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"One cannot talk about mathematics in the 16th and 17th centuries without seeing a Jesuit at every corner," George Sarton observed in 1940. * Sarton, of course, was not the first to recognize the disproportionate representation of members of the Society of Jesus in the scientific enterprise of the early modern period. However, unlike many historians who belittled the discernible numerical strength of the Jesuits on the grounds that they lacked originality and were generally hostile to new ideas, Sarton correlated numerical strength with significance. Hence his plea for collecting the papers of that industrious historian of Jesuit science, Henri Bosmans, was quite refreshing. Yet Sarton's appeal went unheeded, and not only with respect to Bosmans' papers. The perception of the Jesuits as plodding pedagogues and obscurantists remained as ingrained as ever, virtually sanctioning the disregard of their activities. Such neglect meant that the exact nature of the Jesuit contribution to the Scientific Revolution remained sketchy at best; only recently - owing to a long-overdue examination of the Order's archives and of published texts - have new contours begun to emerge. Striking in this reassessment is a more nuanced appreciation of the Jesuits' interaction with "modernity" and a far greater recognition of the Jesuit contribution to the two poles of modern science: the mathematization of natural philosophy and experimental science.
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Archimedes Volume 6
Archimedes NEW STUDIES IN THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 6
EDITOR JED
Z.
BUCHWALD,
Dreyfuss Professor of History, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
ADVISORY BOARD University of Utrecht Virginia Polytechnic Institute ALLAN D. FRANKLIN, University of Colorado at Boulder KOSTAS GAVROGLU, National Technical University of Athens ANTHONY GRAFTON, Princeton University FREDERIC L. HOLMES, Yale University PAUL HOYNINGEN-HUENE, University of Hannover EVELYN Fox KELLER, MIT TREVOR LEVERE, University of Toronto JESPER LiiTZEN, Copenhagen University WILLIAM NEWMAN, Harvard University JURGEN RENN, Max-Planck-Institut fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte ALEX ROLAND, Duke University ALAN SHAPIRO, University of Minnesota NANCY SIRAISI, Hunter College of the City University of New York NOEL SWERDLOW, University of Chicago HENK Bos,
MORDECHAI FEINGOLD,
Archimedes has three fundamental goals; to further the integration of the histories of science and technology with one another: to investigate the technical, social and practical histories of specific developments in science and technology; and finally, where possible and desirable, to bring the histories of science and technology into closer contact with the philosophy of science. To these ends, each volume will have its own theme and title and will be planned by one or more members of the Advisory Board in consultation with the editor. Although the volumes have specific themes, the series itself will not be limited to one or even to a few particular areas. Its subjects include any of the sciences, ranging from biology through physics, all aspects of technology, broadly construed, as well as historically-engaged philosophy of science or technology. Taken as a whole, Archimedes will be of interest to historians, philosophers, and scientists, as well as to those in business and industry who seek to understand how science and industry have come to be so strongly linked.
Archimedes Volume 6 New Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
The New Science and Jesuit Science: Seventeenth Century Perspectives
edited by
MORDECHAI FEINGOLD Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, USA
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Public