History, it is often claimed, enables us to understand the present. In constructing our position in society, in religion, in the family, as well as our manners and social norms, we turn to history, real or imagined. Likewise, every politician knows how to mobilise the past for political ends; how to appeal to the collective consciousness of a group by evoking its glorious history and the ignominious deeds of its enemies. Although it is customary to emphasise the dissimilarities between science and politics, they both make extensive, although different, use of history. In contrast to politics and many other domains, science is usually portrayed as progressive and the past is therefore often treated as irrelevant—or, at best, subservient—to the present. Yet history does play a major (although often implicit) role in science precisely because the all-important notion of progress is predicated on a posited relation between past, present and future. Thus when scientists celebrate a hero—such as Newton or Darwin—they utilise historical narratives to describe how the ‘great man’ dispelled the clouds of error and superstition. Despite some noteworthy exceptions, such as Stephen Jay Gould, most scientists who construct these progressivist narratives ignore the work of historians of science who, over the last thirty years, have laboured to show the inadequacy of these accounts and have developed alternative historiographical perspectives that grant greater integrity to the past.

Although possessing privileged access to the past, the historian must also acknowledge a deep sense of humility since the past is elusive and its quest more often ends in questions and uncertainties than in triumph. By contrast there are no questions and uncertainties in the writings of those scientists who look upon the history of science as an unproblematic record of the success and progress of science. Consider, for example, the physicist Paul Davies who has written several best-selling panegyrics on science. In some of his earlier books Davies portrays the period prior to the seventeenth century as dominated by hopelessly primitive and animistic beliefs about the physical world. The (supposed) intellectual and social bankruptcy of religion looms large in these books since Davies considers that progress was inhibited by the intervention of corrupt religious authorities that controlled people's lives. However, with the rise of the new science in the seventeenth century salvation was at hand. Science liberated humanity from its naive, degenerate state. Moreover, the beacon of science, and particularly modern theories in physics and cosmology, provided a fresh understanding of the mysterious forces in the universe. Yet Davies displays some ambivalence towards the new science of the seventeenth century; not only does he champion the rise of classical physics as responsible for the new-found rationality and progress but he also criticises it for imposing a sterile, mechanistic view of the universe. Finally, in his account of the twentieth century, Davies identifies a second scientific revolution with the emergence of a beautiful new paradigm that not only transcends the old mechanistic picture but also provides humankind with an understanding of the reality that must replace traditional religions.1 Although Davies postulates two revolutions he still adheres to the traditional mythology in which rational science displaces dogma—especially religious dogma—and error. Thus science comes to play an apocalyptic role, finally revealing the truth after many centuries of ignorance and superstition. However, to the historian, Davies's account smacks of crude pro-science propaganda and of a marked disinclination to reflect on the past.

Paradoxically, many critics of science, such as the journalist Bryan Appleyard, adopt strikingly similar historical accounts by emphasising that a major cultural shift occurred with the rise of science in the seventeenth century. Yet, unlike Davies, they often portray the earlier period as idyllic and, instead of extolling the virtues of science, they view science as alienating, spiritually corrosive and as responsible for undermining the previously-existing happy certainties. In his Science and the Soul of Modern Man (1993) Appleyard argues that from its inception in the seventeenth century science has grown ever more powerful and has increasingly dominated every aspect of life. It has repeatedly challenged and destroyed traditional religious beliefs and has recently spawned a degenerate and scientised mutant, which he labels ‘liberal theology’.2 The very aspects of science that Davies champions are deplored by Appleyard. One writer sees progress where the other sees regress.

The preceding examples illustrate how master-narratives have been employed for apologetic purposes. Both writers tell simple, straightforward and strikingly similar stories about how science arose and challenged the prevailing cultural norms. Although outwardly they after contrasting visions of science, they are principally concerned with values, the imperialism of science, and the relation between past and present. They are also very persuasive stories deploying easily-recognisable images of science and (in the case of Davies's book) introducing the reader to the fascinating world of modern physics.

Are these accounts acceptable as history? Do the narratives offered to the wider public by Davies and Appleyard accord with recent work in the History of Science? Historians of science have a duty to analyse such accounts of the past and to identify any defects, since misunderstanding the past is likely to result in misconstruing the present. Moreover, any prescriptions for the future are thereby compromised. In the next section we shall therefore examine in detail one construction of the history of science that claims to offer a vision of the past, present and future. This construction appeared in a book that has achieved cult status among a significant sector of the reading public, and even on occasions informs essays written by our students. Because it has achieved such popularity we are devoting this chapter to analysing the view of history that it propagates. In bringing the insights of academic history to criticise a very condensed but popular account we are not wishing to score easy points against an author who is mainly concerned with the relationship between science and human values. Rather, our aim is to show that an informed view of the history of science is required if we are to make adequate judgements concerning the ways in which science and religion have been related.

An Historical Romance

The story opens with the ancient Greeks who laid the foundations of physics. In particular, the

Greek atomists [who] drew a clear [dividing] line between spirit and matter, picturing matter as being made of several ‘basic building blocks’ [which] were purely passive and intrinsically dead particles moving in a void. In subsequent centuries, this image became an essential element of Western thought, of the dualism between mind and matter, between body and soul.

The story then shifts to the late sixteenth century when ‘the study of nature was approached, for the first time, in a truly scientific spirit’. The two most important developments during that period were, firstly, the introduction of experiments, and, secondly, the mathematisation of nature. Because he was the first to combine mathematics with empirical investigations, Galileo became ‘the father of modern science’.3

By contrast, Descartes and Newton emerge as heirs to Greek atomism and therefore as the villains of the piece. To Descartes is attributed the ultimate sin of steadfastly separating mind from matter, which ‘allowed scientists to treat matter as dead and completely separate from themselves’. Blame for the death of nature is laid firmly at Descartes's feet; he was responsible for producing a major shift in Western thought with his mind-matter dualism. This move was ultimately responsible for producing fragmentation and conflict both within ourselves and between individuals. The author of the narrative continues,

The natural environment is [also] treated as if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different interest groups. The fragmented view is further extended into society, which is split into different nations, races, religious and political groups. The belief that all these fragments—in ourselves, in our environment, and in our society—are really separate can be seen as the essential reason for the present series of social, ecological and cultural crises. It has alienated us from nature and from our fellow human beings.…4

This is stirring stuff! If we understand this account correctly the author is claiming that Cartesian dualism is the cause of virtually all problems in the modern world. Descartes's soul (if he had one) must surely be undergoing the most excruciating torment as he repents the sin of having uttered ‘I think, therefore I am’.

In the next stage in the narrative Descartes' mechanistic programme was extended by Isaac Newton. For Newton both space and time are absolute and within this manifold move small, indestructible particles that are acted on by forces, such as the force of gravity. Newton also framed new mathematical techniques that could analyse the movement of these ‘mass points’ under the influence of forces and in accordance with the laws of motion. Although Newton believed that God had set the particles in motion, his rigorous account of mechanics implied that the physical universe ‘had continued to run ever since, like a machine, governed by immutable laws’. Thus the world is a ‘giant cosmic machine’ that is completely subservient to deterministic causal laws. As the following quotation is intended to show, Newtonian mechanics had an immense impact:

Such a mechanistic world view was held by Isaac Newton, who constructed his mechanics on its basis and made it the foundation of classical physics. From the second half of the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, the mechanistic Newtonian model of the universe dominated all scientific thought.5

That the post-Newtonian universe was causal and deterministic is illustrated in this account by a well-known passage by the Marquis de Laplace in which he hypothesised an intellect that knows both the laws of motion and the present state of the universe. From this knowledge the intellect can predict with certainty the dispositions of all particles at some future time. This provides a ‘rigorously deterministic’ picture of the universe which our author refers to as the ‘Newtonian paradigm’ or the ‘Newtonian world-view’. Laplace is also introduced to show that even the Creator had been edged out of this mechanistic universe. When interviewed by Napoleon, Laplace is supposed to have replied that he did not require the ‘hypothesis’ of a Creator.6 The author whose argument we are quoting also states that since the start of the Enlightenment we have been enslaved and our universe despiritualised by Newton's science and its attendant philosophy.

The next act in this drama takes us to the nineteenth century when the first cracks in the mechanistic world-view became apparent. The key developments were Faraday's and Maxwell's electromagnetic investigations which resulted in the introduction of spatially-extended fields of electric and magnetic force. Hence by the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘the Newtonian model had ceased to be the basis of all physics’.7

In the final chapter of the story, physics underwent a radical transformation in the three opening decades of the twentieth century.

At the beginning of modern physics stands the extraordinary intellectual feat of one man: Albert Einstein. In two articles, both published in 1905, Einstein initiated two revolutionary trends of thought. One was his special theory of relativity; the other was a new way of looking at electromagnetic radiation which was to become characteristic of quantum theory, the theory of atomic phenomena.8

Einstein's innovations resulted in the demise of the Newtonian conceptions of space and time. Likewise Newton's picture of hard, impenetrable particles was rejected in favour of a plethora of sub-atomic particles. Newtonian mechanics was superseded by quantum mechanics. In sum, Newton's world-view was replaced by one that was totally different. Historically, the rise of this new world-view marks the transition from one scientific paradigm to another, while in conceptual terms it constitutes a totally new and different philosophy of nature. According to the author of this account, the new physics (unlike the old) portrays the universe ‘as a dynamic, inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way’. The two main features of the new physics were, firstly, the recognition that the world constitutes a dynamic unity. Secondly, ‘the classical ideal of an objective description of nature is no longer valid’; rather, ‘we can never speak about nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves’.9 These two aspects of modern physics herald the negation of Cartesianism which set man apart from nature three centuries earlier. Now, at last, nature has become re-spiritualised and we are again part of nature.

The story sketched above constitutes a master-narrative: a synoptic-overview of how science has developed across the centuries. It contains condensed descriptions of what occurred at various periods—the rise of the ‘Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm’ in the seventeenth century and its replacement by the new physics in the early twentieth. The account is also highly evaluative—it has its villains and its heroes. Greek atomism, but more emphatically, Cartesian dualism and Newtonian mechanism are viewed as responsible for destroying our environment and our civilisation. By contrast, modern physics, as exemplified in the work of Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg, is applauded as unifying and therefore as irenic and humane.

Unless readers have already guessed the author's name or looked at the accompanying notes they will doubtless want to know the source of the preceding account. All the material we have cited is from Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, which first appeared in 1976. Since then it has become one of the best-selling books on science. This, and similar, historical narratives have achieved great popularity and we find them reappearing in books and magazine articles. That Capra's narrative has achieved such popularity necessitates a close examination of his historical account of the development of science.

Capra's book is not only an exposition of science and its history but also one of the canonical texts of the New Age movement. The term ‘New Age movement’ is difficult to define either doctrinally or institutionally but it provides a convenient label encompassing a wide range of positions. Most New Agers express deep disillusionment with modern Western society—its rank materialism, its science, its politics and often its traditional religious beliefs and institutions. Instead they advocate a pantheistic spirituality and also emphasise the urgent need to transform both the individual and the world. These latter features justify its inclusion in this book. While there are many New Agers who view all aspects of science as part of the malaise of Western society, there is also a significant group that looks to specific aspects of modern science as providing crucial elements in the new understanding of the world.

Like many other New Age writers Capra claims that there exist close parallels between modern physics and the doctrines of Eastern religious philosophies. Holism and, by implication, the negation of Cartesian dualism are, he insists, to be found in many Eastern philosophies. Herein lies the Tao of Physics. Another well-known work in this genre is Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu-li Masters (1979).10 Both books first appeared in the late 1970s and are very much products of both time and place. They offer a green, spiritual and decidedly Californian analysis of the ills of the West—and you can't get much further west than California! It should be emphasised that the New Age movement has not stood still and while the preceding account continues to be retailed as the route to our present malaise, there are some more sophisticated historical accounts by such recent writers as Rupert Sheldrake, Morris Berman, Ken Wilber and Arthur Zajonc.11 Nevertheless, Capra's first book remains the most widely-cited example of this genre, and has generally been adopted as providing the standard account not only by New Agers but also by some who reject the New Age philosophy. Hence we are dealing with a much broader phenomenon than either Capra or the New Age Movement since similar historical narratives have been propounded by people of various religious persuasions or none. For example, in his Holy Ground: The Spirituality of Matter (1990), Ross Thompson, an Anglican cleric, protests against the despiritualisation of the universe by Descartes and others. His chapter heading—‘Dualism and disenchantment’—says it all. Likewise in his recent book Bryan Appleyard Blares many of Capra's criticisms of seventeenth-century science and its supposed legacies, although he does not follow Capra in encompassing modern physics. Instead, like many conservatives, he seeks Salvation in traditional social and religious values.12

Concern with the history of science may, at first sight, appear irrelevant when analysing a book aimed principally at elucidating the relation between physics and Eastern philosophy. However, central to Capra's account and to much New Age thinking is a construction of the past that criticises classical physics and legitimates modern physics. Moreover, New Agers are not only committed to the view that paradigm shifts have occurred in the past but also that we live in in age of sharp transition—the Age of Aquarius heralding a new world-order that will replace the old. As one adept has written,

This [present] transformation… is reflected in what is being recognised as a general paradigm shift away from a predictable Newtonian billiard-ball model of life to a more open-ended and intuitively understood model… [This transformation] is perhaps at its most intellectually respectable and acceptable when it speaks purely of the paradigm shift and reflects on the new insights from sub-atomic physics, from the new biology, [and] from humanistic and transpersonal psychology.13

As this quotation indicates, radical, even discontinuous, changes in the sciences seem both to presage the Aquarian Age and also to help legitimate the movement's message before the wider public. Thus history in general and the history of science in particular are integral to the New Age movement's understanding of science and form an intrinsic part of its self-image.

