The Scientific RevolutionUniversity of Chicago Press, 2018 M11 5 - 256 pages This scholarly and accessible study presents “a provocative new reading” of the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century advances in scientific inquiry (Kirkus Reviews). In The Scientific Revolution, historian Steven Shapin challenges the very idea that any such a “revolution” ever took place. Rejecting the narrative that a new and unifying paradigm suddenly took hold, he demonstrates how the conduct of science emerged from a wide array of early modern philosophical agendas, political commitments, and religious beliefs. In this analysis, early modern science is shown not as a set of disembodied ideas, but as historically situated ways of knowing and doing. Shapin shows that every principle identified as the modernizing essence of science—whether it’s experimentalism, mathematical methodology, or a mechanical conception of nature—was in fact contested by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century practitioners with equal claims to modernity. Shapin argues that this contested legacy is nevertheless rightly understood as the origin of modern science, its problems as well as its acknowledged achievements. This updated edition includes a new bibliographic essay featuring the latest scholarship. “An excellent book.” —Anthony Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review |
From inside the book
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Page 6
... nature” as the object of inquiry was understood in radically different ways ... natural world. And this interest provides the second legitimate justification ... book will follow early modern usage, including the designation of relevant ...
... nature” as the object of inquiry was understood in radically different ways ... natural world. And this interest provides the second legitimate justification ... book will follow early modern usage, including the designation of relevant ...
Page 8
... nature and knowledge very different from those elaborated by our officially ... book to be historiographically up to date—drawing on some of the most recent ... book is not written for professional specialized scholars, and readers who ...
... nature and knowledge very different from those elaborated by our officially ... book to be historiographically up to date—drawing on some of the most recent ... book is not written for professional specialized scholars, and readers who ...
Page 12
... book devotes much attention to what have been called the “mechanical,” the “experimental,” and the “corpuscular” philosophies, do I simply equate these practices with the Scientific Revolution. Not all seventeenth-century natural ...
... book devotes much attention to what have been called the “mechanical,” the “experimental,” and the “corpuscular” philosophies, do I simply equate these practices with the Scientific Revolution. Not all seventeenth-century natural ...
Page 14
... nature of this account, I want to intersperse interpretative generalizations with a series of relatively detailed vignettes of particular scientific beliefs and practices. I do this because I want this book, however arbitrarily ...
... nature of this account, I want to intersperse interpretative generalizations with a series of relatively detailed vignettes of particular scientific beliefs and practices. I do this because I want this book, however arbitrarily ...
Page 37
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Contents
1 | |
15 | |
Two How Was It Known? | 65 |
Three What Was the Knowledge For? | 119 |
Bibliographic Essay | 167 |
Index | 235 |
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Common terms and phrases
air pump Alchemy Alexandre Koyré ancient Aristotelian astronomy Bacon belief bodies Book of Nature Boyle's Cambridge University Press causal causes century certainty changes chaps chapter Chicago Press claims clock conception Copernican culture Descartes Descartes's disciplines Early Modern Europe early modern period early modern science earth effects English especially essay example experience experimental fact factual Galileo historians History of Science Hobbes human idea intellectual intelligible Isaac Newton Johannes Hevelius mathematical matter mechanical accounts mechanical explanation mechanical philosophers Medicine mercury Merton Thesis metaphor microscope modern natural philosophers motion natural history natural knowledge natural philosophy natural world Newton objects observed occult orig Oxford phenomena philoso physical practice practitioners Princeton principles produced proper publ relation reliable religious Renaissance Robert Boyle Robert Hooke role Roy Porter Royal Society Scientific Revolution secure sense sensibilities seventeenth Shapin sixteenth social sources structure telescope texts theory things tion traditional ture University of Chicago York