of the attention space.^9 But this is given up in time, primarily because scientists
are more eager to move on to a new research front than they are to stay and
defend losing positions. Thus, in the two ways in which science differs from
philosophy—eventual consensus and a fast-moving research front—the latter
is what makes the difference for the former. Science arrives at social consensus
because the research front is still moving, and it is easier to make a reputation
there than by clinging to old controversies.
What then are the social conditions which brought about this combination
of rapid research front plus consensus on older results? One possibility is
empiricism. Many kinds of organized empiricism had developed in Europe by
the 1600s. Dissections at the Padua medical faculty led to Vesalius’s new
anatomy in 1543; Tycho Brahe’s observatories in Denmark and Prague pro-
duced detailed astronomical data from 1576 to 1600; by the late 1600s there
was a veritable enthusiasm of private naturalistic collections. But the difference
between European rapid-discovery science and traditional science is not a
matter of empiricism. Traditional science is essentially empirical. We see the
limits of sheer empirical accumulation in the official Chinese astronomical
bureaus, which brought neither rapid discovery nor consensus despite many
centuries of observation; similarly, Albert the Great’s naturalist collection set
off no research front. The collections fashionable among the gentry of the
1600s tended toward curious anomalies and did little to develop explanatory
theory (Impey and McGregor, 1985; Girouard, 1978: 163–80). One may
conclude that empiricism by itself does not reach very high levels of intellectual
abstraction and systematization, and does so only when naturalistic empiricists
are brought into contact with the competitive intellectual community of phi-
losophers. Philosophy-plus-empiricism does not yield research-front science,
but philosophical networks are one of the necessary ingredients.
What else is needed? Two other possibilities are research technology and
mathematics. Both of these went into accelerated development at the time of
the scientific revolution. In some respects they are alternatives; some of the
scientific takeoff, such as that of Galileo or Boyle, was associated with research
technologies; other parts of the takeoff, such as the astronomy of Copernicus
and Kepler, were essentially mathematical. At a deeper level, we shall see that
both research technology and mathematics acquired a similar social organiza-
tion at this time.
technologizing the research front
Rapid-discovery science is not just a network of persons or of ideas; it is
the connection between the human network and a genealogy of research tech-
nologies. The research front consists of the most recent edge of those technolo-
gies. The scientific revolution coincided with the setting in motion of this tech-
Cross-Breeding Networks and Rapid-Discovery Science • 535