Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific RevolutionUniversity of Chicago Press, 1995 M11 25 - 290 pages 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
One Induction in EarlyModern Europe | 11 |
Three Expertise Novel Claims and Experimental | 63 |
Four Apostolic Succession Astronomical | 93 |
Five The Uses of Experience | 124 |
The Growth | 151 |
Seven Pascals Void Natural Philosophers | 180 |
Eight Barrow Newton and Constructivist | 210 |
A Mathematical Natural | 245 |
251 | |
281 | |
Other editions - View all
Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution Peter Dear Limited preview - 2009 |
Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution Peter Dear Limited preview - 1995 |
Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution Peter Dear No preview available - 1995 |
Common terms and phrases
Aguilonius Alhazen Almagestum novum apparatus appears argument Aristotelian Aristotle Aristotle's Arriaga assertions astronomical Barrow behavior Blancanus Blancanus's Boyle Cabeo causal chap chapter Christoph Clavius claims Clavius Clavius's concerning contrived demonstration Descartes Descartes's disciplinary discussion Drake empirical ences established event evident example experientia experimental Fabri falling bodies Galileo geometry Grassi Guiffart historical Honoré Fabri Ibid idem induction Isaac Barrow Jesuit Jesuit mathematicians kind knowledge mathe mathematicians matter means mechanics ment mercury Mersenne methodological mixed mathematical mixed mathematical sciences motion natural philosophy Newton observations Œuvres optics particular Pascal Périer's phenomena physico-mathematics physics Pierius Posterior Analytics postulates practice presentation principles problem problem of induction procedure propositions Ptolemy Puy-de-Dôme quae quod reference Riccioli rience Robert Boyle Royal Society says Scheiner scholastic sense seventeenth century Shapin Sidereus nuncius singular specific Sphaera statements sunspots telescope term things tion tradition trans treatise tube universal void weight