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Alexandre Koyré and the scientific revolution

A. Rupert Hall

To cite this article: A. Rupert Hall (1987) Alexandre Koyré and the scientific revolution, History and
Technology, an International Journal, 4:1-4, 485-496, DOI: 10.1080/07341518708581716

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History and Technology, 1987, Vol. 4, pp. 485-495
Photocopying permitted by license only
O 1987 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH .
Printed in the United Kingdom

Alexandre Koyré and the scientific

revolution

A. RUPERT HALL
Tackley, Oxford

THE CENTRAL rôle of Alexandre Koyré — both in historiography and

in time — in establishing the concept of the scientific revolution of the
seventeenth century as the turning-point in the history of science
between Antiquity and the present age is so well known and so clear
that it needs no emphasis from me. Professor Cohen in his recent
excellent book has devoted several pages to the matter.1 Not, of
course, that Cohen or anyone else would attribute the origination of
this concept to Koyré: what Koyré did was to clarify and reinforce an
established historical expression, to analyze its meaning, and to show
its real utility in the interpretation of the past. In particular, Koyré
gave a certain special sense or bias to his idea of the formative revolu-
tion in science, and it is this which I propose to examine.
Koyré's first influential work in the history of science was his
Etudes Galilèennes (1939);2 here he enunciated an idea of the scien-
tific revolution which he found no reason substantially to modify
later. First, Koyré affirms that he is concerned with 'une véritable
mutation de l'intellect humain,' in the sense of Bachelard. What is in
question, therefore, is not merely a development or growth of knowl-
edge but rather a transformation of thinking about the universe.3
This particular "mutation" was possibly 'la plus importante depuis
l'invention du Cosmos par la pensée grecque ... (une) profonde
transformation intellectuelle dont la physique moderne, ou plus
exactement classique, fut à la fois l'expression et le fruit.'
485
486 A.R.HALL

Note that Koyré carefully does not write 'la science moderne' as
perhaps the reader might expect, and as many of us might be inclined
to write ourselves. Since Koyré was obviously not unaware that
profound changes, which might equally be qualified as 'transfor-
mations intellectuelles' had taken place, in the seventeenth century
and subsequently, in branches of science outside 'la physique
classique', did his deliberate choice of a narrower expression imply
that these other changes were not 'l'expression et le fruit' of the scien-
tific revolution?
Some light on Koyré's choice of the more limited expression may
be derived from the following paragraphs. First, Koyré is emphatic
that the transformation of science is not to be explained by 'une
espèce de renversement de l'attitude spirituelle toute entière: la vie
active prenant désormais le pas sur la vie contemplative'. Koyré's
position here has in fact two facets. On the one hand he rejects the
notion of a universal spiritual change affecting European man totally,
and his philosophy of nature in particular as a part of the whole. On
the other hand, and it is this facet that he argues in detail, he rejects
the idea of a social change with respect to natural philosophy,
whereby its knowledge comes to be regarded as active rather than
passive. Koyré holds, in other words, that the transformation is
unique to science and. is independent of technological ambitions or
the concept of man as 'maître et possesseur de la nature'.
Specifically, in terms of individuals, Koyré classified 'l'attitude
activiste' as being that of Francis Bacon 'dont le rôle, dans l'histoire
de la révolution scientifique, a été parfaitement négligeable', an
attitude to be contrasted with that of Galileo and Descartes. Koyré
adds, perceptively, that the mechanism of classical physics is not that
of the practical mechanic or of the engineer (without, rather unfairly,
allowing Bacon any share in the transition to the mechanical philo-
sophy of nature). Let me recall that in a footnote Koyré defended his
forceful condemnation of Bacon by affirming that Bacon was credu-
lous, 'totalement dénué d'esprit critique,' in mentality closer to the
alchemist and the magician, a man of the Renaissance.
It is not my intention to rebut Koyré's criticisms here, though I
myself believe that Bacon's place in the history of science is more
than 'une plaisanterie'. It is an easy step, not perhaps to be taken
imprudently, from ridiculing Bacon to ridiculing all philosophers of
science. What I must draw attention to, however, is a certain circula-
 KOYRÉ AND THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 487

rity in Koyré's argument. If we define the revolutionary science of the

seventeenth century as being the mathematical science of Galileo,
Descartes and Newton, and no more than that, then ipso facto Bacon
had no hand in it. If the sole fruit of the scientific revolution was 'la
science classique' then Bacon scattered no seed.
However, Koyré has not so far explained why we should consider
la science moderne as being limited to, or paradigmatically expressed
by, la physique classique.
His next step is to argue that in la science classique (which phrase
may be taken as signifying the same thing as la physique classique)
experiment had\no independent, formative function. While recogni-
sing the importance of experiment in the history of physics, he affirms
that it can be significant only within an appropriate mathematical
structure:

