Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution

This volume offers broad reflections on the Scientific Revolution by leading scholars on 1500–1600 science.

David C. Lindberg (Edited by), Robert S. Westman (Edited by)

9780521348041, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 July 1990

584 pages
22.7 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.879 kg

This volume contains specialised essays, offering broad reflections on the Scientific Revolution, by a group of leading scholars actively engaged in the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science. Although the volume's thirteen original essays display a wide variety of methods and approaches, all share the aim of re-examining fundamental assumptions and questioning established interpretations of the Scientific Revolution. Some of the essays deal with questions of method, audience, and social context. Others examine the conceptions of science held by the major figures in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science, reconsider the relationship of metaphysics to scientific inquiry, investigate the ideology of scientific openness and its origins, and revise traditional estimates of the place of science within the universities. Still others reconsider the map of scientific knowledge as viewed during these two centuries, and the relationship of occult traditions to other features of the Scientific Revolution.

List of contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction Robert S. Westman and David C. Lindberg
1. Conceptions of the scientific revolution from Bacon to Butterfield: a preliminary sketch David C. Lindberg
2. Conceptions of science in the scientific revolution Ernan McMullin
3. Metaphysics and the new science Gary Hatfield
4. Proof, portics, and patronage: Copernicus's preface to De revolutionibus Robert S. Westman
5. A reappraisal of the role of the universities in the scientific revolution John Gascoigne
6. Natural magic, hermetism, and occultism in early modern science Brian P. Copenhaver
7. Natural history and the emblematic world view William B. Ashworth, Jr.
8. From the secrets of nature to public knowledge William Eamon
9. Chemistry in the scientific revolution: problems of language and communication Jan V. Golinski
10. The new philosophy and medicine in seventeenth-century England Harold J. Cook
11. Science and heterodoxy: an early modern problem reconsidered Michael Hunter
12. Infinitesimals and transcendent relations: the mathematics of motion in the late seventeenth century Michael S. Mahoney
13. The case of mechanics: one revolution or many? Alan Gabbey
Index.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX]