The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility (Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760)

Understanding the emergence of a scientific culture - one in which cognitive values generally are modelled on, or subordinated to, scientific ones - is one of the foremost historical and philosophical problems with which we are now confronted. The significance of the emergence of such scientific values lies above all in their ability to provide the criteria by which we come to appraise cognitive enquiry, and which shape our understanding of what it can achieve. The period between the 1680s and the middle of the eighteenth century is a very distinctive one in this development. It is then that we witness the emergence of the idea that scientific values form a model for all cognitive claims. It is also at this time that science explicitly goes beyond technical expertise and begins to articulate a world-view designed to displace others, whether humanist or Christian. But what occurred took place in a peculiar and overdetermined fashion, and the outcome in the mid-eighteenth century was not the triumph of 'reason', as has commonly been supposed, but rather a simultaneous elevation of the standing of science and the beginnings of a serious questioning of whether science offers a comprehensive form of understanding. The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility is the sequel to Stephen Gaukroger's acclaimed 2006 book The Emergence of a Scientific Culture . It offers a rich and fascinating picture of the development of intellectual culture in a period where understandings of the natural realm began to fragment. Cover Copyrights Contents Introduction 1. The Construction of a New World Picture The Completeness of Natural Philosophy A New Metaphysics Physico-Theology The Rationalization of Religion 2. The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy From Principia Philosophiae to Principia Mathematica The Structure of Newton’s Principia Gravitation: Matter Theory versus Mechanics 3. 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 4. 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 5. Explaining the Phenomena The ‘Nature’ of Species The ‘Nature’ of Electricity The ‘Nature’ of Metals Causation and Explanation 6. Natural Philosophy and the Republic of Letters The Académie des Sciences and the Republic of Letters Vortices, Attraction, and the Shape of the Earth 7. The Realm of Reason The Birth of the Philosophe The Encyclopédie Reason and the Unity of Knowledge 8. The Fortunes of a Mechanical Model for Natural Philosophy Explanatory Models and the Unity of Natural Philosophy Mechanics as an A Priori Discipline The Limits of Mechanics 9. Material Activity The Resurgence of an Autonomous Matter Theory Electrified Matter The Chemistry of Fluids and Sympathies 10. Living and Dead Matter Matter and Activity A Developmental History of the World 11. The Realm of Sensibility From Sensibility to Sensibilism Physiological Sensitivity Moral Sensibility The Unity of Sensibility 12. Historical Understanding and the Human Condition The History of Manners From Myth to Reason Reason and Sensibility The Varieties of Understanding Conclusion Bibliography of Works Cited Index 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