As historians of science working in academic institutions we should welcome any books that popularise our subject. However, without wishing to appear ungenerous we must express some reservations about the stories regaled by Capra and the many authors who have published similar narratives. Invariably such accounts are delivered with nonchalant authority. These writers tell their readers how it really happened—how the West was won—or lost. Yet, have Davies, Capra or Appleyard ever pursued historical research? Have they taken account of recent work in the History of Science? Judging from his bibliography Capra's reading in the history of physics was minimal; he cites only Maurice Crosland's collection of articles on matter theory, Bertrand Russell's passe History of Western Philosophy (1945) and two books on Greek philosophy. Milic Capek's The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics (1961) is the single serious work on the philosophy of science cited, but it is a profoundly ahistorical piece that is now outdated. Interestingly, the physicist Werner Heisenberg appears to have been Capra's main source of information on the background to modern physics—two sets of Heisenberg's essays being frequently cited by Capra. If Heisenberg was indeed Capra's intellectual mentor then we should approach Capra's account with a healthy dose of scepticism. After all, Heisenberg was not an historian. We might also expect his view of the history of physics to be highly coloured since he was one of the chief architects of the new physics.14

Writers who deliver these master-narratives with so much aplomb fail to appreciate that history is a critical discipline and it is incumbent on the historian not to rest satisfied with any particular story. We intend in the remainder of this chapter to identify some of the areas in which Capra's master-narrative is to be found wanting.

General Critiques

Let us begin by making a few general points about Capra's account. Firstly, he has not written a critical history; instead he used the history of science to support his evaluations of the Newtonian mechanistic paradigm, which he denigrates, and the holistic paradigm of modern physics, which he champions. Moreover, he deployed history to legitimate the sharp contrast he insists on drawing between these two paradigms. These are the only two ways of doing science that he allows. He then constructs history by projecting this contrast back onto the past, thereby imposing a radical discontinuity on the historical record. History is thus made to recapitulate what he sees as the necessary conflict between these two world-views.

While historians of science would not deny that there were significant differences between physics pre-1900 and post-1930, they would also insist that the contrasts cannot be drawn as simplistically or starkly as Capra's story requires. Highly relevant to his discussion is the theory developed by Thomas Kuhn in the early 1960s to describe the development of scientific disciplines. Appealing to the term ‘paradigm’—the consensual form of science practised by a scientific community-Kuhn postulated that revolutions occur when one paradigm replaces its predecessor. For example, a revolution occurred when the wave theory of light replaced the particle theory c.1830; the new wave optics being incommensurable with its predecessor. Hewing this change through a Kuhnian lens imposes discontinuity on the historical record.15 However, closer historical study of the ‘optical revolution’ shows up problems with Kuhn's theory of paradigm change. For example, instead of two stark alternatives, a great variety of optical theories abounded during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These cannot be reduced simply to wave versus particle paradigms. Moreover, Jed Buchwald has argued that in the early nineteenth century the opposition between waves and particles was not the crucial issue; instead, he emphasises the importance of the different mathematical constructions used to explain complex polarisation phenomena.16 More generally, historians have found Kuhn's master-narrative inadequate.

Although Kuhn applied his theory of revolutions specifically to science, he did not take out patent rights on the term ‘paradigm’ which has been extended by New Age writers, among others, in ways that bear little relationship to its use by historians, philosophers and sociologists of science. In entering popular culture the term has become a shorthand for any package of ideas. Thus, according to Zukav, a ‘paradigm is an established thought process, a framework’. Another New Age writer has characterised a paradigm as ‘a framework of thought… a scheme for understanding and explaining certain aspects of reality’. Hence a ‘paradigm shift is a distinctly new way of thinking about old problems’.17 In line with this redefinition, traditional ways of thinking (about ourselves, about society or about the cat next door) constitute a paradigm, as does the New Age mentality. By drawing on this notion of competing paradigms Capra encompassed a theory of historical discontinuity. This appeal to abrupt changes in science through shifts in paradigm imposes discontinuities on the historical record. Indeed, the second section of The Turning Point, in which Capra delineates the contrasting world-views of classical and modern physics, is entitled ‘The two paradigms’.18

We also wish to question some of the general assumptions underlying Capra's description of Galileo as the ‘father of modern science’; his justification being that Galileo was the first to combine mathematics and empirical investigation. This is however factually incorrect. There were many earlier examples, such as the astronomers of ancient Greece who were not only competent observers of the heavens but also made extensive use of mathematical models to describe the motions of the stars and planets. But there is a further and more fundamental problem with Capra's assertion. Historians have questioned whether Galileo was the thoroughgoing empiricist that Capra portrays. Instead his attitude to experiment now seems far more complex, even ambivalent.

As we shall have occasion to note in the next chapter, there is little evidence that Galileo ever performed the most famous ‘experiment’ usually attributed to him; by dropping two balls of different weight from the Leaning Tower of Pisa he is said to have refuted Aristotle's theory of motion. Moreover, some of the experiments he reported are now recognised as thought experiments rather than practical investigations of the physical world. This is not a criticism of Galileo but a recognition that in the early seventeenth century the notion of experiment was both new and controversial.19 Some historians have also emphasised that if Galileo's considerable debt to Platonism is adequately recognised, then we should interpret him as an opponent of empiricism, at least in its popular and unsophisticated forms.20 In ignoring these more subtle interpretations Capra creates a straw man in order to make Galileo fit a conventional and rather unsatisfactory image of scientific endeavour. It is surely ironic that while Capra offers a vision of science based on holistic metaphysics, his historical account draws on a tired positivistic philosophy of science. If the New Age perspective is to contribute to writing the history of science—and we believe it can offer important insights—then it should not draw uncritically on such stale cliches derived from positivism.

