Total Number of Books in Collection Library : 127

 

Page number: 41
 

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science

Author: E. A. Burtt
ISBN: 0486425517
Publisher: Dover Publications         Place:
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Format: Paperback         # Pages: 352
Reader Rating: 3.5 (3 votes)
Release: 2003
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Summary: To the medieval thinker, man was the center of creation and all of nature existed purely for his benefit. The shift from the philosophy of the Middle Ages to the modern view of humanity's less central place in the universe ranks as the greatest revolution in the history of Western thought, and this classic in the philosophy of science describes and analyzes how the profound change occurred. A fascinating analysis of the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Gilbert, Boyle, and Newton, it not only establishes the reasons for the triumph of the modern perspective but also accounts for certain limitations that characterize contemporary scientific thought.


 

Never at Rest : A Biography of Isaac Newton

Author: Richard S. Westfall
ISBN: 0521274354
Publisher: Cambridge University Press         Place:
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Format: Paperback         # Pages: 928
Reader Rating: 5.0 (7 votes)
Release: 1983
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Summary: This richly detailed biography captures both the personal life and the scientific career of Isaac Newton, presenting a fully rounded picture of Newton the man, the scientist, the philosopher, the theologian, and the public figure. Professor Westfall treats all aspects of Newton's career, but his account centres on a full description of Newton's achievements in science. Thus the core of the work describes the development of the calculus, the experimentation that altered the direction of the science of optics, and especially the investigations in celestial dynamics that led to the law of universal gravitation.


 

The Origins of Modern Science

Author: Herbert Butterfield
ISBN: 0684836378
Publisher: Free Press         Place:
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Format: Paperback         # Pages: 256
Reader Rating: 4.0 (6 votes)
Release: 1997
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The Scientific Revolution:

As spelled out in the introduction, to the book based on his lectures in 1948 the Scientific Revolution, popularly associated with the 16th and 17th century, has started much earlier than the Renaissance. Butterfield advanced the notion of its eruption was caused by the 'destruction of Aristotaslian physics,' that was crucial to the development of science that was the basis of western civilization. This is the best praise for an Alexandrian scientist he never mentioned, the sixth century dean of the academy in Alexandria, John Philoponus.



Butterfield's Historiography:

Thomas Kuhn was a milestone in the historiography of science by studying in depth how science evolved with new established concepts and ideas and how these catalyzed displacing the old ways of thinking with brisk new methods. What one of Kuhn's obituaries noted, "We all live in a post-Kuhnian age," so more applies with Butterfield treatment, especially when it concerns origins of modern science, which was not one of his favorite subjects. In the words of a history of science reviewer, Butterfield's observations that better described the underlying reality of the fields of science he considered lacked a scientific analysis that weakened his historiographic conclusions.



The Impetus Theory:

Although he started logically with the historical importance of 'Impetus Theory,'as the point of breakthrough, on obsolesence of the body of Aristotalian physics, he failed to identify, while Kuhn did, to dig out who effectively attacked it into rubble in the sixth century. On the same year, he revised the 'Origins' in 1957 Kuhn in,'The Copernican Revolution', wrote on page 119 that, "John Philoponus, the sixth-century Christian commentator who records the earliest extant rejection of aristotle's theory, attribute his ... to Hippacrius."

Early on, in his Origins, he discusses Buridan (14th century), who elaborated on projectile dynamics, and quoted Philoponus, before Copernicus who read him, when he studied in the university of Padua, under or with Galileo who paid respect to John's pioneering thought in dynamics and astronomy. (Essays on Galileo & the History and Philosophy of Science, S. Drake)

He missed the point again when he discussed the 'Downfall of Aristotle and Ptolemy,' which in both cases the Alexandrian Genius was the major catalyst many centuries before. This being said, the volume of books that were published in the last years, in the UK after his death, made the flaw even more obvious.



Basic reading?

'The Origins of Modern Science' is basic reading, keeping in mind it was an original work on the history and philosophy of science. Butterfield's lectures described the prevailing milieu of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but did not give enough attention to their origins in the great city of science: Alexandria, which made the book core idea not supported.

An in depth modern treatment of the subject, in the Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology is; "Science and Technology in World History : An Introduction"



Herbert Butterfield:

Butterfield, a British historian and philosopher of history, mainly remembered for his work on Interpretation of History. He taught at Princeton University (1924/5) and at Cambridge from 1928 to 1979. Butterfield's main interests were diplomatic history and historiography, and was highly concerned with religious issues, but he did not believe that historians could uncover the hand of God in history.



 

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