Front cover image for Discipline & experience : the mathematical way in the scientific revolution

Discipline & experience : the mathematical way in the scientific revolution

Peter Dear
This study examines 17th-century mathematical sciences - astronomy, optics and mechanics - not as abstract ideas, but as vital enterprises that involved practices related to both experience and experiment. Mersenne, Descartes, Pascal, Barrow, Newton, Boyle and the Jesuits are discussed.
Print Book, English, 1995
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995
History
xii, 290 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
9780226139432, 9780226139449, 9780226139524, 0226139433, 0226139441, 0226139522
32236425
Introduction: The Measure of All Things
1. Induction in Early-Modern 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 Physico-Mathematics
7. Pascal's Void, Natural Philosophers, and Mathematical Experience
8. Barrow, Newton, and Constructivist Experiment
Conclusion: A Mathematical Natural Philosophy?