Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life by Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 291 who had claimed more than his due. The mistake was compounded and the truth concealed. Bedini tells us how, after many years of frustrating research, he came to think that something was wrong with the available indications. While extending his investigations on the life of Facini, he unearthed the truth, and the distinction between the Sferologio and the Planisferologio came clearly to light. Clockwork Cosmos is also rich in little-known and often new historical information. Life in Piacenza, particularly at court, is a fascinating story in itself. The vicissitudes of the Planisferologio follow those of the Farnese family and of the Bourbon kings of Naples and Sicily, reflecting political and military events, generally of an international nature, that were taking place on the Italian scene. It is indeed most fortunate that the clock has survived and found at last a safe and honorable place in the Vatican Library. The documents that form the book’s appendixes are a valuable addition. Among them appear for the first time an inventory of the tools found in Facini’s shop at his death and the list, with identification, of thirty books among the fifty in his library. The summarized translation of Ferrari’s booklet is of particular importance. How Bedini managed to trace all the evidence scattered in so many places remains his secret. It would have been a remarkable achieve­ ment even for a scholar permanently resident in Italy. His book is not only a valuable example of historical and bibliographical work in con­ nection with a scientific and technological development, it is also a long overdue act of justice in restoring Facini to the high status he fully deserves in the history of horology. Giuseppe Brusa Mr. Brusa is Honorary Keeper of the Horological Collection at the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan. Currently he is cataloging the clocks of the Savoia family in the royal residences in Turin and Piedmont, and, with Charles Allix and John Leopold, writing a history of horology, Mechanical Timekeeping in Europe. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. By Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni­ versity Press, 1985. Pp. xiv + 440; illustrations, bibliography, ap­ pendix, index. $60.00. A quarter of a century ago a brilliant young historian of science liberated his discipline from the philosophy of science. Few of his readers appreciated what T. S. Kuhn had wrought in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. His text appeared on the surface to provide a general covering theory for those pedagogical paradigms that J. B. Conant proffered as curricular cures for the malaise of the two cul­ tures afflicting American higher education after World War II. These were case studies of major conceptual changes in the history of the 292 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE sciences—the so-called scientific revolutions. The effect of Kuhn’s work was to send philosophers of science scurrying to closet quickly the twin specters of subjectivism and historical relativism that the new theory of scientific change seemed to let loose. Philosophers, like his­ torians, had a stake in the promise of this educational renewal and were, perhaps, more sensitive to the power and patronage of science that lay behind it. But the intellectual rewards went to the minority of historians who seized the moment of their liberation and exploited it. They recognized that the important part of Kuhn’s book was not his theory of revolutions but his depiction of the practice of what he called normal science. This revealed science to be not the work of heroic genius combating the ignorance and authority of the epoch (Copernicus vs. the Middle Ages) but the activity of communities with controlled access who operated within well-defined disciplinary boundaries solving clearly articulated problems with agreed-upon in­ tellectual and instrumental tools. This was both a credible and a pliable model for historians to use. Leviathan and the Air-Pump is a rich and rewarding fruit of the Kuhnian revolution. Its authors take us back to the origins of science as a communal experimental activity in the 17th century, which they substantively and emblematically identify with the air pump...