Some Preliminary Considerations on Science and ...

Introduction:

Some PreliminaryConsiderations on Science and Civil Society By Thomas H. Broman* ABSTRACT Until now, the interestdisplayedin civil society by historiansand political scientists has not found muchecho amonghistoriansof science. This is regrettable,becausethe doctrine of civil society offers historiansof science a means of investigatingthe relationshipbetween the forms of social life characteristicof civil society (voluntaryassociations,civic institutions,etc.) and engagementwith science. The doctrineof civil society also permits historiansto inquireinto how science eitherlegitimatesor underminespolitical authority. Most importantly,civil society permitsan analysisof the basis of science'spublic authority.As the articlesin this collection show, the attemptto occupy the position of representing science as public knowledge has been a central concern of social and professional groupsin a wide varietyof settings.

THE PAST FIFI'EEN YEARS, the concept of civil society has beDURING come quiteprominentin the thinkingof politicalscientistsandotherdiagnosticiansof the moder condition.'The interestin civil society,takenherein its broadest meaningas describinga realm of social life positionedbetween the family and the state, is not all that difficult to trace. One source is providedby the political transformationsseen in EasternEuropein the 1980s, when independentpolitical and social movements,such as Solidarityin Poland,contributedto the overthrowof totalitarianregimesandthe restorationof democraticpoliticalinstitutions.Nor have only communistandtotalitarianregimesbeen involvedin this process,as evidenced by the overthrowof the autocraticFerdinandMarcos from the presidencyof the Philippinesin 1986. Morerecentlystill, the electionof VicenteFox to the presidency of Mexico in 2000 signaledthe end of morethanseventyyearsof virtualone-party rule by the InstitutionalRevolutionaryParty(PRI). *

Departmentof Historyof Science, Universityof Wisconsin-Madison,7133 Social Science, 1180 ObservatoryDr., Madison,WI 53706-1393; [email protected]. More even thanis usually the case, the authorwishes to thankthose who have patientlydiscussed these matterswith him, critiqueddrafts, and otherwise attemptedto deepen his understandingof science and civil society: Cathy Carson, John Carson, Peter Dear, Volker Hess, Clark Miller, Ted Porter,Mary Terrall,and Jessica Wang. Most especially, he thanks Lynn Nyhart, who has had to endurehis recurrentbouts of conceptualincoherenceand over-the-topprose for far too long. 1 Ernest Gellner, Conditionsof Liberty:Civil Society and Its Rivals (London:Allen Lane, 1994); JohnKeane, Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions(London:Polity, 1999); R. Fine and ShirinRai, eds., Civil Society: Democratic Perspectives (London: FrankCass, 1997); Ralf Dahrendorf,After 1989: Morals, Revolution,and Civil Society (New York:St. Martin's,1997). Additional literature will be cited below. ? 2002 by The History of Science Society.All rights reserved.0369-7827/02/1701-0001$10.00 Osiris, 2002, 17:1-21

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Anothersourceof interestin civil society has been the systemicweakeningof the welfare state in Europeand NorthAmerica.These changes have been signaledby the growing inability of governmentsto providehigh levels of social supportfor retirees and the physically disabled, for example, and the increasingpressureon countries such as Canada and Great Britain to maintaintheir systems of statesupportedmedical care in the face of constantlyrising costs. In the United States, which did not have a well-developedwelfare state to begin with, therehas been a strongmovementto cut long-termunemploymentbenefitsandto privatizefunctions such as education(althoughthis has failed to show much effect) and the operation of prisons.Indicativeof this trendis the sight of so-called public universitiesnow chasing after patentsand privateendowmentswith the fanaticalzeal once shown only by schools such as Harvardand Princeton. These developmentshavecombinedto directthe attentionof historiansandother scholarsaway from the state and towardthose institutionsthat structuresocial life independentlyof government.The conceptof civil society is attractivein these contexts because,accordingto KeithTester,it is a resourcefor understandingwhatit is that has "madethe social world social."2Moreover,it is not only the patternsof social life that are of interesthere;just as significantare the interactionsbetween social institutionsandthe state.Civil society is a tool for investigatingthese interactions as well. To date,historiansof science havepaid scantattentionto these developments,but, as this collection of essays hopes to demonstrate,the conceptof civil society opens new andimportantquestionsfor the historyof science. By way of preliminaryorientation, we can point to two general types of questions here and then refine them lateron. The firstconcernsthe voluntaryassociations,clubs, and otherinstitutions characteristicof civil society.How has engagementwith science figuredin the composition and evolutionof those institutions?Has engagementwith science offered the membersof civic associationsa way of acquiringsocial status,and if so, why has this happened?Have the institutionsof civil society favoredthe cultivationof certainsciences, to the relativeexclusionof others?Here,too, we can ask why this would be the case. A second generalquestionaboutscience and civil society can be asked with respect to the relationshipbetween civil society and political authority.As we shall see below, one of the doctrine'scentraltenets makes the constitutionof political authoritydependenton the formationof society itself. By highlightingthe mechanisms by which political authorityis created,the doctrineof civil society brings the issue of legitimacy to center stage, offering groundfor studyinghow political legitimacyis maintained.In light of these considerations,then,how does the cultivation of science in civil society eithersupportor underminethe legitimacyof political authority?Does the invocationof certainkindsof scientificknowledgeby members of civil society providethe foundationfor criticizingthe state'spolicies or for denying its legitimacy?Moreover,it is notjust politicallegitimacythatis underconsideration here. Insofaras all societies requirewidely acceptedforms of legitimationto functioneffectively and avoid chaos-for example, in regulatingmattersas mundane as marriageand inheritance-how does science affect these otherkinds of legitimation? 2 KeithTester,Civil

Society (Londonand New York:Routledge, 1992), p. 5.


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In alluding to the relationship between science and social legitimation, we bring the issues raised in this volume into territory that has already been opened up by the work on "gentlemanly science" and science and the court in early modem Europe.3 Often inspired or informed by the work of the German sociologist Norbert Elias, this literature has shown how the practice and the legitimization of science were part of a broader pattern of emergent behavioral norms, cultural values, and social institutions in Europe between the sixteenth century and the French Revolution. At first glance, the study of science and civil society would appear to be quite similar to this work because it includes many of the same norms of civility characteristic of the process described by Elias and central to the historical literature on science and civility. But the difference is that civil society represents an entirely different conception of social structure. Therefore a clear distinction must be drawn between the hierarchically stratified and aristocratic forms of social organization in which civility has largely been discussed and the nonhierarchical vision of social formation that permeates the doctrine of civil society. "We hold these Truthsto be self-evident," intones the American Declaration of Independence, "that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Along with women and African Americans in the cast of excluded thousands, the category of "all Men" in the Declaration of Independence left no room for hereditary aristocrats, either. Although the doctrine of civil society has much to offer the history of science, it does have two significant drawbacks. First, it is a maddeningly imprecise and frankly contentious concept. Does the definition of civil society include economic activity? Montesquieu and Adam Smith certainly thought so, as did G. W. F Hegel and Karl Marx. But contemporary political scientists tend to dissociate the two, preferring to focus on social intercourse that brings people into various kinds of associations, thereby reinforcing civic cohesiveness and becoming the basis for independent political action. Does civil society include the home and the family? John Locke specifically excluded these from civil society. Hegel, in a quintessentially Hegelian formulation, regarded the family as the primitive, absolute form of society in which "[some]one's frame of mind is to have self-consciousness of one's individuality within this unity as the absolute essence of oneself," a condition radically different from the atomized and selfish individualism that Hegel found in civil society.4 Jiirgen Habermas, too, drew a sharp boundary between civil society and the family. By contrast, Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, whose 1992 volume Civil Society and Political Theory offers one of the most thorough and theoretically sophisticated 3 For a samplingof this literature,see Steven Shapin,A Social Historyof Truth(Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994); Bruce T. Moran, ed., Patronage and Institutions:Science, Technology,and Medicineat the EuropeanCourt,1500-1750 (Rochester,N.Y.: Boydell Press, 1991); PaulaFindlen, "Controllingthe Experiment:Rhetoric,CourtPatronage,andthe ExperimentalMethodof Francesco Redi (1626-1697),"Hist. Sci. 31 (1993): 35-64; JayTribby,"Dante'sRestaurant:The CulturalWorkof Experimentin EarlyModem Tuscany"in The Consumptionof Culture,1600-1800: Image, Object, Text,ed. Ann Berminghamand JohnBrewer(Londonand New York:Routledge, 1995), pp. 319-37; Jay Tribby,"ClubMedici: NaturalExperimentand the Imagineeringof 'Tuscany,"'Configurations 2 (1994): 215-35; and Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993). For discussion of the transitionfrom this model of court-orientedscience to a more bourgeois and domestic form in the eighteenth century,see Alice N. Walters,"ConversationPieces: Science and Politeness in Eighteenth-CenturyEngland,"Hist. Sci. 35 (1997): 121-54. 4 G. W. F Hegel, The Philosophyof Right, trans.T. M. Knox (Oxford:OxfordUniv. Press, 1979), p. 110. Comparethis with the definitionof "civil society" on pp. 122-3.


