The construction of a new world picture. The completeness of natural philosophy ; A new metaphysics ; Physico-theology ; The rationalization of religion -- The mathematical principles of natural philosophy. From Principia philosophiae to Principia mathematica ; The structure of Newton's Principia ; Gravitation : matter theory versus mechanics -- The metaphysical unity of natural philosophy. Leibniz and the unity of knowledge ; The role of metaphysics ; Leibnizian dynamics ; Demonstration : geometry versus analysis ; Phenomenalism and the rise of rational mechanics -- From experimental philosophy to empiricism. The vindication of experimental philosophy ; The origins of Locke's Essay ; Natural philosophy and primary qualities ; Locke and the defence of Newton -- Explaining the phenomena. The "Nature" of species ; The "nature" of electricity ; The "nature" of metals ; Causation and explanation -- Natural philosophy and the republic of letters. The Académie des Sciences and the republic of letters ; Vortices, attraction, and the shape of the Earth -- The realm of reason. The birth of the Philosophe ; The Encyclopédie ; Reason and the unity of knowledge -- The fortunes of a mechanical model for natural philosophy. Explanatory models and the unity of natural philosophy ; Mechanics as a priori discipline ; The limits of mechanics -- Material activity. The resurgence of an autonomous matter theory ; Electrified matter ; The chemistry of fluids and sympathies -- Living and dead matter. Matter and activity ; A developmental history of the world -- The realm of sensibility. From sensibility to sensibilism ; Physiological sensitivity ; Moral sensibility ; The unity of sensibility -- Historical understanding and the human condition. The history of manners ; From myth to reason ; Reason and sensibility ; The varieties of understanding
Summary
How did we come to have a scientific culture - one in which cognitive values are shaped around scientific ones? Stephen Gaukroger presents a rich and fascinating investigation of the development of intellectual culture in early modern Europe, a period in which understandings of the natural realm began to fragment
