Reading Galileo’sDiscorsiin the Early Modern University*

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 558-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renée J. Raphael
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Institutional Affiliation ◽  
Disciplinary Identity ◽  
New Methods

AbstractThis article examines the scholarly practices with which readers at three universities read select passages from Galileo’s 1638Discorsi,a work depicted by Galileo as one that eschewed the goals and methods of Aristotelian natural philosophy in favor of the quantitative and experimental ones characteristic of modern science. The article reveals that a group of readers — diverse in terms of institutional affiliation, disciplinary identity, geography, and attitude toward Galileo — approached Galileo’s text using the tools of what Ann Blair has termed “bookish” natural philosophy. It argues that, contrary to Galileo’s rhetoric, these readers saw old and new methods as interchangeable.

Theological Foundations for Modern Science?

Dialogue ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
Theological Foundations ◽  
Recent Collection ◽  
Scientific Imagination

It is often said that philosophy in the seventeenth century returned from a Christian otherworldliness to a pagan engagement, theoretically and practically, with material nature. This process is often described as one of secularization, and the splitting off of science from natural philosophy and metaphysics is a traditional figure in accounts of the emergence of the modern. At the same time, the historiographical assumption that early modern science had religious and philosophical foundations has informed such classics as E. A. Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1932), Gerd Buchdahl's Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (1969), and Amos Funkenstein's Theology and the Scientific Imagination (1986). A recent collection testifies to continuing interest in the theme of a positive relationship between theology and science.

Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen. New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. ix, 437. $27.95.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-251
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The Marxists had it right all along, they just got tripped up by their materialism. Early modern capitalism opened vast new worlds, particularly in the arts and sciences, only the traffic went both ways. Creative agents invented new markets and pushed commerce in directions that favored enterprises immensely cosmopolitan and innovative, often solely for the sake of beauty and display. Commerce offered a context but the nobility, and not an imagined bourgeoisie, had the edge when it came to exploiting the market for objets. Paintings could be traded for property, land, and houses. Princes could sponsor natural philosophers, and the fluidity in values meant that good investors, like good practitioners of the arts and sciences, took an interest in all aspects of learning. The interrelatedness of the representational arts and natural philosophy stands as one of the central themes in this tightly integrated collection of essays. We now have a vast historiography telling us that we should no longer teach early modern science without reference to the art of the time, and vice-versa. The point is beautifully illustrated by an exhibition recently held at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (spring 2002) on the art of Pieter Saenredam. Working in Utrecht in the 1630s, he used geometry to regularize and make precise the angles and corners found in the exquisite paintings he made of the city's churches. He knew as much about geometry as he did about chiaroscuro. At precisely the same moment, an hour or two away by barge, Descartes in Leiden put the final touches on his Discourse on Method (1637). In effect he explained to the world why precision and clarity of thought made possible the kind of beauty that Saenredam's paintings would come to embody.

scholarly journals Through dark and mysterious paths. Early modern science and the search for the origin of springs from the 16th to the 18th centuries

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Luzzini
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Water Cycle ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Problematic Issue ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lively Debate

Since its first attempts to understand natural phenomena, early modern science devoted great attention to the problematic issue of the origin of springs. This essay examines the lively debate that emerged from the studies on fresh water during the years spanning from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth. By focusing on the interpretations advanced by several authors (including lesser known, but nonetheless important figures such as Mario Bettini, Edward Barlow, and Diacinto Cestoni), and by introducing Antonio Vallisneri's Primi itineris specimen, an unpublished manuscript which reveals significant insights into the hydrogeological debate, a new analysis is provided of the heterogeneous factors which influenced the path of natural philosophy towards the comprehension of the water cycle. The conclusion suggests how a reconsideration of the intricate backgrounds underlying many scientific debates and concepts could play a critical role in solving a still controversial issue: science's need for a history of science.

scholarly journals What Is the History of Science the History of? Early Modern Roots of the Ideology of Modern Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-62
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

The title of the article prompts at least two questions: (1) how to determine that any particular research topic or problem belongs to the history of science and (2) the effect of the history of science and other research in problematizing the very idea that science is a natural category. The category of “science” itself has become so historicized and slippery that it calls into question the integrity of what historians of science are engaged in. The thesis of the article is that the integrity of the history of science as a distinct field of scholarship may lie in understanding the antecedents to modern science as well as its ongoing development. The evident mismatch between the common representations of “science” and the miscellany of materials typically studied by a historian of science comes from a systematic ambiguity that may itself be traced back to early modern Europe. In that cultural setting, natural philosophy was held (most famously by Francis Bacon) to involve both contemplative and practical knowledge. The resulting tension and ambiguity are typified in the 18th century by Buffon’s views. The new enterprise that was called science in the 19th century arrived at an unstable ideology of natural knowledge that was heavily indebted to those early modern developments. The two complementary and competing elements in the ideology of modern science may be described as “natural philosophy” (a discourse of contemplative knowledge) and “instrumentality” (a discourse of practical or useful knowledge). The history of science in large part deals with the interrelations — always shifting and often repudiating each other — between those two poles.

scholarly journals Was there a Scientific Revolution?

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER HARRISON
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Western History ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Major Discipline

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Scientific Revolution came to be understood as a key period in Western history. Recently, historians have cast doubt upon this category, questioning whether the relevant institutions and practices of the seventeenth century are similar enough to modern science to warrant the label ‘scientific’. A central focus of their criticisms has been the identity of natural philosophy – the major discipline concerned with the study of nature in the early modern period – and its differences from modern science. This paper explores natural philosophy and its relation to philosophy more generally. It concludes that a significant philosophical revolution took place in the seventeenth century, and that this was important for the subsequent emergence of modern science.

IDENTITY, PRACTICE, AND TRUST IN EARLY MODERN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 1125-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADRIAN JOHNS
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mathematical Sciences

Historians of early modern science face a serious problem, in that there was no science in early modern society. There were, however, other enterprises in the early modern period devoted to the understanding and manipulation of the physical world. This review identifies important trends in historians' attempts to comprehend those enterprises. In particular, it identifies four leading currents. The first is the move to characterize these different enterprises themselves, and in particular to understand natural philosophy and the mathematical sciences as distinct practical endeavours. The second is the attention now being paid to the social identity of the investigator of nature. The third is the attempt to understand the history of science as a history of practical enterprises rather than propositions or theories. The fourth, finally, is the understanding of natural knowledge in terms of systems of trust, and in particular in terms of the credit vested in rival claimants. In a combination of these, the review suggests, lies a future for a discipline that has otherwise lost its subject.

scholarly journals "Hypotheses fingimus": Cartesian Natural Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Špelda
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Hypothetical Reasoning ◽  
Natural Processes

In this paper, I would like to present the methodological views of two representatives of the early modern Cartesian school: Jacques Rohault and Pierre-Sylvain Régis. Firstly, I want to present the methodological objections of Cartesians to Aristotelian and Scholastic natural philosophy. Then, I want to show how Cartesians strived for a combination of empirical and speculative procedures in their explanations of natural processes. Lastly, I would like to explain the reasons and forms of the hypothetical methodology which was significant for Cartesian natural philosophy. My aim is to refute the idea of the methodological naivety of Cartesians and point out the importance of hypothetical reasoning in the genesis of modern science.

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