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
Page xiii
... historians whose work I use so freely and whose books and papers are listed in the accompanying bibliographic essay. There should be no doubt about the legitimate sense in which this is as much their book as mine, yet the ...
... historians whose work I use so freely and whose books and papers are listed in the accompanying bibliographic essay. There should be no doubt about the legitimate sense in which this is as much their book as mine, yet the ...
Page 1
... historians announced the real existence of a coherent, cataclysmic, and climactic event that fundamentally and ... historian Alexandre Koyré celebrated the conceptual changes at the heart of the Scientific Revolution as “the most ...
... historians announced the real existence of a coherent, cataclysmic, and climactic event that fundamentally and ... historian Alexandre Koyré celebrated the conceptual changes at the heart of the Scientific Revolution as “the most ...
Page 2
... historians' usage, generally refers to the period in European history from roughly 1550 to 1800. I shall be using the term in a slightly more restrictive sense, to denote the period ending about 1700–1730. Later I will use the terms ...
... historians' usage, generally refers to the period in European history from roughly 1550 to 1800. I shall be using the term in a slightly more restrictive sense, to denote the period ending about 1700–1730. Later I will use the terms ...
Page 3
... historians have become increasingly uneasy with the very idea of “the Scientific Revolution.” Even the legitimacy of each word making up that phrase has been individually contested. Many historians are now no longer satisfied that there ...
... historians have become increasingly uneasy with the very idea of “the Scientific Revolution.” Even the legitimacy of each word making up that phrase has been individually contested. Many historians are now no longer satisfied that there ...
Page 4
... historians do not now accept that the changes wrought on scientific beliefs and practices during the seventeenth ... historians' identification of “the" original Scientific Revolution. Why Write about the Scientific Revolution? There are ...
... historians do not now accept that the changes wrought on scientific beliefs and practices during the seventeenth ... historians' identification of “the" original Scientific Revolution. Why Write about the Scientific Revolution? There are ...
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