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guides to the concept, include the family within civil society, in recognition of the evolving understanding of household work as a form of labor and of the distinctive situation faced by women as both mothers and members of the labor force.5 A more serious drawback to the concept of civil society is the tendency to treat it as a stable empirical object, amenable to social-scientific analysis just like any other institution. For example, political scientists have recently taken to bemoaning the "decline" of civil society in America and filling their writings with proposals for its "restoration,"as if the object of their lamentations were as easily identifiable an empirical phenomenon as monthly church socials or bowling leagues.6 Nor is this the only example of such usages. There is an enormous scholarly literature on economic development and political change in Eastern Europe and Africa that makes the presence or absence of a fully developed civil society a crucial marker of "progress" in these and other parts of the world.7 Indeed, such ideas have been the basis of economists' and political scientists' discussion of "modernization" since it was first formulated theoretically in the 1950s and 1960s.8 Even Cohen and Arato waver between treating civil society analytically as a theory of social formation and as an empirical term.9 The danger inherent in treating civil society as if it referred to a particular segment or location in society, in the manner of terms such as "trade unions" or "the inhabitants of St. Cecilia's parish," is that by doing so we run the risk of subscribing, unwittingly or deliberately, to civil society's own ideological underpinnings. With respect to empirical content, what the historian or sociologist actually identifies in practice are particular institutions, such as museums, professional associations, and sundry clubs and other voluntary groups. Yet when the next step is taken and those institutions are made to be representative of "civil society," this attribution has the effect of situating them in the context of a liberal-democratic political system and 5

JurgenHabermas,TheStructuralTransformation of the Public Sphere,trans.ThomasBurgerand FrederickLawrence(Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1989), p. 45; JeanL. Cohen andAndrewArato, Civil Society and Political Theory(Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 532-48. 6 See, e.g., Brian O'Connell, Civil Society: The Underpinningsof AmericanDemocracy (Hanover and London:Univ. Press of New England, 1999); RobertK. Fullinwider,ed., Civil Society,Democracy,and CivicRenewal(Lanham,Md.:Rowman& Littlefield,1999); andRobertPutnam,"Bowling Alone: America'sDeclining Social Capital,"Journalof Democracy 6 (1995): 65-78. 7 See, e.g., Rasul Bakhsh Rais, ed., State, Society,and Democratic Change in Pakistan(Karachi: OxfordUniv. Press, 1997);Africa'sSecond Waveof Freedom:Development,Democracy,and Rights (Lanham,Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1998); GordonWhite, Jude Howell, and Shang Xiaoyuan, In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in ContemporaryChina (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1996); andAlbertoGaspariniand VladimirYadov,eds., Social Actors and Designing the Civil Society of Eastern Europe (Greenwich,Conn.: JAI Press, 1995). A perusal of books catalogedunderthe Libraryof CongressdesignationHN380.7 will yield a flood of similarliterature on EasternEurope alone. For a refreshingantidoteto this point of view, see MahmoodMamdani, "The Politics of Civil Society and Ethnicity:Reflections on an African Dilemma,"Political Power and Social Theory 12 (1998): 221-33. My thanksto my colleague Gay (not Ann) Seidman for this referenceand discussions of the largerissues at work here. 8 See C. E. Black, The Dynamics of Modernization:A Study in ComparativeHistory (New York: Harper& Row, 1966), which includes at the end a comprehensivebibliographicessay on modernization theory. 9 Cohen, Civil Society (cit. n. 5). Comparethe preface, p. vii-"Our goal, rather,is twofold: to demonstratethe relevanceof the concept of civil society to modem political theory and to develop at least the frameworkof a theoryof civil society adequateto contemporaryconditions"-to p. 19"Farfrom viewing social movementsas antitheticalto either the democraticpolitical system or to a properlyorganizedsocial sphere ..., we considerthem to be a key featureof vital, modem civil society"


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handingthem functionswithin that system. This transformsinto an empiricalphenomenonwhat is arguablymerely an analyticalcategory,and clothedin the mantle of this objectivity,civil society can be assessedeitheras actuallypromotinga healthy polity or as somehowbeing preventedfrom doing so.10 The conceptualslippageby which civil society is routinelyrenderedas an empirical termundeniablyconstitutesthe most significantproblemwe face when dealing with it. Moreover,our difficulties are only increasedby the fact that most of us readilysubscribeto at least some versionof the ideology of democraticsociety that civil society represents.Becausewe believe thatthe institutionscomposingwhatwe call "civil society"have somethingto do with democracy,it becomes all the more difficultto separatethe social role of those institutionsand an analysisof civil society as an ideologyfromthe assumedcontributionsby civic institutionsto the developmentof democracy.One can see this mixtureof normativeanddescriptiveinclinations at work in the recent collection edited by Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord, Civil Society beforeDemocracy.This volume bringstogetheressays studyingcivic institutionsin variousEuropeancountriesduringthe nineteenthcenturyanddescribing the effect of those institutionson the evolutionof democraticpolitics in those countries.The questionanimatingthese articlesis this:In light of the variousinstitutionalforms assumedby civil society in differentEuropeancountriesandthe correspondingdiversityof politicalsystems,can any generalconclusionsbe drawnabout the ability of civil society to promotedemocracy?Both Nord, the historian,and Bermeo, the political scientist, answer in the affirmative."When such normative expectationsare readinto nineteenth-century history,the negativecase of a stunted civil society failing to foster democracyis furnished,not surprisingly,by Germany. In an article proving (Blackbournand Eley notwithstanding)that the Sonderweg thesis remainsalive in contemporaryGermanhistoriography,KlausTenfeldewrites that"inthe Tocquevillianscheme of things, associationsare meant to function as consensus-buildinglittle republics.They did not work that way in Germany."To hammerthis point home, he adds that "a civil society never developedin full, not in 1918 and not underthe WeimarRepublic."12 10As FrankTrentmann puts it, "[C]ivil society has always stood both for norms and for social realities."That is, the term has alwaysrepresenteda certainmodel of how society ought to work, as well as describinghow in fact it does work.Leavingaside here the questionof whetherthe conceptof civil society offers an accuratedescriptionof social interaction,what might be addedto Trentmann's statementis thatboth the normativeand descriptivepartsof the doctrineare informedby an ideology concerningthe structureof social life and its relationshipwith political power. Civil society is an ideology masqueradingas an empiricalcategory,and it is precisely the slippage between empirical and normativeelements describedby Trentmannthat makes it so powerful. See FrankTrentmann, "Introduction:Paradoxesof Civil Society,"in Paradoxesof Civil Society: New Perspectiveson Germanand BritishHistory,ed. FrankTrentmann(New York:BerghahnBooks, 2000), pp. 3-46, on p. 3. " See Philip Nord, "Introduction,"and Nancy Bermeo, "Civil Society after Democracy: Some Conclusions,"in Civil Society before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-CenturyEurope, ed. Nancy BermeoandPhilip Nord (LanhamMd.: Rowman& Littlefield,2000), pp. xiii-xxxiii, 237-60. 12 Klaus Tenfelde,"CivilSociety andthe Middle Classes in Nineteenth-CenturyGermany,"in Civil Society before Democracy (cit. n. 11), pp. 83-108. For a critique of the Sonderwegthesis, which holds that Germany'sfailed road to modernizationis the explanationfor its disastrousfate in the twentieth century, see David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford:OxfordUniv. Press, 1984). Blackbournand Eley's book actually appearedfirst in German in 1980, underthe provocativetitle MythendeutscherGeschichtsschreibung(Mythsof Germanhistoriography).Needless to say, it touched off a massive controversy.For an interestingcommentaryon this entireimbroglio,see RichardEvans, "The Myth of Germany'sMissing Revolution,"in Rethinking German History (London and Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987). For a highly readable general


