The ‘Mathematization of Nature': The Making of a Concept, and How It Has Fared in Later Years

Abstract

The concept of ‘the mathematization of nature’ arose in close connection with the equally novel concept of ‘The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century’. The pioneers were E.J. Dijksterhuis (1924), E.A. Burtt (also 1924), and Alexandre Koyré (1935). Thanks in good part to Koyré’s agenda-driven perseverance, these became highly productive concepts. Nonetheless their analytically sharp delineation quickly gave way to an unceasing process of meaning dilution. In the 1970s Thomas S. Kuhn and Richard S. Westfall sought (but to little avail) to halt the process by suggesting two ingenious ‘two-current’ accounts of the Scientific Revolution, with the mathematization of nature figuring prominently in each. The idea of the mathematization of nature being key to the Scientific Revolution has kept informing a ‘master narrative’ that professionals have ever since the 1980s tended to regard as hopelessly obsolete. It is certainly true that, in their original guise, these concepts are incapable of capturing fundamental aspects of the pursuit of knowledge of nature in seventeenth century Europe. But is that good enough a reason to give them up altogether? Two efforts at fresh reconceptualization have recently been undertaken, one by Stephen Gaukroger, one by the author of the present chapter. Having compared the two elsewhere, he outlines here in what ways he has partly reinstated, partly revised, partly expanded, but in all cases built forth upon, the still vital notion of the mathematization of nature. In this partly altered guise, it marks three of the six revolutionary transformations that in his view comprise the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century.