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 44
Page 5
... fact collecting and experimentation.” Mathematical physics was, for example, a very different sort of practice from botany. 3. In the seventeenth century the word “science” (from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge or wisdom) tended ...
... fact collecting and experimentation.” Mathematical physics was, for example, a very different sort of practice from botany. 3. In the seventeenth century the word “science” (from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge or wisdom) tended ...
Page 8
... fact that most seventeenth-century people had never heard of our scientific ancestors and probably entertained beliefs about the natural world very different from those of our chosen forebears. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of ...
... fact that most seventeenth-century people had never heard of our scientific ancestors and probably entertained beliefs about the natural world very different from those of our chosen forebears. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of ...
Page 10
... fact the very distinction between the social and the political, on the one hand, and “scientific truth,” on the other, is partly a cultural product of the period this book discusses. What is commonsensically thought of as science in the ...
... fact the very distinction between the social and the political, on the one hand, and “scientific truth,” on the other, is partly a cultural product of the period this book discusses. What is commonsensically thought of as science in the ...
Page 12
... fact that this 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 ...
... fact that this 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 ...
Page 17
... fact that the spots were on the sun's surface to the conclusion 1. Scholasticism was a form of Aristotelian philosophy, especially as developed by Saint Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–74), and taught in the medieval universities (“Schools ...
... fact that the spots were on the sun's surface to the conclusion 1. Scholasticism was a form of Aristotelian philosophy, especially as developed by Saint Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–74), and taught in the medieval universities (“Schools ...
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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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