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It would be carryingthis criticismtoo far to insist thathistoriansexaminingcivil society leave aside completelyany attentionto the connectionsbetweenthe institutional forms of civil society and the developmentof democraticpolities. Such connections,afterall, are what give civil society much of its interest.At the same time, however,we can attemptto set aside our normativeexpectationsand treat those connectionscircumstantially, andnot as the inevitableresultof democraticmodernization. In fact, historiansof science should be in an advantageousposition to do just that,becausethey arehabituatedto settingasidethe powerfulideologicalclaims of theirtopic, science, andevaluatingit independentlyof whateverthey maybelieve is true in it. In each case, the point is not to renounceour belief that civil society may indeedbe importantto democracy,or thatthe naturalsciences do make claims aboutthe worldthatwe all subscribeto, but to distanceourselvesfromthose beliefs in orderto gain a criticaland analyticalperspectiveon theirplace in history.Thus the essays in this volume treatcivil society analytically,as an ideology thathas had an importantimpacton historyand has interactedin significantways with science. When they speak about "civil society" more or less empirically,they do so as a shorthanddesignationfor the social institutionsthatare commonlyidentifiedas belonging to civil society,but withoutassumingthat those institutionshave anything at all to do normativelywith the developmentof democracy.Of course, this is not to deny that in many instances-such as those describedby AndreasDaum (on scientificpopularizationin Germany),ElizabethHachten(on Russian scientistsin the public sphere),andZuoyueWang(on the Science Society of China)-historical actorsmay havedeliberatelyincorporatedthe political andideological aims of civil society to promotereformor modernization.But the articlesavoidpassingjudgment on these events in termsof some absolutescale of democraticfulfillment. Withthis separationbetweenthe analyticalandthe empiricalsenses of civil society firmlyin mind,we shouldnow takea closer look at some of the dominantthemes in the doctrineas it has evolved since the late seventeenthcentury.No pretensionto completenessis claimed for the survey offered here.'3Instead,the aim is to direct the reader'sattentionto some of civil society'sdistinctivecharacteristicsas well as to highlightthose parts of the doctrinethat will featurein this volume. After this preliminarysurvey is completed, the discussion will addressthe relationshipbetween civil society and the public sphere,focusing on science's role in the latter. overview of the immense struggles over Germany'spast, see Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and GermanNational Identity (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1988). 13 On the history of the concept of civil society, see Cohen, Civil Society (cit. n. 5), chap. 2; John Keane, "Despotismand Democracy:The Originsand Developmentof the Distinctionbetween Civil Society and the State, 1750-1850" in Civil Society and the State: New EuropeanPerspectives, ed. John Keane (London and New York:Verso, 1988), pp. 35-71; and John Ehrenberg,Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea (New York:New YorkUniv. Press, 1999). Ehrenberg'streatmentis probablythe most accessible one for those making their first study of this topic, but it suffers from a tendency to create a normativedefinitionof civil society and then to situate various writers on a scale of how correctlythey understoodthe concept. Thus Locke'stheoryof civil society represented a step forwardover Hobbes'sideas, we are told, because Locke "knewbetterthanHobbes thatproperty had become a necessary condition of human life" (p. 85). For outstandinginterpretationsof David Hume andAdam Smith, two otherseminaltheoristsof civil society, see JohnRobertson,"The Scottish Enlightenmentat the Limits of the Civic Tradition,"and Nicholas Phillipson,"AdamSmith as Civic Moralist,"in Wealthand Virtue:TheShapingof Political Economyin the ScottishEnlightenment, ed. Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1983), pp. 13778, 179-202.


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Finally,the essay closes with a discussionof the professionsand otherinstitutional forms of civic life, and theirconfrontationwith the state. THE DOCTRINE OF CIVIL SOCIETY:ORIGINS AND PRINCIPALTHEMES

The concept of civil society, as it has been understoodsince the late seventeenth century,depends essentially on the idea of "society"as something distinct from "politics"and from the exercise of political authority.By means of this distinction, therehas emergedthe well-known"public-private" boundarythatfeaturesso promiin of civil with the state.As obvious as this and its relations nently analysis society distinctionseems to us, however,let us note thatthe separationbetweensociety and politics is scarcelya naturalone, andin fact ancientGreekwriterstreatedcivil society as the collection of men in a town who exercised political functions.To be a memberof civil society in the ancientGreek,and laterRoman,understandingwas to be a citizen and to engage in politicallife.14This identificationof the social with the political mirrored,as HaroldCook's article tells us, a similaridentificationof knowledgeof the good andknowledgeof the truefor Platoandotherancientphilosophers. For this reason, Cook writes, naturaland moral philosophy were distinguishedonly heuristically;"theywere simply differentways to a knowledgeof the good andthe true."Virtueconsistedof the applicationof reasoninformedby philosophy (referredto in Cook's article as "rightreason")in restraintof the irrational passions.By extension,the same set of principlesappliedto the wise governanceof the polis, the body politic, as appliedto the well-being of an individual. Accordingto Cook,this understandingof reason'smasteryoverthe passionsbroke down duringthe sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies,in large measurebecause of the scientific revolution.In its wake, the understandingof "reason"was radically narrowedto whatwas knowableby meansof experience,ratherthanwhathas been revealedto the intellect by God. This createda problemfor the understandingof virtue.For if reasonnow could only be basedon experienceandconsequentlycould no longer be seen as some transcendentlegislatorof virtue,then what could serve as the ethicalcompassfor humanaction?The rejectionof rightreasonas a guide to virtue, Cook claims, led to a wholesale reevaluationof the role of the passions in context, the passions guidinghumanaction. Understoodin a natural-philosophical becamethe foundationfor arguingthata polity consistingof the mutualadjustment of interestsguidedby the passions was the most equitableform of politics and the true sourceof virtue.15 None of the seventeenth-centurywritersdiscussed by Cook here presentedany explicitanalysisof society apartfrompolitics.But thatwouldnot be long in coming. One of the earliest-and undoubtedlythe most influential-formulations of this kind came from JohnLocke, whose anonymouslypublishedTwoTreatisesof Government(1690) becamethe indispensablestartingpointfor all latertheorists.In the 14 On the origins of 15 In additionto

this distinction,see Keane, "Despotismand Democracy"(cit. n. 13). Hont, Wealthand Virtue(cit. n. 13), the relationshipbetween virtue and the passions are treatedin Albert O. Hirschmann,The Passions and the Interests:Political Argumentsfor Capitalismbefore Its Triumph(Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1977); and J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thoughtand the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1975). NeitherHirschmannnor Pocock deals with the writers addressedin Cook'sarticle,however.


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second of the two treatises, Locke posed a simple yet powerful question: Under what conditions do humans enter into society? The key to this development, Locke believed, lies in the notion of property. Whether one starts from the principles of natural reason or the text of Scripture, it is evident that humanity has a right to appropriatethe earth's abundance to preserve life and health. We might note in passing that Locke follows earlier writers in grounding property on the satisfaction of physical needs and desires. Here, too, it seems, the passions have an important role to play. But if such natural products are given to humanity collectively for its preservation, what legitimate basis can there be for a narrower sense of "property" as pertaining to particularindividuals? Locke's answer held that the investment of labor in acquiring or improving the earth's resources makes those things the property of the person who has performed the work. Whatsoeverthen he [i.e., "man"]removesout of the State that Naturehathprovided, andleft it in, he hathmixedhis Labourwith, andjoynedto it somethingthatis his own, and therebymakes it his Property.It being by him removedfrom the common state Natureplaced it in, it hath by this labour somethingannexedto it, that excludes the commonrightof otherMen.16 For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing more than a half century after Locke, the establishment of property was the defining moment in the origin of civil society. "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, to whom it occurred to say this is mine, and found a people sufficiently simple to believe him, was the true founder of civil society."17 Locke, as always, was less peremptory in his pronouncements. While property alone did not suffice to induce people to enter into society, property coupled with scarcity did promote the formation of such relations, as people became accustomed to the idea of exchanging property through barter and, ultimately, by means of money.18 Locke then turned to the question of what motivates people to enter into what he called "political or civil society." He opened his chapter on the formation of political societies with this oft-quoted passage: Men being, as has been said, by Nature,all free, equal and independent,no one can be put out of this Estate,and subjectedto the PoliticalPowerof another,withouthis own Consent.The only way wherebyany one devests himself of his NaturalLiberty,and puts on the bondsof Civil Societyis by agreeingwith otherMen to joyn and unite into a Community,for theircomfortable,safe, andpeaceableliving amongstone another,in 16 JohnLocke, TwoTreatisesof Government,ed. PeterLaslett(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1988), p. 288. This text is based on the thirdedition, which was publishedin 1698. The italics are in the original. 17 Jean-JacquesRousseau, "Discourse on the Origin and the Foundationsof Inequality among Men,"in Rousseau:TheDiscourses and OtherEarly Political Writings,ed. and trans.VictorGourevitch (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1997), p. 161. Italics in original. 18Locke, TwoTreatises(cit. n. 16), p. 299. Nowhere does Locke explicitly addresshimself to the questionof what drives people to begin exchangingproperty.However,he seems to suggest on this page thatthe scarcityof resourcesand theirunevendistributionamong differentcommunitiescreate the impulse to exchange. Moreover,Locke's concept of civil society supposes, in quite deliberate contrastto Hobbes'smodel of the state of natureas a conditionof unremittingviolence, thathumans have a naturaltendencytowardsociability."Godhaving made Man such a Creature,"he says at one point, "that,in his own Judgment,it was not good for him to be alone, put him understrongObligations of Necessity, Convenience,and inclinationto drive him into Society,as well as fittedhim with Understandingand Languageto continueand enjoy it" (pp. 318-9).


