Words, Works, and Ways of Knowing by Sara Paretsky

Author:Sara Paretsky [Paretsky, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, United States, 19th Century, State & Local, New England (CT; MA; ME; NH; RI; VT), Religion, Christianity
ISBN: 9780226337883
Google: HJEgDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-06-14T00:17:17+00:00

Chapter V

The Narration of the Creation in Genesis

:: :: ::

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,

When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

— Job 37:4–7

Like philology and history, natural philosophy changed rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century. Inundated by a vast array of data, sciences developed where there had been only science before. In 1802, Yale created the first chair of chemistry in this country. Benjamin Silliman (1779–1864), its first holder, taught mineralogy, geology, and what we call zoology and botany, as well as chemistry. In 1853, the chair was divided into two appointments, and in 1864 divided again.1 In those sixty years, the body of scientific knowledge had grown so much that four men had to teach material one covered previously. Such a deluge of facts removed science from the hands of the talented amateur. The gentleman naturalist, who tapped rocks or collected plants while pursuing a career in law or religion, could not keep pace with the professionals who did nothing else with their time.2

The naturalists of the 1830s agreed with the theologians that their work was described by the principles of Bacon and Newton. As Daniels points out in American Science in the Age of Jackson, everyone claimed discipleship to the masters without ever saying precisely what that meant. Their work, however, reveals two major points by which they understood Baconianism: science should be limited to “naming, classifying, and describing,” as prescribed by the French anatomist Georges Cuvier; and one should induce laws from known facts, not frame hypotheses for experimental testing.3

As new data poured in in all fields, classification became increasingly difficult. Did facts about electro-magnetism belong to chemistry or physics? And once that was decided, how did one classify contradictory phenomenal behavior without framing a hypothesis and testing it experimentally? Most Americans in the 1830s and ’40s contented themselves with simply making as many observations as possible. Others wrestled with unwieldy categorization schemes. Still a third group self-consciously began building hypotheses. A public debate of major proportions grew up between this group and the Baconians, for it included the issue of whether the public should fund research it could not understand. As this argument progressed, it cut sciences off further from the grasp of the educated amateur.

But Andover approached science in this period as if nothing were changing. They saw a stability and harmony in the relationship between the natural world and revealed theology which caused them to ignore new developments for some time. “There are many dark passages in the volume of nature which are illustrated by the book of inspiration,” Park wrote in 1846. “The teachings of the former volume are so far informed by the latter, so many of its deficiencies . . . supplied, that the right-minded student of one will feel his knowledge to be incomplete without an acquaintance with the other.

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