Quant à l'expérimentation — interrogation méthodique de la nature — elle présuppose

et le langage dans lequel elle pose ses questions, et un vocabulaire permettant d'inter-
préter les réponses. Or, si c'est dans un langage mathématique, ou plus exactement
géométrique, que la science classique interroge la nature, ce langage . . . ne pouvait, à
son tour, être dictée par l'expérience qu'elle allait conditionner.4

In other words, the transition to geometry as the language of class-

ical physics, itself produced as the result of a 'changement d'attitude
métaphysique' which might be considered as 'un renouveau de la
primauté de l'être sur l'avenir', must logically precede the use of
experiment. Thus experimentation, however and whenever it entered
physics, must be posterior to the process of mathematisation.
I think several serious arguments, both historical and philo-
sophical, could be entered against this terse exposition of his position
by Koyré but now, leaving aside this particular contention, I consider
rather the whole of his analysis in the Études, which seems after fifty
years persuasive, but by no means wholly convincing. Consider first
Koyré's rejection of the 'men of the Renaissance' as having any share
in the foundation of classical physics. One sees what he means, of
course: he wishes to set aside Leonardo da Vinci (Duhem's hero),
Cardano, John Dee. In advance he wished to make a pre-emptive
strike against the influence of the magicians and neo-Platonists, of
which we have heard so much since Koyré's death. But does not his
process of rejection tend, in the opposite sense, to diminish the histo-
rical importance of those individuals who do have some relevance to
the birth of classical physics, not only such as Copernicus, Tartaglia
488 A.R. HALL

and Benedetti — about all of whom Koyré wrote studies — but of

Kepler (a renaissance man if ever there was one) and even Galileo.
Was not Galileo a renaissance mathematician? And, as a Platonist
(Galileo's own claim) was not Galileo following a main stream of
renaissance thought, however idiosyncratic his own navigation of it?
It seems to me that Koyré's criticism of the Renaissance tended to
place his heroes — Galileo, Kepler, Descartes — in a timeless detach-
ment from their historical development and context which historians
since Koyré have rightly sought to understand and restore.5
Then there is the matter of experiment. Unnecessary here to dwell
on Koyré's picture of Galileo as a pure thinker whose seeming experi-
ments were purely imaginary. Stillman Drake and others have
demonstrated that on this precise point Koyré was mistaken and that
(as so often in the record of science) the true course of the evolution
of major innovations is not to be deduced solely from their author's
narrative in print. Yet Galileo was surely a mathematician before he
was a systematic experimenter; and Koyré was right in declaring a
priori that a mathematical structure preceded his experiments, if not
quite in the manner that Koyré imagined. For that early mathematical
structure only generated errors, was delusive rather than constructive,
and we must now conclude that Galileo owed to his experiments and
careful measurements of the movement of bodies, rather than to
geometry alone, his apprehension of the essential affinity between
time and motion.
Let us broaden the discussion by considering the qualitative
astronomy of the seventeenth century, starting from Galileo's own
Sidereus Nuncius. Koyré himself wrote that: 'la physique moderne
prend sa source dans l'étude des problèmes astronomiques et main-
tient ce lien à travers toute son histoire ... Et c'est dans les deux
qu'elle trouve sa perfection et sa fin.'61 shall qualify this branch of
astronomy as experimental, for if astronomical experiments sensu
stridii are impossible one can certainly use the telescope to answer
questions about the universe. I think it would be a bold historian who
would deny that, in addition to the problems of planetary orbital
motion, qualitative astronomy exerted an influence upon the genesis
of classical physics. I myself suppose that it had great relevance to the
development of the central concept of celestial mechanics, that of
universal force, a concept that could not spring from geometry alone
or from pure thought without reference to the new picture of the
 KOYRÉ AND THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION " 489

