The new science and the public sphere in the premodern era

This paper argues that the New Science, which was seen as essentially a public enterprise, was moreover a major constituent of the public sphere in early modern era. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Western Europe the sphere of public experimentation, testing, and discussion related to the new science, manifested itself as a highly diversified, contested, and complex social field. Two general problems arose in constructing this cultural public sphere: the selection of participants in the debate and the inclusion of a heterogenous public in the experimental scene. National authorities employed diverse policies but none denied the necessity of public debate for testing the validity of experimentations. The public sphere had to create its own conditions of existence by imposing manifold regulations in order to make these public meetings possible and enjoyable. The regulations emphasized common interest and the moral code as the most basic condition for the sustenance of the public sphere, thus enhancing self-restraint, tolerance, and politeness on the part of both discussants and participants. The more inclusive and heterogenous the public sphere, the more these norms were required. Thus the sphere of public debate constituted by early modern science implied a civilizing process, quite different from and more encompassing than the one analyzed by Norbert Elias.