scholarly journals Science and Knowledge

2016 ◽  
Vol 71 (02) ◽  
pp. 321-335
Author(s):  
Roger Chartier
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Traditional Definition ◽  
Histoire Des Sciences ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Clear Line

This review article poses three questions, essentially based on the first two volumes of Histoire des sciences et des savoirs, a collective undertaking edited by Dominique Pestre. First, it considers the relationships between “science” and “knowledge.” Can a clear line be drawn between them? Or should “scientific” knowledge (with or without quotation marks) be considered a particular class of knowledge? And, if this is the case, must we define it according to a certain number of specific operations? Second, the article turns to the acceptance, criticism, or rejection of the traditional definition of the “scientific revolution,” dated to the seventeenth century and characterized by the mathematization of nature and the introduction of experimental practices. Should this be replaced by other perspectives, highlighting previous reconfigurations of fields of knowledge or the plurality of “revolutions”? Finally, the article considers the attention paid to connected histories of knowledge, which move away from Eurocentricism and introduce new actors. Recognizing these circulations does not however efface the asymmetry of exchanges, the stigmatization of indigenous knowledge, or the imperialistic imposition of Western science.

The Changing Boundaries of Knowledge Between Māori Awareness and Western Science

Leonardo ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 513-514
Author(s):  
Ian Clothier
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Indigenous Culture ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Contemporary Life

Conventionally, indigenous knowledge such as that held by Māori (the indigenous culture of Aotearoa New Zealand) is seen as in total contrast to Western scientific knowledge. In this paper the author puts forward instances where ideology is held in common across cultural borders. A general awareness of facets of shared ideology has been refined, extended and given substance through three curatorial projects involving Dr. Te Huirangi Waikerepuru, a highly respected kaumatua (elder). These took place in Istanbul, Albuquerque and Aotearoa New Zealand. Ethically, acceptance of these commonalities leads to considering the shifting boundary of knowledge in contemporary life.

History of Science and Medicine

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Staffan Müller-Wille
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Growth Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores what both historians of medicine and historians of science could gain from a stronger entanglement of their respective research agendas. It first gives a cursory outline of the history of the relationship between science and medicine since the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century. Medicine can very well be seen as a domain that was highly productive of scientific knowledge, yet in ways that do not fit very well with the historiographic framework that dominated the history of science. Furthermore, the article discusses two alternative historiographical approaches that offer ways of thinking about the growth of knowledge that fit well with the cumulative and translational patterns that characterize the development of the medical sciences, and also provide an understanding of concepts such as ‘health’ and ‘life’.

Science, Tradition, and the Science of Tradition

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-173
Author(s):  
Joseph Mali
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Religious Controversy ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
Modes Of Thought

The ArgumentScience consists in progress by innovation. Scientists, however, are committed to all kinds of traditions that persist or recur in society regardless of intellectual and institutional changes. Merton's thesis about the origins of the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century England offers a sociohistorical confirmation of this revisionist view: the emergence of a highly rational scientific method out of the religious-ethical sentiments of the English Puritans implies that scientific knowledge does indeed grow out of – and not really against – customary modes of thought.In tracing the intellectual origins of this view back to the religious controversy between Protestants and Catholics, the essay demonstrates that the essential conflict between them with regard to natural science stemmed from their antagonistic conceptions of tradition and its function in the production of genuine knowledge – of religious as well as of natural affairs. Whereas the Protestants believed only in those truths that are immediately revealed by God to each man through his reason, the Catholics adhered to truths that are related to men or “made” by them through culture and history.

Light of Reason, Light of Nature. Catholic and Protestant Metaphors of Scientific Knowledge

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Title Page ◽  
Direct Study ◽  
Important Development ◽  
Relative Status ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The ArgumentMany of the epistemological issues that occupied natural philosophers of the seventeenth century were expressed visually in title-page engravings. One of those issues concerned the relative status to be accorded to evidence of the senses, as compared to knowledge gained by faith or reason. In title-page illustrations, the various arguments were often waged by a series of light metaphors: the Light of Reason, the Light of Nature, and the Lights of Sense, Scripture, and Grace. When such illustrations are examined with the authors' theological views in mind, it becomes apparent that in the first half of the seventeenth century, Catholic authors favored the Light of Reason as a source of truth, while Protestant authors favored the Light of Nature. Since by the end of the century it was widely accepted by scientists of all religious persuasions that certain knowledge must be grounded in sense evidence and the direct study of nature, one might argue that in this instance Protestantism was responsible for nurturing an important development of the Scientific Revolution. However, the skewed nature of the sample (the Catholics who used light metaphors were mostly Jesuits; the Protestants who did so mostly alchemists) and the large number of counterexamples available (many Catholic scientists believed in the ascendancy of the senses but failed to engage in metaphorical warfare) mitigate against taking this offshoot of the Merton thesis too seriously.

