INTRODUCTION

In 1743 the Norwegian-Danish government distributes a questionaire to all the

government officials. The answers from Norway consists of 172 pieces. The main topic
of the questionaire is topography. This, together with other contemporary sources, the
main topic of the paper conveys the way of thinking): the mentality of the time.
This discourse was delivered at Congressgebouw, den Haag, at the European Social
Science History Conference in May 1996.
The publication of the questionnaire was finished in five volumes by Christmas 2008.

THE EARLY SPRING OF SCIENCE

A topographical investigation in early modern times

”The 43 questions”
In 1743 the Danish-Norwegian government distributed a questionaire to all government
officials. 43 questions were to be answered. As the clergy was reckoned to be the
learned class, the questionaire was also sent on to the clergy all the way from the
bishops to the vicars. The answers from bailiffs of the time, however, also show a
sound knowledge of the topics in question.
Some of the descriptions are missing today, but we still have 172 left. They will be
published in five or six volumes at The compartment of sources, The national archives of
Norway. Volume I comes in the end of this year 2003, if everything go as planned. The
original intention of the questionaire at the time was to collect material for a 9-volumes
work on norwegian circumstances, a socalled topographical work. Only one volume saw
daylight.
The questions are open, that means, they state the subject of interest, but leave it much
to the interviewee to formulate the answers and give details. The answers consequently
bear the stamp of the officials personality and in a body give an impression of what
occupied the wellbred, cultured and educated class in the early 18th century. The subject
matter is in other words a piece of history of learning in this springtime of enlightenment.
Seen in this way the questionaire shows a change of pattern in way of thought.

Change of way of thought

It seems that at this time there was a feeling of change almost like the one we have in our
times: Lots of changes in a relatively short time. In the introduction to his work The first
attempt of the natural history of Norway, printed in 1752, the bishop of Bergen, Erik
Pontoppidan, states:

Our time has had the great advantage to see from the
beginning of this century the progress of science caused
by more important discoveries than many of the earlier
secula seen together.
A short view of the previous world of thought shows:
In the middle ages, roughly, the universe was seen as not understandable for man. It was
subject to the great wisdom and unscrutableness of God – or the intermediation of the
devil, inscrutable that too. The church, only, had the right to state how the world was built
and how it functioned. People were subjected to believe in a symbolic and hierachical
order of the world. A more down - to - earth inquiring attitude to the surroundings was
suppressed.
But, however, the map seemed to differ from the real world. Slowly, slowly, with many
reactions and setbacks (the new thoughts were, of course, seen as dangerous, devastating
and disintegrating on society), one worked towards a new understanding, also thanks to
the Arabic learned world. Slowly the new thoughts were accepted all over. The project of
the 43 questions shows that the thoughts of the renaissance became common amongst the
educated in Denmark-Norway too.
The nature was no longer symbolic and hierarchical. God was really present. God was
the reason for dealing with science. And science was dealt with. Getting to learn the
nature was the way to get to know the creation of God and God himself. The bishop Erik
Pontoppidan continues:

See, there is a God, … though he, that lives in an

unaccessible light, and can not be seen by the eye of an
ordinary mortal, however, the mind sees and experiences
him in his acts.

And God’s acts were the world of reality, a down-to-earth conception of our
surroundings. By studying the real world, we learned Housekeeping, the Housekeeping
of God, and the Housekeeping of man.

The Housekeeper and Housekeeping

The Housekeeper and Housekeeping were important and much used concepts. Erik
Pontoppidan, in the preface to his work The first attempt …, mentions God’s
Housekeeping with the physical world, with the stars, the fishes, the birds, the plants,
God’s houskeeping with the place, and God as the great Housekeeper of it all.
And so the researchers fell upon science in small and in big. They observed and
collected and systematized and gave names to the fishes, the birds, the fishes, the plants,
the stars, every subject of nature. The interests went further than to register the animal
kingdom, the plant kingdom and the mineral kingdom. The beginning of a social
sciencewas studied: How people lived, how they organized, what they ate, earlier and
contemporary ways of living, trade and industry, history and lingvistics and ways of
production were discussed. We see, the beginning of the science of nutrition.
Also subjects that presently might be unknown were taken into consideration. Only the
theology was left alone, as stated in the first volume of the first edition of the
Copenhagen society’s volumes:
Also subjects that might be unknown to the society were taken into consideration. Only
the theology was left alone, as stated in the first volume of the first edition of the
Copenhagen society’s volumes:
 .. Except the theology, unless the study concerns philology
or church-history in the holy bible.

Everything belonged in a greater connexion, in the houskeeping of God. Underlying

was the hope that when everything was found, then Gods whole world would be fully
understood.

The whole and the part

Consequently the whole and the part and the role of the part in the wholeness were
importent. The whole and the part were related to each other as a chinese box containing
uncountable rooms - or a beehive or a composite of the both, if such is imaginable. And
there was a sense of democracy through it all, with due regard to real knowledge. We are
all builders and contributors to the wholeness. The learning of nature or natural history it
was called. Towards a later time these descriptions are called topographical. This word
was not so much in use by this time – at least in Norway. One used several different
words, but the concern was descriptions of the place in the widest conception. The place
was seen as a whole with all the parts interacting.

The Place
Ideally each place was a unit containing everything those who lived there needed and
themselves and their habitat. An example: On one of the questions concerning herbs
and deceases, one of the officials answered:

I think that God has given each and every place the herbs
they need to cure or relieve any decease they might have.