It should also be noted that although Capra is primarily concerned with the development of physics, he often switches unannounced to broader claims about how science, in general, developed. As a physicist he may consider that physics is the queen of the sciences, but it is not unreasonable to insist that such subjects as natural history, chemistry and geology should also be included in any account of science. Yet none of these subjects followed the simple transition from mechanism in the seventeenth century to holism in the twentieth.

Specific Criticisms

Turning to specifics, it is appropriate to question the relation Capra posits between the Greek atomists and Descartes. Since he readily acknowledges that the Greek atomists dissociated matter and spirit, it might appear that Descartes was simply following a programme stretching back some two millennia. Why, then, does he single out Descartes for such harsh criticism if he was not the originator of atomism? Also, if atomism has proved such a destructive doctrine, as Capra claims, then we need to be clear why Descartes's ‘formulation of the spirit/matter dualism’ was ‘extreme’. In what ways did his views go beyond the Greek atomists? Capra's account also fails to recognise that in the mid-seventeenth century Descartes was not alone in courting Greek theories of matter; indeed, many of his contemporaries identified Pierre Gassendi as the writer primarily responsible for the revival of Greek atomism.21

Another relevant issue is raised by the work of Emilios Bouratinos who claims that the breakdown of holism can be traced to developments in Egyptian and ancient Greek cultures. In these cultures science first became possible through drawing a distinction between the perceiving subject and the perceived object. Yet this distinction also destroyed a previously-existing dynamic, holistic mode of understanding.22 If we adopt this perspective, then atomism was not solely Responsible for fragmenting the universe; indeed, atomism was an effect rather than the cause of the breakdown of holism. Descartes's central position in Capra's story is also further compromised by Bouratinos's analysis.

It should also be remembered that in Descartes's day Aristotelianism was the dominant natural philosophy taught in universities. Although Aristotle allowed a crucial role for teleology, much of his physics was concerned with efficient causation. For example, he posed the problem of determining how many men were required to move a boat on a sandy beach. This involved the relationship between what we might call ‘force’ and ‘speed’. Again, in order to account for the flight of an arrow through the air he postulated flow currents in a plenum. In these and many other examples Aristotle focused on material causation. Although Aristotle insisted on the importance of teleology—every natural phenomenon having a purpose—his universe was certainly not holistic in the sense required by Capra. In contrast to Bouratinos's argument, some New Age writers consider Greek philosophy to have portrayed the universe as holistic and dynamically interdependent. One severe New Age critic of Descartes, Danah Zohar, has even contrasted his ‘sterile’ view of the physical world with ‘the living cosmos’ of the Greeks, ‘filled with purpose and intelligence’.23 This characterisation of Greek natural philosophy is clearly inaccurate and does not apply either to the atomists or to Aristotle (except in respect to purpose). From these widely differing accounts it is clear that Capra and other New Age writers are faced with a number of problems in characterising Greek natural philosophies and Descartes's relationship to his Greek sources.

There are also numerous problems with Capra's central contention that in the ‘mechanical world-view’ mind and matter were fragmented, whereas in modern physics mind and matter constitute a unity. Here Capra implicitly assumes that the meanings of both terms have remained sufficiently constant across three and a half centuries. However, Descartes's deployment of the word ‘mind’ bears but a tenuous relation to modern concept(s) of mind. For the term that is conventionally translated as ‘mind’ he used the words mens, l'esprit and l'âme (which should probably be translated as ‘soul’).24 Even for the person in the street Freud's notions of the libido and the unconscious form part of our late-twentieth-century concept of mind. Yet these notions are alien to Descartes's understanding of mind (or should it be soul?). Likewise views about the nature of matter have not remained static for the past three and a half centuries, but have been affected by shifts in technology, science and philosophy. In the light of such significant changes in the meanings of terms historians of philosophy have warned that we misread Descartes if we uncritically attribute to him notions of mind and matter that carry so much twentieth-century baggage.

Again, we are concerned about the glib references to reductionism versus holism found in Capra's book and in many other works in this genre. There are practical and definitional difficulties with both terms and particularly with the widespread notion that they stand in stark and manifest opposition. Even the much-maligned Descartes can be read as a holist. In the fifth part of his Discourse on Method he rejected the following analogy as inadequate. Consider a pilot who is able to steer the ship. At first sight this situation may seem analogous to the way the soul moves the body. However Descartes decisively rejected this analogy: his reason for rejecting it is instructive. He stated that in contrast to the case of the pilot in a ship,

it is necessary that the soul be joined and united more closely to the body, in order to have, in addition to this power of movement, feelings and appetites similar to ours, and thus compose a true man.25

This is a telling comment, for far from fragmenting the ‘true man’ into two irreconcilable parts, Descartes here emphasised the integration of soul and body in the constitution of the complete human being. Certainly matter and soul are very different substances according to his theory, one being material and extended, the other immaterial and non-extended. Although commentators remain divided over whether his (all too brief) resolution is philosophically sound, Descartes addressed the problem of interactionism—how the body affects the mind and the mind affects the body—and, in specifying the human condition, he clearly asserted the necessary unity of mind and matter.26 They are indivisible in the ‘true man’. Had Capra concentrated on this text he might have championed Descartes as a card-carrying holist. We shall return to this point in chapter 7.

Our next criticism is that, contrary to Capra's thesis, there was no single world-view shared by ‘scientists’, let alone ‘physicists’, from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. Instead, there was considerable diversity throughout this period, with a significant proportion of scientists rejecting any all-encompassing mechanistic programme as the basis for their science. Indeed one significant problem with Capra's account is that the sciences—especially the more experimental sciences—were rarely driven by such a grand metaphysical engine. This is not to deny that metaphysics has played an important role in the development of science, but its role has often been oversimplified and overstated. Contrary to the thesis that metaphysics is the engine of science, much recent work by historians and sociologists has emphasised the pragmatic and piecemeal development of science. For example, ever the opportunist. Galileo embraced corpuscularianism in his 1623 polemic entitled The Assayer. Here he assumed that matter consisted of corpuscles in order to account for the densities of different materials. It was also a handy stick to beat the Aristotelians. Yet atomism rarely plays an explanatory role in the remainder of Galileo's works.27

