Not Dead Yet

Teleology ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 150-179
Author(s):  
Jeffrey K. McDonough
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Mathematical Physics ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Teleological Reasoning ◽  
New Science ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

It is often maintained that teleology was undermined in the early modern era by the scientific revolution. Hoping to correct this misperception, this essay looks at three areas in which teleology was upheld and developed by three pioneers of early modern science. The first main section argues that teleological reasoning is woven into the very fabric of William Harvey’s revolutionary work in biology. The second main section takes up Robert Boyle’s explicit and systematic defense of teleology and especially his effort to reconcile the methods and views of the new science with a deep-seated commitment to divine teleology. Finally, the last main section explores Pierre Maupertuis’s bold attempt to find a place for teleology in the heart of modern, mathematical physics.

scholarly journals Paying Attention: Early Modern Science Beyond Genealogy

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 459-470
Author(s):  
Carla Nappi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Early Modern Science

Abstract To move away from histories of early modern science that are shaped by the notion of a Scientific Revolution, the essay proposes a historiographical methodology that moves away from genealogy and toward juxtaposition as a principle of storytelling. It briefly discusses the study of sound in early modern Manchu texts as an example of this #hashtag (or juxtapositional) history.

scholarly journals Making History: Identity, Progress and the Modern-Science Archive

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 433-444
Author(s):  
Ahmed Ragab
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Global South ◽  
Colonial Education ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
History Of

Abstract The history of pre- and early-modern science, medicine, and technology in the Islamicate world has been traditionally charted around certain signposts: Translation, Golden Age, and Decline. These signposts tethered the history of Islamic sciences to a European story that culminates in the Scientific Revolution and that links European colonial expansion (causally and chronologically) to modernity. This article looks at the roots of the classical narrative of the history of Islamic sciences and explores its connections to the production of colonial sciences and the proliferation of colonial education. Moving beyond the validity or accuracy of the Golden-Age/Decline narrative, it asks about the archives that such a narrative constructs and the viability of categories and chronologies, such as the “early modern,” in thinking about histories of the Global South, in general, and of the Islamicate “world” in particular.

scholarly journals Early Modern Jesuit Science. A Historiographical Essay

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila J. Rabin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
The Earth ◽  
New Instruments ◽  
Mathematics And Science ◽  
The Catholic Church

The traditional narrative of early modern science, or the scientific revolution, made the Catholic church appear anti-scientific. However, as scholars during the last three decades have reconstructed science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they have found that members of the Catholic church and the Jesuits in particular, despite their rejection of Copernican astronomy, contributed significantly to the advancement of science in those centuries. Many members of the Society of Jesus were both practitioners of mathematics and science and teachers of these subjects. They were trained in mathematics and open to the use of new instruments. As a result they made improvements in mathematics, astronomy, and physics. They kept work alive on magnetism and electricity; they corrected the calendar; they improved maps both of the earth and the sky. As teachers they influenced others, and their method of argumentation encouraged rigorous logic and the use of experiment in the pursuit of science. They also used mathematics and science in their missions in Asia and the Americas, which aided their successes in these missions. Historians of science now realize that detailing the progress of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries requires the inclusion of Jesuit science.

The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Institutional Influences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Reciprocal Influences ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Present Understanding

The early modern era produced the Scientific Revolution, which originated our present understanding of the natural world. Concurrently, philosophers established the conceptual foundations of modernity. This rich and comprehensive volume surveys and illuminates the numerous and complicated interconnections between philosophical and scientific thought as both were radically transformed from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. The chapters explore reciprocal influences between philosophy and physics, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other disciplines, and show how thinkers responded to an immense range of intellectual, material, and institutional influences. The volume offers a unique perspicuity, viewing the entire landscape of early modern philosophy and science, and also marks an epoch in contemporary scholarship, surveying recent contributions and suggesting future investigations for the next generation of scholars and students.

Paradoxes: Baroque Science

2019 ◽  
pp. 712-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ofer Gal
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Causal Process ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Cognitive Value ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Bernard Mandeville

From Copernicus’s claim that the earth is engaged in three different motions—none of which we can experience—to Newton’s claim that the planetary motions are disorderly—and it is the philosopher’s task to enforce a pattern on them—early modern science made paradoxes the core of its inquiry. Rather than marking the limits of reason or laying foundations for playful skepticism, paradoxes were explicitly sought, carefully elaborated and seriously inquired into, scientifically and philosophically. This entry will string together the most crucial of these paradoxes, one often leading to the other: Tycho demonstrated that the heavens are changing; Kepler showed that vision is a causal process with no inherent cognitive value; Descartes concluded that the passions are the conduits of knowledge; and Bernard Mandeville, already a proud disciple of a self-confident Newtonian science, argued that public virtue arises for private vice. The acknowledged, reflective, and fertile paradoxical nature of its claims and techniques turns the New Science into a representative and a shaping force of Baroque culture.

The Fowls of Heaven and the Fate of the Earth: Assessing the Early Modern Revolution in Natural History

2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Miller
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
The Earth ◽  
John Ray ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Natural Histories ◽  
Modern Era

AbstractIn recent years scholars have begun to question in various ways the traditional notion of the Scientific Revolution, which has long been seen as a fountainhead of modern Western approaches to nature. One line of questioning involves the suggestion that there were significant, and perhaps revolutionary, developments during the early modern era not only in the realms of astronomy and physics but also in the field of natural history. This article takes up this suggestion and begins by examining the seventeenth-century transformation of natural history in relation to the work of two representative English naturalists—Edward Topsell and John Ray—by looking specifically at their contrasting ornithological descriptions of cranes. It then analyzes how the different theological orientations of these two devout naturalists shaped their natural histories and contributed to the shift from a symbolic to a literalistic understanding of natural entities. This change of mind is examined in light of the phenomenon of secularization and the loss of "the dimension of depth" and in relation to the promise and problems of a utilitarian orientation to the natural environment, with observations on cranes as they have migrated through history in the thought of some leading naturalists and across some changing natural habitats.

Reconsidering Causal Powers

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. They were once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes but were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this collection of essays, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each author is focused on the philosophical role(s) causal powers was/were thought at the time to play and the reasons offered in support of, or against, their coherence and ability to perform their role(s). By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analysed. Canvassed are the thoughts of such important philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, and Ockham and Buridan, then on through Suárez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists, Goodman and Lewis.

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