was to become the liberal, progressive, leftward beliefs of modernity. Rousseau
stepped in at virtually the founding moment of this intellectual synthesis,
selected the negative strands, and wove them into a position that was equally
viable under modern intellectual conditions. Rousseau was not a reactionary,
and he used none of the older resources of the established church, the university
metaphysics, or the legal privileges of the aristocracy. He was instead the
anti-modernist modernist, and the turf he discovered proved to be fruitful for
a major faction of modern times—indeed, down to its postmodernist incarna-
tion. Once again we see that as the underlying conditions of intellectual
productivity change, creativity bursts out simultaneously on rival fronts.
Anti-modernist Modernism and the Anti-scientific Opposition
We are now in the midst of the great reversal of intellectual alliances between
religious positions and science. Most creative intellectuals from Kepler through
Leibniz and Newton argued for the compatibility of science and religion.
Religious intellectuals such as Gassendi and Mersenne appropriated science for
their own theological purposes; on the other side, most scientists liked to
claim religious legitimation for their activities. The English scientists around
Boyle were particularly concerned to show the religious orthodoxy of their
science, and Boyle funded public lectures for the confutation of atheism by
means of the evidence of science. With Locke, however, science went over to
the side of secularization; henceforward, scientists and their philosophical
advocates would become increasingly associated with a minimalist religion
such as Deism, and eventually with outright atheism. At the same time, religion
began to turn against science; this trend emerged in the British milieu during
Locke’s lifetime, with Berkeley and Swift. In short, we are now arriving at the
“modern” lineup in which a “liberal” in religious matters tends to claim the
support of science, while religious “conservatives” turn against science.^23
We have been tracing the growth of the philosophical “left”; for its polar-
izing counterpart on the “right,” let us return to the English networks of the
late 1600s and trace the connections which flowed from the Cambridge Pla-
tonists. Their first important offspring was Newton. Newton in turn had a
network of scientific followers whose own network descendants were philoso-
phers: Berkeley, Hume, and Swedenborg. It seems surprising that the arch-rep-
resentative of the successful scientific revolution should have a train of follow-
ers which led up to turning away from science, or even to an attack upon it.
What we are seeing is a division within the camp of science itself. With the
isolated exception of Hobbes, the older mechanical philosophy, in both its
British and French branches, had been in solidarity with religion. Now the
religious politics of science were changing. Locke’s followers used scientific
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