The Simplicity Delusion

Issue #8

We often prefer simple and clear though the world is usually neither. Take the “great man theory,” that posits that history moves forward through the impact of great men.

In the context of the Scientific Revolution (roughly 1400-1800 AD), this parade of geniuses features Isaac Newton at its head, but ignores the efforts of many without whom the geniuses could not have functioned.

This case is made with thick description by Deborah Harkness in The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. Perhaps because of my profession, I am drawn to novel data-collection and storytelling – and Harkness delivers a high dosage of microhistory. ?

She began by collecting every book written on science (or natural philosophy as it was called) between 1550 and 1610 (about 200 if I’m counting correctly). Then, effectively, she conducted ethnography on long-dead people, revealing the extraordinarily diverse froth of scientific experimentation that permeated Elizabethan London – which provided the stout scaffolding for the geniuses to build on.

But were they all singular like the great Newton, or at least in the same ballpark? No, she argues, zeroing in with zeal on Francis Bacon, popularly regarded as the father of modern science.

Bacon’s claim primarily rests on his articulation of a prophetic vision for a scientific establishment called Salomon’s House – an institution that would be hierarchically structured into departments that would conduct cutting-edge science. “Prophetic,” because, years later the first of many such institutions (the Royal Society) came into existence and excelled. Case closed, right?

Not quite.

As Harkness delights in pointing out, Bacon wasn’t so much laying out a vision as he was coopting an existing reality – and spinning it into “a clear and univocal” marketing message.

The reality was that there was already a teeming, diverse, collaborative experimental culture in London led by common people (merchants, gardeners, teachers, alchemists, mathematicians). London – “the jewel house” – was the institution in all its wildness. Bottom-up science, if you will. ??????????

But that didn’t suit Bacon’s elitist perspective – a teeming horde of commoners conducting experiments was not his cup of tea. Instead, he imagined a top-down, bureaucratic structure peopled by scientists and headed by a single, well-educated man (guess who?) – and parlayed that vision into posthumously claiming the visionary title.

For centuries it lasted. Why? Because he had a single, clear message on how science should be done – or as a marketer would say, a unique selling proposition (USP) complete with branding. The fact that it was not needed, and was wrong, didn’t seem to matter. ???

Simple, clear . . . and wrong – a mental post-it warning that’s simple, clear . . . and right. ???

End Notes

Accomplished historian and author is just one of Deborah Harkness’s dimensions. Add to that witches and wine: a NY Times bestselling novelist for a trilogy on witches (starting with A Discovery of Witches, also a TV series), and writer of an award-winning wine blog (Good Wine Under $20)

“Every complex problem has an answer that is simple, clear and wrong” is attributed to H.L. Mencken

#books, #learning, #insights, #ethnography, #science,