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a secure enjoymentof their Properties,and a greaterSecurityagainstany that are not in it. This any numberof Men may do, because it injuresnot the Freedomof the rest; they areleft as they werein the Libertyof the Stateof Nature.Whenanynumberof Men have so consentedto make one Communityor Government,they are therebypresently incorporated,andmakeone body Politick,whereinthe majorityhavea Rightto act and concludethe rest.19 Elsewhere, Locke notes that slaves are incapable of holding property and therefore "cannot in that state be considered as any part of Civil Society; the chief end whereof is the preservation of Property."20 There are at least three significant features of Locke's conception of civil society that deserve comment here. First, it is voluntaristic. People are not compelled to enter into civil society; rather,they choose to do so freely, in order to better regulate their property and enjoy it more fully. Second, the mode of formation of civil society, by means of the "social contract" (as Rousseau would later famously label it), was a thoroughly egalitarian one. Whatever forms of social differentiation and hierarchy might characterize society as it was actually constituted, the point of departure for the doctrine of civil society, as Locke formulated it, was a group of free and equal people spontaneously agreeing to submit themselves to authority. Third, the model of property and self-interested economic exchange that animated the concept of civil society placed a stout wall between civil society and the home. Relationships outside the home between "all men" could be conducted, in theory at least, as encounters between equals. Such models of sociability did not pertain to relationships between spouses or between parents and children, however, and the home became the most private of private spaces in the emerging thicket of public-private dichotomies that the doctrine of civil society put in place.21 Needless to say, this made the role of women in civil society problematic, but not perhaps for the reason-the sequestration of women inside the domestic sphere of the home-that might first come to the modem reader's mind as an anticipation of Victorian domesticity.22Thus, as Shelley Costa's article on the Ladies' Diary illustrates, the spectrum running from inclusion to exclusion of women from the domain of "all men" in civil society permitted wellborn women to be the audience for some extremely sophisticated mathematical conundrums. But the ability of that same female audience to contribute to the solution of those problems was more contested and variable. More perhaps than any other feature of Locke's conception of civil society, the establishment of "society" as something separate from government and political authority furnished an exceptionally powerful tool for the understanding of human relations. Characteristically, according to this and later formulations, neither society 19Ibid., pp. 330-1. Ibid., p. 323. Locke believed that slavery was justified in situationswhere prisonershave been takenin the prosecutionof a "justwar." 21 Indeed, Locke devotes a considerableeffort in the early chaptersof the "Second Treatise"to arguingthat certainforms of social and political relations,such as families, slaveholding,and absolute monarchy,lie outside the boundariesof civil society. 22 For a fascinatingstudyof how the understandingof gendercontributedto the doctrinalformulation and institutionalevolution of civil society, see Isabel V. Hull, Sexuality,State, and Civil Society in Germany,1700-1815 (Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1996), especially chap. 5, where Hull engages most directly with the doctrineof civil society as it was being developed duringthe eighteenthcentury.See also SuzanneDesan, "Reconstitutingthe Social afterthe Terror:Family,Property, and the Law in PopularPolitics,"Past Present 164 (1999): 81-121, which analyzes debates over the natureof family and the social orderin Franceafterthe fall of the Jacobinregime. 20


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nor governmentconstitutedor precededthe other. Instead,both came into being simultaneouslyand necessarilyas part of the other'sformation.On the one hand, this madethe analysisof the formsof politicalauthorityandtheirrelationto society a matterof supremeimportance.Montesquieudevotedone of the eighteenthcentury'smost fascinatingandwidely readtreatises,TheSpiritof the Laws(1748), to just this issue, and of course,manyotherwritershave also treatedit. On the otherhand, the creationof society as a topic of discussion opened up a whole new world for scientific analysis.As LorraineDaston has pointed out, much of the work in the emergentfields of probabilityand social statisticswas informedby the assumption of the "reasonableman"as the core objectof study,an assumptionfully consistent with the doctrineof civil society.23 The same possibilitiesfor an empiricalscience of society informedthe discussion of "talent"and "merit"in the eighteenthcentury,as describedin John Carson'sarticle. Carsondirectsour attentionto a crucialfeatureof the doctrineof civil society, which was its distinctionbetween a basic civil or political equalityassertedfor all humanbeings (or at least, for thatsame groupof "allMen"referredto in the Declarationof Independence)and a conspicuouslyunequaldistributionof talentsamong the membersof society.As Carsonputs it, talk abouttalentsfurnished"one way of speaking like a democrat"while continuingto "justifysocial distinctions,though ones based on decidedlydifferentgroundsthanthe heretoforestandarddifferentiations accordingto birth and tradition."Most powerfullyof all, the distributionof talentwas understoodby manywritersas based in humannature,and althoughthis distributionpertainedto humansin the state of naturebefore the creationof civil society,it had nonethelessprofoundsocial consequences.As suggestedby Carson's descriptionof the debatebetween JohnAdams and ThomasJefferson,the unequal distributionof talentpointeddirectlyto the powerfulquestionof who shall rule in a democracy.Moreover,it might be added,in a social ideology based on property, the discourseof talentandvirtuepermitted(andcontinuesto permit)massivesocial and economic inequalitiesto thriveunderneatha veneerof political equality. The line of thinkingby which the needs of propertybecome the impulse for the formationof civil society resonatedthrougha line of prominentthinkers,including DavidHume,Rousseau,Smith,Hegel and,of course,Marx,whose devastatinganalysis of the role of propertyin civil society led him to advocatethe abolitionof private propertyas a conditionfor the achievementof true democracy.A ratherdifferent line of thinkingwas developedby Alexis de Tocquevillein Democracyin America (1835, 1840). Tocquevilledisplayedlittle interestin analyzingthe conditionsthat engenderedcivil society or in understandinghow tradeand manufacturesproduced social progress,which had been Smith'sconcernas well as thatof AdamFerguson, whose Essay on the Historyof CivilSociety (1767) offeredone of the earliesttreatments of this subject.Tocquevilleinsteadwantedto show how Americanspracticed democracyin theirsociety and,in a questionreminiscentof Montesquieu,how democraticinstitutionsshapedAmericanmanners. The centralproblemfor a democraticpolitical system, Tocquevilleclaimed, is how to set properlimits to individualliberty and equality,withoutextirpatingone or the other.The tendencyin young democraciesis for people to emphasizetheir 23LorraineDaston, Classical Probabilityin the Enlightenment(Princeton,N. J.: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1988), especially chap. 2.


