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 84
Page iv
... History. Classification: lcc q125.s5166 2018 | ddc 509—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016688 This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). To the memory of Susan E. Abrams ...
... History. Classification: lcc q125.s5166 2018 | ddc 509—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016688 This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). To the memory of Susan E. Abrams ...
Page xi
... History, Washington, D.C. (fig. 6); the Syndics of Cambridge University Library (figs. 13, 14, 17, 23, and 25); the Burndy Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts (fig. 15); and Edinburgh University Library (figs. 21 and 22). This is a work ...
... History, Washington, D.C. (fig. 6); the Syndics of Cambridge University Library (figs. 13, 14, 17, 23, and 25); the Burndy Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts (fig. 15); and Edinburgh University Library (figs. 21 and 22). This is a work ...
Page xiii
... historical research produced over recent decades, it nevertheless draws on the efforts of generations of scholars. Accordingly, my greatest debts are to the many other historians whose work I use so freely and whose books and papers are ...
... historical research produced over recent decades, it nevertheless draws on the efforts of generations of scholars. Accordingly, my greatest debts are to the many other historians whose work I use so freely and whose books and papers are ...
Page xiv
... years or so. For suggestions about the shape and content of that revised essay, I thank Adrian Johns, Jan Golinski, and Peter Dear. Introduction The Scientific Revolution: The History of a Term There xiv acknowledgments.
... years or so. For suggestions about the shape and content of that revised essay, I thank Adrian Johns, Jan Golinski, and Peter Dear. Introduction The Scientific Revolution: The History of a Term There xiv acknowledgments.
Page 1
Steven Shapin. Introduction The Scientific Revolution: The History of a Term There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it. Some time ago, when the academic world offered more certainty and more ...
Steven Shapin. Introduction The Scientific Revolution: The History of a Term There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it. Some time ago, when the academic world offered more certainty and more ...
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