Ahan R
"Lumpiness, rather than smoothness, is the normal texture of historical temporality"
How are we supposed to write about history? There are numerous ‘big-picture’ narratives of science. The most famous of which was formalized by Thomas Kuhn in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Which establishes “revolution” as the standard category in measuring periods of scientific change.
Structure and narrative within history is embedded within subsequent understanding and depiction. The language of an event is patterned into categories. Categories which could present as history as distributed or non-linear need to have their sub-conscious role highlighted. Regardless of which category is chosen, there is an epistemic need for an interpretation of the world. It acts as a description, one that shares a structural similarity with its noumenal subject. There are habits and patterns ingrained within narratives which are isomorphic to reality. The description is necessary but carries consequences. Certain categories can produce harmful interpretations. Where the interpretation is implicit within the category’s articulation. Revolution is one of these categories.
As a term – it describes something. Language maps onto the world and the usage of ‘revolution’ arose out of a need to describe a time of great upheaval. There are material constituents to the French and American revolution. In tracing the application of the category we’re able to produce concrete evidence. Bodies burned; communities displaced - this is the terms native land. Its usage is indigenous to outlining violence, and guillotines, and whatnot.
In describing ideas, we’re forced into a compromise. Ideas change, they have material constituents which cause tangible change within the world. In line with its previous usage – something happens. The world before and after Darwin published his Origin of Species (OOS) is different. There’s a structural need to articulate this difference. The question is whether revolution is the best linguistic tool we possess. A category is always illuminating – in that it produces implications through its usage, misunderstandings sometimes. Our task lies in evaluating whether ‘revolution’ produces more illuminations or misunderstandings.
This argument was anticipated by Hodge (2005) in his paper Against "Revolution" and "Evolution" which signals a need for serious historians of science to move away from “revolution-talk”. A specific historiography that categorizes certain periods of scientific change as “revolutions”. He puts forward three main points:
In attempting to evaluate revolution as a proper category, we’ll trace the lineage of the term along with precursor categories, which may have informed its acceptance within the scientific community.
Interpretive categories of history are numerous. However, those of Comte (1830), Saint-Simon (1813), and Cournot are ones that explicitly dealt with a ‘progression’ of science. Saint-Simon argued that science progressed through discrete stages (Saint-Simon, 1813). Outlining a historical succession that began with Copernicus and finished with Newton. Comte built upon those ideas by putting forward his law of ‘three stages’ (Comte, 1830). According to him, there is an inevitable progression of human understanding that progresses through certain abstract phases.
Whewell (1837) also conceived his own framework for the progression of science through ‘epochs’ (Whewell, 1837). While these are all earlier notions of scientific progress, we find common features with the subsequent category of revolution. Ideas are placed on a linear structure which ultimately lead to progress. Transition between different phases requires a certain event and are discrete from each other (except in the case of Comte). Advancement along the structure is inevitable and ‘truth’ is continually inched towards.
Revolutionary thinking as a structure evolved out of these previous frameworks. As a proper historical category, it only appeared recently. The term was originally borrowed from a political context to describe events such as the French or American revolution. As a vague descriptor, it was employed by both Kant and Comte to characterize dramatic upheavals within the ideas of certain fields (Secord, 2024). Darwin used the term in describing Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’ (Darwin, 1859). There are numerous examples of the term ‘revolution’ being used to describe events. However, it still reflected a political upbringing. This was not a fleshed-out usage and only roughly represented an idea of accelerated change within a certain sphere.
The terms popularization is traceable to the Progressive Era in the United States. Here, "scientific revolution" became less a description and more a pedagogical tool. A way of manufacturing a particular scientific imagination. Secord (2023) observes that these "revolutions" are retrospective narratives crafted in the interwar period, telling us far more about the moment of their articulation than about the historical moments they purport to describe (Secord, 2023).
