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 5
... means that we need an account of changes in early modern science appropriate for our less confident, but perhaps more intellectually curious, times. Yet despite these legitimate doubts and uncertainties there remains a sense in which it ...
... means that we need an account of changes in early modern science appropriate for our less confident, but perhaps more intellectually curious, times. Yet despite these legitimate doubts and uncertainties there remains a sense in which it ...
Page 8
... mean this book to be historiographically up to date—drawing on some of the most recent historical, sociological, and philosophical engagements with the Scientific Revolution. On the other hand, I do not mean to trouble readers with ...
... mean this book to be historiographically up to date—drawing on some of the most recent historical, sociological, and philosophical engagements with the Scientific Revolution. On the other hand, I do not mean to trouble readers with ...
Page 10
... mean to make it into a topic of inquiry. How and why did we come to think that such a distinction is a matter of ... means that selection is a necessary feature of any historical story, and there can be no such thing as definitive or ...
... mean to make it into a topic of inquiry. How and why did we come to think that such a distinction is a matter of ... means that selection is a necessary feature of any historical story, and there can be no such thing as definitive or ...
Page 12
... means of knowing about nature, as well as conflicts over the propriety of mechanical and experimental modes, do capture quite a lot that is worth understanding about cultural change in this period. If there is any originality about the ...
... means of knowing about nature, as well as conflicts over the propriety of mechanical and experimental modes, do capture quite a lot that is worth understanding about cultural change in this period. If there is any originality about the ...
Page 13
... means of securing that knowledge. First, the mechanization of nature: the increasing use of mechanical metaphors to construe natural processes and phenomena; second, the depersonalization of natural knowledge: the growing separation ...
... means of securing that knowledge. First, the mechanization of nature: the increasing use of mechanical metaphors to construe natural processes and phenomena; second, the depersonalization of natural knowledge: the growing separation ...
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