A History of English Language

9
The Appeal to Authority, 1650–1800
186. The Impact of the Seventeenth Century.
The social, commercial, technological, and intellectual forces that were released in the
Renaissance had profound effects on the English language, as the previous chapter has
described. In the middle and latter part of the seventeenth century the evolution and
interaction of these forces led to a culmination, a series of crises, and an eventual
reaction. Both the crises and the responses to them were provoked by transmutations of
forces that had energized the Renaissance, and these new trends became disruptively
intense by the middle of the seventeenth century. The most obvious crisis was the English
Civil War of the 1640s, followed by the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. The
intellectual turbulence, which involved matters of language and language use, among
many other concerns, is somewhat harder to trace than the political turbulence, and it has
often been misread. While it is natural for us to take the rationality of scientific discourse
as a kind of norm, the new scientists and philosophers of the seventeenth century saw
their world view challenged by an outpouring of fervent expression that was often driven
by religious zeal and occult science, and which incorporated large measures of
irrationality and obscurity, often accompanied by belief in astrology, alchemy, and
witchcraft. Radical Nonconformists, Dissenters, and other perceived fanatics were
lumped together under the pejorative label “Enthusiasts” by writers and scientists
connected with the Royal Society, as well as by more conservative Anglicans. Supporters
of rational science such as Henry More, Thomas Sprat, John Wilkins, and Robert Boyle
were disturbed by the “ranting” language of the Enthusiasts. More conserva-tive minds
were concerned about the very fact of public expression and the sheer bulk of
controversial publications.
Learned discourse was no longer confined to elite circles; it was now being
extensively published, in English. The practitioners of natural science seemed to glory
not only in condemning the Enthusiasts and the old authorities but also in open
disputation. They regarded science as a cooperative enterprise which required
disagreements. In the seventeenth century, however, it was still very difftcult for people
to conceive that open controversy was either safe or beneficial to society. As one
conservative nobleman put it, “Controversye Is a Civill Warr with the Pen which pulls
out the sorde soone afterwards.” 1 In the wake of the recent revolutionary turmoil (1640–
1660), featuring civil war, the execution of a king, and a Cromwellian interregnum, his
apprehensions were understandable. Thus, there arose during the latter seventeenth
century a highly focused public consciousness as regards language. Yet, with few
exceptions, though often for different reasons, educated English people recoiled from the
solution Thomas Hobbes proposed—that all power, even over knowledge—must reside
in a single political authority.