ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

John Tyndall’s “Incommunicable” Scientific Method

• In Event: Do Individuals Matter? Character, Community, and Controversy in the History of Science

English Abstract

The physicist John Tyndall is often taken to be emblematic of the scientific methodology of “mechanical objectivity” that became prominent in the nineteenth century. According to Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, mechanical objectivity was essentially a “regulatory ideal” that directed the scientist to absent himself from his natural inquiry in order to “let nature speak for itself.” And, as George Levine shows in his book Dying to Know, Tyndall thoroughly embraced this ideal, arguing that the scientist needed to sacrifice his own self in order to present the natural world as it really was, a virtuous act that indicated that the scientific enterprise, when done properly, was a deeply moral endeavour. What this paper argues, however, is that Tyndall’s scientific methodology is only partially explained by reference to mechanical objectivity because, alongside the virtue of self-denial, Tyndall also promoted something approaching its opposite by stressing the necessity of harnessing the poetic, imaginative, and emotional faculties when engaging in scientific practice. This paper thus seeks to address this seeming contradiction by exploring Tyndall’s reflections on the discoveries of three important scientific figures: Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur, and Charles Darwin. What we will see is that for Tyndall the most transformative scientific discoveries were made precisely because the scientific practitioner was able to speculate beyond what was strictly observed. In this way, argued Tyndall, the ideal scientific method was one that was actually “incommunicable,” and reliant on an individual’s genius as much as on idealized, mechanical principles.

Author

• Ian Hesketh, University of Queensland