemistry had become one of the principal industries of Europe, and it rested firmly on the foundation of the Scientific Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution
The relationship between the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution is, in summary, a long and indirect one. The Industrial Revolution was not the direct result of any single scientific discovery, nor was it the work of a community of natural philosophers. It was the work of practical craftsmen, inventors, and entrepreneurs, working in a culture that had been transformed by the new learning. The transformation was not a single event; it was a long process, in which the seventeenth-century science gradually displaced the old natural philosophy, the new institutions gradually displaced the old universities, the new culture of measurement gradually displaced the old culture of local custom, and the new value of useful knowledge gradually displaced the old value of contemplative knowledge. The story is told in How Did Science Drive the Industrial Revolution?. The catalogue of the key inventions is given in What Inventions Came From the Scientific Revolution?. And the broader social impact of the revolution is set out in The Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Society.