The Newton Wars And The Beginning Of The French Enlightenment

Author : J.B. Shank
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 590 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2008-09-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226749471

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The Newton Wars & the Beginning of the French Enlightenment by J.B. Shank Pdf

Nothing is considered more natural than the connection between Isaac Newton’s science and the modernity that came into being during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Terms like “Newtonianism” are routinely taken as synonyms for “Enlightenment” and “modern” thought, yet the particular conjunction of these terms has a history full of accidents and contingencies. Modern physics, for example, was not the determined result of the rational unfolding of Newton’s scientific work in the eighteenth century, nor was the Enlightenment the natural and inevitable consequence of Newton’s eighteenth-century reception. Each of these outcomes, in fact, was a contingent event produced by the particular historical developments of the early eighteenth century. A comprehensive study of public culture, The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment digsbelow the surface of the commonplace narratives that link Newton with Enlightenment thought to examine the actual historical changes that brought them together in eighteenth-century time and space. Drawing on the full range of early modern scientific sources, from studied scientific treatises and academic papers to book reviews, commentaries, and private correspondence, J. B. Shank challenges the widely accepted claim that Isaac Newton’s solitary genius is the reason for his iconic status as the father of modern physics and the philosophemovement.

Author : John Robertson
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 169 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Electronic books
ISBN : 9780199591787

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The Enlightenment by John Robertson Pdf

This introduction explores the history of the 18th-century Enlightenment movement. Considering its intellectual commitments, Robertson then turns to their impact on society, and the ways in which Enlightenment thinkers sought to further the goal of human betterment, by promoting economic improvement and civil and political justice.

Author : J.B. Shank
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2018-06-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226509327

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Before Voltaire by J.B. Shank Pdf

We have grown accustomed to the idea that scientific theories are embedded in their place and time. But in the case of the development of mathematical physics in eighteenth-century France, the relationship was extremely close. In Before Voltaire, J.B. Shank shows that although the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia in 1687 exerted strong influence, the development of calculus-based physics is better understood as an outcome that grew from French culture in general. Before Voltaire explores how Newton’s ideas made their way not just through the realm of French science, but into the larger world of society and culture of which Principia was an intertwined part. Shank also details a history of the beginnings of calculus-based mathematical physics that integrates it into the larger intellectual currents in France at the time, including the Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns, the emergence of wider audiences for science, and the role of the newly reorganized Royal Academy of Sciences. The resulting book offers an unprecedented cultural history of one the most important and influential elements of Enlightenment science.

Author : Daniel Brewer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2014-10-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107021488

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The Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment by Daniel Brewer Pdf

Containing essays by leading scholars representing a wide range of disciplines, this Companion offers new perspectives on the French Enlightenment. Clearly organized and easy to use, the volume provides a comprehensive overview of a period that marks the beginning of modern intellectual culture and political life.

Author : Gary Kates
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2022-08-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781350277663

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The Books that Made the European Enlightenment by Gary Kates Pdf

In contrast to traditional Enlightenment studies that focus solely on authors and ideas, Gary Kates' employs a literary lens to offer a wholly original history of the period in Europe from 1699 to 1780. Each chapter is a biography of a book which tells the story of the text from its inception through to the revolutionary era, with wider aspects of the Enlightenment era being revealed through the narrative of the book's publication and reception. Here, Kates joins new approaches to book history with more traditional intellectual history by treating authors, publishers, and readers in a balanced fashion throughout. Using a unique database of 18th-century editions representing 5,000 titles, the book looks at the multifaceted significance of bestsellers from the time. It analyses key works by Voltaire, Adam Smith, Madame de Graffigny, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume and champions the importance of a crucial innovation of the age: the rise of the 'erudite blockbuster', which for the first time in European history, helped to popularize political theory among a large portion of the middling classes. Kates also highlights how, when, and why some of these books were read in the European colonies, as well as incorporating the responses of both ordinary men and women as part of the reception histories that are so integral to the volume.

Author : Charles Walton
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2009-02-02
Category : History
ISBN : 0199710015

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Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution by Charles Walton Pdf

In the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, French revolutionaries proclaimed the freedom of speech, religion, and opinion. Censorship was abolished, and France appeared to be on a path towards tolerance, pluralism, and civil liberties. A mere four years later, the country descended into a period of political terror, as thousands were arrested, tried, and executed for crimes of expression and opinion. In Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution, Charles Walton traces the origins of this reversal back to the Old Regime. He shows that while early advocates of press freedom sought to abolish pre-publication censorship, the majority still firmly believed injurious speech--or calumny-constituted a crime, even treason if it undermined the honor of sovereign authority or sacred collective values, such as religion and civic spirit. With the collapse of institutions responsible for regulating honor and morality in 1789, calumny proliferated, as did obsessions with it. Drawing on wide-ranging sources, from National Assembly debates to local police archives, Walton shows how struggles to set legal and moral limits on free speech led to the radicalization of politics, and eventually to the brutal liquidation of "calumniators" and fanatical efforts to rebuild society's moral foundation during the Terror of 1793-1794. With its emphasis on how revolutionaries drew upon cultural and political legacies of the Old Regime, this study sheds new light on the origins of the Terror and the French Revolution, as well as the history of free expression.

Author : Dennis C. Rasmussen
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 361 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781107045002

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The Pragmatic Enlightenment by Dennis C. Rasmussen Pdf

This is a study of the political and moral thought of the Enlightenment, focusing on four key eighteenth-century thinkers: David Hume, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. Dennis C. Rasmussen argues that these thinkers exemplify a particularly attractive type of liberalism, one that is more realistic, moderate, flexible, and contextually sensitive than most other branches of this tradition.

