The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760

by Gaukroger, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9780199594931
• ISBN10: 0199594937
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Understanding the emergence of a scientific culture - one in which cognitive values generally are modelled on, or subordinated to, scientific ones - is one of the foremost historical and philosophical problems with which we are now confronted. The significance of the emergence of such scientific values lies above all in their ability to provide the criteria by which we come to appraise cognitive enquiry, and which shape our understanding of what it can achieve. The period between the 1680s and the middle of the eighteenth century is a very distinctive one in this development. It is then that we witness the emergence of the idea that scientific values form a model for all cognitive claims. It is also at this time that science explicitly goes beyond technical expertise and begins to articulate a world-view designed to displace others, whether humanist or Christian. But what occurred took place in a peculiar and overdetermined fashion, and the outcome in the mid-eighteenth century was not the triumph of 'reason', as has commonly been supposed, but rather a simultaneous elevation of the standing of science and the beginnings of a serious questioning of whether science offers a comprehensive form of understanding. The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibilityis the sequel to Stephen Gaukroger's acclaimed 2006 bookThe Emergence of a Scientific Culture. It offers a rich and fascinating picture of the development of intellectual culture in a period where understandings of the natural realm began to fragment.

Author Biography

The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility is the sequel to Stephen Gaukroger's acclaimed 2006 book The Emergence of a Scientific Culture. It offers a rich and fascinating picture of the development of intellectual culture in a period where understandings of the natural realm began to fragment.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The Construction of a New World Picture	p. 11
The Completeness of Natural Philosophy	p. 13
A New Metaphysics	p. 17
Physico-Theology	p. 30
The Rationalization of Religion	p. 40
The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy	p. 55
From Principia Philosophiae to Principia Mathematica	p. 57
The Structure of Newton's Principia	p. 64
Gravitation: Matter Theory versus Mechanics	p. 83
The Metaphysical Unity of Natural Philosophy	p. 97
Leibniz and the Unity of Knowledge	p. 98
The Role of Metaphysics	p. 104
Leibnizian Dynamics	p. 115
Demonstration: Geometry versus Analysis	p. 125
Phenomenalism and the Rise of Rational Mechanics	p. 145
From Experimental Philosophy to Empiricism	p. 150
The Vindication of Experimental Philosophy	p. 157
The Origins of Locke's Essay	p. 163
Natural Philosophy and Primary Qualities	p. 170
Locke and the Defence of Newton	p. 184
Explaining the Phenomena	p. 187
The 'Nature' of Species	p. 188
The 'Nature' of Electricity	p. 196
The 'Nature' of Metals	p. 206
Causation and Explanation	p. 217
Natural Philosophy and the Republic of Letters	p. 229
The Académie des Sciences and the Republic of Letters	p. 232
Vortices, Attraction, and the Shape of the Earth	p. 247
The Realm of Reason	p. 257
The Birth of the Philosophe	p. 257
The Encyclopédie	p. 269
Reason and the Unity of Knowledge	p. 283
The Fortunes of a Mechanical Model for Natural Philosophy	p. 293
Explanatory Models and the Unity of Natural Philosophy	p. 294
Mechanics as an A Priori Discipline	p. 304
The Limits of Mechanics	p. 317
Material Activity	p. 328
The Resurgence of an Autonomous Matter Theory	p. 330
Electrified Matter	p. 336
The Chemistry of Fluids and Sympathies	p. 350
Living and Dead Matter	p. 355
Matter and Activity	p. 356
A Developmental History of the World	p. 365
The Realm of Sensibility	p. 387
From Sensibility to Sensibilism	p. 389
Physiological Sensitivity	p. 394
Moral Sensibility	p. 402
The Unity of Sensibility	p. 409
Historical Understanding and the Human Condition	p. 421
The History of Manners	p. 423
From Myth to Reason	p. 427
Reason and Sensibility	p. 438
The Varieties of Understanding	p. 444
Conclusion	p. 453
Bibliography of Works Cited	p. 454
Index	p. 493
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