The Rise of Early Modern Science

Abstract

The author has shown great courage in undertaking an endeavor that has daunted historians of science, intellectual historians, Islamicists, and Sinologists. Huff utilizes excellent sources and makes insightful hypotheses in this multidisciplinary work. If the book is not perfect, the failure is small compared to what he has achieved. Building on this work, other scholars will be able to sharpen the on-going debate and propose bold conclusions for years to come. The Rise of Early Modern Science concentrates on why science "took off' in the West but not in China or the Islamic world, where it had much longer histories. By "takeoff," Huff means the explosion of scientific discovery that flowered in the West, especially during the early seventeenth century. His basic premise is succinct: "Modem science depends on the belief that the natural world is a rational and ordered world" and that "man is a rational creature who is able to understand and accurately describe the universe." Claiming that such Greek tenets never occurred in China and noting that the Arabs passed them on to Europe, he enwnerates how they took hold in the West and facilitated the modem world. Huff compares the legal systems of the three cultures as institutionalizations of their social, political, and intellectual experiences. While comparisons of their legal systems produce interesting results, contrasting their thought processes, educational systems, and practices of science could have shed more light on the differences in their utilization of scientific methodologies. His recourse co legal systems for comparisons in science is not successful, for law parallels scientific methodology in that both employ rigor, empiricism, and deduction. But induction, essential for science, was used in law mainly for purposes of legislation. His comparison of Islamic law with the West's fails because the former includes every aspect of life, whereas the latter is more limited to criminal, civil, and corporate aspects. China's law, on the other hand, is concerned with the social order. Huff notes that China concentrated more on the organization of human society than on the natural environment. Emperors and their minions opposed searching for "truths" lest the established order be troubled. China did not codify or institutionalize its laws in ways comparable to Islam and the West. Given this history, China should be effectively out of ...