Author : Derrick Peterson
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2021-02-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9781532653339

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Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes by Derrick Peterson Pdf

We are all haunted by histories. They shape our presuppositions and ballast our judgments. In terms of science and religion this means most of us walk about haunted by rumors of a long war. However, there is no such thing as the “history of the conflict of science and Christianity,” and this is a book about it. In the last half of the twentieth century a sea change in the history of science and religion occurred, revealing not only that the perception of protracted warfare between religion and science was a curious set of mythologies that had been combined together into a sort of supermyth in need of debunking. It was also seen that this collective mythology arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by historians involved in many sides of the debates over Darwin’s discoveries, and from there latched onto the public imagination at large. Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes takes the reader on a journey showing how these myths were constructed, collected together, and eventually debunked. Join us for a story of flat earths and fake footnotes, to uncover the strange tale of how the conflict of science and Christianity was written into history.

Author : Frank Ejby Poulsen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2023-11-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9783110782547

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The Political Thought of Anacharsis Cloots by Frank Ejby Poulsen Pdf

Historians have often either ignored Anacharsis Cloots (1755-1794) or considered him deranged because he claimed to be the 'orator of the human race' and devised a 'universal republic' based on the 'sovereignty of the human race'. This book is the first comprehensive study of the entire body of Cloots's written works and political actions. By contextualizing them, the book non only rehabilitates Cloots as a political thinker worthy of consideration, but also argues that his political thought constitutes a specific branch of republicanism in the age of Atlantic revolutions: cosmopolitan republicanism. The introduction suggests how 18th-century French cosmopolitanism was a new philosophical tradition, but was composed of several themes, which the book then analyses in Cloots's writings. The first chapter provides a brief overview of his life. The second chapter explains why he called himself orator and wrote pamphlets, and why contemporary readers should not discard this as non-philosophical. Having established Cloots's writings as constituting a philosophical system, the following chapters explores it through the themes laid out in the introduction. First, the concept of reason and his understanding of science. Second, the paradigm of natural law and the role of nature in moral and political thought. Third, the conception of humanity and individuals in nature and society. Finally, republicanism and its principles. The last chapter summarizes the elements of Cloots's cosmopolitan republicanism and opens a research programme to other political thinkers in the age of Atlantic revolutions for historians and political theorists.

Author : Christy L. Pichichero
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2021-01-15
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1501752065

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The Military Enlightenment by Christy L. Pichichero Pdf

The Military Enlightenment brings to light a radically new narrative both on the Enlightenment and the French armed forces from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Christy Pichichero makes a striking discovery: the Geneva Conventions, post-traumatic stress disorder, the military "band of brothers," and soldierly heroism all found their antecedents in the eighteenth-century French armed forces. Readers of The Military Enlightenment will be startled to learn of the many ways in which French military officers, administrators, and medical personnel advanced ideas of human and political rights, military psychology, and social justice.

Author : Alexandrescu, Vlad
Publisher : Zeta Books
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2012-01-01
Category : Europe
ISBN : 9786068266350

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Journal of Early Modern Studies - Volume 1, Issue 1 (Fall 2012) by Alexandrescu, Vlad Pdf

Author : Peter Harrison
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 483 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2024-03-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781009477222

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Some New World by Peter Harrison Pdf

Author : Aaron Garrett
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 874 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2014-03-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317807926

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The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century Philosophy by Aaron Garrett Pdf

The Eighteenth century is one of the most important periods in the history of Western philosophy, witnessing philosophical, scientific, and social and political change on a vast scale. In spite of this, there are few single volume overviews of the philosophy of the period as a whole. The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century Philosophy is an authoritative survey and assessment of this momentous period, covering major thinkers, topics and movements in Eighteenth century philosophy. Beginning with a substantial introduction by Aaron Garrett, the thirty-five specially commissioned chapters by an outstanding team of international contributors are organised into seven clear parts: Context and Movements Metaphysics and Understanding Mind, Soul, and Perception Morals and Aesthetics Politics and Society Philosophy in relation to the Arts and Sciences Major Figures. Major topics and themes are explored and discussed, ranging from materialism, free will and personal identity; to the emotions, the social contract, aesthetics, and the sciences, including mathematics and biology. The final section examines in more detail three figures central to the period: Hume, Rousseau and Kant. As such The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century Philosophy is essential reading for all students of the period, both in philosophy and related disciplines such as politics, literature, history and religious studies.

Author : Devin J. Vartija
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2021-08-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9780812253191

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The Color of Equality by Devin J. Vartija Pdf

Enlightenment thinkers bequeathed a paradoxical legacy to the modern world: they expanded the purview of equality while simultaneously inventing the modern concept of race. The Color of Equality makes sense of this tension by demonstrating that the same Enlightenment impulse—the naturalization of humanity—underlay both of these trends.

Author : Roger Mathew Grant
Publisher : Oxford Studies in Music Theory
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780199367283

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Beating Time & Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era by Roger Mathew Grant Pdf

Roger Mathew Grant is Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. A recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (PhD 2010) his research focuses on the relationships between eighteenth-century music theory, Enlightenment aesthetics, and early modern science. His journal articles have appeared in Music Theory Spectrum, Eighteenth-Century Music, and the Journal of Music Theory. A former Junior Fellow of the University of Michigan's Society of Fellows, he was the fourth musicologist ever to hold a fellowship in the forty-year history of the Society.