Van Dyck, Maarten

Ghent University Academic Bibliography

S A R T O N I A N AVolume 242011Editors :  R .  Rubens en M.  Van DyckSar ton Chai r  of  H is tory  of  Sc iencesGhent  Univers i ty© Academia PressEekhout 29000 GentT. (+32) (0)9 233 80 88 F. (+32) (0)9 233 14 09info@academiapress.be www.academiapress.beDe publicaties van Academia Press worden verdeeld door:J. Story-Scientia nv Wetenschappelijke BoekhandelSint-Kwintensberg 87B-9000 GentT. 09 255 57 57 F. 09 233 14 09info@story.be www.story.beGent, Academia Press, 2011, 169 pp.ISBN 978 90 382 1855 7D/2011/4804/271U1687Opmaak: proxess.beNiets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd en/of openbaar gemaakt door middel vandruk, fotokopie, microfilm of op welke andere wijze ook, zonder voorafgaande schriftelijketoestemming van de uitgeverij.31Laudatio James E. McGuire (lecture on Thursday April 28, 2011)Maarten Van DyckProfessor McGuire’s first major paper, which he had co-written with histhen colleague at Leeds University Piyo Rattansi, came out in 1966 andcarried the somewhat enigmatic title “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan’”. Atthis point he had been lecturer in history and philosophy of science at LeedsUniversity for some years, after having studied at Oxford University,King’s College in London, and the University of Western Ontario. Hewould stay in Leeds until 1971, when he joined the department of historyand philosophy of science at Pittsburgh, where he is still very active asprofessor emeritus today. Both in Leeds and in Pittsburgh he was part ofremarkably strong groups of historians of science. In this respect, his distin-guished career testifies at least to the partial fulfilment of George Sarton’slifelong struggle to get history of science recognized as a fully autonomousdiscipline, with strong institutional backing. And it needs no mention, ourbeing gathered here today to honour this distinguished career is also a signof recognition of the discipline itself. That we gather in this magnificent oldauditorium moreover shows that such recognition often goes hand in handwith a number of traditional measures, such as offering a symbolic “chair”and a medal, or wearing these very otherworldly academic gowns. Nowthese are of course merely symbolic gestures, and as such could be consid-ered contingent and even arbitrary, but they arise from a more essentialimpulse: they testify to the fact that a scientific discipline is partly consti-tuted by the relation it takes up to its own history – by the specific ways inwhich it itself becomes a tradition. In saying this, I am actually merely32paraphrasing George Sarton himself, who opened his text entitled “Scienceand Tradition” as follows: “The title of this group of lectures … is paradox-ical. It would seem natural to twist it a little and instead of saying Scienceand Tradition, to say Science versus Tradition. Indeed, the two terms are tosome extent antithetical. The word tradition suggests preservation andcontinuity; on the other hand, science is the most revolutionary force in theworld.” (Sarton 1952, p.3) But he goes on to argue: “Far from there beingany conflict between science and tradition, one might claim that traditionis the very life of science.” (ibid., p. 11) This, I believe, was the true coreof Sarton’s vision of the necessity of the discipline of the history of science.It is only through history of science that science can reconnect with its ownessence and telos.A very similar vision seems always to have animated professor McGuire’swork in the history of science. It is no accident that the collection of hismajor papers on Isaac Newton was called Tradition and Innovation. Andin Science Unfettered, a book that he published in 2000 together withBarbara Tuchanska, the constant dialectic between tradition and innovationis analyzed in detail using the philosophical framework of a hermeneuticontology. Not only has his own historical and philosophical work beenconstantly guided by this perspective, it was also a topic that greatly occu-pied the mind of his prime object of study: Isaac Newton. No doubt, almosteverybody present here is familiar with the famous saying by Newton thathe had been able to see a little bit further than people before him, but onlybecause he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Now, George Sarton,who had written his PhD-dissertation here in Ghent on Newton’smechanics, took a particular interest in this saying, and tried to trace itsearlier history, a work that was further elaborated on by his student, thegreat sociologist and recipient of the very first Sarton Chair, Robert K.Merton. But it is professor McGuire who more than anybody else hasshown how fundamental was Newton’s commitment to the tradition ofwhich he considered himself to be merely the last in line. In the 1960sMcGuire discovered among the Newton manuscripts a series of documentsthat proved that when working on a second edition of his landmark Prin-cipia, Newton delved deeply in ancient sources, looking for evidence thatrather than charting absolutely new territories with his theory of universalgravitation, he was actually rediscovering ancient wisdom – and he found33such evidence too, as he pointed out that when the Ancients talked about,and now I quote Newton, “the God Pan’s playing upon a Pipe and attrib-uting musick to the spheres” (McGuire and Rattansi 1966, p. 118), theywere obliquely referring to the mathematical law of gravitation that wasinstituted by God in creating the world. Not very convincing evidence, wewould be tempted to think, and it is clear that it depends on an alreadyfirmly held belief in the existence of a golden age in the past of humanculture, with the knowledge of our modern age by definition being nothingbut an attempt at recovering what had been lost since. As McGuire and hisco-author pointed out in great detail in their paper on “Newton and ‘thepipes of Pan’”, Newton was not an exception in his time in holding