This teaches us that revolution is not a natural interpretive category. Instead, it arose out of very specific historical conditions. It benefitted greatly from the mass-production of science textbooks which sought to simplify history into a string of results. An effect of which, as Daston (2009) notes, is placing certain scientists as winners (sheep) and others as losers (goats).
“Lavoisier sheep, Priestley goat; Darwin sheep, Lamarck goat”
Revolution necessitates that something must be triumphed over. In the process, something is defeated and relegated to a forgotten paradigm. This form of ‘epistemic violence’ (Secord, 2024) can be traced to its vagrancy as a term describing political revolutions. Events that required violent uprising and the ousting of dominant structures.
This is the way that Kuhn justified his borrowing of the term. He argued that what scientific and political revolutions had in common was responding to situations where existing institutions have ceased adequately to meet the problems posed by an environment they have created (Kuhn, 1962). His characterization of scientific development takes the following form:
It’s important to note that this is one of many conceptions of a revolution historiography. Cohen (1985) provides an alternative, but similar, conception for the stages of revolution within science.
Expanding on this, he puts forward the conditions necessary for an event to be considered a revolution.
Both frameworks have common elements. Kuhn’s model progresses from a pre-paradigm phase to “normal science”, which eventually encounters anomalies, forcing a paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1962). Similarly, Cohen describes an “Intellectual Revolution” where a radical solution recontextualizes existing knowledge, leading to new practices (Cohen, 1985). The separation between stages of knowledge is discrete, there is no co-existence of structures after the pre-paradigm stage. Both frameworks also rely on a crucial epistemological mechanism: the necessity of communal validation. This validation manifests through documentation, formal systematization, and institutional integration.
This synthesis of the two structures will be applied regarding the history of evolutionary biology so as to capture the common features of a revolution framework. Despite Kuhn citing Darwin as an example of a scientific revolution, he pays remarkably little attention to him within the book. Instead, focusing more on developments within math and physics due to his training in those subjects. Partly because of this, attempts have been made to match the Kuhnian stages of historical development with the history of evolutionary biology (Greene, 1981).
The first challenge, as Hodge (2005) points out, is where exactly to start. Aristotle and Theophrastus both had works on botany and zoology, however, establishing a coherent chain of events between Aristotle and medieval botanists (for example, Albertus Magnus) is hard, let alone Aristotle and Darwin. This isn’t to say that there aren’t coherent chains between thinkers. Cuvier, Lamarck, and Hooker are all following in the tradition laid down by Linnaeus, Ray, and Tournefort (Greene, 1981) but this is a far easier connection to draw than that with Aristotle.
This poses a significant problem with revolutionary thinking and any sort of historiography that seeks to characterize science as a linear, cause-and-effect, structure. Drawing a coherent line between certain thinkers is especially hard, and justifying that connection is sometimes impossible. If all thought is viewed as a teleological precursor to another thought, then half of historiography becomes defending where to draw your boundaries.
Linearity advances a single overarching narrative of scientific progress. The people who create the histories are confronted with a choice of what events to include, events that are a small part of a totality. The act of historical narration becomes an exercise in selective representation, where events are selected to produce a seemingly coherent narrative. This curatorial process inevitably sequesters alternative perspectives, particularly those employing non-European intellectual paradigms.
The consequence of this is a largely Western history of science. Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams (1993) noticed this and sought to establish a ‘big picture’ of science. They argued that what we refer to as ‘science’ is a uniquely Western cultural phenomenon instead of an objective, standardized activity that developed mostly within Europe. They trace the development of this Western science to the late 18th century, along the same time as the ‘Age of Revolutions’.
Their conclusion was that the science we are familiar with is a specific type of knowledge seeking activity that exists within its respective time, culture, and history. The problem with revolution-talk was that it legitimized this phenomenon as objective and pushed an ideologically loaded narrative about man’s place within the world (Cunningham and Williams, 1993).