INTRODUCTION

11

individualism,because in such conditions it is difficult to see beyond their own selfish intereststo the commongood. This shortsightedness,in turn,is conduciveto the growth of a tyrannicaldespotism, because such a regime can take root only wherethe people aredividedandunableto unitein resistingthe growthof a despotic government.But Americans,Tocquevillebelieved, overcomethe atomizingeffects of democraticsystems by enteringinto a multitudeof voluntaryassociations.He elaboratedon this point by resortingto one of his favoriterhetoricaltools, the comparisonbetween democraciesand aristocracies.In aristocracies,he declared,the multitudeof people areweak while a few arevery powerful.These few havein their own handsthe ability to "achievegreatundertakings"and do not requirethe assistance or even the passive complianceof othersto reachthese goals: Among democraticnations,on the contrary,all the citizens areindependentandfeeble; they can do hardlyanythingby themselves,andnone of themcan oblige his fellow men to lend him theirassistance.They all, therefore,become powerlessif they do not learn voluntarilyto help one another.If men living in democraticcountrieshad no rightand no inclinationto associatefor politicalpurposes,theirindependencewould be in great jeopardy,but they might long preservetheir wealth and their cultivation:whereas if they neveracquiredthe habitof formingassociationsin ordinarylife, civilizationitself wouldbe endangered.24

Thus for Tocquevilleit was the formationof voluntaryassociations,both what he labeled "civil"as well as "political"associations,thattogethercharacterizethe distinctivepatternsof Americandemocracy. Tocqueville'sanalysis of civil society stands as an antidoteboth to Rousseau's gloomy assessmentof the role of propertyin the establishmentof social inequality, quotedaboveand laid out in the Discourseon the Originof Inequality,as well as to Hegel's claim thatthe state was the ultimatesolventfor the radicallyparticularized interestsof civil society.Tocquevillearrivedat this position by ignoringthe role of propertyin the formationof civil society altogether.Instead,he fashioneda picture emphasizinghow privatelife acquiresa public characterthroughinstitutionssuch as civic organizationsand the press and how this "public"based in civil society becomes an effective check on the growthof tyranny.25 Not coincidentally,by framing his treatise as a discussion of democracy as it actually existed in America, Tocquevillegreatly contributedto the conflationof the empirical,analytical,and normativeaspects of the doctrine. SCIENCE, CIVIL SOCIETY,AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

One obvious questionthat could be raised in responseto the foregoing discussion is why did this idea of civil society take hold among so many eighteenth-century writers?Locke alone certainlydid not create the discourse of civil society-no single individualcould have. Instead,what gave this discourse its circulationand 24

Alexis de Tocqueville,Democracyin America, ed. Phillips Bradley,2 vols. (New York:Vintage Books, 1945), vol. 2, p. 115. 25 Tocqueville was, however, greatly concerned about the tyrannyof the majority in American politics and the suffocatingeffects of majorityconsensus on public opinion. "InAmerica,"he wrote, "themajorityraises formidablebarriersaroundthe libertyof opinion;within these barriersan author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them."Ibid., vol. 1, p. 274.


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application was a remarkable set of cultural and social transformations that first took form during the last decades of the seventeenth century and continued through the eighteenth. For some time now, historians have been describing the rapid expansion of economic activity during this period and the corresponding emergence of what has been labeled "consumer society." The phenomenon has been most closely associated with Great Britain, but historians of continental Europe have been almost as active in describing it.26Alongside these new forms of consumption and clearly associated with them, new patterns of social life also developed, patterns commonly described under the rubric of "new forms of sociability." This phenomenon is represented by a host of diverse institutions-among them coffeehouses, reading societies, salons, Masonic lodges, and societies of useful knowledge and improvementthat began to appear in many parts of Europe and North America. The characteristic that united this rather heterogeneous group of meeting places was the voluntary nature of participation in them and their tendency to reduce social distinctions.27 Even Frederick the Great (1712-1786), king of Brandenburg-Prussiabetween 1740 and 1786, was just another brother initiated into the Berlin lodge of the Secret and Fraternal Order of Masons in 1738, when he was still crown prince.28 John Locke and his many readers as well as later commentators were people who inhabited this world, the world of commercially driven town life and the open sociability of the clubs and coffeehouses, and they formulated and engaged with the doctrine of civil society as a reflection of their day-to-day social experience. Their patronage of coffeehouses, their subscription to journals and newspapers, either individually or via membership in a reading society, gave them a taste of just the kind of voluntarist and nonhierarchical society that the doctrine meant to portray. We might appropriately call civil society the "Whig view of society," in recognition of the cultural ascendancy of the urban "middling sort" and the entrepreneuriallower gentry, and their hostility toward the upper echelons of the aristocracy. Shelley Costa's article on the Ladies' Diary during the first half of the eighteenth century can be read against this background of the coffeehouses and the literary culture they inspired. Echoing Habermas's point about how coffeehouses and the other new forms of sociability fostered among participants a new collective sense of themselves as "the public," Costa frames her essay around a consideration of women's place in this public. The story is a paradoxical one. She shows how the 26The wellspring for much of this story is Neil McKendrick,John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, eds., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercializationof Eighteenth-CenturyEngland (Bloomington:IndianaUniv. Press, 1982). Among the best new treatmentsof this subject are Ann Berminghamand John Brewer,eds., The Consumptionof Culture,1600-1800: Image, Object, Text (Londonand New York:Routledge, 1995); MargaretR. Hunt, TheMiddlingSort: Commerce,Gender, and the Family in England, 1680-1780 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1996); and Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment,trans. ArthurGoldhammer(Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1998). Roche's book, which was originally published in 1993, sounds from its title like a traditionalcultural/intellectualhistory but is in fact a much more broadly conceived interpretationof the period. For a brief summaryof these culturaland social changes, see DorindaOutram,The Enlightenment(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1995), chap. 2. 27 On the new forms of sociability,see Outram,Enlightenment (cit. n. 26), chap. 2, andthe secondary literaturecited there. 28 On Freemasonryin the eighteenth century,see MargaretC. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonryand Politics in Eighteenth-CenturyEurope (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991); and Richard van Diilmen, Die Gesellschaft der Aufkldrer:Zur biirgerlichen Emanzipationund aufklclrerischenKulturin Deutschland (Stuttgart:Fischer, 1986), pp. 55-66, which summarizesa large body of secondaryliteratureon Freemasonry.


INTRODUCTION

13

Ladies' Diary became a thumpingpublishingsuccess, selling out its first issue of 1704 withinweeks of its appearanceandremainingpopularthroughoutthe century. Such an achievementwas all the moreremarkablein light of the fact thatthe Ladies' Diary featuredin each yearly issue increasinglysophisticatedmathematicalproblems for which readerswere invitedto submitsolutions.Indeed,Costa claims, the Ladies' Diary became the "firstprintedforumfor mathematicalexchange"and an exampleof the participatorypublic spheredescribedby Habermas.Yetby the 1730s the role of women in this exchangeover mathematicshad disappearedentirely,althoughobviously the almanacremainedorientedin otherrespectstowarda female audience.Womendroppedout of the mathematicaldiscussion(at least to the extent of being identifiedin printas women)becauseby the middledecadesof the century masteryof the increasinglytechnicalsubjectmatterof mathematicswas seen as too far removedfrom the polite accomplishmentsin dancing and music that women were expectedto cultivate. Nor was it only with respect to mathematicsthat women were barredfrom participationin the public sphere.As Joan Landes and others have pointed out, the eighteenth-century public spherewas largelyclosed to women'svoices.29In part,the reasonfor this exclusioncan be tracedto the belief thatwomen lackedthe intellectual power to engage in public debate. But there was anotherfactor at work, too, one that had nothingto do with such forms of active exclusion.Accordingto the prevailingassumptionsof the public sphere,women were too completely categorized and markedby their social and culturalposition to attaina sufficientlevel of impartialityand detachmentto participatein public debate. Characterizedas they were by the ineluctabledeterminationsof theirgenderand social position,whatever their intellectualresources,women could never achieve the level of generalityrequiredto speak as membersof the disinterestedand universalpublic. "The male is male only at certainmoments,"wrote Rousseauin Emile, statingbaldly the viewpoint at workin the public sphere,"thefemale is female her whole life."30 The public sphere'sgreattrick,its deceptivesleight of hand,was to createa form of discoursethat was in fact rathernarrowin its origins and point of view and yet unlimitedin its claims for itself. As CraigCalhounhas pointedout (andCostamentions in her article),we must take seriously Habermas'sclaim, made explicitly in the title of his work on the public sphere,that it is a bourgeois(biirgerlichein the originalGerman)public sphere.Its bourgeoischaracterlies not in the fact thatthe public sphere and its attendantcivil society were based in a certain social class, althoughthis may also have been largely true. More to the point, Calhounargues thatthe very conceptionof society as definedby the doctrineof civil society is itself bourgeois.31It is in partthe viewpointrepresentedby EmanuelJosephSieyes in his 29 Joan Landes, Womenand the Public Sphere in the Age of the FrenchRevolution(Ithaca,N.Y.: Corell Univ. Press, 1988); for a penetratingcritiqueof Landes'swork and an analysisof the gendering of the public sphere, see Dena Goodman,"PublicSphere and PrivateLife: Towarda Synthesis of CurrentHistoriographicalApproachesto the Old Regime,"Hist. Theory31 (1992): 1-20. Mary Terrallhas also addressedthe question of whethereighteenth-centuryFrench women were participants in science or merely furnishedan audiencefor it. Terrall,"GenderedSpaces, GenderedAudiences: Inside and Outsidethe ParisAcademy of Sciences,"Configurations2 (1995): 207-32. 30 Jean-JacquesRousseau,Emile, ou de l'education(1762; reprinted,with introductionby Francois and PierreRichard,Paris:EditionsGarier Freres, 1961), p. 450. 31 Craig Calhoun,"Introduction:Habermasand the Public Sphere,"in Habermasand the Public Sphere,ed. CraigCalhoun(Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), p. 7.


