The natural and the human : science and the shaping of modernity, 1739-1841 / Stephen Gaukroger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gaukroger, Stephen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Europe--History--18th century.

Science.

Europe.

History.

Science--history.

Natural History--history.

Behavior.

Europa.

Medical Subjects:

Science--history.

Natural History--history.

Behavior.

Local Subjects:

Europa.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

viii, 402 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

Stephen Gaukroger presents an original account of the development of empirical science and the understanding of human behavior from the mid-eighteenth century. Since the seventeenth century, science in the west has undergone a unique form of cumulative development in which it has been consolidated through integration into and shaping of a culture. But in the eighteenth century, science was cut loose from the legitimating culture in which it had found a public rationale as a fruitful and worthwhile form of inquiry. What kept it afloat between the middle of the eighteenth and middle of the nineteenth centuries, when its legitimacy began to hinge on an intimate link with technology? The answer lies in large part in an abrupt but fundamental shift in how the tasks of scientific inquiry were conceived, from the natural realm to the human realm. At the core of this development lies the naturalization of the human, that is, attempts to understand human behavior and motivations no longer in theological and metaphysical terms, but in empirical terms. one of the most striking features of this development is the variety of forms it took, and the book explores anthropological medicine, philosophical anthropology, the "natural history of man," and social arithmetic. Each of these disciplines re-formulated basic questions so that empirical investigation could be drawn upon in answering them, but the empirical dimension was conceived very differently in each case, with the result that the naturalization of the human took the form of competing, and in some respects mutually exclusive, projects.

Contents:

Introduction. PART I. 1 The dichotomies of understanding : The place of reason

Systematic knowledge

Reason and sensibility

The challenge to reason

The limits of certainty

The anatomy of reason. 2 Rethinking the nature of matter : The reaction to mechanism

Chemical composition

Chemical "elements"

Vital forces

The unity of force

Naturalization. PART II. 3 Anthropological medicine : The idea of an anthropological medicine

Matter and sensitivity

Médecins philosophes

Social medicine

The demise of sensibility. 4 Philosophical anthropology : Metaphysics and psychology

Language and art

The shaping of experience

The legitimacy of anthropological explanation. 5 The natural history of man : The problem of classification

Anthropology and natural history

Comparative anatomy

Comparative geography

Comparative history. 6 Social arithmetic : The Fable of the Bees

The naturalization of morality

The quantification of everyday life

The average man. PART III. 7 The naturalization of religion : The limits of reason

The historicization of Christianity

The evolution of religions

Aesthetic humanism and the cultivation of the self. Conclusion. Bibliography of works cited

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-393) and index.

ISBN:

9780198757634

0198757638

OCLC:

917362552