Although seventeenth-century ‘scientists’ often viewed Descartes as a mechanist, his theories were widely discussed but frequently rejected in favour of alternative natural philosophies. For example, in seventeenth-century Britain mechanistic views were often perceived as both physically inadequate and conducive to atheism. Thus Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, who had initially been excited by Cartesian natural philosophy, criticised Descartes for restricting the role of God in the physical universe to the act of creation and for precluding God's subsequent interaction with it. As More complained in a letter to Robert Boyle, ‘the phaenomena of the world cannot be solved merely mechanically, but… there is the necessity of the assistance of a substance distinct from matter, that is, of a spirit, or a being incorporeal’. Only by admitting a major role for spirit could More frame an adequate, Christian natural philosophy.28

More's response to ‘the Cartesian dream’ was not unique among British natural philosophers. Most importantly, it coloured the views of Isaac Newton whose intellectual debt to Descartes was both complex and ambivalent—he did not simply adopt and expand on Descartes's views, as Capra's account implies. Although Newton read Descartes closely, key passages in his Principia (1687) indicate the extent of his criticisms of Descartes's Principia Philosophiae (1644). Indeed, not only did Newton devote the second book of the Principia to refuting Descartes's theory of motion, but the preface opens with an argument against the Cartesian account of the solar system. Newton asserted that the Cartesian theory of vortices cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of the planetary orbits. Even more pertinent is Newton's rejection of the Cartesian doctrine of contact action. On the Cartesian account matter is considered to be particulate and inert. The only way in which two moving particles of matter can interact is through contact. By contrast, Newton introduced the notion of force allowing particles to act at a distance. Newton considered that forces, such as the force of gravitation, are immaterial. Although associated with matter, they are not necessary properties of matter. Moreover, forces suffuse space and constitute what he variously called ‘powers’ or ‘active principles’.

These notions of force or activity were of central importance to Newton and in many passages he emphasised that passive mechanical principles are inadequate in accounting for many natural phenomena, which instead manifest intrinsic activity. He thereby highlighted his rejection of the Cartesian theory of matter. As a paradigmatic instance of activity he cited the way we move our limbs by the power of the human will. In one manuscript he even claimed, with typical circumspection, that ‘We cannot say that all nature is not alive.’ Such passages have led historians to speculate on the extent to which he was indebted to Neoplatonism and to the alchemical tradition.29 His theory of activity also played a significant role in his physico-theology since, in some of his writings, Newton advanced the view that God operates in the universe through the agency of immaterial forces extending across space. Indeed, in her Study of Newton's alchemy the late Betty Jo Dobbs emphasised the extent to which he conceived many classes of natural phenomena as manifesting sources of activity, such as the growth of vegetables. Nature was therefore definitely not mechanistic in the Cartesian sense. Moreover, he considered that this activity is ultimately—if not directly—derived from God.30 From Newton's repeated emphasis on the sources of activity of nature it is clear that he did not endorse the view of nature which Capra disparages as the ‘Newtonian world-machine’. We thoroughly misconstrue Newton's science if we portray him as a naive mechanist who reduced the universe to inert lumps of matter which attract or repel one another.

A further caveat needs to be entered against the paramount position attributed to Descartes in Capra's story. It should be remembered that Descartes was but one of many early-seventeenth-century natural philosophers. His vision of explaining physical phenomena in purely physical terms—that is, by matter and motion—remained partly a fantasy since he could offer only a limited range of examples to illustrate how particular physical phenomena could be explained by these principles. Although some of his near contemporaries pursued similar programmes, others—such as Johannes Kepler, William Harvey and Simon Stevin—made substantial contributions to science while pursuing philosophies of science opposed to that of Descartes. The problem of magnetism, which proved particularly contentious, provides an instructive example showing the diversity of approaches and the sterility of the Cartesian solution. A number of earlier scientists, including William Gilbert and Kepler, had discussed magnetic attraction as the non-material sympathetic interaction between a magnet and a piece of iron. Gilbert even envisaged the earth and planets as possessing souls and considered magnetism to be a manifestation of these souls. Likewise Kepler viewed the sun as a large magnet responsible for moving the attendant planets in their orbits. Rejecting these Neoplatonic ideas Descartes sketched a mechanical explanation that postulated screw-threaded particles travelling along bevelled tubes linking the magnet's poles. Even his explanation of such basic phenomena as magnetic attraction and repulsion was open to major objections. Not surprisingly this cumbersome theory attracted few adherents. It is therefore simplistic either to single out Descartes as the only important scientist in the early seventeenth century or to portray the mechanistic world-view (as characterised by Capra) as the key to early modern science.

More generally, while there were certainly some self-proclaimed followers of Descartes (mostly in France), we can make little sense of the science developed over the next three centuries it we read it simply as the implementation of Descartes's programme. Capra's portrayal of the influence of Descartes—via Newton—over the ensuing three centuries therefore needs to be severely qualified since his vision remained controversial and was not the only key available to unlock the secrets of nature. We shall outline one of several alternative approaches.

There has been a long-running dispute in the life sciences over whether matter and its properties suffice in explaining a wide range of biological phenomena. While some phenomena—such as muscular contraction producing movement of the arms—seem readily explicable by physical processes, others have proved more intractable. In contrast to mechanistic accounts ‘vitalist’ explanations were offered by many physiologists, including Robert Whytt the eighteenth-century Scottish physician who addressed the question of ‘spontaneous motion’ (such as breathing or the use of the muscles when we walk). He dismissed any explanation ‘purely by virtue of [the body's] mechanical construction’ since such ‘a notion of the animal frame [is] too low and absurd to be embraced by any but the most minute philosophers!’31 Here Whytt rejected the Cartesian programme as incapable of offering an adequate explanation of the phenomena. Instead he argued the need for a non-rational and immaterial ‘sentient principle’, residing primarily in the brain, to account for physical effects—like spontaneous motions—that were not produced by physical causes. This appeal to an immaterial principle indicates that although Whytt responded to Cartesianism he firmly rejected the view that physiological explanation should appeal only to matter and motion.

Whytt's vitalist orientation was shared by many subsequent physiologists.32 The history of embryology also indicates the limitations of Cartesianism. The central question was how to account for the growth and development of a perfectly-formed child from a small quantity of semen (later embryologists also attributing a role to the female's egg). To many embryologists inert matter seemed hopelessly inadequate at explaining the phenomenon. Even the addition of Newtonian forces of attraction and repulsion was of little assistance. Instead, they insisted, powerful, vital, organic principles must be responsible for organising material particles according to a preordained plan. Observations of spermatozoa under the microscope supported this argument since they were often seen as minute creatures displaying internal organisation. Although scientists disagreed over the exact nature of this vital principle and how it operated, it was widely accepted as the distinguishing feature of living organisms.33 In postulating an active non-material entity some scientists were motivated by religious considerations, yet the diversity of positions cannot be reduced simply to religious orientations. The examples of physiology and embryology indicate that even if mechanism had proved successful in physics we should not follow Capra and assume that it could readily be applied with equal success to other sciences.

