The roots of the Belgian history of science go back to the Renaissance period when, under the influence of humanism, a historical interest in the classical sciences flourished at the University of Leuven. This interest manifested itself mainly in the publication of critical editions of sources and bio-bibliographical works.
A true historiography of science only gradually emerged from the crucial, pivotal period that culminated in the Belgian Revolution, when the foundations of the Belgian scientific system were established.
Together with the establishment of important national science institutions - the universities, the Royal Military Academy, the Brussels Academy of Sciences and the Observatory - a great interest in the historical background of the 'national' sciences was born.
Some, like the Ghent rector Frans-Peter Cassel, also propagated the usefulness of teaching history of science to students. As a result, a considerable number of contributions on the history of science have been written by scholars from Ghent.
Most of these contributions were of a biographical nature, although a number of works illuminating the history of Belgian science within a broader cultural framework also appeared.
Cultural-scientific journals such as the Correspondance mathématique et physique, founded by Jean Garnier and Adolphe Quetelet, were the forum for such publications. Medicine in particular found a number of competent historians in the first decades after the Revolution, such as Adolphe Burggraeve and Cornelius Broeckx.
The Académie de Médecine and local medical societies encouraged historical research, for example by organising essay competitions.
The historiography of the natural sciences got off to a much slower start. As with medicine, here too it was mainly biographical studies of precursors that were produced, such as the series on famous botanists that Jean Kickx wrote, and overviews of recent developments, such as Jean Garniers's article Histoire des sciences pendant la Révolution française (1817).
Quetelet and the positivist approach
Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) The actual foundation of the Belgian history of science was laid by Adolphe Quetelet. His most important works are Histoire des sciences mathématiques et physiques chez les Belges (1864) and Sciences mathématiques et physiques au commencement du XIXe siècle (1867).Quetelet regarded science as a measure of the cultural level of a civilisation. He believed in a direct analogy between the development of scientific thought and the development of the individual and the nation. At the same time, however, he defended a rather narrow, positivistic view of the nature of science: the maturity of a science could be gauged from the extent to which it allowed a mathematical formulation. Only mathematics and physics met these standards.
Other sciences such as chemistry and geology, although enormously popular at the time, were therefore given much less attention in Quetelet's historiography. Quetelet's influence was particularly great, both for the general orientation of his views on the history of science and philosophy, and for the limitation of his research to mathematics and physics, with the result that the other sciences were only with difficulty integrated into the broader framework of the national history of science.
History of science in the service of the present
In the following decades, Quetelet's general view of Belgian history of science formed the framework within which a wide range of science history themes flourished. Among others, the role of the old University of Leuven in the development of science - stimulating or hindering? - and the case of Galileo, among others, caused great controversy among historians of science. The rise of neo-Thomism also aroused the interest of Catholic scholars in ancient science.
Among others the Leuven professors Julien Thirion, Jacques Laminne and Alphonse Proost and the ecclesiastic Georges Monchamp published standard works on classical astronomy, physics and Cartesianism.
An ideological or political bias was no exception in these historical studies. The glorification of the nation or the Flemish culture, or the defence of the Catholic faith were common threads. Jean-Hubert van Raemdonck's science-historical research, for example, was dominated by the recovery of the cartographer Gerard Mercator as Flemish.
Belgium was also the frame of reference in the historical studies on geography and meteorology by Henri-Emmanuel Wauwermans and Jean Vincent respectively.
A multifaceted discipline
Georges Sarton (1884-1956). Source:G. Vanpaemel, "Bijlage Wetenschapsgeschiedenis in België", in: Halleux e.a. (red.), Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België van de Oudheid tot 1815, Brussels 1998, 429. Around the turn of the century, interest in the history of science in Belgium was at a peak, both among historians and scientists, within and outside of academic circles.
Jesuit Henri Bosmans, engineer Paul Ver Eecke, professor of Greek philology Adolphe Rome and mathematician Lucien Godeaux threw themselves into the history of mathematics at different periods, while Maurice Delacre, Jean Timmermans and Albert Bruylants devoted themselves to the history of chemistry in Belgium.
The Ghent biologist Paul Van Oye, the Liège professor of geology Armand Renier, the engineer Arthur Vierendeel, the Ghent professor of geography Fernand van Ortroy and the Ghent botanist Julius MacLeod also devoted studies or reflections to the history of their discipline.
A special place in Belgian history of science is reserved for the full-time science historian George Sarton, who emigrated to the United States.
As a student of mathematics and physics, Sarton became interested in the history of science from a very broad philosophical and cultural point of view. After his studies, he devoted himself fully to the history of science. Sarton was the founder of the science journals Isis and Osiris.
Paul Mansion (1844-1919)In 1890, the history of mathematics and physics was also included in the curriculum of the science faculties of the state universities. The compulsory course was limited in scope and was assigned to a faculty member as an addition to his 'normal' assignment.
Only in exceptional cases did the lecturer also conduct historical research himself, such as at the University of Ghent, where the mathematics professor and active science historian Paul Mansion was responsible for the subject, and in Liège, where Constantin Le Paige was in charge. The subject did not take off and was dropped from the compulsory curriculum in 1928, a few years later it was dropped altogether.
Only in Brussels did the history of science remain as a free course until after the Second World War, with, among others, the very active science historian Jean Pelseneer as lecturer.
Interest in the historical study of the sciences continued to decline in the 1930s, despite the establishment in 1933 of the rather successful Belgian Committee for the History of Sciences, which, under the chairmanship of Joseph Bidez, promoted the discipline. The Belgian Committee undertook actions to bring the history of science to the attention of politicians and rectors. Until the Second World War, it was the only organisation in Belgium that was actively involved in the history of science.
Even the establishment of the National Committee for Logic, History and Philosophy of Science, under the auspices of the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique and the Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, could hardly bring about progress: it essentially took over a number of activities from the Belgian Committee. In 1970, the complaint was still being made that the history of science was misunderstood by universities and therefore had no chance of academic development. None of the bodies and associations, however, took any action to change the situation.
Vanpaemel, Geert, |"Wetenschapsgeschiedenis in België" in: Halleux e.a. (red.), Geschiedenis van de Wetenschappen in België van de Oudheid tot 1815, Brussel, 2001, 419-432.
