EAN: 9781402036033

THE SCIENCE OF NATURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUR...

One of the hallmarks of the modern world has been the stunning rise of the natural sciences.
The exponential expansion of scientific knowledge and the accompanying technology that so
impact on our daily lives are truly remarkable. But what is often taken for granted is the
enviable epistemic-credit rating of scientific knowledge: science is authoritative  science
inspires confidence  science is right. Yet it has not always been so. In the seventeenth
century the situation was markedly different: competing sources of authority  shifting
disciplinary boundaries  emerging modes of experimental practice and methodological reflection
were some of the constituents in a quite different mélange in which knowledge of nature was by
no means p- eminent. It was the desire to probe the underlying causes of the shift from the
early modern 'nature-knowledge' to modern science that was one of the stimuli for the 'Origins
of Modernity: Early Modern Thought 1543-1789' conference held in Sydney in July 2002. How and
why did modern science emerge from its early modern roots to the dominant position which it
enjoys in today's post-modern world? Under the auspices of the International Society for
Intellectual History  The University of New South Wales and The University of Sydney  a group
of historians and philosophers of science gathered to discuss this issue. However  it soon
became clear that a prior question needed to be settled first: the question as to the precise
nature of the quest for knowledge of the natural realm in the seventeenth century.

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