Having portrayed the Newtonian view of the world as a causal, deterministic machine, Capra then represents Laplace as the arch mechanist and exemplar of the ‘Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm’. Yet this characterisation is also problematic. According to Capra Laplace considered that if the state of a physical system were known at a particular time, ‘the future of any part of the system could—in principle—be predicted with absolute certainty’. The qualification ‘in principle’ is soon overlooked and Capra proceeded to cite the following passage by Laplace as the ‘clearest expression’ of ‘rigorous determinism’:

An intellect [une intelligence] which at a given instant knew all the forces acting in nature, and the position of all things of which the world consists… nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes.

Not only does this quotation illustrate strict determinism for Capra, but also ‘the fundamental division between the I and the [mechanical] world [as] introduced by Descartes’. By appearing to identify ‘the intellect’ cited in the quotation with the observer, Capra conveys to the reader the impression that in a mechanical universe the mechanism is transparent to the human intellect.34

The first point to note is that in the above passage Laplace, unlike Capra, does not attribute this knowledge to humans, either now or in the future. Indeed, the ‘intellect’ in the preceding quotation bears a closer relation to the infinite intelligence traditionally attributed to God than to the finite intelligence of any mundane scientist.

To identify the leading problem with Capra's interpretation we must restore the passage to its proper historical context. It was published in Laplace's Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités (1814) but was based on a similar but much earlier discussion of the doctrine of chances that appeared in a memoir first published in 1776. It is important to notice that both of these evocations of a superhuman intelligence appeared in works discussing probability. Laplace argued that only in physical astronomy can reasonably accurate predictions be made from the present to the future state of a system. However, in fields other than astronomy we can be less sure of the causal factors involved. Moreover, in such fields the phenomena are far more complex. For these reasons we are prevented from achieving the same certainty about phenomena. Instead ‘we seek to compensate for the impossibility of knowing’ these causes by turning to the calculus of probabilities. In other words, in direct contradiction to Capra's interpretation, it is clear that for Laplace we do not share this superhuman intelligence's knowledge of the universe. Except possibly in the realm of positional astronomy we do not have access to the complex causal laws governing the universe. In line with Laplace's insistence that science provides us with limited knowledge of the natural world, he considered that the theory of probabilities must be developed to cope with such apparent complexity.35 Thus, far from dealing with rigid determinism, Laplace acknowledges that we must often rest satisfied with a limited, statistical understanding of the world. In this sense Laplace was not Capra's rigorous determinist. Indeed, in the light of the foregoing discussion we might fantasise that he might have accepted the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics that Capra champions as the harbinger of the new anti-mechanistic physics!

Déjà Vu

As historians we find many of the ingredients of New Age thought all too familiar, having encountered them in the writings of previous generations. Certainly, some of the crises that mark the end of the second millennium seem without parallel in former epochs, but there have been many earlier periods when the condition of the world has appeared dire. Particularly in such situations people tend to look back to a Golden Age or forward to the dawn of a bright new era. Millenarians were thick on the ground in the seventeenth century, and as the eighteenth drew to a close, with great convulsions in France, ‘new ages’ were proclaimed in both religious and secular colours. Fascinating comparisons can be drawn between these earlier movements and the New Age movement of our own day. It is also important to notice that like many of its apocalyptic predecessors the current New Age movement attributes a significant role to science.

While the science of previous centuries could not deploy the insights of quantum theory, chaos theory or sub-atomic physics, there was no shortage of scientific concepts that served similar purposes. The themes of idealism, holism and anti-mechanism are not recent innovations but have appeared on many occasions in the history of both science and general culture. Indeed, one historian of physics, Stephen Brush, has argued, perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that like other aspects of our culture, science oscillates between the two contrasting styles of Realism and Romanticism, the period of oscillation being about seventy years.36 According to Brush, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory was framed during the inter-War years and reflected the dominant Romanticism of the period. Some seven decades later we are again in the midst of a Romantic revival in which Capra finds much affinity with the founders of the Copenhagen Interpretation (who were likewise steeped in Eastern philosophy). Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of Brush's thesis, it can usefully remind us that styles of science fluctuate and that patterns often recur. Echoes of holism and anti-mechanism are to be found in many earlier writers, perhaps none more forcefully than in the German Romantic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Like its counterparts in the arts, Romanticism in science defies any single definition, yet it is usually associated with the following characteristics: a breadth of vision (as opposed to specialisation); the unity of man and nature; the essential unity of nature; the view that nature is mysterious (not transparent to reason), organic (as opposed in mechanistic) and holistic; the scientist is accorded imagination and empathy (rather than possessing rational faculties). Although the term has been applied to scientists of other periods, Romanticism reached its peak in science (as in other subjects) in the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, particularly in Germany where Naturphilosophie flourished. Blumenbach, Coleridge, Davy, Fichte, Goethe, Oersted, Humboldt, Oken, Ritter, Schelling, Steffens and Tyndall are some of the names often cited in discussions of scientific Romanticism.37 Most noticeably, New Age writers share with these Romantically-inclined scientists a strong aversion to mechanism and an insistence on holism and organicism. Although the historical Context is different, James Lovelock's evocation of Gaia does not look out of place when set beside the works of Goethe or Oken.

To illustrate the high Romantic view of science we might introduce The Novices of Sais by Friedrich von Hardenberg who wrote under the pseudonym Novalis during the closing years of the eighteenth century. The dramatis personae include the master who is the true prophet of nature, several novices—including the narrator—who are seeking the path to the Golden Age, and four travellers who are seeking to understand how man and nature are interrelated. Although different positions are adopted by the interlocutors, conventional science receives short shrift and is portrayed as responsible for mechanising, and thereby killing, nature. In the words of one of the novices, scientists have ‘debased nature to the level of a uniform machine, without past and future’.38 Running through the dialogue is a sharp contrast between scientists and poets: ‘Scientists [Naturforscher] have cut into the inner structure [of nature] and sought after the relations between its members. Under their hands friendly nature died, leaving behind only dead, quivering remnants, while the poet inspired her like a heady wine.’ This theme received its most trenchant statement in the speech by the fourth traveller, a youth with sparkling eyes, who asserts:

How strange that precisely the most sat red and charming manifestations of nature should be in the hands of such dead men as scientists tend to be. These phenomena whose potency calls forth nature's creation, phenomena which should he a secret of lovers, a mystery of higher mankind, are shamelessly and senselessly evoked by unfeeling minds, which will never know what miracles their retorts contain. Only poets should deal in the fluid element and be empowered to speak of it to ardent youth; then laboratories would be temples.…39

This is not the language of wave-particle dualism nor the physics of non-locality, but the image of a unified integrated world was central to Novalis's vision.

