THE ANATOMY OF SCIENCE 69 



ways a common point of departure in a terminology and a set of 

 premises shared by all. No matter how far the scientist might voyage 

 in thought, he remained in touch with contemporaries who, mov- 

 ing perhaps in other directions, shared always the same base of 

 operations. 



Quite aside from the universities, men informed by the same tradi- 

 tion and sharing the same enthusiasm might band together, as in the 

 Accademia del Cimento and the Royal Society. Such local organiza- 

 tion was supplemented by a rapid transmission of intelligence along 

 channels earlier developed for mercantile, ecclesiastic, and political 

 purposes, a transmission also newly and dramatically broadened by 

 the invention of printing. Within the 150-year period embracing the 

 publication of the works of Copernicus and Newton— and the birth 

 of modern science— an association of scientists as pervasive as it was 

 loose, and as powerful as it was intangible, invested science with a 

 cohesiveness as crucially important as it was then novel, and today 

 commonplace. The extravagant dissipation of eflFort so marked in 

 ancient science is, as Herschel notes, already replaced by something 

 of that co-ordination of efiFort we take for granted: 



. . . the sparks of information from time to time struck out, instead 

 of glimmering for a moment, and dying away in oblivion, began to 

 accumulate into a genial glow, and the flame was at length kindled 

 which was speedily to acquire the strength and rapid spread of a 

 conflagration. 



The social setting. Today science so thrives, in a culture we take 

 wholly for granted, that some among us are led to the absurdity of 

 supposing science independent of its social setting. Historical per- 

 spective rectifies that judgment: even the general organization of so- 

 ciety can aflFect science. Ancient society was, for the most part, highly 

 stratified. Possibly such stratification impairs communication between 

 scholar and craftsman; probably it will suggest to the former that 

 higher truths must be sought through contemplation, not through 

 vulgar manipulative techniques. Often there may be also a crucial 

 disparagement of the basic principle of intelligibility: in a highly 

 stratified society supernaturaiism, convenient superstitions, may have 

 a weighty social role. But any serious concern for the social expedi- 

 ency of supernaturaiism cannot but endanger grasp of the principle 

 of intelligibility. Ultimately, for whatever reason, all hold is lost on 



