Originally published in 1960, The Edge of Objectivity helped to
establish the history of science as a full-fledged academic
discipline. In the mid-1950s, a young professor at Princeton named
Charles Gillispie began teaching Humanities 304, one of the first
undergraduate courses offered anywhere in the world on the history
of science. From Galileo's analysis of motion to theories of
evolution and relativity, Gillispie introduces key concepts,
individuals, and themes. The Edge of Objectivity arose out of this
course. It must have been a lively class. The Edge of Objectivity
is pointed, opinionated, and selective. Even at six hundred pages,
the book is, as the title suggests, an essay. Gillispie is unafraid
to rate Mendel higher than Darwin, Maxwell above Faraday. Full of
wry turns of phrase, the book effectively captures people and
places. And throughout the book, Gillispie pushes an argument. He
views science as the progressive development of more objective,
detached, mathematical ways of viewing the world, and he
orchestrates his characters and ideas around this theme. This
edition of Charles Coulston Gillispie's landmark book introduces a
new generation of readers to his provocative and enlightening
account of the advancement of scientific thought over the course of
four centuries. Since the original publication of The Edge of
Objectivity, historians of science have focused increasingly on the
social context of science rather than its internal dynamics, and
they have frequently viewed science more as a threatening instance
of power than as an accumulation of knowledge. Nevertheless,
Gillispie's book remains a sophisticated, fast-moving,
idiosyncratic account of the development of scientific ideas over
four hundred years, by one of the founding intellects in the
history of science. Featuring a new foreword by Theodore Porter,
who places the work in its intellectual context and the development
of the field, this edition of The Edge of Objectivity is a
monumental work by one of the founding intellects of the history of
science.
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