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51 THE TRIUMPH OF REASON
everything that goes to make up the texture of nature, such as
its perfumes and its colors. The debasement of nature is parallel
to the glorification of all that eludes it, God and man.
The Limits of Classical Science
We have tried to describe the unique historical situation in
which scientific practice and metaphysical conviction were
closely coupled. Galileo and those who came after him raised
the same problems as the medieval builders but broke away
from their empirical knowledge to assert, with the help of
God, the simplicity of the world and the universality of the
language the experimental method postulated and deciphered.
In this way, the basic myth underlying modern science can be
seen as a product of the peculiar complex which, at the close
of the Middle Ages, set up conditions of resonance and reciprocal
amplification among economic, political, social, religious,
philosophic, and technical factors. However, the rapid
decomposition of this complex left classical science stranded
and isolated in a transformed culture.
Classical science was born in a culture dominated by the
alliance between man, situated midway between the divine
order and the natural order, and God, the rational and intelligible
legislator, the sovereign architect we have conceived in our
own image. It has outlived this moment of cultural consonance
that entitled philosophers and theologians to engage in science
and that entitled scientists to decipher and express opinions
on the divine wisdom and power at work in creation. With the
support of religion and philosophy, scientists had come to believe
their enterprise was self-sufficient, that it exhausted the
possibilities of a rational approach to natural phenomena. The
relationship between scientific description and natural philosophy
did not, in this sense, have to be justified. It could be
seen as self-evident that science and philosophy were convergent
and that science was discovering the principles of an
authentic natural philosophy. But, oddly enough, the selfsufficiency
experienced by scientists was to outlive the departure
of the medieval God and the withdrawal of the epistemological
guarantee offered by theology. The originally bold bet had become
the triumphant science of the eighteenth century, 26 the