universe that the telescope provided. In the more general field, the
role of other non-mathematical types of experimentation — pneu-
matics, for example — besides astronomy is so well known that we are
forced to question Koyré's affirmation of the logical priority of the
mathematical structure, since its historical priority would be difficult
to prove.
Koyré was himself above all things an idealist in his philosophy of
science. When the idealism of his historiography was thrown against
him as a criticism, he accepted the attribute gladly. He was also highly
selective in his own choice of topics for historical research. Entitling
the first volume of his Études 'À l'Aube de la Science Classique', he
devoted all his labours to the same topic, though he extended it from
the early sixteenth century to Newton's Opticks in the early eight-
eenth. My impression is that Koyré was not quite certain whether he
was following a restriction internal to historiography, or one imposed
by his own taste. In his writings he appears to grant overwhelming
importance to the origin of classical physics as holding the unique key
to the whole history of modern science, but in personal conversation
he was content merely to claim that he pursued the topics of interest
to himself. My belief is that Koyré was certainly well able to ascribe
their just merits to historical attitudes very different from his own, for
example, the historiography of the scientific revolution put forward
by A.C. Crombie in his book Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of
Modern Experimental Science (1953). Koyré's review article in
Diogene (1956) concludes with the judgement that 'M. Crombie
considère la science moderne comme résolument positiviste', quoting
a passage in which Crombie declares, in effect, that the most perfect
science is the most complete description of Nature. Koyré, as one
might expect, rejects this positivism:

l'empirisme pur — et même la "philosophie expérimentale" — ne conduisent nulle part;

et ce n'est pas en renonçant au but apparemment inaccessible et inutile de la connais-
sance du réel (my emphasis), mais au contraire en le poursuivant avec hardiesse que la
science progresse sur la voie sans fin qui la conduit à la viriti (my emphasis).

There follows procedural advice:

En conséquence, l'histoire de cette progression de la science moderne devrait être

consacrée à son aspect thiorique au moins autant qu'à son aspect expérimental.

One observes that it is theory which is associated with the real and the
490 A.R. HALL

trae, and that he here speaks not of la physique classique only but of
la science moderne', however, he is evidently far from recommending
a concentration of study uniquely upon the theoretical aspects of
science. 'L'on peut traiter l'histoire de bien des façons', he concludes.7
Perhaps it may seem that I am seeking to depreciate Alexandre
Koyré's historiography of science, and particularly his idealism. Not
so. Permit me to quote once again one of those elegant and impres-
sive passages in which Koyré has so admirably expressed his noble
vision of the epic of intellectual progress:

il n'y a rien de plus intéressant, de plus instructif ni de plus saisissant que l'histoire de
cet effort (c'est-à-dire, l'effort de la pensée en préparant la révolution galiléenne et
cartésienne) l'histoire de la pensée humaine traitant avec obstination les mêmes éternels
problèmes, rencontrant les mêmes difficultés, luttant sans répit contre les mêmes
obstacles, et se forgeant lentement et progressivement les instruments et les outils, c'est-
à-dire les nouveaux concepts, les nouvelles méthodes de pensée qui permettront enfin
de les surmonter.'

One can but applaud. But note that Koyré here himself employs a
metaphor drawn from technology, in speaking of the instruments and
tools which have enabled the solutions of difficult problems to be
attained; my only criticism of his writings is that they tend to define
these 'tools and instruments' in excessively narrow terms. Entirely
concurring with Alexandre Koyré in his belief that the process of
scientific change is conceptual, and that in the long run the function
of all else in the activity of science is to bring about the enrichment
and perfection of those concepts which constitute our image of the
universe, nevertheless my contention is that conceptual change does
not depend upon a single tool or prop, such as mathematics, but that
like any stable body it must have three points of support: mathe-
matics, metaphysics and empirical or, if you prefer, contingent
knowledge.
I make this contention on the assumption (which I believe Koyré
shared) that there is an historical phenomenon which we call the
scientific revolution that is larger and more diffuse than the develop-
ment of classical mechanics from Galileo to Newton and beyond.
I have deliberately introduced yet another term, classical mecha-
nics, to indicate how narrow the mathematical line taken by Koyré
was; he might employ such expressions as la physique classique but
the image in his mind was that of mechanics. For if one considers
other branches of seventeenth century physics — optics, pneumatics,
 KOYRÉ AND THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 491

