Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe / Irving B. Harris.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harris, Irving B., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Judaism and science--History--Medicine--Europe.

Judaism and science.

Jews--Intellectual life--Europe.

Jews.

Jews--Judaism--Religious aspects--Europe.

Medicine--Europe--History.

Medicine.

Jewish scientists--History.

Jewish scientists.

Jewish physicians.

History.

Ethnicity.

Natural Science Disciplines.

Population Groups.

Humanities.

Persons.

Science.

History, Modern 1601-.

History, Early Modern 1451-1600.

Medical Subjects:

History.

Ethnicity.

Natural Science Disciplines.

Population Groups.

Humanities.

Persons.

Science.

History, Modern 1601-.

History, Early Modern 1451-1600.

Jews.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [1995]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book is the first to examine closely the interaction between Jewish culture, medicine, and science during Europe's age of "scientific revolution." Most students of Jewish history have treated the period from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries as a mere extension of the Jewish Middle Ages, a time when the Jewish world was cut off from intellectual developments in the Christian world. The eminent scholar David Ruderman here argues, however, that during this era Jewish culture and society became increasingly aware of medical and scientific advances, and that a new Jewish scientific discourse evolved that had significant repercussions for Jewish religious concerns.Ruderman discusses the intellectual and social factors shaping Jewish cultural development. He then focuses on three distinct but interrelated groups: converso physicians and other university-trained intellectuals who fled Spain and Portugal in the seventeenth century and served as doctors and purveyors of scientific learning throughout the Jewish communities of Europe; circles of Jewish scholars in Central and Eastern Europe who pursued scientific learning (especially astronomy) as a desirable supplement to their own rabbinic study; and the hundreds of Jews who graduated from Italian medical schools. Ruderman shows how these thinkers formed an international community of Jewish intellectuals knowledgeable about modern scientific developments.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Medieval Jewish Attitudes toward Nature and Scientific Activity

2. The Legitimation of Scientific Activity among Central and Eastern European Jews

3. Padua and the Formation of a Jewish Medical Community in Italy

4. Can a Scholar of the Natural Sciences Take the Kabbalah Seriously? The Divergent Positions of Leone Modena And Joseph Delmedigo

5. Science and Skepticism. Simone Luzzatto on Perceiving the Natural World

6. Between High and Low Cultures. Echoes of the New Science in the Writings of Judah Del Bene and Azariah Figo

7. Kabbalah, Science, and Christian Polemics. The Debate between Samson Morpurgo and Solomon Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea

8. On The Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge within The Jewish Community. The Medical Textbook of Tobias Cohen

9. Contemporary Science and Jewish Law in The Eyes of Isaac Lampronti and His Rabbinic Interlocutors

10. The Community of Converso Physicians. Race, Medicine, and the Shaping of a Cultural Identity

11. A Jewish Thinker in Newtonian England. David Nieto and His Defense of the Jewish Faith

12. Physico-Theology and Jewish Thought at the End of the Eighteenth Century. Mordechai Schnaber Levison and Some of His Contemporaries

Epilogue

Bibliographic Essay. The Study of Nature in Ancient Judaism

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780300145953

0300145950

OCLC:

1024026317