scholarly journals CHANGING APPROACHES TO INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Ngo Thi Puong Lan
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Present Context ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Static Body

Prevailing views on indigenous knowledge (IK) rely on a binary contrast between indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge (SK), where the former is either dismissed as backward or judged superior in terms of its sustainability. I assert instead that we must examine the specific conditions under which people invoke indigenous and/or scientific forms of knowledge. Based on an ethnographic study of the IK of two Mon-Khmer speaking ethnic minority populations, the Xtiêng and the Mạ, in Binh Phuoc province of Vietnam, conducted in 2012 and 2013, this paper re-examines the definition of IK, exploring the relationship between IK and scientific knowledge (SK), and analyzing the changing nature of IK in the present context. In so doing, I suggest that IK is not a static body of knowledge but depends substantively on socio-economic conditions. In local people’s daily lives, they both use IK and SK as resources for navigating their changing life-worlds.

Language Matters: ‘Counsel’ in Early Modern and Modern Medicine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Sabroe ◽  
Phil Withington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Successful Scientist

Francis Bacon is famous today as one of the founding fathers of the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century. Although not an especially successful scientist himself, he was nevertheless the most eloquent and influential spokesperson for an approach to knowledge that promised to transform human understanding of both humanity and its relationship with the natural and social worlds. The central features of this approach, as they emerged in Bacon’s own writings and the work of his protégés and associates after 1605, are equally well known. They include the importance of experiment, observation, and a sceptical attitude towards inherited wisdom (from the ‘ancients’ in general and Aristotle in particular).

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Walker
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Classical Architecture ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Architectural Knowledge

The Introduction uses a major source from the beginning of the period—Sir Christopher Wren’s Letter from Paris of 1665—to introduce the key themes of the book. In particular, the Introduction discusses the recourse to an intellectual-historical method in order to rethink major themes in English architectural culture at the time. It also explains the makeup of architectural knowledge in the period and justifies the book’s focus on aesthetic knowledge rather than practical. Finally, it uses seventeenth-century sources to formulate an appropriate definition of classical architecture (on which this book is exclusively focused). The Introduction concludes with a summary of the ensuing chapters and a proposition that architecture was among the most serious and important of all intellectual pursuits in a formative period in English intellectual history.

scholarly journals Integrating Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science into Forestry, Natural Resources, and Environmental Programs

2016 ◽  
Vol 114 (6) ◽  
pp. 648-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priya Verma ◽  
Karen Vaughan ◽  
Kathleen Martin ◽  
Elvira Pulitano ◽  
James Garrett ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Environmental Programs

« ET VIDI COELUM NOVUM ET TERRAM NOVAM »

Nuncius ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-77
Author(s):  
MAURIZIO TORRINI
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Single Access ◽  
New Science ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Formal School ◽  
Made In ◽  
School Boundaries

Abstract<title> SUMMARY </title>Contemporary movements, united by their common rejection of traditional knowledge and by their common beginnings and development outside formal school boundaries, libertinism and the new science are often considered, evaluated and classified in the univocal light of modern thought introduced by Descartes. A comparison totally unfavourable to libertinism which did not benefit from the attempt made in some cases to assimilate it to the scientific revolution in the name of a common anti-dogmatic character. The movements were in fact distinct in their aims and motives and their occasional interaction must not make us forget the contemporary presence of different and often contrasting ideas at the dawn of modern thought. The aim of this paper is to overcome the historiographical approach which, by privileging a single access to modern thought, evaluates all the others according to the same measure.The paper, through an examination of the European discussion stimulated by Galileo's Sidereus nuncius, shows the philosophical consequences of the astronomical revolution and the series of projects, hopes and misunderstandings that marked its course. An event that did not encounter the indifference of libertines like Naude, who read in the celestial revolution confirmation of the crisis of terrestrial knowledge. In Italy the bond between libertine thought and the scientific revolution came tragically into being as from the condemnation of Galileo and found its consecration in the Neapolitan trial of the atheists at the end of the seventeenth century, thus reuniting in the name of a single orthodoxy, two different conceptions of nature and knowledge.

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