The 17th century and "Pure Science."

Quotes from 20th century History of Science texts:

The concept of "pure science" usually rests on the premise that scientific research can be pursued independent of demands to solve technological problems. While this may be acceptable as a general statement, its application to 17th and 18th century science is problematic because at that stage of the development of society, science and technology were only just converging into the close association in which they find themselves today. In practice the argument is often used to imply that the development of science during the 17th and 18th centuries was not conditioned by the changes that occurred in society but was the work of independent thinkers. The following excerpts give two examples.

In the Preface to Force in Newton's Physics, the Science of Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century Westfall (1971) apologizes for not including a discussion of the social conditions that lead to Newton's discoveries:

"I have paid almost no attention to the social and economic setting in which dynamics emerged. When the book closes, the bourgeoisie have not risen through my efforts one inch above the level they occupied on page one. Undoubtedly the fact that so many men of ability devoted serious study to natural science in general and mechanics in particular during the seventeenth century depended to a high degree on the social and economic state of Europe. If my experience is any guide, however, it is impossible to conclude from seventeenth-century literature on mechanics that practical considerations, technological problems set by the economic system, guided and determined the conceptual development of science. The most important applications of dynamics at the time were to problems in pure science - the celestial dynamics of Newton's Principia epitomised the use to which it was put - and as far as the seventeenth century was concerned, it was more by accident than design that the engineers of a later age would exploit its conclusions to such effect."

Hall (1983) writes in The Revolution in Science 1500 - 1750 that

"a Marxist proposition that the development of commerce and industry in the Renaissance, and perhaps particularly its global extent, stimulated a certain kind of intellectual activity in Europe may be taken as valid, though hardly adequate to account for any specific events (such as the Copernican revolution in astronomy) that one might care to name, whereas the strong form of the same proposition, that commerce and industry dictated problems for natural philosophers to solve seems (to me, at any rate) palpably false."

Quite logically political and social developments during the 17th and 18th centuries do not rate a mention in Hall's book at all.

References

Hall, A. R. (1983) The Revolution in Science 1500 - 1750. Longman, London.

Westfall, R. S. (1971) Force in Newton's Physics, the Science of Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century. Macdonald, London.

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