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
Results 1-5 of 47
Page ix
... Descartes's scheme for explaining magnetism 48 Descartes's scheme for explaining reflex action 49 Hooke's illustration of common objects microscopically magnified 51 Kepler's geometrically structured solar system 6o Hevelius and his ...
... Descartes's scheme for explaining magnetism 48 Descartes's scheme for explaining reflex action 49 Hooke's illustration of common objects microscopically magnified 51 Kepler's geometrically structured solar system 6o Hevelius and his ...
Page x
... magnification of a sumac stem 146 Huygens's drawing of microscopically observed protozoa 147 The brain according to Descartes 161 ophoto Credits I thank the following institutions for permission to I L L U S T R AT I O N S.
... magnification of a sumac stem 146 Huygens's drawing of microscopically observed protozoa 147 The brain according to Descartes 161 ophoto Credits I thank the following institutions for permission to I L L U S T R AT I O N S.
Page 7
... Descartes, or Boyle were hardly typical of seventeenthcentury Italians, Frenchmen, or Englishmen, and telling stories about them geared solely to their ancestral role in formulating the currently accepted law of free fall, the optics of ...
... Descartes, or Boyle were hardly typical of seventeenthcentury Italians, Frenchmen, or Englishmen, and telling stories about them geared solely to their ancestral role in formulating the currently accepted law of free fall, the optics of ...
Page 8
... Descartes, and Newton, and to views of nature and knowledge very different from those elaborated by our officially sanctioned scientific ancestors. For still other purposes we could make much of the fact that most seventeenth-century ...
... Descartes, and Newton, and to views of nature and knowledge very different from those elaborated by our officially sanctioned scientific ancestors. For still other purposes we could make much of the fact that most seventeenth-century ...
Page 11
... Descartes, Huygens, and Newton. The pride of place accorded in some traditional stories to mathematical physics and astronomy has tended to give an impression that these practices solely constituted the Scientific Revolution, or even ...
... Descartes, Huygens, and Newton. The pride of place accorded in some traditional stories to mathematical physics and astronomy has tended to give an impression that these practices solely constituted the Scientific Revolution, or even ...
Contents
1 | |
15 | |
Two How Was It Known? | 65 |
Three What Was the Knowledge For? | 119 |
Bibliographic Essay | 167 |
Index | 235 |
Other editions - View all
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