A “Plato to NATO” conception of history will ultimately advance a Western perspective. Since the non-western will be seen as non-cohesive when trying to construct a narrative (Elshakry, 2010) This framing of history as starting with the Greeks and ending with the Internet is partly why revolution talk has so much staying power. Lorraine Daston characterized it as a “Zombie Narrative” (Daston, 2019) due to its constant revival in mainstream literature.
Brush (1995) comments on this tension between scientists’ histories of science and the histories written by historians of science. Ultimately, he advocates for collaboration between the two groups but warns against the tendency of scientists to produce "Whiggish" histories - narratives that depict the progression of science as a straightforward, inevitable march toward modern understanding (Brush, 1995).
Advancing a theory of history which unifies a certain subset of events into a ‘history of ideas’ helps in the selling of popular-history books. Science educators profit off a simplification of ideas that follows a clear and compelling story of scientific progress. The term 'scientific revolution' persists partly because it condenses gradual advancements into a narrative that appears cohesive and dramatic. This is a term that benefits publishers and popular writers, not a historian seeking precision. By sharing the term with them - we implicitly affirm its misuse within other subjects and the overarching narrative it produces.
For example, this is a retelling of the Darwinian Revolution found within a popular history.
“In 1859, there was a groundbreaking revolution in both the scientific and religious realms: the origin of species, authored by Charles Darwin, was published. The book changed how people approach biology forever, and has fundamental impacts on modern science, religion, and other aspects of the society.”
This is generally the story endorsed by educators, communicators, and policy specialists. All of which utilize the term revolution in describing this apparent upheaval. In this restating of history, the ‘revolution’ aspect is obvious. Darwin publishes ‘The Origin of Species’, everybody is immediately onboard and biology is changed forever
It’s easy to see how this history fails. Moreover, how the term revolution becomes a blinding category. Complete attribution to Darwin implicitly disregards the contributions of other scientists at the time. This is a genuine problem with revolution as a category. It advances a great man theory of science in which progress is brought about by a single individual’s work and intelligence. Darwin’s contemporaries are numerous, and he recognizes his debt. However, the naming of popular revolutions within science: “Newtonian Revolution”, “Copernican Revolution”, “Darwinian Revolution”
There has been plenty of literature questioning the validity of these terms, but the damage is already done. We are presented with a single winner who triumphs over a gaggle of faceless losers. By emphasizing one man as the progenitor for change, we relegate his contemporaries to footnotes. The contributions of Alfred Russel Wallace or Robert Chambers, both of which have been argued to be the real ‘revolutionaries’ (Secord 2000, Brackman 1980).
In presenting a single linear sequence of events, we ignore, for example, the interpretation of evolutionary thought overseas. In China, Huxley’s ‘Evolution and Ethics’ was presented as the latest continuation of Confucian thought. Whereas in India, the Bengali Bhadralok community presented Darwin within the context of Samkhya thought. A dualist school within Hinduism that emphasized an ontology of constant progression and dissolution (Elshakry, 2010). Multiple narratives can be constructed, choosing one is to deny the others their significance.
In his work “The Darwinian Revolution” Michael Ruse anticipates this issue of finding where to start and draws his markers between the years of 1830 and 1870 (Ruse, 1979). His argument was that this represented the period of greatest change in the attitudes concerning evolutionary thinking. In measuring this, he uses the example of the Cambridge examinations in science.
“In 1851 one question was as follows. “Reviewing the whole fossil evidence, shew that it does not lead to a theory of natural development through a natural transmutation of species”. By 1873, however a question told a students to assume “the truth of the hypothesis that the existing species of plants and animals have been derived by generation from other widely different” and to get on with discussing the causes”
If we start our analysis at this point, then the pre-paradigmatic theories in evolution are those of Lamarckism, which posited the inheritance of acquired characteristics as a mechanism for species change; Catastrophism, which emphasized extinction and replacement through periodic catastrophic events; Transformism, which proposed that species gradually transform into new forms over time; Natural Theology, which sought to reconcile divine design with observable natural phenomena; and Uniformitarianism, which focused on gradual geological processes shaping the Earth over immense periods (Bowler, 2009).
