In search of the ‘true prospect’: making and knowing the Giant's Causeway as a field site in the seventeenth century

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALASDAIR KENNEDY
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Field Site ◽  
Science Field ◽  
Discursive Formation ◽  
The North ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Natural Philosophers

AbstractThe phenomenon of the Giant's Causeway in the north of Ireland has attracted much attention over five centuries. This essay recounts the formative years between 1688 and 1708 of the Giant's Causeway as a field site and ‘philosophical landscape’ in the light of recent research on the historical geographies of scientific knowledge. This research has provided new perspectives on field science, emphasizing the spatial character of the field and its discursive formation in different spaces. A view of the field as a self-contained unit in which science is practised is rendered problematic. Instead, it is seen as part of a network of intersecting locales within which scientists and science circulate. This essay draws upon this work, exploring and mapping the spaces and techniques used by late seventeenth-century natural philosophers in London and Dublin to generate observational and conceptual knowledge of the Giant's Causeway. In doing so, the paper contributes to an understanding of the spaces of natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, of the knowledge networks within which the virtuosi operated and of the earth science field site.

Political Science

2018 ◽  
pp. 104-133
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
Gulliver's Travels ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Late seventeenth-century natural philosophers inherited the conjunction of politics and science at the core of Francis Bacon’s experimental project. Thomas Sprat’s The History of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels use the conventions of literary knowledge to express their scientific-political visions, insisting that natural philosophy cannot be understood apart from the political institutions enabling and enabled by its practice and promulgation. These writers use the experimental imagination to envisage, in turn, civil government, absolutist monarchy, and imperialism. Sprat advances scientific triumphalism and a model for schooling gentlemen into civil society.

Godly Men and Mechanical Philosophers: Souls and Spirits in Restoration Natural Philosophy

1987 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Schaffer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
World Picture ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
The World ◽  
Work World ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The ArgumentRecent historiography of the Scientific Revolution has challenged the assumption that the achievements of seventeenth-century natural philosophy can easily be described as the ‘mechanization of the world-picture.’ That assumption licensed a story which took mechanization as self-evidently progressive and so in no need of further historical analysis. The clock-work world was triumphant and inevitably so. However, a close examination of one key group of natural philosophers working in England during the 1670s shows that their program necessarily incorporated souls and spirits, attractions and congruities, within both their ontology and their epistemology. Any natural philosophical strategy which excluded spirits and sympathies from its world was condemned as tending to subversion and irreligion. This examination shows that the term ‘mechanical philosophy’ was a category given its meanings within local contexts and carries no universal sense separate from that accomplished by these natural philosophers. It also shows how the experimental praxis was compelled to treat souls and spirits, to produce them through experimental labor, and then to extend these experimentally developed entities throughout the cosmos, both social and natural. The development of mechanical philosophy cannot be used to explain the cognitive and social structure of this program, nor its success: instead, the historical setting of experimental work shows how a philosophy of matter and spirit was deliberately constructed by the end of the seventeenth century.

scholarly journals Current Situation and Optimization Strategy of Earth Science Talents Training in Colleges and Universities

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Qing Wu
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Optimization Strategy ◽  
Fresh Blood ◽  
Science Field ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Training Mode ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
Teaching Ideas

After a lot of analysis and exploration, the researchers said that at present, there are still some shortcomings in the process of developing the earth science talents training in Chinese universities, which leads to the relatively low level of the earth science talents training, which is not conducive to the cultivation and construction of the earth science talents, and has a very adverse impact on the development of China’s earth science field. To solve this problem, college teachers should actively change and innovate their teaching ideas, so as to effectively realize the transformation of earth science talents training mode, and lay a solid foundation and guarantee for the construction of earth science talents in China. In this paper, the development of geoscience talents education in colleges and universities in China at present is analyzed, and the corresponding countermeasures are put forward in combination with teaching practice, aiming at further realizing the cultivation of geoscience talents, thus delivering fresh blood for the development of geoscience in China.

