The Good Life In The Scientific Revolution

Author : Matthew L. Jones
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 809 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2008-09-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226409566

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The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution by Matthew L. Jones Pdf

Amid the unrest, dislocation, and uncertainty of seventeenth-century Europe, readers seeking consolation and assurance turned to philosophical and scientific books that offered ways of conquering fears and training the mind—guidance for living a good life. The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution presents a triptych showing how three key early modern scientists, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz, envisioned their new work as useful for cultivating virtue and for pursuing a good life. Their scientific and philosophical innovations stemmed in part from their understanding of mathematics and science as cognitive and spiritual exercises that could create a truer mental and spiritual nobility. In portraying the rich contexts surrounding Descartes’ geometry, Pascal’s arithmetical triangle, and Leibniz’s calculus, Matthew L. Jones argues that this drive for moral therapeutics guided important developments of early modern philosophy and the Scientific Revolution.

Author : Steven Shapin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2018-11-05
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226398488

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The Scientific Revolution by Steven Shapin Pdf

This scholarly and accessible study presents “a provocative new reading” of the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century advances in scientific inquiry (Kirkus Reviews). In The Scientific Revolution, historian Steven Shapin challenges the very idea that any such a “revolution” ever took place. Rejecting the narrative that a new and unifying paradigm suddenly took hold, he demonstrates how the conduct of science emerged from a wide array of early modern philosophical agendas, political commitments, and religious beliefs. In this analysis, early modern science is shown not as a set of disembodied ideas, but as historically situated ways of knowing and doing. Shapin shows that every principle identified as the modernizing essence of science—whether it’s experimentalism, mathematical methodology, or a mechanical conception of nature—was in fact contested by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century practitioners with equal claims to modernity. Shapin argues that this contested legacy is nevertheless rightly understood as the origin of modern science, its problems as well as its acknowledged achievements. This updated edition includes a new bibliographic essay featuring the latest scholarship. “An excellent book.” —Anthony Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review

Author : Laurence D. Cooper
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2021-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780271029887

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Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life by Laurence D. Cooper Pdf

The rise of modern science created a crisis for Western moral and political philosophy, which had theretofore relied either on Christian theology or Aristotelian natural teleology as guarantors of an objective standard for &"the good life.&" This book examines Rousseau's effort to show how and why, despite this challenge from science (which he himself intensified by equating our subhuman origins with our natural state), nature can remain a standard for human behavior. While recognizing an original goodness in human being in the state of nature, Rousseau knew this to be too low a standard and promoted the idea of &"the natural man living in the state of society,&" notably in Emile. Laurence Cooper shows how, for Rousseau, conscience&—understood as the &"love of order&"&—functions as the agent whereby simple savage sentiment is sublimated into a more refined &"civilized naturalness&" to which all people can aspire.

Author : Ofer Gal,Raz Chen-Morris
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 348 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2014-07-21
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780226212982

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Baroque Science by Ofer Gal,Raz Chen-Morris Pdf

Presents a perspective on the study of early modern science. This title examines science in the context of the baroque, analyzes the tensions, paradoxes, and compromises that shaped the New Science of the seventeenth century and enabled its spectacular success.

Author : Ann T. Delehanty
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781611484892

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Literary Knowing in Neoclassical France by Ann T. Delehanty Pdf

Literary Knowing in Neoclassical France analyzes the work of several literary critics in France and England, at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, who were inspired by the idea that literature - especially the literary sublime - might offer us the deepest kind of knowledge. Dominique Bouhours, Nicolas Boileau, Ren Rapin, John Dennis, and the abb Dubos believed that literature could deliver truths that transcend our world and were analogous or even equal to the truths of divine revelation. Ann Delehanty argues that this shift towards the transcendental realm pushed the definition of the literary work away from describing its objective properties and towards its effects on the mind of the reader. After placing these ideas about literature in the context of the religious and philosophical thinking of Blaise Pascal, Delehanty traces the evolution of a debate about literature in the writings of the critics in question. They embraced theories of sentiment and the passions as the epistemological means of identifying and knowing the transcendental aspects of a literary work that eventually came to be known as aesthetics. By tracing the historical evolution of the relationship between transcendentalism and aesthetics in French and English neoclassical thought, Literary Knowing in Neoclassical France provides new and engaging insights into an important moment in our literary history.

Author : Peter Lawler,Marc Guerra
Publisher : Northern Illinois University Press
Page : 339 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2013-11-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781501757914

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The Science of Modern Virtue by Peter Lawler,Marc Guerra Pdf

The Science of Modern Virtue examines the influence that the philosopher Rene Descartes, the political theorist John Locke, and the biologist Charles Darwin have had on our modern understanding of human beings and human virtue. Written by leading thinkers from a variety of fields, the volume is a study of the complex relation between modern science and modern virtue, between a kind of modern thought and a kind of modern action. Offering more than a series of substantive introductions to Descartes', Locke's, and Darwin's accounts of who we are and the kind of virtue to which we can aspire, the book invites readers to think about the ways in which the writings of these seminal thinkers shaped the democratic and technological world in which modern human beings live. Thirteen scholars in this volume learnedly explore questions drawn from the diverse disciplines of political science, philosophy, theology, biology, and metaphysics. Let the reader be warned: The authors of these essays are anything but consensual in their analysis. Considered together, the chapters in this volume carry on a lively internal debate that mirrors theoretical modernity's ongoing discussion about the true nature of human beings and the science of virtue. Some authors powerfully argue that Locke's and Darwin's thought is amenable to the claims made about human beings and human virtue by classical philosophers such as Aristotle and classical Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. Others make the opposite case, drawing attention to the ways in which Descartes, Locke, and Darwin knowingly and dialectically depart from central teachings of both classical philosophy and classical Christian theology.

