The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the WorldUniversity of Chicago Press, 15 сент. 2008 г. - Всего страниц: 254 Throughout the history of the Western world, science has possessed an extraordinary amount of authority and prestige. And while its pedestal has been jostled by numerous evolutions and revolutions, science has always managed to maintain its stronghold as the knowing enterprise that explains how the natural world works: we treat such legendary scientists as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein with admiration and reverence because they offer profound and sustaining insight into the meaning of the universe. In The Intelligibility of Nature, Peter Dear considers how science as such has evolved and how it has marshaled itself to make sense of the world. His intellectual journey begins with a crucial observation: that the enterprise of science is, and has been, directed toward two distinct but frequently conflated ends—doing and knowing. The ancient Greeks developed this distinction of value between craft on the one hand and understanding on the other, and according to Dear, that distinction has survived to shape attitudes toward science ever since. Teasing out this tension between doing and knowing during key episodes in the history of science—mechanical philosophy and Newtonian gravitation, elective affinities and the chemical revolution, enlightened natural history and taxonomy, evolutionary biology, the dynamical theory of electromagnetism, and quantum theory—Dear reveals how the two principles became formalized into a single enterprise, science, that would be carried out by a new kind of person, the scientist. Finely nuanced and elegantly conceived, The Intelligibility of Nature will be essential reading for aficionados and historians of science alike. |
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Стр. 12
... appeared to many people to be suggesting that gravity operated by strict action at a distance : a mate- rial body simply exerted a force on another body that was separated from it by empty space , with nothing passing between I 2 ...
... appeared to many people to be suggesting that gravity operated by strict action at a distance : a mate- rial body simply exerted a force on another body that was separated from it by empty space , with nothing passing between I 2 ...
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Содержание
1 | |
15 | |
The Classification of the World | 39 |
3 The Chemical Revolution Thwarted by Atoms | 67 |
The Origin of Species | 91 |
The Aether and Victorian Machines | 115 |
6 How to Understand Nature? Einstein Bohr and the Quantum Universe | 141 |
Making Sense in Science | 173 |
Notes | 197 |
Bibliographical Essay | 207 |
Index | 235 |
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The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World Peter Dear Недоступно для просмотра - 2006 |
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aether arguments Aristotelian atoms behavior bodies Bohr Bohr's Buffon Cambridge University Press chap Charles Darwin chemical chemistry chemists Chicago Press classification classificatory concepts Cuvier's Dalton Darwin Descartes developed effect eighteenth century Einstein electrical electromagnetic electrons energy experience experimental Faraday Faraday's fundamental gases gravity Heisenberg Herschel History of Science human Huygens Ibid ideas instrumental intelligibility Isaac Newton James Clerk Maxwell John John Dalton Jussieu kind Lavoisier Lavoisier's light lines of force Linnaeus's magnetic Martin J. S. Rudwick mathematical mathematician matrix mechanics matter Maxwell Maxwell's mechanical explanations mechanical philosophy Michael Faraday motion natural history natural philosophy natural selection natural-philosophical naturalists Newton nineteenth century observation organic Origin of Species particles phenomena physical plants practical precise Princeton principles proof quantum mechanics Quoted Revolution Schrödinger scientific scientists sense simply substances taxonomic theoretical theory things Thomson tion understanding University of Chicago wanted wave
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Стр. 26 - That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to. another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has iu philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.
Стр. 112 - There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Стр. 35 - But to derive two or three general principles of motion from phaenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy, though the causes of those principles were not yet discovered. And therefore I scruple not to propose the principles of motion above mentioned, they being of very general extent, and leave their causes to be found out.
Стр. 34 - And the Aristotelians gave the Name of occult Qualities, not to manifest Qualities, but to such Qualities only as they supposed to lie hid in Bodies, and to be the unknown Causes of manifest Effects...
Стр. 111 - In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a false term ; but who ever objected to chemists speaking of the elective affinities of the various elements? — and yet an acid cannot strictly be said to elect the base with which it in preference combines.
Стр. 33 - These Principles I consider not as occult Qualities, supposed to result from the specifick Forms of Things, but as general Laws of Nature, by which the Things themselves are form'd: their Truth appearing to us by Phenomena, though their Causes be not yet discover'd.
Стр. 132 - The conception of a particle having its motion connected with that of a vortex by perfect rolling contact may appear somewhat awkward. I do not bring it forward as a mode of connexion existing in nature, or even as that which I would willingly assent to as an electrical hypothesis. It is, however, a mode of connexion which is mechanically conceivable, and easily investigated, and it serves to bring out the actual mechanical connexions between the known electro-magnetic phenomena...
Стр. 126 - The explanation of all phenomena of electro-magnetic attraction or repulsion, and of electro-magnetic induction, is to be looked for simply in the inertia and pressure of the matter of which the motions constitute heat. Whether this matter is or is not electricity, whether it is a continuous fluid interpermeating the spaces between molecular nuclei, or is itself molecularly grouped ; or whether all matter is continuous, and molecular heterogeneousness consists in finite vortical or other relative...
Стр. 32 - Seeing therefore the variety of Motion which we find in the World is always decreasing, there is a necessity of conserving and recruiting it by active Principles...
Стр. 26 - You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me, for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more time to consider of it.