However, it seems that even after Darwin publishes his “Origin of Species” the pre-paradigmatic phase continues within evolutionary science. There have been recent surges of interest in fitting the development of evolutionary biology into a Kuhnian paradigm-structure (Tanghe et al).
Bowler (1983) notes three schools that could be argued as constituting pre-paradigm science: Lamarckism, orthogenesis, and mutation theory. Another candidate, even if not widely accepted, was that of theistic evolution. Each of the previously mentioned schools competed with each other and had their own specific niche of study depending on what complimented their theory (Largent 2009). Darwin's work, while transformative, did not immediately unite the scientific community under a single paradigm. Instead, multiple competing schools emerged.
“For example, neo-Darwinists were preoccupied with adaptations, mutationists with discontinuous variations and orthogenesists or adherents of the idea of straight-line evolution with (presumed) trends in the fossil record.”
However, if we want to advance an argument for a Darwinian Revolution then this timeline is unacceptable because this stage or pre-paradigm thinking occurs after Darwin published his “Origin of Species”. Tanghe (2021) argues that the true paradigmatic shift only occurred with the Modern Synthesis in the 20th century. The effect of which consolidated evolutionary theory around population genetics as its core framework
An attempt can be made to excuse this timeline by arguing for an ‘eclipse of Darwinism’. This term describes the period from the 1880s to the 1930s when Darwin's theory of natural selection faced scepticism and alternative evolutionary mechanisms gained prominence until Darwin’s re-emergence in the early 20th century (Bowler 1983).
The ‘eclipse of Darwinism’ skews dangerously close to revisionism. As Tanghe (2017) points out, Darwinism was never the dominant paradigm, but it was never ‘eclipsed’. It was one of several competing theories and changed significantly during its ‘reappearance’ in the 20th century (Tanghe, 2017) paper. In attempting to apply a revolutionary framework, the metaphor has the ability to obscure the history of an era. The categories used to describe certain periods will emphasize and understate certain events. In attempting a fair historiography, the epistemic category we employ to understand and make sense of science (its progress, practices, and history) should have some qualities that lend themselves to a more nuanced understanding.
In tracing the transformation of Darwinism into a dominant paradigm we find multiple cultural reasons. Julian Huxley, helped in framing Darwinism as a reborn and scientifically robust framework. This historiographical reframing distanced Darwinian principles from earlier controversial applications, such as eugenics and social Darwinism (Weindling, 2012). Additionally, the reconciliation of Darwin's natural selection with Mendelian genetics provided a coherent synthesis that addressed longstanding criticisms about the mechanisms of evolution. Parallel efforts to reform public perception through education and accessible scientific communication also played a substantial role. These are all cultural and social reasons for the shift in paradigms within evolutionary biology.
Revolution as a category likes to place the only consequential events affecting scientific progress as scientific in nature. It’s only a new paradigm within science which can force progression from one paradigm to another. However, science is not insular. It is affected and can affect the social and political structures around it.
Hodge (2005) argues this in his paper:
“The notion of a ‘Darwinian revolution’ was first promoted by Darwin’s supporters in the 1860s, in efforts to convince people that Darwin had wrought such a comprehensive and irresistible transformation of biological science that, as in a political revolution, no compromise with the old regime was possible.”
By filling the narrative with solely scientific objects, we’re unable to meaningfully analyse the other possible reasons for why an idea was rejected or accepted. In framing paradigms as only being vulnerable to usurping by other scientific paradigms, we’ve inadvertently relegated cultural and social events surrounding a theory. Through this process, we become limited in our ability to describe science and its relation to other cultural and social phenomena.
This is especially important for Darwinism, which represents a ‘multitude’: an ideology, worldview, and ontology. When Darwin published his “Origin of Species” something happened. Revolution as a term described this something. The pertinent question is whether it was the best term to describe it. By removing it as an interpretive category, we’re forced to nominate a new contender since we still require a structure in interpreting the history of science. Hacking (1992) expresses this necessity in the tension between philosopher and historian and their need for frameworks to explain the world.