Author : Luc Ferry
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2005-06-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780226244532

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What Is the Good Life? by Luc Ferry Pdf

Has inquiry into the meaning of life become outmoded in a universe where the other-worldiness of religion no longer speaks to us as it once did, or, as Nietzsche proposed, where we are now the creators of our own value? Has the ancient question of the "good life" disappeared, another victim of the technological world? For Luc Ferry, the answer to both questions is a resounding no. In What Is the Good Life? Ferry argues that the question of the meaning of life, on which much philosophical debate throughout the centuries has rested, has not vanished, but at the very least the question is posed differently today. Ferry points out the pressures in our secularized world that tend to reduce the idea of a successful life or "good life" to one of wealth, career satisfaction, and prestige. Without deserting the secular presuppositions of our world, he shows that we can give ourselves a richer sense of life's possibilities. The "good life" consists of harmonizing life's different forces in a way that enables one to achieve a sense of personal satisfaction in the realization of one's creative abilities.

Author : Robert I. Levy
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Medical literature
ISBN : 9781387797264

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Essays in the History of Medicine by Robert I. Levy Pdf

Author : M. Alper Yalçinkaya
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2015-02-13
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226184340

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Learned Patriots by M. Alper Yalçinkaya Pdf

The nineteenth century was, for many societies, a period of coming to grips with the growing, and seemingly unstoppable, domination of the world by the “Great Powers” of Europe. The Ottoman Empire was no exception: Ottomans from all walks of life—elite and non-elite, Muslim and non-Muslim—debated the reasons for what they considered to be the Ottoman decline and European ascendance. One of the most popular explanations was deceptively simple: science. If the Ottomans would adopt the new sciences of the Europeans, it was frequently argued, the glory days of the empire could be revived. In Learned Patriots, M. Alper Yalçinkaya examines what it meant for nineteenth-century Ottoman elites themselves to have a debate about science. Yalçinkaya finds that for anxious nineteenth-century Ottoman politicians, intellectuals, and litterateurs, the chief question was not about the meaning, merits, or dangers of science. Rather, what mattered were the qualities of the new “men of science.” Would young, ambitious men with scientific education be loyal to the state? Were they “proper” members of the community? Science, Yalçinkaya shows, became a topic that could hardly be discussed without reference to identity and morality. Approaching science in culture, Learned Patriots contributes to the growing literature on how science travels, representations and public perception of science, science and religion, and science and morality. Additionally, it will appeal to students of the intellectual history of the Middle East and Turkish politics.

Author : Raphaële Garrod,Alexander Marr
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2020-11-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004437623

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Descartes and the Ingenium by Raphaële Garrod,Alexander Marr Pdf

A historically-informed account of the lasting importance of embodied thought in the intellectual trajectory of René Descartes, still remembered today as the founding father of dualism.

Author : Warren Dym
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2010-09-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004188716

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Divining Science by Warren Dym Pdf

The patronage of dowsers by mining administrations through the eighteenth century challenges common assumptions about the Enlightenment. Rather than decline in importance like alchemy and astrology, dowsing transformed from a study of mineral vapors into an experimental branch of geophysics.

Author : Peter Distelzweig,Benjamin Goldberg,Evan R. Ragland
Publisher : Springer
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2015-12-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789401773539

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Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy by Peter Distelzweig,Benjamin Goldberg,Evan R. Ragland Pdf

This volume presents an innovative look at early modern medicine and natural philosophy as historically interrelated developments. The individual chapters chart this interrelation in a variety of contexts, from the Humanists who drew on Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle to answer philosophical and medical questions, to medical debates on the limits and power of mechanism, and on to eighteenth-century controversies over medical materialism and 'atheism.' The work presented here broadens our understanding of both philosophy and medicine in this period by illustrating the ways these disciplines were in deep theoretical and methodological dialogue and by demonstrating the importance of this dialogue for understanding their history. Taken together, these papers argue that to overlook the medical context of natural philosophy and the philosophical context of medicine is to overlook fundamentally important aspects of these intellectual endeavors.

Author : Jeremy Black
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2014-01-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300167955

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The Power of Knowledge by Jeremy Black Pdf

A thought-provoking analysis of how the acquisition and utilization of information has determined the course of history over the past five centuries and shaped the world as we know it todaydiv /DIV

Author : Creighton Peden
Publisher : Peter Lang
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0820481106

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A Good Life in a World Made Good by Creighton Peden Pdf

Original Scholarly Monograph

Author : John Cottingham
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1998-07-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0521478901

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Philosophy and the Good Life by John Cottingham Pdf

John Cottingham's 1998 study examines three philosophical approaches to the systematic understanding of human nature.