Fixing the Sky by James Rodger Fleming Page A

temporal coverage, however, remained a continuing challenge. 4
    In 1949 one of the early champions of the idea of a scientific revolution, the historian Herbert Butterfield, wrote the following:
    Since the Scientific Revolution overturned the authority in science not only of the middle ages but of the ancient world—since it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics—it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the realm of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. Since it changed the character of habitual mental operations even in the conduct of the non-material sciences, while transforming the whole diagram of the physical universe and the very texture of human life itself, it looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance. 5
    More recently, a prominent feminist scholar, Carolyn Merchant, saw the same events as a disaster of unmitigated proportions: “The removal of animistic, organic assumptions about the cosmos constituted the death of nature—the most far-reaching effect of the Scientific Revolution.” 6 She argured that because scientists had redefined nature as a system of dead, inert particles moved by external rather than inherent forces, their endorsement of the reductionistic framework of the mechanical philosophy legitimized nature’s manipulation and progressive destruction. Power over nature was fully compatible with the values of scientists’ ultimate supporters—governments—especially the military establishment, commodifiers, and other ideologues and opportunists of various stripes. Others wonder if there have been many scientific revolutions, or perhaps none at all! 7
    Most historians agree that since the seventeenth century, scientists have attempted to complete the Baconian program, elevating the attainment of natural knowledge to the sine qua non of human achievement, and then wielding this knowledge to gain power over and control of nature for the stated purpose of improving the human condition, however narrowly defined, but often falling short of this goal. This program, the opening wedge of a revolution articulated in different ways by Galileo, Descartes, and others, was more than a new set of techniques in the laboratory or the field. It was a revolution in thought that placed humanity at the conceptual and willful center of the universe, redefined our relationship with the natural world, elevated the scientific method to the pinnacle of truth recently vacated by the church fathers, and dealt a blow to apocalyptic thinking. As the Enlightenment eroded belief in divine providence as a moving force in history, the historiographic void was filled by the notion of progress, a secular notion based on the development and application of human reason to the challenges of understanding, prediction, and ultimately, control.

Great Fires and Artificial Volcanoes
    In the closing decades of the eighteenth century in Europe, and slightly later in Russia and the United States, serious attempts were made to broaden the geographic coverage of weather observations, standardize their collection, and publish the results. Individual observers in particular locales dutifully tended to their journals while networks of cooperative observers gradually extended the meteorological frontiers. No one, however, had yet proposed a serious scientificbased program of weather control. James Pollard Espy (1785–1860) was a leading meteorologist of his day, the first to be employed by the U.S. government in this capacity. Born into a farm family in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and educated at Transylvania University in Kentucky, he worked as a frontier schoolmaster and lawyer until he moved to