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 1
... period from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. In 1943 the French historian Alexandre Koyré celebrated the conceptual changes at the heart of the Scientific Revolution as “the most profound revolution achieved or ...
... period from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. In 1943 the French historian Alexandre Koyré celebrated the conceptual changes at the heart of the Scientific Revolution as “the most profound revolution achieved or ...
Page 2
... 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 “modern” and “modernist” to designate some ...
... 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 “modern” and “modernist” to designate some ...
Page 3
Steven Shapin. From antiquity through the early modern period, a “revolution” invoked the idea of a periodically recurring cycle. In Copernicus's new astronomy of the mid-sixteenth century, for example, the planets completed their ...
Steven Shapin. From antiquity through the early modern period, a “revolution” invoked the idea of a periodically recurring cycle. In Copernicus's new astronomy of the mid-sixteenth century, for example, the planets completed their ...
Page 10
... period this book discusses. What is commonsensically thought of as science in the late twentieth century is in some measure a product of the historical episodes we want to understand here. Far from matter-of-factly treating the ...
... period this book discusses. What is commonsensically thought of as science in the late twentieth century is in some measure a product of the historical episodes we want to understand here. Far from matter-of-factly treating the ...
Page 11
... period of interest. I am content to accept that this account of the Scientific Revolution is selective and partial. There is a moderate bias toward the empirical and experimental sciences and toward English materials. This is partly due ...
... period of interest. I am content to accept that this account of the Scientific Revolution is selective and partial. There is a moderate bias toward the empirical and experimental sciences and toward English materials. This is partly due ...
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