The Nature of the Early Royal Society: Part I

1976 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Theodore Hoppen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Working Out

The foundation of the Royal Society marks an important step in the institutionalization of seventeenth-century British natural philosophy. The society's existence and activities provided a focus for the exchange of opinions, while its meetings and publications became forums for scientific debate. Some writers, however, have claimed much more than this for the society and have seen its establishment as marking a real watershed between, on the one hand, intellectually ‘conservative elements’ and, on the other, a set of ‘definite philosophical principles … inspiring … progressive minds’. Others have gone still further and argued not only that the society's activities ‘enormously’ accelerated ‘the development of natural sciences’, but that these activities were the result of the ‘working out of a conscious, deliberately-conceived ideal’. But views which see a single, logically consistent conception of the nature of the scientific enterprise informing the work and outlook of the Royal Society and its members involve a serious oversimplification of the complexity of natural philosophy in the late seventeenth century. Despite some important work published in recent years, we are still far from achieving a satisfactory understanding of the complicated web of traditions, sources, and intellectual systems that provided both an inspirational dynamic for the work of natural philosophers such as those in the Royal Society and patterns of expression through which their preoccupations could be articulated. Thus the many studies which have been devoted to establishing connexions between the scientific movement and patterns of religious or political belief have been flawed from the start by unreal assumptions about the degree of intellectual coherence presented by the natural philosophy of the time. And until we can present a more three-dimensional picture of what the 'scientific movement’ was in fact all about, and until wider agreement has been reached as to satisfactory definitions of various types of socio-theological attitude and behaviour, such studies are no more than attempts to tie together two unknowns by means of a rope of sand.

Natural Philosophy

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisha Rankin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Lutheran Theology ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
To Receive

This essay examines how Protestant natural philosophers incorporated theology into their study of nature. It focuses in particular on the impact of Lutheran beliefs, which have tended to receive less attention than seventeenth-century British Puritanism. After a brief discussion of changing historical ideas about Protestantism and science, it examines the specific ways in which Protestant theology influenced the natural philosophy practiced by its believers. It then discusses the reforms to natural philosophy developed by Luther and his disciple Philip Melanchthon and focuses on two areas of natural philosophy that were affected most strongly by Lutheran theology: medicine and astronomy. Finally, it shows the ways that trends in Protestant theology in the seventeenth century continued to influence ideas about natural philosophy, albeit in more diverse ways.

Representation of Innovation in Seventeenth-Century England

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-42
Author(s):  
Benoît Godin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Science And Research ◽  
Radical Transformation ◽  
Present Understanding

Our present understanding of innovation is closely linked to science and research on the one hand and economy and industry on the other. It has not always been so. Back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the concept was mainly used in religious and political discourses. In these contexts, actors used it in a pejorative sense. Innovation, imagined as a radical transformation, was considered a peril to the established social order. Such was natural philosophers’ understanding. This article documents Francis Bacon’s work as an eminent example of such a representation. To Bacon, natural philosophy and innovation are two distinct spheres of activity. It is documented that Bacon’s uses of the concept of innovation are found mainly in political, legal, and moral writings, not natural philosophy, because to Bacon and all others of his time, innovation is poli tical.

Some Eminent Newtonians and Providential Geophysics at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century

1983 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Force
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Geophysical System

At the end of the Seventeenth Century, geophysical speculations among such eminent Newtonian natural philosophers as William Whiston, Edmond Halley, and John Keill concerning the moral fabric of the post-Fall geophysical system, the earth's place in the Newtonian framework of the heavens, and what counts as evidence in geophysical theorizing reflect a definite rejection of the dominant Seventeenth Century Earth Theorist, Thomas Burnet. All three Newtonians are confident that the earth's fabric is not morally corrupt, that, like Newton's heaven, the earth is providentially designed, and that knowledge of its structure ought to be firmly rooted in empirical observation. Nevertheless, there is a major disagreement between Whiston and Keill about how to interpret the Bible. Whiston accepts revealed scripture, properly interpreted by the Newtonian exegete, as compatible with Newtonian science. Keill alone among the Newtonians is convinced that there are some aspects of the Bible which no amount of "scientific" interpreting will square with science. In such cases, for Keill, the Biblical view must always prevail. In the views of neither man, however, is there room for any sort of warfare between the new science and the old religion. Either revelation is completely accepted when an apparent dispute arises as with Keill or a complete correlation is simply assumed as with Whiston.