In spite of years of hunger, in 1740 to 1742, or may be because of them, one believed in
God’s reason and order, God’s plan. It was man’s duty to find this reason and this order
and his plan. God has created the world in such a way that ideally each place should
contain people enough to live from what the place could offer, or said in the opposite
way: There should be resources enough in each place so that the people in that place
could live. Therefore it is man’s duty to study the creation in order to understand Gods
Housekeeping. Each phenomenon had to be studied apart on each place. God’s plan
was fundamentally the same everywhere, but creation was infinitely rich with local
variations in countless combinations. This made it necessary to understand difference.
Each environment, each part had its duty and contributed to the whole.

The Journey
The journey got a special meaning in this context. The journey gave a continuous
experience of places and their difference. There was an obligation to tell others about it
afterwards, very often in print. There are quite a few books of travel from this time.

The mathematical - scientific method

The enthusiasm and optimism of the time can be felt, it is almost touchable. The project
was to see, count, measure, weigh, so that others, by doing the same, could come to the
same results. There the mathematical-scientific method started. There was a great joy
and optimism in the work and a great joy of the results. Everything could be found out!
The world could be fully understood.
Well, God and his world was the ultimate reason for this research. But God himself
and spirit was above. The spiritual world was put aside. God, and the thinking and
conscious man were not condemned to be non-existing. In the opposite, Descartes, for
instance, showed the existence of God and of the spirit in man. But, as i have
understood, Descartes learned that spirit could not be weighed or measured or counted,
and could therefore not be subject to science.

The learned societies, the academies

Well, back to the officials and the clergy and their answerson the questions of 1743.
Their inspired occupation with the real world led to – and by time got – their
background in the learned societies. The university of Copenhagen didn’t function well
at the time. In 1728 it simply burned down. Things like that happen. The new
occupations with natural history led to a demand for contact with others of the same
interests, ways of communication.
The beginning of The society of Copenhagen in 1742 and its activities is one of the
factors that created the professional environment that made possible the questionaire of
the 43 questions. The later bishop in Bergen, Erich Pontoppidan was among the seven
learned members who constituted The Copenhagen society for the lovers of learning and
branches of knowledge. The members were well established and learned personalities in
the danish and international academic life. The members met weekly in the home of the
preses, the lord Johan Ludvig Holstein for discussions and reading of papers to each
other. The members especially, had an obligation to contribute with their papers for
discussion and publishing. All interested, members or not, were invited to send in papers.
Francis Bacon was the great inspirer and giver of ideas. His idea was that all the
branches of knowledge should not be used for a narrow egoistical or economical purpose.
In the learned societies all the results should be made accessible for the public. The
Copenhagen society followed, as we can see, this concept. The Copenhagen society’s
publications started in 1745.
The academy was modelled on academies elsewhere in Europe, created as a
consequence of the thoughts of the renaissance. At last the renaissance came to us living
up in the north. Pontoppidan states the importance of the inspiration of such learned
societies:

To the progress of the history of nature have almost in all

the countries of Europe nowadays, flourishing learned
societies been of great help, by mutual encouragement,
instruction, caution, careful opposition, visitors,
experiments, and the communication of their finished
thesis to common knowledge by yearly publications.
Foreign or national language?
There was an interesting discussion: should the publishing be in danish, to serve the
native interests, or in latin to make use of the communication abroad. In the preface to the
first volume of the Copenhagen periodical publications it is stated that the prints will be
in danish, because the works mainly concerned domestic subjects. The writers were also
well learned in latin and european languages, they had access to the many foreign
models. The nearest was the swedish academy’s periodical publication that was so
renowned and loved, that people elsewere in Europe learned swedish to be able to read
the papers published there in the original language. The swedish papers were also
translated and published in Germany, France and Italy.
The learned societies contributed to make scientific papers open to the public. Otherwise
it very often took a year and a day before things like that were printed, or the manuscripts
suffered fire or were not published at all. There was also the censorship on printed
matters to take into consideration. Anyhow: The enthusiasm was the case by us and was
also the case elsewhere in Europe. There was all in all a lively, enthusiastic activity inside
and over the borders.

I want to take a big jump to our circumstances today, and give

An afterthought or a dream for the future?
We can look back upon three centuries of research. In the course of the renaissance we
gradually left a symbolic worldview and established a worldview of reason and
rationality. In the course of these centuries the scientific research on the material part of
our world has been predominant, and, as we have seen, they have altered our way of
living tremendously, mostly for good, I will only dwell on the good. The topographical
investigations were an important part of the starting of this in Norway.
The topographical descriptions concerned God’s presence in the material world, both
spirit and matter. When everything was mapped and everything understood, the hope was
that maybe man could understand, if not God himself, then perhaps the nature of God.
God and spirit covered no weight or plane or room, wherefore they were outside the
possibilities of research. Towards our time we have seen that the spiritual part of us and
of the world is situated between romanticism and a disacknowledgement that such a part
of the world exsists. For a time it became out of focus for the possibilities and interest of
science. God’s presence, spirituality, was no longer a theme.
Nowadays there is knowledge present that through the physics, chemistry and
mathematics one can suggest that a spiritual world exists. Solid matter is mostly
emptyness, according to Einstein, as i have understood, round an energypattern. This is
the case with humans too. The observation of the elementary particles itself may change
the results in the way the observer expects. Or, said in another way: the univers seems to
consist of pure energy that changes according to man’s intention and expectation.
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