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Reconfiguring the World: Nature, God, and Human Understanding from the Middle Ages to Early Modern Europe - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Reconfiguring the World: Nature, God, and Human Understanding from the Middle Ages to Early Modern Europe

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Change in human understanding of the natural world during the early modern period marks one of the most important episodes in intellectual history. This era is often referred to as the scientific revolution, but recent scholarship has challenged traditional accounts. Here, in Reconfiguring the World, Margaret J. Osler treats the development of the sciences in Europe from the early sixteenth to the late seventeenth centuries as a complex and multifaceted process. The worldview embedded in modern science is a relatively recent development. Osler aims to convey a nuanced understanding of how the natural world looked to early modern thinkers such as Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Newton. She describes investigation and understanding of the natural world in terms that the thinkers themselves would have used. Tracing the views of the natural world to their biblical, Greek, and Arabic sources, Osler demonstrates the impact of the Renaissance recovery of ancient texts, printing, the Protestant Reformation, and the exploration of the New World. She shows how the traditional disciplinary boundaries established by Aristotle changed dramatically during this period and finds the tensions of science and religion expressed as differences between natural philosophy and theology. Far from a triumphalist account, Osler's story includes false starts and dead ends. Ultimately, she shows how a few gifted students of nature changed the way we see ourselves and the universe.

ISBN-13: 9780801896569

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Publication Date: 09-01-2010

Pages: 200

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

Age Range: 18 Years

Series: Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Science

Margaret J. Osler is a professor of history at the University of Calgary.

What People are Saying About This

Paul Lawrence Farber

Reconfiguring the World is a rich story that captures much of the best historiography of the past couple of decades -- the exciting new work on alchemy, the religious roots of modern science, the contributions of Arabic thinkers (not just their 'transmitting' of Greek and Roman knowledge), and the integration of natural history and natural philosophy.

— Paul Lawrence Farber, Oregon State University

From the Publisher

Reconfiguring the World is a rich story that captures much of the best historiography of the past couple of decades—the exciting new work on alchemy, the religious roots of modern science, the contributions of Arabic thinkers (not just their 'transmitting' of Greek and Roman knowledge), and the integration of natural history and natural philosophy.
—Paul Lawrence Farber, Oregon State University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 The Western View of the World before 1500 3

2 Winds of Change: Searching for a New Philosophy of Nature 30

3 Observing the Heavens: From Aristotelian Cosmology to the Uniformity of Nature 61

4 Creating a New Philosophy of Nature 77

5 Shifting Boundaries: From Mixed Mathematics to Mathematical Physics 94

6 Exploring the Properties of Matter: Alchemy and Chemistry 118

7 Studying Life: Plants, Animals, and Humans 132

8 Rethinking the Universe: Newton on Gravity and God 147

Epilogue 165

Suggested Further Reading 169

Index 177