In the aftermath of the English Civil War, as people were groping for new forms of political order, Robert Boyle built an air-pump to do exper iments. Does the story of Roundheads and Restoration have something to do with the origins of experimental sci ence? Schaffer and Shapin believed it does. Focusing on the debates between Boyle and his archcritic Thomas Hobbes over the air-pump, the authors proposed that "solutions to the problem of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order." Both Boyle and Hobbes were ...
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In the aftermath of the English Civil War, as people were groping for new forms of political order, Robert Boyle built an air-pump to do exper iments. Does the story of Roundheads and Restoration have something to do with the origins of experimental sci ence? Schaffer and Shapin believed it does. Focusing on the debates between Boyle and his archcritic Thomas Hobbes over the air-pump, the authors proposed that "solutions to the problem of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order." Both Boyle and Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that did not decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild. The new approaches taken in Leviathan and the Air-Pump have been enormously influential on historical studies of science. Shapin and Schaffer found a moment of scientific revolution and showed how key scientific givens--facts, interpretations, experiment, truth--were fundamental to a new political order. Shapin and Schaffer were also innovative in their ethnographic approach. Attempting to understand the work habits, rituals, and social structures of a remote, unfamiliar group, they argued that politics were tied up in what scientists did, rather than what they said.
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Add this copy of Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the to cart. $106.00, very good condition, Sold by Sequitur Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Boonsboro, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1986 by Princeton University Press.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. Size: 9x6x0; Hardcover and dust jacket. Good binding and cover. Shelf wear. Small stain to jacket. Small tears to jacket. Dust jacket in protective mylar cover. Clean, unmarked pages. xiv, 440 p., ill., 24 cm. "This book is about a series of controversies in England during the 1660s and 1670s over the status and value of experimental methods in natural philosophy."-Princeton University Press From the library Dr. Owen Hannaway. Hannaway was director of the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science at Johns Hopkins University. He authored numerous books and served as an editor of academic magazines in the history of science. Partial list of publications: Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry (1975); Observation, Experiment, and Hypothesis in Modern Physical Science (1985); The Evolution of Technology (1989); Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (1994); and The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts (1996).
Add this copy of Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the to cart. $167.81, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1986 by Princeton University Press.
