Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I
1: Science and modernity
Part II
2: From Augustinian synthesis to Aristotelian amalgam
3: Renaissance natural philosophies
4: The interpretation of nature and the origins of physico-theology
Part III
5: Reconstructing natural philosophy
6: Reconstructing the natural philosopher
7: The aims of enquiry
Part IV
8: Corpuscularianism and the rise of mechanism
9: The scope of mechanism
10: Experimental natural philosophy
11: The quantitative transformation of natural philosophy
Part V
12: The unity of knowledge

About the Author

Stephen Gaukroger has a BA (Philosophy) from the University of London and a Ph.D (History and Philosophy of Science) from the University of Cambridge. He was Research Fellow in the Philosophy of Science, Clare Hall, Cambridge, 1977-1978; Research Fellow, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, 1978-1980. Since 1981 he has been in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney where he is currently Professor of History of Philosophy and History of Science.

Reviews

This impressive and wide-ranging book is the first of a quintet devoted to the question: how in the (Western) world did all cognitive values come to be associated with scientific ones?... Gaukroger's grand beginning of an even grander five-volume narrative is an exceptional book. Its structure of scientific authority, as it were, is certain to stimulate long and lively discussions among academics of every stripe. Michael H. Shank, Renaissance Quarterly [A] substantial and impressive book...I am not aware of any other treatment of these themes that combines so magisterially a discerning account of changing boundaries between disciplines with a dispassionate analysis of the changing relations between theology and the sciences. The result is a scholarly exploration on the grand scale. John Hedley Brooke, British Journal for the History of Science especially useful to philosophers looking for the historical context of particular arguments. Few historians have the ambition to attempt a synoptic treatment of the entire history of Western science at anything more than an introductory level. Certainly, no one has undertaken such a project in recent years, when so much has been added to the secondary literature. Gaukroger's book is a comprehensive, narrative overview of the state of the art...[this book] and its companion volumes will fill an empty niche on scholars' bookshelves. David Marshall Miller, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews A careful reading of this outstanding treatise by Gaukroger brings to life not only 500 crucial years that yielded the emergence of science in the west, but also the religious ferment and motivations that forwarded the new scientific culture. T. Eastman, Choice Gaukroger provides an insightful analysis...[and] the book's...content also reminds us of its author's accomplishments as a historian of philosophy. Peter Dear, Nature, Vol. 446 a project of breathtaking ambition... an impressive performance...and synthesizes a lot of difficult material into a coherent body. Times Literary Supplement