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famous pamphletWhatIs the ThirdEstate?, publishedearly in 1789, in which the authorheaped scorn on the Frencharistocracyand articulatedthe interestsof the commerciallymindedbourgeoisie,whose representativeswould soon be debatinga new Frenchconstitutionin the EstatesGeneral.But even more thanthis, the public sphere'soverwhelmingpowerlies in its seeming abilityto transcendmere social or class interestand simply standfor "everyone."32 The power to speak for everyoneis undeniablya potent rhetoricalplatformto occupy. Here, the claim to possess scientific knowledge offers a powerfulaid because, from one perspective,science offers itself as the most open, nondiscriminating, andpublicformof knowledge.Anyone,potentially,can learnscience andunderstandit. But who is qualifiedto speak as a scientist?As we will see, the scramble to occupy the positionof speakingfor science was an issue of no small significance in nineteenth-andtwentieth-century civil society.Withrespectto how this issue was framedin the eighteenthcentury,when the public spherewas developing,we can pointto an essay by ImmanuelKant,"TheConflictof the Faculties,"in which Kant arguedthat of the universities'differentfaculties (theological,legal, medical, and philosophical),only the philosophicalfaculty was capable of representingexclusively the interests of science (Wissenschaft)for its own sake. The other, more career-orientedfacultieswere too tied to careersand social position to achieve this disinterestedposition.The implicationof this claim-one thatKantwouldnot have found displeasing-was thaton the basis of this disinterestedpursuitof truth,philosophersand other scholars (includingnonmedicalnaturalscientists) were freed from social determination,becomingtherebyqualifiedto speak for "everyone."33 While it may be truethatthe public spherepermitsvariousstatements,scientific and otherwise,to be maintainedby privilegedspeakersas "whateveryoneknows," we should guardagainst believing that this condition alone furnishesa sufficient explanationfor the subsequenthistoryof professionalizationand the resultingtyranny of experts.This is the basic theme of TheodorePorter'sarticleon the statistician Karl Pearsonand his vision of an aristocracyof science around1900. Porter remindsus thatthe historyof professionalizationis all too often cast in the light of a functionalismthatmakesthe triumphof professionalexpertsout as the inevitable by-productof an increasinglycomplicatedsociety'srequirements.The pictureas it actuallyunfolds,he counters,is muchmorecomplex andinteresting.Porter'sarticle shows how the place of scientistsand otherexpertswas highly contestedin British society and governmentat the close of the nineteenthcentury.Pearsonbelieved fervently in the power of the state to direct social progress,and to directthe state he called for trainingan aristocracyof science. The idea of an aristocracyholdingsuch authoritymay soundanathemato the doctrineof civil society,almostas if Pearson were an arch-Toryrailingagainstthe corrosionof modernity.And, as Pearson'snostalgic medievalismsuggests, in partit was. But Pearson'saristocracywas anything 32 Thomas Broman,"The HabermasianPublic Sphereand 'Science in the Enlightenment,"'Hist. Sci. 36 (1998): 123-49; and Anthony J. La Vopa, "Conceiving a Public: Ideas and Society in Eighteenth-CenturyEurope,"J. Mod. Hist. 64 (1992): 79-116. For the most recent commentaryon the public sphere and a critique of attemptsby historiansto talk about it in terms of multiple or differentiated"publics,"see HaroldMah, "Phantasiesof the Public Sphere:Rethinkingthe Habermas of Historians,"J.Mod. Hist. 72 (2000): 153-82. 33 ImmanuelKant,"DerStreitder Fakultaten"in KantsgesammelteSchriften,24 vols. (Berlin:G. Reimer, 1907), vol. 7, pp. 18-9.


INTRODUCTION

15

but the hoaryold plutocracyhe saw silting up England'sHouse of Lords.This new aristocracywould be perpetuatedaccordingto the most up-to-dateeugenic principles to guaranteeits continuedqualificationfor leadership,andits memberswould receivea thoroughscientificeducation,including,of course,the principlesof statistics. In manyways,Pearson'seugenic vision of the new aristocracyof science, peopled by men of high vision andbroadtraining,representsthe fulfillmentof the social distinctionsnaturalizedas talentandmeritthataredescribedin JohnCarson'sarticle. WhatJean-JacquesRousseauandThomasJeffersonregardedlargelyas a theoretical pointaboutthe divisionof laborin societybecamein KarlPearson'shandsthe potential cornerstoneof a new social elite. SCIENCE BETWEEN CIVIC ASSOCIATIONSAND THE STATE

Duringthe nineteenthcentury,Europeancivil society beganto experiencea number of transformationsthat would stamp it as distinctlydifferentfrom its eighteenthcenturypredecessor,while preservingmuch of the same ideological basis. No less thanthe partisansof Enlightenmenta centuryearlier,nineteenth-century popularizers of science saw an essentialcomponentof theirmission as combatingprejudice andignoranceandbringingthe publicas it actuallypresenteditself into closer alignment with the image of a rationaland civically orientedpopulationas posited by the doctrine of civil society. Yet the differences are striking.The institutionsof nineteenth-centurycivil society were far more numerousthan their counterpartsa centuryearlierin both absolutetermsandvariety.The numberof people engagedin this form of social life was much greater,too. It would not be correctto say that nineteenth-centurycivil society was truly a mass phenomenon,in which factory laborershappilyrubbedelbows with olderestablishedurbanelites. But the ranksof middle-classparticipantshadswelledremarkably, as cities andeconomiesgrew with astonishingspeed.34 The rapidurbanizationof the nineteenthcenturyand the spectaculargrowthof the industrialbase of Europeanand NorthAmericaneconomies broughtto cities somethingelse as well: a self-consciousworkingclass with its own ideology.The consequencesof this for our understandingof civil society and the public sphere couldnot be greater.Duringthe Enlightenment,the bourgeoisideologyof the public sphererecognizedonly dimly outside its own glow an inchoatemass of humanity, waiting to be broughtinto the circle of light; the same could no longer be said by the end of the nineteenthcentury.The appearanceof a self-conscioussocialistmovement,loudlyproclaimingits own ideology,gave a particularurgencyandorientation to campaignsfor populareducation,elements that had been entirely lacking previously. In the new, more complex social and culturalenvironmentof nineteenthcenturycivil society,the questionof who spoke for science thus took on social contours-and often a political significance-that moved it far beyond the somewhat theoreticalassertionsby Kant that scholars could speak as representativesof the 34 For the most comprehensivetreatmentof this phenomenon,see JiirgenKocka, ed., Biirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert:Deutschlandim europaischenVergleich,3 vols. (Munich:DTV, 1988). A selection of the articlesin this massivecollection was publishedin JiirgenKockaandAllan Mitchell, eds., Bougeois Society in Nineteenth-CenturyEurope (Oxford: Berg, 1993). Kocka sketches the main elements of the story in JiirgenKocka, "The Middle Classes in Europe,"J. Mod. Hist. 67 (1995): 783-806.