sound — which enter into the broad story of the scientific revolution
in the physical sciences, it is obvious enough that no historian can
treat their development as the fruit of pure mathematical thinking and
conceptual shifts without reference to experiment. We are all aware
that indeed Newton did attempt, in his Philosophiae naturate
principia mathematica, to mathematise these branches of physics that
are inductive rather than deductive: we recognise too that his efforts
fell far short of complete success. I think it would be a strange judge-
ment of this episode in the history of science that should be based on
Newton's mathematical failures, grand though these were, and take
no account of his experimental achievements. A fortiori this must be
true when we pass beyond the limits of physical science.
In the last ten years of his life, I infer, Koyré's attachment to
'Galilean Platonism' as the principal key to the scientific revolution
weakened, though his conception as such remained staunchly
unmodified. An obvious turning-point was the writing of From the
Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957),9 a work which is
entirely concerned with the metaphysical rather than the mathe-
matical origins of modern science. In his preface to this book Koyré
developed his criticism of both the sociological and the logical
hypotheses of the origin of science formerly stated in the Etudes
Galiléennes, concluding:

As for myself, I have endeavoured in my Galilean Studies to define the structural

patterns of the old and the new world-views and to determine the changes brought
forth by the revolution of the seventeenth century. They seemed to me to be reducible
to two fundamental and closely connected actions that I characterised as the destruction
of the cosmos and the geometrization of space.

It is not difficult to see the former of these 'actions' as the subject of

the new book, just as the latter had been of the Etudes. And, as is to
be expected, the destruction of the cosmos proves to have little to do
with mathematics, and much to do with metaphysics.
Needless to insist upon Koyré's great interest in the metaphysical
component of the thought of Isaac Newton; indeed, he made virtually
no contribution to the study of Newton as a mathematical philo-
sopher, at least after the publication of An Unpublished Letter of
Robert Hooke to Isaac Newton in 1952.10 In the same preface that I
have cited, Koyré firmly united the history of scientific and philo-
sophical thought during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: 'they
are, indeed, so closely interrelated and linked together', he wrote,
4<>2 A.R.HALL

'that, separated, they become ununderstandable'.11 Accordingly, we

may safely conclude that for Koyré metaphysical changes were no
less necessary than mathematical procedures in bringing about
scientific change.
I do not find that he ever allowed a place for my third prop, instru-
ment or component of the scientific revolution, contingent know-
ledge. Perhaps we must infer that in Koyré's opinion the non-
mathematical departments of natural knowledge were to be entirely
excluded from the historical phenomena of the scientific revolution,
even though some of these were to feature in classical physics. Or if
not excluded, relegated to a very lowly role.
I confess I find such a position hard to comprehend. If any one
should argue that Gassendi had a share in that intellectual revolution,
but Boyle did not; that Newton had a pivotal role in that revolution as
a mathematical, but not as an experimental philosopher, then I am
bound to view this as a strange and distorted view of history. It is also
a view contradicted by the assessment of contemporaries of the
ambitions and achievements of their age. I am aware that contempor-
ary vision of the currents of thought may be partial or blind, but I
think that the mass of contemporary opinion that attached great
importance to the increase of factual, contingent knowledge of nature
in a variety of departments cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. We may
reduce contemporary estimates of the merits of the work of the
Accademia del Cimento, the Royal Society, or the Académie Royale
des Sciences by ninety per cent, but it would seem a refinement of
extremism to declare that these bodies are of no significance at all in
the evolution of science, I mean of course in intellectual as well as
social terms.
Koyré's own lifelong concern was with no more than ten per cent
of the area covered by the seventeenth century's exploration of
nature: I cannot believe that he meant to affirm that the remainder is
of no interest — rather it constituted the other mansions of history of
which he wrote. Recognising the fundamental importance of the
Galileo-Newton-Einstein line, with its profound dependence upon
mathematics and philosophy, he was unable to reconcile the history
of ninety per cent (or more) of scientific work in the past with the
history of this one great line of advance. Much of that past work
indeed appears banal and tedious. What would Koyré, what would
Einstein, have made of Darwin and his barnacles? But who can doubt
 KOYRÊ AND THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 493

