 |
The Sciences in Enlightened
Europe
Edited by: William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1999. |
|
The Sciences in Enlightened
Europe
Edited by: William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1999. |
Description:
Radically reorienting our understanding of the Enlightenment, this book explores the complex relations between "enlightened" values and the making of scientific knowledge. Here monsters and automata, barometers and botanical gardens, polite academies and boisterous clubs are all given their due place in the landscape of enlightened Europe. The contributors examine the production of new disciplines through work with instruments and techniques; consider how institutions of public taste and conversation helped provide a common frame for the study of human and nonhuman natures; and explore the regional operations of scientific culture at the geographical fringes of Europe. Implicated in the rise of both Fascism and liberal secularism, the moral and political values that shaped the Enlightenment remain controversial today. Through careful scrutiny of how these values influenced and were influenced by the concrete practices of its sciences, this book gives us an entirely new sense of the Enlightenment.
The Editors:
William Clark is visiting lecturer in history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University. He is coeditor of The Prose & Figures of Authority & Objectivity.
Jan Golinski is associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of Science as Public Culture and Making Natural Knowledge.
Simon Schaffer is reader in history and philosophy of science and fellow of Darwin College at Cambridge University. He is coauthor of Leviathan and the Air Pump.
"The consistently first-rate essays in this book move analysis of eighteenth-century science onto a new plane. Readers will particularly appreciate the well-integrated range of thematic topics and the commitment to engage with modern theoretical approaches. Essential reading."--Roy Porter, author of The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity.
Preface
Bibliographical Note
Notes on Editors and Contributors
Introduction: The Sciences in Enlightened Europe
William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer
Orientations
1. The Enlightenment our Contemporary
Dorinda Outram
Bodies and Technologies
2. Biopolitics: Political Arithmetic in the Enlightenment
Andrea A. Rusnock
3. Barometers of Change: Meteorological Instruments as Machines
of Enlightenment
Jan Golinski
4. French Engineers Become Professionals, Or, Meritocracy Makes
Knowledge Objective
Ken Alder
5. Enlightened Automata
Simon Schaffer
Humans and Natures
6. Enlightened Monsters
Michael Hagner
7. The Science and Conversation of Human Nature
Marina Frasca-Spada
8. Metaphysics, Mathematics, and the Gendering of Science in
Eighteenth-Century France
Mary Terrall
9. The “Nature” of Enlightenment
Emma Spary
Provinces and Peripheries
10. A Forgotten Newtonian: Women and Science in the Italian Provinces
Paula Findlen
11. Going Dutch: Situating Science in the Dutch Enlightenment
Lissa Roberts
12. Daedalus Hyperboreus: Baltic Natural History and Mineralogy
in the Enlightenment
Lisbet Koerner
13. The Death of Metaphysics in Enlightened Prussia
William Clark
Departures
14. Inner History: Or, How to End Enlightenment
Nicholas Jardine
15. Afterword: The Ethos of Enlightenment
Lorraine Daston
Comprehensive Bibliography of Secondary Sources