Barbara J. Shapiro. A Culture of Fact: England, 1550-1720. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000. x + 284 pp. $42.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8014-3686-4.

Reviewed by Mark Knights (School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich)
Published on H-Albion (May, 2002)

Shapiro argues that the "modern fact" was "a rather late arrival in natural philosophy, having become a well-established concept elsewhere before it was adopted by the community of naturalists" (p. 2). The "fact," she suggests, originated not in science but in the legal practices and standards of eye witness and testimony. Shapiro recognises that her book continues an argument begun in Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth Century England (1983); and readers of the earlier work will find much that is familiar. But her argument has been given new significance by the innovative work of Steven Shapin, Lorraine Daston, and Peter Dear on the social construction of truth, on objectivity, and on experiment.[1] Shapiro's new book is therefore in part an engagement with this recent historiography. In particular, she challenges Shapin's emphasis on gentility as the factor conferring legitimacy of truth claims. She argues that observation and expertise were more important than social status. Indeed, the discourse of fact was not new to "natural philosophy," but borrowed from other discourses of fact, notably the law. Thus, although "the courtroom and the rooms of the Royal Society shared a great deal..., whatever the courtroom was, it was certainly not a place of shared, gentlemanly trust" (p. 6, see also ch. 6). Having emerged in the legal arena, and partly because the lay participation of jurors diffused the concept, Shapiro suggests that "fact" contributed to a wide range of intellectual enterprises, and historical writing in particular. Bacon played a key role in cross-fertilising the legal and historical definition into natural philosophy, though continental influences were also important.

Having established these key points, the rest of the book explores a wider "culture of fact." One chapter investigates human observation as the result of travel or news reportage, genres which also stressed credible witnesses and particular events, thereby creating "norms of impartiality and fidelity" (p. 4, see also ch. 4). Another chapter suggests that "the successful deployment of the proofs of matter of fact in the sphere of religion played an important role in making 'fact' a central cultural category" (p. 5, see also ch. 7). At the end of the seventeenth century, John Locke elevated fact into a generally applicable philosophical category no longer tied to particular disciplines. Thus by the early eighteenth century there was a general "culture of fact," so much so that, as a final chapter shows, it could promote a new type of literature, the novel, which purported to relate "facts" while creating fictions. Shapiro thus engages with (though does not dissent from) recent work by cultural, intellectual, and literary historians to argue that the rhetoric of fact fostered a polite, non-contentious mode of discourse as well as new literary genres. Fact thus had a far-reaching cultural impact, well into the eighteenth century.

Questions about fact, fiction, and truth are surely some of the most important concerns of the early modern period and Shapiro is both right to concentrate our attention on them and to do so in a way that demolishes our post-Enlightenment division of knowledge. The book's concern with fact in many of its guises should ensure that its argument has wide appeal to a variety of different disciplines. Indeed one of the strengths of the book is the attempt to show "the interrelatedness of the various discourses of fact" and Shapiro is to be praised and admired for this interdisciplinary undertaking. Scholars will be encouraged by it to think more about the relationships between specialisms.

However, if the different cultural contexts were interrelated, the fundamental argument that a definition of fact emerged first in, and because of, sixteenth-century law seems questionable. Shapiro is right to remind us of the importance of the law in the context of fact-making and fact-finding. But the law does not work in a vacuum. What was driving its innovation? Shapiro suggests that religion played an important part in "diffusing" the new concept; but it seems more likely that conflicts over belief played a pivotal role in shaping the sixteenth century culture in which legal and other questions of fact became crucial. Shapiro suggests that arguments from "fact" by religious polemicists were adopted "rather late," in the late seventeenth century; but this is only because Shapiro's discourse of fact is based on criteria which at times marginalize broader discussions of "truth" out of which definitions and the language of fact emerged. Conscience, for example, is not considered as a means towards establishing "truth"; there is no treatment of conflicting appeals to the Bible before the seventeenth century; and the different types of religious witness and personal testimony are hardly considered at all. A discussion of truth might, in a religious context, have considered fallibility, the sacramental real presence, witchcraft, conviction, rival polemical strategies, prophecy, and "knowledge" of election. Indeed, if we are looking for a "trigger" for change, religious conflict might seem a good starting point, though social, political, and institutional change should also be factored in. Shapiro's definition of fact as legalistically witness-based thus causes problems and there is an ambiguity at the heart of the book about whether it is investigating the truth of fact, the concept or language of fact, or the concept of truth. The pursuit of the language of fact wins out, though it is never explicit that this is the project at stake. This is not to say that she should have written a different book; rather that the emergence of a language of fact, which may well have derived from the law, needs to be set against a larger canvass of its constituent concepts (as was done, perhaps more successfully, in Probability and Certainty).

Moreover, a different approach might have taken the various aspects of fact-making and truth-claims in turn and pursued them across the different intellectual and cultural fields. Claims made in law, history, reportage, religion, and philosophy for the importance of eye-witness accounts and personal testimony, for example, might have thus been taken and explored together as well as in their separate thematic chapters. This might have highlighted the contribution of key individuals, chronologies, and issues more clearly, leading to a greater emphasis on the particular contexts shaping the concept of fact.

Finally, one might question the extent to which the "norms" claimed by Shapiro were established as practice or remained ideals. What is often striking about discussions about fact and truth is how much they were contested rather than agreed on. Division or difference--whether in the religious, legal, political, intellectual, or social spheres--fostered rivalry over how the criteria of fact and truth should be interpreted. Whilst this may, as Shapiro argues, have encouraged a common belief in the rules of the game, the application of those rules was often highly contested to the extent that the rules could seem redundant (as, for example, with press reporting's claims to impartiality and factuality). Since Shapiro is far more interested in the theoretical rules than in their practice (and pp. 89-90 make clear this is a conscious decision) this probably explains her problem with the recent historiography of science, which is intensely interested in practice.

Note

[1.] S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985); S. Shapin, The Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England (Chicago, 1994); L. Daston, "Baconian Facts, Academic Civility and the prehistory of objectivity," Annals of Scholarship 8 (1991); L. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1650-1750 (Cambridge, Mass., 1997); P. Dear, Discipline and Experience: the mathematical way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1995).

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Citation: Mark Knights. Review of Shapiro, Barbara J., A Culture of Fact: England, 1550-1720. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. May, 2002.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=6280

Copyright © 2002 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.