“The historian may conclude that the philosopher’s use of the tool is bunk, irrelevant to understanding the past. Nevertheless, the philosopher needs the history, for if the tool does not provide a coherent and enlightening ordering of the record, then it has no more place in sound philosophy than any other fantasy ”
We require a structure that can adequately respond to the shortcoming that ‘revolution’ faced. So far, we have identified a number of issues in using revolution as an interpretive category of history:
A proper category of history should avoid these limitations. While historians of science have proposed a number of alternate interpretive categories (Bycroft, 2024; Kaye 2024). Instead, we propose clarifying the core theoretical constructs employed in historical research. We do not want to advance a new way of constructing ‘big-picture’ interpretations of history. In doing this, we perform an appraisal of our core vocabulary and how it can be rearticulated to allow for a more nuanced understanding.
To accomplish this, we borrow from William H. Sewell and his work “Logics of History”. This was an attempt to combine “historians’ nuanced sense of social temporalities, anthropologists’ recognition of the power and complexity of culture, and sociologists’ commitment to explanatory rigor” (Sewell, 2005, p. ix)
To perform this synthesis, Sewell borrows from Sahlins, an anthropologist, and Giddens, a sociologist, in illuminating the basic categories of structure and event.
There is no attempt to properly define structure, instead it is left as a metaphor. It is presented as multiple things. A multiplicity of “schemas and resources” that fuse and crossover in novel ways. A cultural or symbolic structure which designates an overarching system of meaning, of which the constituents connect to each other in a network of mutual clarification. People are able to shape structures, but structures regulate the boundaries in which people act. They are ‘enabling’ and allow agents to work in ways which potentially disrupt their formation (Sewell, 2005).
They are the rules and resources used in the reproduction of social systems. The “relatively bounded social practices that link person across time and space” (Sewell p. 6). For example, nations, towns, and suburbs. They are only articulated ‘in practice’. Only by tracing the actions of people can we find evidence for them. However, this does not mean that structures don’t exist – they do, but as principles that generate actions. Sewell provides the analogy of grammar in clarifying structure. Grammar exists as a collection of principles and is put into practice through speaking.
Given this formulation, how do we cause structural change? This is when Sewell introduces his conception of the “event” within history. An event is a transformation of structure. Sewells event is not a new category but instead a clarification of older theoretical categories.
An event is fully situated between the given structure of a society. In doing so a proper understanding of its historical context is necessary to understand it. We must engage with the event using the structure of its time. The role of the event is similar to that of revolution-talk. Sewell asserts that
"Lumpiness, rather than smoothness, is the normal texture of historical temporality"
An event is not viewed in isolation. It integrates the “buildup of pressures” which was present within the structure beforehand. Events are “sequences of occurrences that result in transformations of structures”. These sequences require a “rupture” or “crisis” of some kind. Some historians of science will argue that crisis is an outdated heuristic in framing scientific change. However, Giovannetti-Singh (2024) argues that ‘crisis’ can still be used as a guiding principle in understanding transformations in cultures of knowledge. A crisis must be recognized and identified in order to throw light upon the current cultures of knowledge and their subsequent change. A crisis forces us to question our underlying assumptions (Giovannetti-Singh 2024).
"The crisis spiral into transformative historical event when a sequence of interrelated ruptures disarticulates the previous structural network, makes repair difficult, and makes a novel rearticulation possible.
A historical event is a sequence of incidents that is recognized as notable by contemporaries and concludes in a permanent transformation of structures. An application of this to Darwin’s publication of the “Origin of Species” results in a more defensible historiography. Instead of being framed as the progenitor to change. Darwin’s work is yet another item in a sequence of incidents that led to the disarticulation of biological-structures at the time. It is embedded contextually within Alfred Russel Wallace and Robert Chambers works and does not necessitate a complete, irreversible, change in scientific-thinking