thisidea. One example, not mentioned by them, was the Flemish mathemati-cian and engineer, Simon Stevin, about whom George Sarton wrote a longarticle in 1934, in which he commented as follows on Stevin’s ideas on theso-called Wysentyt (the “Age of the Sages”): “The idea of a primordialgolden age is one of the oldest conceits of the human mind. … The fact thatsuch strange ideas may be found alongside others of the purest scientifickind is but another illustration of the infinite complexities of the humanmind. No man is always consistent, certainly no man of genius.” (Sarton1934, p. 260) It is at this critical juncture that professor McGuire, from hisvery first publication onwards, has consistently chosen another perspectivethan did Sarton. Rather than distinguishing between purely scientific ideasand strangely inconsistent, mythical addenda to these, he has alwaysattempted to excavate the underlying nexus in which these apparently verydifferent ideas were intrinsically tied together for Newton. After his pieceon the “pipes of Pan”, McGuire engaged in a sustained enquiry in the fine-structure of the central concepts of what he has called Newton’s ‘meta-physics of nature’. In a series of groundbreaking papers he showed howNewton’s understanding of the basic concepts of his natural philosophy,such as space, time and force, can only be fully illuminated by taking intoaccount his theological preoccupations. Newton’s view of God as anomnipotent creator, first and foremost characterized by his absolutely freewill, was essential in sustaining his natural philosophy, including his theoryof universal gravitation. Now, it is one thing to state this as a general claim,it is quite another thing to convincingly fill it out in every detail, using newmanuscript evidence along the way. It is obviously the latter that ProfessorMcGuire has done. Each of the papers collected in his Tradition and Inno-34vation is a small masterpiece of conceptual analysis, laying out the intricaterelations between crucial Newtonian concepts. Taken together they arewidely recognized to be unsurpassed until this day. In their combination ofarchival research, textual interpretation, contextual embedding, and a fullunderstanding of the mathematical and empirical content, they show thekind of exciting results that a fully established discipline of history ofscience can give rise to. So while in a number of respects the resultingpicture differs crucially from Sarton’s views on how the history of scienceshould be written, it can only do this because it exemplifies the notion thatwas dearest to his heart: that of progress. And here more specifically,progress in the history of science itself; progress that is only possiblebecause it has become a scientific discipline in its own right.Full justice is not of this world; hence I will not expand on the rest ofprofessor McGuire’s extensive work, such as his recent book on RenéDescartes, published together with his colleague Peter Machamer, his workon rhetoric and science, or his recent and as yet unpublished studies onancient philosophy. I will also not list his students who made their ownname not only in the field of history and philosophy of science, but in otherfields as well. I will not do all this, but I do want to close with a few remarksthat start from the wide range of interests characterizing professorMcGuire’s work and personality. I have stressed the importance of thecoming of age of history of science as an autonomous discipline, but forSarton that was always a means, not an end. The end was what he called a“new Humanism”, and this humanism was antithetical to excessive special-ization, the danger always lurking behind the necessary professionalizationof research. History of science would be exactly a privileged place for inte-gration and unification of insights from different fields; a place where ourculture could come closest to a satisfactory interpretation of itself. Ourhumanism cannot and need not be that of Sarton, who wrote for his times,not for ours. But we can still uphold the ideal that history of science couldplay a crucial part in constituting who we are and want to be at the begin-ning of the twenty-first century. And it is here that we can find professorMcGuire’s work on the metaphysical and theological infrastructure ofIsaac Newton’s new science of the utmost importance and relevance. Notbecause it would allow us to directly answer any of the pressing questionsconcerning the possible place of religion in our contemporary worldview,35which to a large extent is shaped by scientific theories that are ofteninspired by Newton’s; but maybe because it could help us to formulatebetter questions. In teaching us to understand Newton’s thought in a histor-ically and contextually sensitive way, professor McGuire’s work alsoforces us to grapple with the historicity of our own thought. In the activityof interpreting past science, we ourselves are always essentially involved.Or to put it for the last time in Sarton’s words: “If the past were not part ofyour present, if it were not a living past, it would be better for you to leaveit alone.” (Sarton 1920, p. 6) We should all be grateful to professorMcGuire for having shown how to make so much of seventeenth and eight-eenth century science into a living past, one that from now on we can leavealone only at our own peril.References[1] McGuire, J.E., and P.M. Rattansi, “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan’”, Notes andRecords of the Royal Society of London, 12 (1966), pp. 108-143.[2] Sarton, G. (1920), “The Faith of a Humanist”, Isis 3, pp. 3-6.[3] Sarton, G. (1934), “Simon Stevin of Bruges (1548-1620)”, Isis 21, pp. 241-303.[4] Sarton, G. (1952), A Guide to the History of Science, Waltham (Mass.): ChronicaBotanica Company.

Laudatio James E. McGuire

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Laudatio James E. McGuire

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Ghent University Academic Bibliography