Discipline & experience : the mathematical way in the scientific revolution / Peter Dear.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dear, Peter, 1958-

Series:

Science and its conceptual foundations.

Science and its conceptual foundations

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematics--Europe--History--17th century.

Mathematics.

Science--Europe--History--17th century.

Science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (306 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Discipline and experience

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Although the Scientific Revolution has long been regarded as the beginning of modern science, there has been little consensus about its true character. While the application of mathematics to the study of the natural world has always been recognized as an important factor, the role of experiment has been less clearly understood. Peter Dear investigates the nature of the change that occurred during this period, focusing particular attention on evolving notions of experience and how these developed into the experimental work that is at the center of modern science. He examines seventeenth-century mathematical sciences-astronomy, optics, and mechanics-not as abstract ideas, but as vital enterprises that involved practices related to both experience and experiment. Dear illuminates how mathematicians and natural philosophers of the period-Mersenne, Descartes, Pascal, Barrow, Newton, Boyle, and the Jesuits-used experience in their argumentation, and how and why these approaches changed over the course of a century. Drawing on mathematical texts and works of natural philosophy from all over Europe, he describes a process of change that was gradual, halting, sometimes contradictory-far from the sharp break with intellectual tradition implied by the term "revolution."

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTE ON CITATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

INTRODUCTION: THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS

1. INDUCTION IN EARLYMODERN EUROPE

2. EXPERIENCE AND JESUIT MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE: THE PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF METHODOLOGY

3. EXPERTISE, NOVEL CLAIMS, AND EXPERIMENTAL EVENTS

4. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION, ASTRONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE, AND SCIENTIFIC TRADITIONS

5. THE USES OF EXPERIENCE

6.ART, NATURE, METAPHOR; THE GROWTH OF PHYSICOMATHEMATICS

7. PASCAL'S VOID, NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS, AND MATHEMATICAL EXPERIENCE

8. BARROW, NEWTON, AND CONSTRUCTIVIST EXPERIMENT

CONCLUSION: A MATHEMATICAL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-279) and index.

ISBN:

9786613058164

9781283058162

1283058162

9780226139524

0226139522

OCLC:

705538180