Thomas Kuhn, in his famous Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argued that the essential learning that goes on in science and that underlies scientific change is perceptual and precedes interpretation. Dr. Bono argues that interpretation of perception is critical as well, and one cannot understand interpretation unless one recognizes the crucial ties of individual scientists to larger communities of discourse and belief. These ties may be cultural, religious, social or of some other sort; but they are reflected in the scientist's attitudes toward and use of language in the description and interpretation of these perceptions. This theory, if correct, more clearly shows how so-called external factors like culture and religion directly affect the development of science. If successful, therefore, this study promises to have a very significant impact on the history and philosophy of science. Like Kuhn, Dr. Bono is turning to the paradigm case of scientific change, the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, to see how changes in language and discourse affected science. He seeks to relate changes in scientific thought from about 1500 to 1670 to the emergence of new assumptions and practices for interpreting language, texts, and nature. These new principles of language emerged, Dr. Bono argues, in response to new understandings of the relationship between the "Word of God" and the "Languages of Man" fostered by Renaissance Humanism, Neoplatonism and magic, and both the reformed and radical religions of Protestantism. In other words, he argues that the new humanistic studies of the Renaissance and new challenges to the doctrinal views of the Church in the Reformation radically altered the attitudes of educated laymen towards the status of language. The received writings from the ancients could no longer be considered absolute but rather are contingent and must be compared to one's own observation. It was this attitude which fostered the Scientific Revolution. In order to demonstrate the relationship between science and changes in modes of discourse and interpretation, Dr. Bono will try 1) to situate these new "theories" of language within their wider cultural and religious setting; 2) to show the consequences of specific assumptions about the nature of language for the methodologies and ideas of scientists and physicians; and 3) to suggest how assumptions about language link practioners of early modern science to non-scientific communities and their discourses.