the importance of Cirrepedia to Darwin? In face of the incongruities

that arise when one tries to generalize at one and the same time about
taxonomy, say, and cosmology, Koyré chose, it seems, to consider the
history of mechanics and of cosmology as the paradigmatic types, the
types which are passionnant, though not it would seem to all men.
Other historians, and not only those of the marxist persuasion,
have taken a very different view.12 Whereas Koyré insisted that the
scientific revolution consisted of a movement from the concrete to the
abstract, they have seen it as a movement from the abstract to the
concrete. And they have much evidence in the complex if seamless
web of history on their side. It would be hard even to deny that the
history of classical mechanics itself demanded ever-renewed attention
to concrete phenomena.
Is any reconciliation possible? The question was examined not
long ago by T.S. Kuhn.13 Kuhn notes the essential continuity of topic
in mathematical physical science:

The scientific subjects to which an Euler, Laplace or Gauss principally contributed are
almost identical with those illuminated earlier by Newton and Kepler. Very nearly the
same list would encompass the work of Euclid, Archimedes and Ptolemy as well.14

The identity is perhaps rather rhetorical than substantial. Echoing

Koyré, Kuhn writes that in this part of science the revolution
consisted of new procedures founded on a new metaphysics.
Conversely, in the non-mathematical physical sciences and in the
non-physical sciences development consisted of their reaching the
stage of positive, organized knowledge. Gradually these latter attain
the rigour and comprehensiveness of classical physical science though
lacking its mathematical structure; instead, they acquire independent
conceptual structures as happened in the eighteenth century with
electricity and chemistry. They, and the non-mathematical physical
sciences also, are characterised by their use of experiment and refined
observation.
In Kuhn's view, these non-mathematical, empirical sciences were
'in gestation' during the period of the scientific revolution which saw
the 'transformation' of the classical sciences. Perhaps Koyré would
have agreed, but I doubt whether he would have accepted all of
Kuhn's following arguments. For, while seeking to provide a respect-
able historical context for the 'Baconian sciences' (as Kuhn labels
them) in technological experience and needs, Hermeticism and so on,
 494 A.R.HALL

that is, while explaining the evolution of the 'Baconian sciences' by

appeal to exactly that kind of sociological causation which, like
Koyré, Kuhn had been unwilling to see operating on the classical
sciences, Kuhn seems to me to surrender the strength of his own
idealist position: which is, surely, that it is to the extent that these
non-mathematical sciences, enriched by experiment and re-prientated
by new metaphysical presuppositions, are capable of being conceptu-
alized, that is to say, of receiving a theoretical structure and organis-
ation, that they become disciplines and hence may be said to parti-
cipate in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.
Despite the great authority of Alexandre Koyré and Thomas S.
Kuhn, buttressed by the older distinction (1956) made by Professor I.
Bernard Cohen between the mathematical and the experimental
aspects of Newtonian science in the eighteenth century, I venture to
suggest that this type of subject-distinction should not figure as a
commonplace of historical interpretation, especially if it is seen as
justifying the attribution to the mathematical sciences of a degree of
perfection that experimental sciences do not enjoy. (If such an attribu-
tion were appropriate in one period, it could hardly be appropriate
for all periods.) It is not wholly true that Newton's Principia, in re-
forming the classical sciences, also brought them to a state of
perfection. Clifford Truesdell has declared that every result in fluid
mechanics obtained by Newton in 1687 was false; one may also recall
that the fundamental issue of vis viva was in total confusion; the
detailed validification of Newtonian mechanics by, for example, an
authentic theory of the Moon's motion, was still to come — in this
respect particularly experiment and measurement were still to be
fundamentally important — think of Maupertuis! On the other side of
the coin, we may note that the material sciences had already been
given a wide-ranging theoretical basis, ultimately deriving from
ancient atomism, which furnished a common language for the discus-
sion of phenomena. Perhaps more important, the Koyré-Kuhn
distinction seems to force itself between the investigations of different
scientists, and even between the investigations of one individual. Few
leading exponents of the mathematical tradition were inactive in the
experimental or observational aspects also: among the dualists James
Gregory, Christiaan Huygens, John Wallis, Leibniz and Newton
come at once to mind. It is true that the naturalists and medical
scientists were less apt to demonstrate competence in mathematics
 KOYRÉ AND THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 495

