1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910816923703321

Autore

Dear Peter <1958->

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 1995

ISBN

1-283-05816-2

9786613058164

0-226-13952-2

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (306 p.)

Collana

Science and its conceptual foundations

Classificazione

CC 3400

Disciplina

501

Soggetti

Mathematics - Europe - History - 17th century

Science - Europe - History - 17th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

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

Nota di contenuto

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

Sommario/riassunto

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."