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public.Among the older higherprofessionsof law, theology,and medicine,physicians, of course, could claim a significantauthorityover the study of nature,and physicians'attachmentto science provideda powerfulmotorfor theirown professional development.35 But physicianswere now joined by a host of othermen (and they were nearlyall men) claiming to representscience before the public as either teachersand popularizersor as expertsin certainkinds of technicalwork. One place to begin examiningthis morecomplex pictureis withAndreasDaum's article on Emil Rossmasslerand the popularizationof science in mid-nineteenthcenturyGermany.Rossmasslerwas a thoroughlyTocquevillianfigure:democratic agitator,scientificlecturer,andjournaleditor,andthe guidingspiritbehindthe natural history-orientedHumboldtAssociations,which were organizedin variousparts of Germany.As Daummakesclear,the establishmentof science as a form of public knowledgewas partof a broadertransformationof Germancivil society in the period. We can comprehendthis transformationas an increasinglydense networkof civic associationsandinstitutionsin Germantownsandcities, all of whichpromoted a distinctlybourgeoisform of civic identity.In this respect, the Germanstory can be readas illustrativeof a more generaltrenddiscernibleelsewherein Europe.36 Where Germanymay have been distinct,if not unique,as Glenn Penny'sarticle on ethnology museums suggests, was in the assertivelylocal and civic character of these associations.The cities that providethe setting for Penny'sstory-Berlin, Hamburg,Leipzig, and Munich-are significantin themselves.They experienced rapidpopulationgrowthduringthe last half of the century,andtheirelites competed keenly with each otherto give theirhometownsa prominentpositionon the national stage.Even afterits unificationin 1871, Germanyremaineda countrywhereprovincial andtown loyaltieswere still in the processof mergingwith nationalones. Penny shows how this rapidgrowthled to a professionalizationof city management,as a new groupof administratorsdisplacedthe older urbanelites from their governing positions. In parallel with these changes, the museums became more thoroughly integratedinto the cities' administrativestructuresand began receivingregularoperatingfunds fromthe city governments. It is significantfor both Daum'sand Penny'sstories that their protagonistswere not partof the scientificelite. Althoughuniversityeducatedand thus a memberof the educatedmiddle class (Bildungsburgertum), Rossmasslerlacked a prestigious from which he could command the kind of attentionthatpromiuniversityposition nent scientistsof the next generation,such as RudolfVirchowand HermannHelmholtz, enjoyed.The same holds for the ethnologistsdescribedby Penny who, like Daum'spopularizersof naturalhistory,were outsidersto the university-basedscientific elite.37Consequently,civic museums and not universityfaculties became the primarypointof orientationfor those attemptingto establishethnologyas a science. It is no matterof coincidence that the science presentedin those Germancivic museumswas ethnology,the science of empireparexcellence.The idea of comparing Europeansociety and its evolutionto other societies was certainlynot new in 35 ClaudiaHuerkamp,DerAufstieg derArzte im 19. Jahrhundert(Gottingen:Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht,1985). 36 On these developments, see Trentmann,"Introduction"(cit. n. 10), and Nord, "Introduction" (cit. n. 11). 37 See also Lynn K. Nyhart,"Civic and Economic Zoology in Nineteenth-CenturyGermany:The 'Living Communities'of KarlMobius,"Isis 89 (1998): 604-30.


INTRODUCTION

17

the latternineteenthcentury.Indeed, as MichaelAdas has argued,certainroots of this line of thinkingcan be tracedback as far as the seventeenthcentury.38 But what was novel, as the discussionsof ethnologyby PennyandAlice Conklinmake clear, was the abilityto assemble,transport,anddisplayartifactsof otherculturesin metropolitancenterssuch as Parisand Berlin.Such displaysrepresentedin the most concrete form possible the claims by ethnologiststo comprehendand categorizeother peoples of the world.And althoughby the latternineteenthcenturyanthropological theoryhadrejectedany simplemodelsof linearculturalprogressrunningfromprimitives at one end to Germansor Frenchat the other,the mere availabilityof those artifactsandrepresentationsof otherculturesmanifestedto the museums'visitorsa reflectionof theirown social progressandtechnologicalsuperiority. Conklin'sarticleon the Musee de l'homme in Paris showsjust how deeply tied the workof Frenchethnologistswas to the sinews of France'sconsiderableoverseas empirein the 1920s and 1930s. But Conklinalso demonstratesthatthe kind of racism presentin the musee was highly paradoxical.Sponsoredby leftist anthropologists actingin concertwith the socialist PopularFrontnationalgovernmentelected in 1936, the musee soughtto inculcatein its visitors a specific vision of "tolerance and respectfor non-Westernpeoples,"as Conklinputs it. This stancewas mounted in deliberatecontrastto the racismof the Frenchfarrightand,of course,to the noisy and repugnantracism being promulgatedby the National Socialists in Germany, who had come to power in 1933 and promptlydismantledGermany'ssystem of electoralpolitics in the bargain.The democraticallymindedsocialistsof the Popular Frontclearlyhad somethingelse in mind, andthey wantedto make surethateveryone knew it. Yet in the end even a socialist and democraticform of ethnology fell prey to many of the same paradoxesof appropriationand dominationthat would befall a more avowedlyracistor imperialistideology. It is a conspicuousfeatureof Conklin'sand severalotherarticlesin this collection that the same sciences that took hold in civil society could serve state interestsas well. Indeed,it could well be one of the outstandingfeaturesof moder science and a source of its powerfulpresencein public life that science can serve the "public" in both senses of the term.On the one hand,the supportof scientificknowledgecan directlyservethe interestsof the state as the locus of public authority.On the other hand,as the articlesdemonstraterepeatedly,science also has considerablevalue in the public sphere.Thus, althoughscience can be seen to serve the interestsof state power,it appearsalmostnever to do so exclusively.Werethatto happen,we might suppose, science would lose much of its legitimacy among the membersof civil society as "whatwe all know"aboutthe world. ZuoyueWang'saccountof the formationandhistoryof the most importantscientific society in pre-CommunistChina,the Science Society of China,highlightsthe partnershipbetween privateinitiativesand the nationalgovernment.The Science Chinesescientistswho deliberSociety was createdby a groupof American-trained to use science to modernize China and ately sought expandcivil society.In part,this was clearly an effort to establishthe scientists' own professionalstatus,featuring many of the appurtenancesthat historianscommonly associate with such movements, such as publicationof a journalandthe institutionof nationalmeetings.Yet 38 MichaelAdas, Machinesas the Measureof Men: Science, Technology,and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989).


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thereis much in this storythatpreventsits easy assimilationunderfamiliarcategories such as "professionalization." First, the foundersof the Science Society were staunchnationalists,who had grown up during a period when the Chinese state, weak and disorganized,sufferedunderEuropeanand Japanesedomination.Thus they did not conceive of theirprojectas the creationof a free zone of activityindependentof statecontrol.Second, the effortto professionalizescientificworknecessarilyincluded,again as a quite deliberatechoice, an attemptto popularizescience for a broadersegmentof Chinesesociety.Because the statewas so weak, the members of the Science Society recognizedthe need for mobilizingpublic supportfor their organizationand for scientific research.Third,the Science Society managed to promoteits agendaby deploying a rhetoricof criticismtowardthe Republican regime, while also securinga measureof materialsupportfrom it for the establishment of librariesandresearchinstitutes. The situationin Chinathusled to whatWangdescribes,quotingthe ChinesehistorianPhilip Huang,as a "thirdrealm"of state/societyinteraction.WhereasWestern politicaltraditionestablishesprivateandpublicinterestsas separableanddistinctand even the Frenchexample of "partnership" in Conklin'sarticleimplies this disto Chinese traditions two are far less easily separated.The the tinction-according end resultof such reflections,accordingto Wang,shouldnot be to deny thatChina developedelementsof civil society recognizableto Westerners,but to broadenour conceptionof the possible forms of civil society. From this perspective,it makes little sense to judge the expansionof civil society in Chinaduringthe periodbefore the Communisttakeoverin 1949 as eithera success or a failure.Suchjudgmentsare only conceivablein the firstplace when they are made along the gradientof social and historicalprogressthatthe (Western)doctrineof civil society itself supports. The same straddlingby science acrossthe interfaceof publicandprivateinterests also featuresprominentlyin ElizabethHachten'sarticleon Russianscience during the second half of the nineteenthcentury.Hachtendescribeshow Russianscientists soughtto expandthe role of science in Russiaby appealingnot to the state, which hadbeen the principalsourceof supportfor science beforethis time, butto a broader alliance of urbanelites and improvingrurallandlords.In contrastto China,where the notionof popularizingscience requiredimportationof the idea of a "public"as well and the creationof the mechanismsof public discourse,Russianshad a long history of substantialculturaldialogue with western Europe, and the ideology of civil society took hold in Russia as a not completely foreign import.The Russian term for civil society (obshchestvo,literally,"society")may have been more distinctly colored as an aristocraticallydominated"highsociety"thanLocke and certainlyJeffersonwould havefelt comfortablewith, Hachtentells us, but its usage as a binaryoppositeto gosudarstvo(state)duringthe nineteenthcenturymakesit clear thatobschchestvodemarcateda field havingconceptualoverlapwith Westernunderstandingsof civil society. The qualitythatmadescience seem like such an obviousmediumfor the modernizationof Russia-a matterof especiallypressingconcernin the wake of its embarrassing defeat in the CrimeanWar-was science's presumedability to serve the the public interestin both of the senses thatwe have been discussing.Traditionally, the Great the tsars. Peter pursuitof scientificresearchhadbeen supporteddirectlyby had organizedthe St. PetersburgAcademyof Sciences in 1725 and staffedit largely with Germans,this at a time when Russiabarelyhad anythingresemblingsecondary