Thomas Henshaw and Sir Robert Paston's pursuit of the red elixir: An early collaboration between fellows of The Royal Society

1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald R. Dickson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
British Library ◽  
Closed World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Culture Of Science ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
The Right ◽  
Shed Light

The problems involved in using Baconian categories to understand the great instauration Bacon hoped to foster are now well known. Natural philosophers were, for Bacon, empiricists, who tested their observations of nature openly, and their foes were superstitious dogmatists, who speculated by conjuring hypotheses in secret. As Joseph Agassi has wryly remarked, ‘once a person, historian or not, accepts a division of mankind into open-minded and closed-minded, he almost invariably finds himself on the right side’.1We now appreciate how broad even the Royal Society's conception of natural philosophy was, given the hermetic interests of many of its early members.2 By examining an early collaborative effort of Thomas Henshaw and Sir Robert Paston, who were both respected Fellows of the Royal Society as well as ‘chemical alchemists’ or ‘chemical philosophers’ following a rigorous, quantitative programme of experimentation, this essay will confirm that the actual practice of natural philosophy was broad indeed, and hardly revolutionary.3 Our view of these shadowy figures is usually obscured by the backdrop against which they are set, a backdrop that was created as the category of ‘natural magic’ disappeared, with part becoming science and the rest being discarded as superstition. The evidence to be examined includes an alchemical treatise in the British Library (Sloane 2222) and Henshaw's correspondence discussing it. Although the status of alchemy certainly changed during the course of the seventeenth century, it did so because more rigorous experimentation proved the alchemist's claims to be unverifiable, not because any underlying theories had been altered. The letters, especially, illustrate this process and also shed light on the differences between the closed world of alchemy and the more open culture of science then emerging.

scholarly journals “Rusticall chymistry”: Alchemy, saltpeter projects, and experimental fertilizers in seventeenth-century English agriculture

2021 ◽  
pp. 007327532110331
Author(s):  
Justin Niermeier-Dohoney
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Agricultural Revolution ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Experimental Trials

As the primary ingredient in gunpowder, saltpeter was an extraordinarily important commodity in the early modern world. Historians of science and technology have long studied its military applications but have rarely focused on its uses outside of warfare. Due to its potential effectiveness as a fertilizer, saltpeter was also an integral component of experimental agricultural reform movements in the early modern period and particularly in seventeenth-century England. This became possible for several reasons: the creation of a thriving domestic saltpeter production industry in the second half of the sixteenth century; the development of vitalist alchemical theories that sought a unified explanation for the “growth” of minerals, metals, and plants; the rise of experimental natural philosophy; and the mid-seventeenth-century dominance of the English East India Company in the saltpeter trade, which allowed agricultural reformers to repurpose domestically produced saltpeter in agriculturally productive ways. This paper argues that the Hartlib Circle – a loose network of natural philosophers and social reformers – adopted vitalist matter theories and the practical, experimental techniques of alchemists to transform agriculture into a more productive enterprise. Though their grandiose plans never came to fruition, their experimental trials to develop artificial fertilizers played an early role in the origins and development of saline chemistry, agronomy, and the British Agricultural Revolution.

“Sooty Empiricks” and Natural Philosophers: The Status of Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Clericuzio
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
The Status ◽  
Harsh Criticism ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Strong Impulse

ArgumentThis article argues that during the seventeenth century chemistry achieved intellectual and institutional recognition, starting its transition from a practical art – subordinated to medicine – into an independent discipline. This process was by no means a smooth one, as it took place amidst polemics and conflicts lasting more than a century. It began when Andreas Libavius endeavored to turn chemistry into a teaching discipline, imposing method and order. Chemistry underwent harsh criticism from Descartes and the Cartesians, who reduced natural phenomena to the mechanical affections of matter, leaving little room for chemistry as an independent discipline. Boyle rejected the chemical principles and promoted the fusion of chemistry with corpuscularianism. He did not reduce chemical phenomena to the mechanical affections of matter, but strived to promote chemistry as part of natural philosophy. Lemery gave strong impulse to the recognition of chemistry as a discipline in its own right by fostering a compromise of chemistry and mechanism. Lemery adopted the chemical principles, but did not see them as the ultimate ingredients of bodies. In order to promote chemistry, he distanced it from alchemy and pursued the reform of chemical terminology.

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