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Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.zarevealed to you through divine power (Quoted in Rossi, P.; Francis Bacon —From magic to science, 1957: 29).This statement, which dates back to 1575, is characteristic of the Renaissanceview of the nature of scientific research, according to which knowledge wasregarded as esoteric and secret and as something which ought, therefore, toremain solely in the possession of initiates. For this reason it comes as nosurprise that the scientist was perceived as some type of Magus figure —someone who, by means of exceptional abilities, is able to penetrate thedeepest secrets of nature. Some of the best-known scientists of the time, forexample Paracelsus, Agrippa and Cardanus, all subscribed to this view. At thatstage, for example, the latter wrote Work has no need at all for partnership.Francis Bacon was one of the first people who objected to this isolationist idealin the sciences. In all his published works (which appeared in the early part ofthe seventeenth century) there is evidence of a clear call for co-operationamong scientists for participation in the reform of the scientific edifice (ametaphor which already presupposes the idea of co-operation), and for theexchange of knowledge. It is common cause amongst historians of science thatthe seventeenth century represents an important turning-point in views on thenature of scientific research. It is therefore not incidental that the developmentof modern physical science is associated with a greater degree of collaborationand organization. Edgar Zilsel adds a further reason for the seventeenth centuryhaving been the golden age of the physical sciences:In the workshops of the late medieval artisans co-operation resulted quitenaturally from the working conditions. In contrast to a monk’s cell or ahumanist’s writing chamber a workshop or dockyard is a place whereseveral people work together (1945: 247).It has long been known that the scientific revolution of the seventeenth centuryowes much to the artisan tradition of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.These artisans worked in teams in order to solve problems of ballistics, sailing,navigation, warfare, astronomy, and so on. Zilsel’s plausible argument is thatthese working conditions, when compared with those that existed inmonasteries, led to co-operation among scientists and eventually to thedevelopment of modern science.Nowadays it is commonly accepted that the sociological dimension of scienceis a central component in any analysis of what science ought to be. Becausethese problems are the natural domain of the sociology of science, and in viewof the fact that these issues are discussed in great detail in a large number ofbooks on the subject, we shall confine ourselves to some of the more importanttopics that are dealt with in those discussions.• Sociologists of science emphasize the fact that scientists operate within aclearly defined scientific community, in invisible colleges (Diane Crane),that they belong to identifiable disciplinary paradigms (Thomas Kuhn), or9