INTRODUCTION

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schools, not to mention universitieswhere naturalsciences were taught.39By the nineteenthcentury,the perceivedneed to promotethe growthof Russia'seconomy led to the charteringof new scientificsocieties andregionallybasedassociationsfor agriculturalimprovementby the autocratictsaristgovernment.But these benefits were believed to pertainnot merely to the state as the locus of public authorityone reasonwhy the tsaristgovernmentwas so ambivalentaboutscience as a vehicle for modernization.Scientists also attemptedto invoke the benefits of science for other segments of Russian society, whose interests could convenientlybe representedin the semi-autonomousregionalassemblies(zemstvos)that were permitted to organizeafter 1864. Scientistsrushedto exploit the space thus createdfor their own professionalinterestsby articulatinga languagethat spoke alternatelyof the fruitsof science for economicprogressandof the edifying benefitsof pursuingscience for its own sake. The lattertook a rhetoricalstance strikinglysimilarto Germans'talkof academicstudyfor self-cultivation,or Bildung,duringthe sameperiod and appearsto have markedoff the interestsof Russianscientistsin much the same way that Kant'stalk about Wissenschaftin the philosophicalfaculty had done in the 1790s. The same three-corneredrelationshipbetween professional,state, and privateor civil interestscan be seen in LynnNyhart'spaperon notions of biological community in the work of the nineteenth-centuryGermanschoolteacherFriedrichJunge. Nyhart'spaperintroducesthe topic of educationto our discussion,bringingan essential,butunfortunatelyall too uncommon,perspectiveon the historyof civil society. Much like science itself, schooling servesthe publicinterestin two ways. From the perspectiveof society,educationacts to reproducesociety andits culturalvalues by takinga cohortof half-savagelittle people and molding(or tryingto mold) them into responsibleand hard-workingmembersof society. The reasonwhy education is not entirelya privateinitiative,however,and why taxes usually supportit, is that formalschooling serves a largercollective andpublic function.Educationalinstitutions reinforcethe stabilityof the political regime by teaching citizenshipto students.Moreover,this is not simply a matterof regimentationandexternalizeddiscipline, for schools attemptto teach enlightenmentby means of the students'own discoveryand self-enlightenment.In doing so, educationalinstitutionsreinforcethe ideology of civil society and help direct students' self-enlightenmentalong the properpaths. Withinthese institutionalpriorities,Nyhartargues,Germanteachers,especially primaryschool teachers,harboreda complicatedset of interests.Althoughtechnically state employees, schoolteachersnumberedamong the lowest membersof the Germancivil service.Theirplace in the civil service scarcelycountedat all in terms of status,and as Nyhartshows, much of theirprofessionaleffort involvedtryingto raise theirstatusto that of the occupationalgroupon the rungabove them.For this reason,local and regionalteachers'associationswere among the most active such groups in Germancivil society. For the same reason, Junge'spresentationof the conceptof biologicalcommunityas manifestedin the village pondfounda receptive audiencebecauseit mergedwith teachers'claims for pedagogicalexpertise.Against the attemptsby Germanstate governmentsto prescribecurriculumand methodsof 39 On the founding of the St. PetersburgAcademy, see Michael D. Gordin, "The Importanceof Being Earnest:The Early St. PetersburgAcademy of Sciences,"Isis 91 (2000): 1-31.


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THOMAS H. BROMAN

teaching, the cultivationof pedagogy as a form of Wissenschaftrepresentedthe teachers'counterstroke.Finally,Junge'sconceptof biological community,in which the role playedby each organismcould be shown as coordinatedinto the well-being of the entirecommunity,transmittedmetaphoricallya comfortablemessageof social conservatismwhile simultaneouslybearing the more liberal associationsof selfenlightenmentthroughknowledgeof modem science. In manyrespects,an understandingof the distinctivelocationof scientists,poised as they are between civil society and the state, helps us to bettercomprehendthe kind of public roles scientistsplay in modem society.JessicaWang'sarticle,appropriatelythe last in the collection, addressesthis questiondirectly.Historians'interpretationsof the scientist'srole in society, she points out, have often focused attention on the potential conflicts between science and democracy.In doing so, the historianshave overlookedthe role of scientistsin civil society as privateactorson a public stage whose own interestsmay sometimesbring them into direct conflict with government.Wang'sarticledemonstratesthe power of scientists' authorityin the public sphereas well as the perils. She describeshow in the aftermathof World WarII and the shockingpowerof nuclearweaponsunleashedby the United States, Americannuclearphysicists launchedthe Federationof Atomic Scientists (FAS). In a numberof ways, the FAS, which consisted of many leading contributorsto the ManhattanProject,resembledother interestgroups that had been formed by scientists,going all the way back to the AmericanAssociationfor the Advancement of Science, establishedin 1848. But the FAS aimed at somethingquite different: it sought to educate the public about the perils of nuclearwarfareand influence U.S. governmentpolicy. It was the FAS's suprememisfortune-although hardly an accident-that it formed duringone of those recurrentflare-upsof America's long-standingparanoiaover socialism and communism.In the quasi-totalitarian conditionsthat ensued, FAS memberswere spied upon, blacklisted,and otherwise houndedinto silence. The importanceof Wang'sstorylies not merely in its explorationof how institutions of civil society might fare underconditionsin Americathat resembledthose in the Soviet Union underStalinor GermanyunderHitlermore thanwe might like to admit.More significantly,she situatesher storyin termsof the concernsover the role of expertsin the modernworldalreadyvoiced by JohnDewey in his 1927 book, ThePublic and its Problems.Dewey believed thatthe proliferationof such experts had evisceratedthe public's ability to engage meaningfullyin importantmatters, leavingit bewilderedby the issues andimpotent.In whatreadslike a previewof the criticisms that would be deliveredby the young Habermasthirty-fiveyears later, Dewey located one cause of the public'ssituationin what he labeled the "machine age,"a time of immenselycomplex relationships"formedon an impersonalrather thana communitybasis."In such conditions,he concluded,the publiccould neither identifynor distinguishitself.40 Fromone perspectiveat least, the scientistswho enrolledin the FAS were Dewey's worstnightmarecome to life: expertspossessedof a knowledgethatwas dauntingly abstruseand frighteninglypowerful.Yet these same scientists were no mere technocrats,manipulatingtheirslide rulesandinsertingfuses into theirbombs.They 40John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927; reprinted,Chicago: GatewayBooks, 1946), p. 126.


INTRODUCTION

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energeticallysought to use their authorityto engage the public and mobilize its supportfor greatercontrolover nuclearweapons. They became political actorsin civil society,preciselythe sortof people Tocquevillehad valorizeda centuryearlier. Therein,of course, lay the almost tragic irony of their situation,for by engaging directlyin political debatethe membersof the FAS underminedthe very claims to universalityanddisinterestednessthathadbeen the bulwarkof speakersin the public spheresince at least the eighteenthcentury. Ultimately,then,the place of science (andof scientists)in civil society is a deeply ambiguousone. Insofaras the membersof civil society are convincedthat society can progressmateriallyfromthe cultivationof scientificknowledgeand can benefit from the spreadof enlightenment(bothof which beliefs have attendedthe doctrine of civil society almost from its first formulation),those who claim dominionover science receive a substantialportionof social status and culturalcapital.Furthermore,by associatingthemselveswith the apparentimpartialityanddisinterestedness of science, particularsocial groupscan promotetheirown very real interestsin the form of increasedsocial status.Yet at its core, as JohnDewey perhapsrecognized, scientificknowledgeneverreally belongs to the public sphereof civil society.Just as the idea of spreadingenlightenmentin the eighteenthcenturycontainedwithin itself the problemof who had the rightto call themselvesenlightenedandteach the practiceof reasonto others,so, too, does the idea of science as a constitutiveelement of enlightenedcivil society merelythrowa maskoverthe fact thatcertainmembers of civil society determinenot only what scientific knowledge is but also who has the rightto make such determinations.
