Scientifi c Methods 315century that if “one expression were to be used to characterize the period
as a whole, it would be ‘intellectual ambiguity.’”^27 Likewise, while writing
about the formation of identity in early America, historian Greg Dening
claimed that the context was one “of ambivalence and unset defi nition”
and that the search for identity was “multivalent and unending.”^28
In the absence of clear boundaries, few Americans lauded science be-
cause it provided a totally unique view of the world or because it was a
single beacon of reliable knowledge in a haze of subjectivity, blind faith,
and make- believe. Rather, science was important because its revelations fi t
neatly into a larger system of truth that ultimately transcended any single
source of information. One scholar has called it the nineteenth- century
“truth complex.”^29 In the highly religious popular culture of the day, sci-
ence often entered general discussion through the natural theological hy-
bridization of mutually supportive physical phenomena and divine inten-
tion rather than in any purely or self consciously scientifi c guise. Orson
Fowler proclaimed in a treatise on memory that instructors should not
teach “children ANY thing in science or nature, without teaching them
GOD in it all.”^30 Asserting the value of science because of its reinforcement
of other areas of knowledge was much closer to the model of the 1700s
than the one that would dominate the 1900s. Historian Thomas Bro-
man has pointed out that eighteenth- century scientifi c pronouncements
gained their authority from the appearance of accessibility and openness.
Those who made them spoke “for anyone suffi ciently apprised of the facts
to formulate a scientifi c comprehension of the matter.”^31 As the 1800s
progressed, however, the greater boundedness of science opened new op-
portunities for boundary- work and for assertion that scientifi c knowledge
was valuable precisely because it was so unlike other, less reliable sorts of
information about the world.
MAKING SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Indeed, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as we have seen,
a larger number of English speakers began turning to a new rhetorical tool,
something one contemporary called “the strictly scientifi c method, as it
labels itself at present.”^32 While the various meanings associated with it
varied every bit as much as those attached to Baconian- style rhetoric—
and sometimes overlapped with talk of facts and induction—it differed in-
sofar as it carried with it a special link with something called “science” and
implied that the method used in the scientifi c world differed somehow
from those employed in other realms. Its modest but noticeable prolifera-