In his Essays about Moral and Political issues in 1742, David Hume asserts 'In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies of liberty.' Indeed, for centuries, the main source of truth have been the study of sacred texts i.e. theology, so that almost all the powers remained in the hands of religious authorities who used to have the monopoly to define what was good, true, accurate, and what was not. Nevertheless, western societies progressively freed themselves from dogmas and churches: this particular moment of History fits with the coincidence of two phenomena, in fields as diverse as politics and science. Indeed, 16th and 17th centuries saw the development of Absolutism and Scientific Revolution, as it has been named years after. Yet correlation does not mean causality. What is the inner link that connects together these two entities?
[...] In France, physiocrats are the first to represent economy as a circuit and are also ‘court scientists”, advisors, and even critics of the monarchs. They provide on the one hand a scientific speech, facts, and on the other hand political advices. But the economical field is just an example, and science became of special importance for the king: a knowledge that makes him able not only to domesticate nature but also to comprehend men's reactions legitimates his power, but above all, strengthens it. [...]
[...] Given that all the scientists share the newly established method, we can observe a community of language. But the fundraisers too must be convinced: the structure of science during modern times put conviction at the center of the role of the scientist. That's why the knowledge making became a public process. European monarchs who from then on control the working out of scientific facts want perfect, categorical, absolute truths on which they could rely to guide their people. We then witness the development of scientist's role in politics, which is characteristic of modern times. [...]
[...] As a matter of fact, the development of absolutism enabled the scientific revolution by producing a transfer of power from the Church to the State and by creating a new space of speech for scientists. But at a more structural level, the culture of absolutism influenced directly what is the inner root of the scientific revolution, i.e. the new scientific method. Indeed, given that the new paradigm to reach truth is absolutely opposite to the previous one, the new figure of scientist needs a new method to establish indisputable facts. [...]
[...] Thanks to scientific revolution the absolute monarch command new techniques indisputably established that enable him no to be subjected to nature anymore. We have tried to demonstrate that the link between absolutism and scientific revolution was not superficial: the rise of this new power made possible the scientific expression in new locations and the structure of the absolute society influenced the achievement of the method. But as Thomas Kuhn proved it in The structure of scientific revolutions published in 1962, the scientific revolution is not a singular and limited event of the History: since Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon and Newton, dozens of scientific revolutions have burst. [...]
[...] Actually, they respected Saint Paul's maxim “omnis potestas a Deo”. But they translated it to assert that the monarch was absolutely sovereign in his kingdom and his people's pontiff, directly linked to God. The culture of absolutism accompanies the Church's loss of influence, and consequently the development of a new space of speech for the new generation of scientists. On the model of Archimedes and Denys of Syracuse, scientists from then on often put themselves under the protection of a monarch: the most striking example is the alliance between Frederick II of Denmark and Tycho Brahe. [...]
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