also, yet examples of such dualism can be found. In general, the

variety of activity in which individuals engaged and the community of
sympathy and sense of common purpose that existed among the
supporters of the new scientific movement were far greater than such
a distinction would allow. What a curious historiography it would be
that would (rightly) attach supreme importance in the history of
science to the three mathematical treatises annexed to the Discours de
la Méthode but would assign to the Discours itself and to the
Principia Philosophiae that followed it a merely secondary or tertiary
rank!
While it is of course perfectly legitimate for an historian to single
out for special study any aspect of the change in the idea of nature
during the seventeenth century that contributed to the scientific
revolution, it may be myopic to argue from one's personal preference
and expertise that this one particular aspect was dominant, or
paradigmatic of the whole. Would the value-judgement that quantum
mechanics or cosmology provides the model or paradigm of scientific
expression make sense in our own day? As indicated already, I do not
see that any sharp distinction can be made between mathematical and
metaphysical in the history of the physical sciences, and this I take to
have been Koyré's view also, as it was that of Burtt and others long
ago. To deny altogether the influence of contingent knowledge of the
external world upon the intellectual processes involving this complex
duality is to push idealism to absurdity. In the same way one cannot
exclude from the history even of the biological sciences the influence
of mathematical and theoretical-physical ideas; I recall quickly the
names of Sanctorio, Borelli and Stephen Hales. Of course the
historian must expect the seventeenth century change in the idea of
nature to evolve differently in different contexts: its application
cannot be equal and symmetrical without reference to the kind of
question that the investigator was asking. Even as between such
classical and mathematical sciences as astronomy and optics this is
true. Whatever the difficulty of defining and expressing the change,
we should endeavour to see it as possessing historical consistency and
homogeneity, and not as it were make schizophrenics of our subjects.
Similarly, with regard to methodology, we are in danger of falling into
error, I think, if we regard organised description, laboratory experi-
ment and mathematical analysis as necessarily incompatible and
perhaps antipathetic, already in the seventeenth century. (Modem
496 A.R.HALL

science surely demonstrates that they are not.) Whether we focus our
attention mainly on theory and explanation, or mainly upon research
procedures and contingent knowledge, we cannot afford (if we seek
to avoid distortion) to limit our vision to a single plane. Only by
examining our sources from a multiplicity of different perspectives
can we see the scientific revolution as possessing a loose and flexible
internal consistency of purpose and procedure, working its way
slowly towards modern science through the medium of conceptual
change.

Notes

1. I. Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,

Mass. and London, 1985, especially p. 396-398.
2. It is well known that this seminal research remained largely unknown until after
the Second World War, and indeed until after 1950.
3. Etudes Galiléennes, Hermann, Paris, 1939, I, 5-6.
4. Ibid., 7.
5. I do not forget that Koyré himself distinguished between the 'Platonisme de
Galilée (et) . . . celui de l'Académie Florentine' and again between 'sa philosophie
mathématique de la nature' and 'arithmologie néo-pythagoricienne'; see 'Galilée
et la Révolution Scientifique du XVIIe siècle', Conférence faite au Palais de la
Découverte, 17 mai 1955; Série D, no. 37, p. 19. The distinction is just, but it
would be pressing it too far to claim that it justifies the exclusion of Galileo from
the renaissance tradition of mathematics.
6. "Gaulée et la Révolution Scientifique du XVIIe siècle", p. 5.
7. A. Koyré, "Les Origines de la Science Moderne", Diogene, no. 16, October 1956,
30-31.
8. "Gaulée et la Révolution Scientifique du XVIIe siècle", p. 5.
9. The original lecture upon which the book was based was delivered in 1953.
10. Isis, 43, 1952, 312-337.
11. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Johns Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore, 1957, vii.
12. See for example Charles Raven, Natural Religion and Christian Theology,
Cambridge University Press, 1953.
13. In an essay entitled "Mathematical versus Experimental Traditions in the
Development of Physical Science", first printed in 1975 and again in T.S. Kuhn,
The Essential Tension, University of Chicago Press, 1978.
14. Ibid, 39-40.