The seventeenth century marked a critical phase in the emergence of
modern science. But we misunderstand this process, if we assume
that seventeenth-century modes of natural inquiry were identical to
the highly specialised, professionalised and ever proliferating
family of modern sciences practised today.
In early modern Europe the central category for the study of
nature was "natural philosophy," or as Robert Hooke called it in
his Micrographia, the Science of Nature. In this discipline general
theories of matter, cause, cosmology and method were devised,
debated and positioned in relation to superior disciplines, such as
theology; cognate disciplines, such as mathematics and ethics; and
subordinate disciplines, such as the "mixed mathematical sciences"
of astronomy, optics and mechanics.
Thus, the "Scientific Revolution" of the Seventeenth Century did
not witness the sudden birth of a ~modern sciencea (TM) but rather
conflict and change in the field of natural philosophy:
Aristotelian natural philosophy was challenged and displaced, as
thinkers competed to redefine natural philosophy and its relations
to the superior, cognate and subordinate disciplines. From this
process the more modern looking disciplines of natural science
emerged, and the idea of a general Science of Nature suffered a
slow demise.
The papers in this collection focus on patterns of change in
natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, aiming to encourage
the use and articulation of this category in the historiography of
science. The volume is intended for scholars and advanced students
of early modern history of science, history of philosophy and
intellectual history. Philosophers of science andsociologists of
scientific knowledge concerned with historical issues will also
find the volume of relevance. Above all, the volume is addressed to
anyone interested in current debates about the origin and nature of
modern science.
General
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