Unlike Novalis and his contemporaries, few New Agers would think of contrasting the scientist with the poet. Nevertheless, despite such significant differences, Romanticism remains an apposite category in which to understand the New Age movement and its attitudes to science. Yet this tentative association between the two movements raises an important historical question: Why did the earlier manifestation fail to overturn the then-prevailing patterns of science? There is no simple answer, but some historians have pointed to the failure of the Romantics, with their highly individualistic prescriptions for science, to gain influence within the walls of the leading scientific institutions. Again, the mid-nineteenth-century opponents of Naturphilosophie—such as Hermann von Helmholtz and Emil du Bois-Reymond—were very effective in convincing contemporaries that it was an empty, fantastic and useless enterprise. Reinforcement of this view was doubtless aided by the scientific successes of these opponents, many of whom promulgated an extreme vision of the world as a mechanism.40 Whatever the reasons, the fate of this earlier movement suggests that the New Age movement will face an up-hill battle to change attitudes within the scientific community. However, public concern about environmental issues may strengthen their hand.

The New Physics

There is a host of problems in depicting the relation between the old and the new physics as a radical break. Some of these problems are historical. For example, Kuhn has argued that the quantum theory of radiation did not appear overnight as a blinding revelation of the truth. Instead, it was the sum of a number of small innovations that occupied many scientists over a period of some twenty years. By examining this period closely, Kuhn portrays the transition as a continuous development, not as a sharp discontinuity.41 Moreover, individual scientists of the period were divided over how to respond to quantum theory and did not simply abandon classical physics even in what became the quantal domain. For example, Max Planck, who first imposed the restriction that the energy of an oscillator is an integral multiple of hv, remained wedded to the ideals of classical physics. Again, Niels Bohr did not simply abandon classical physics but sought strenuously to retain the language of classic physics—the language of ‘waves’ and ‘particles’—in the description of the quantum realm.42 This diversity has continued down to the present, with numerous critics of the Copenhagen Interpretation and, over the last few years, an increasing interest in Bohm's hidden variable theory.43

In Capra's account the position of Einstein is considerably inflated and provides an example of outmoded ‘great man’ history. While not belittling Einstein, historians have been at pains to emphasise that he was not a lone genius but was responding in his 1905 papers (which Capra locates as the key documents for both quantum theory and relativity) to the work of Paschen, Lummer, Pringsheim, Rayleigh, Planck, Maxwell, Larmor, Fitzgerald, Lorentz, Mach and many others. More importantly, the portrayal of Einstein as the guru of the new physics overlooks many nuances in his work. For example, in contrast to Capra's claim that he was ‘bold enough to postulate that light… can appear not only as electromagnetic waves, but also in the form of… quanta’,44 Einstein insisted in 1911 ‘on the provisional character of this concept [light-quanta] which does not seem reconcilable with the experimentally verified consequences of the wave theory’.45 As is well known, Einstein also expressed severe reservations about the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory which Capra champions unquestioningly.46 Moreover, the example of Einstein undermines Capra's portrayal of modern physics as internally consistent, since Einstein sought (unsuccessfully) to reconcile quantum theory and the theory of relativity.

The relation between Newtonian mechanics and the new physics raises numerous historical and philosophical problems. For example, as Hasok Chang has pointed out, one such problem arises from the continuing use of formulae derived from classical physics in descriptions of experiments basic to quantum mechanics. Thus in describing the trajectory of particles through a mass spectrograph physicists deploy the formulae of classical mechanics and electro-magnetism. Far from quantum theory having displaced classical physics, there are many such sites where the old and new theories coexist, however uncomfortably. Moreover, their continued intimate interconnection provides further evidence against the sharp historical discontinuity that Kuhn's theory appears to postulate.47 Yet throughout most of his book Capra sharply contrasted classical and modern physics as if they inhabited separate domains, with the former having been displaced by the latter. Only in his ‘Epilogue’ did he concede that the two theories can coexist since both provide useful descriptions of the world.48 While accepting their coexistence he still implicitly maintained that the two ‘paradigms’ were completely separate and non-interacting.

Perhaps we are reading too much into Capra's account, but it seems to imply that scientists working in the Newtonian mould are spiritual cripples while those adhering to quantum theory are spiritually aware. This is surely a contentious thesis that is unlikely to be true. Moreover, without an adequate definition of spirituality it is also difficult to test. However, we are not alone in expressing this concern. Confused by the repeated and sweeping claims that modern physics lends impressive support to transcendental religion and mysticism, Ken Wilber, a leading New Age writer, took the trouble to collect and examine the writings of several key scientists—including Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Einstein and Eddington—who forged the new physics. He also rightly noted that all these physicists were steeped in religious or spiritual traditions. From this evidence Wilber argues that they were unanimous in denying any symbiotic relationship between their physics and their spiritual meditations. Instead he claims that their concern with spirituality and mysticism arose from their recognition that the domain of physics is limited to abstract, mathematical forms of representation. Thus physics cannot engage ‘reality’, which is accessible only through mystical experience.

In support of this thesis Wilber quotes from the Quaker Arthur Eddington: Science provides only ‘a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating’. Instead, ‘that mental and spiritual nature of ourselves, known in our minds by an intimate contact transcending the methods of physics, supplies just that… which science is admittedly unable to give’.49 Here Eddington seems to be postulating, not a parallel between physics and spirituality, but a disjunction such that the spiritual puts us in touch with the reality that physics cannot reach. Although Wilber did not attempt to engage the historical contexts in which Eddington and his other physicists were writing, he offers a welcome and critical counter-blast to the all-too-familiar scenario of modern physics paralleling spiritual self-awareness. If Wilber is correct then we should be looking for a very different relationship between science and spirituality than the one Capra suggests. Moreover, Wilber's thesis implies that classical and modern physics equally offer a ‘shadow world of symbols’, to which spiritual reality is opposed, and that modern physics has no special affinity to that reality. It should be noted that the theses of Capra and Wilber are variants of the more general claims about the science-religion relationship discussed in our opening chapter: Capra adopts what Ian Barbour calls an ‘integrationist strategy’, while Wilber asserts an ‘independence’ thesis.50

While some in the New Age movement are enamoured with the new physics, many others remain highly critical of the whole scientific enterprise. This latter position is well illustrated by the following passage written by a doyen of the New Age movement a few years before the Tao of Physics achieved cult status. In Where the Wasteland Ends (1972) Theodore Roszak pointed to ‘the psychological continuities that bind the old and new physics together’:

To be sure, over a certain range of phenomena in atomic physics and astronomy, the old machine metaphor has lost its serviceability… But the psychology of the enterprise has not changed; this is the string that holds all the scientific heads together from Galileo and Newton to the present day…

The basic effect of Newtonian mechanism was to produce a nature that was felt to be dead, alien, and purely functional. This estranged relationship of scientist to nature has remained unchanged [in the new physics… T]he tunes have been altered but the mode of the music is the same always. We are still performing in the key of objective consciousness.51

For Roszak the new physics fails to provide an adequate basis for a thoroughgoing anti-mechanist view of the world commensurate with his conception of our inner consciousness. Indeed, Roszak seems to question whether relatively recent innovations in scientific theory can offer any real alternative to its traditional modes of thought. We share his scepticism—not for reasons of psychology—but because there are many respects in which the new physics is contiguous with the old. Some might even argue that the distinguishing feature of modern science is that so much of it is dominated by industry and by the military. From this standpoint the niceties of interpreting quantum mechanics seem pretty irrelevant. While it is certainly true that some scientists find spiritual solace in the rarefied realm of quantum mechanics, this is not the face of science that most people perceive. Moreover, these scientists' response may have more to do with traditional aesthetic criteria (which will be discussed in chapter 7) than with any putative connection between ‘man and nature’.

Capra also claims that modern physicists speak holistically about ‘man and nature’ and they thereby acknowledge that we are part of nature. We have some difficulty making sense of this assertion. There is, surely, a sense in which we can appreciate being part of nature when we hike in the Cairngorms or feel the spray of the Atlantic Ocean beating against our faces. Viewing the magnificence of the night sky may also persuade us that we are part but a very small part—of this immense universe. Physics doubtless produces similar ‘highs’ in its aficionados but it seems doubtful whether quantum theory leads necessarily to such unmitigated holism. Does the modern physicist struggling to solve Schrödinger's equation or fumbling with an electronic detector attached to the synchrocyclotron hidden deep in the ground beneath Geneva appreciate that there must be an essential unity between mind and matter? We doubt it. Does a ‘Newtonian’ physicist trying to solve Newton's equations or fighting to persuade Atwood's machine to work feel any different from his ‘quantum’ sibling? The answer is far from clear, but we would need a lot of persuading that they experience the world so differently. Recent work on the philosophy of experiment has also shed considerable light on the intimate, symbiotic interaction between experiment and experimenter. This work also suggests that even in classical physics the experimental situation cannot be characterised as the observer standing apart from nature.52 We therefore remain highly sceptical about the claim—so often touted in New Age circles—that the new physics makes us more part of nature than the old.

This brings us to one of our main criticisms. Even if the story we recounted earlier in this chapter is accepted by the historian of scientific ideas, there remains Capra's insistent Hegelian claim that ideas in science and philosophy determine all aspects of life. Capra condemned Cartesian dualism because it ‘can be seen as the essential reason for the present series of social, ecological and cultural crises. It has alienated us from nature and from our fellow human beings.’53 The model is of downward influence. Metaphysical ideas about the world shape all aspects of our lives. The ideas of Descartes and Newton have led inexorably to ecological crisis. Historians of philosophy should feel flattered that Capra has prioritised philosophical ideas and has attributed such dramatic impact to them. Yet such claims are highly problematic and most historians would not attribute such a powerful role to metaphysics.

There is also the problem of why the holistic, irenic message Capra locates in modern physics has not already delivered the green, beautiful world he seeks. After all, quantum theory has been with us for two-thirds of a century. Over this period we have not witnessed the impact of the new physics in changing the world for universal good; instead, wars, human strife and the degradation of nature have continued, even accelerated, during these past seventy years. There is clearly a major problem concerning the downwards-influence model. We might put it more strongly: that model is disastrously wrong. While metaphysics has certainly been influential in science so have the social, political, religious and technological forces that shape so many aspects of our lives, science included. For example, while Capra is commendably cautious in claiming that Laplace's response to Napoleon about God being a redundant hypothesis is only a story, the context of post-Revolutionary France is also highly pertinent. While championing a picture of the universe which was law-like Laplace also insisted that the scientist should not concern himself with philosophical and religious questions that fell outside the domain of science. Moreover, although Laplace had been trained in theology at the University of Caen, he was a reticent man who was careful not to discuss his religious beliefs in public. The position he adopted was, moreover, particularly serviceable in the anti-clerical atmosphere of the post-Revolutionary period. It is also highly relevant that Napoleon became a patron of Laplace, showering him with honours and appointing him minister of the interior—until he found how useless Laplace was at administrative duties!54 Put more generally, the downwards influence model is profoundly a-historical and fails to recognise the degree to which science is shaped by practice, by society, by technology, by politics and by religion.

Does the metaphysics of holism lead inevitably to the beautiful, green world that we would all welcome? It is worth remembering that the word ‘holism’ was coined in 1926 by Jan Christian Smuts, whose holistic views about evolution were used to legitimate the separation between the races and thus to justify apartheid in South Africa. Likewise, in Nazi Germany holism was held in high esteem and was used to sanction the racial superiority of Aryans and the persecution of non-Aryans.55 There may be nothing intrinsically dangerous about holism, but it is always encountered in specific social situations. That it has appeared in the contexts of apartheid and racism should give us pause. Moreover, there may be dangers inherent in the widely-held belief that through its force as a pure idea holism can provide a new social order and even a new religion.

These comments take us far from the start of this chapter. We must stress that we did not set out to attack the New Age movement, but only a version of history that has often been peddled not only by New Agers but also by writers opposed to that movement. From the preceding criticisms it is abundantly clear that Capra's master-narrative is unacceptable as history. Indeed, as historical research progresses the complexity of the relationship between science and religion becomes increasingly apparent and irreducible to any master-narrative.56 As historical research has progressed, the spotlight has turned increasingly to smaller pictures that clarify specific science-religion interactions. Yet, as the ensuing chapters indicate, such pictures can be satisfying, exciting and informative.