Isaac Newton Category
What’s in a name? Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica
Posted on January 14, 2015 Leave a Comment
Themes from Andrew Cunningham’s 1988 essay were further developed in his “How the Principia Got its Name: Or, Taking Natural Philosophy Seriously,” published in 1991. Cunningham wants to concentrate on Isaac Newton’s famous Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), particularly the phrase “natural philosophy” in the title. What is the “natural philosophy” in Newton’s book? Like […]
De-centring the Scientific Revolution, Paley’s Natural Theology, Mobilizing a Prophetic Newton, and Maxwell’s Design Argument
Posted on January 7, 2014 Leave a Comment
I still have several articles open on my pdf reader that are worth mentioning before I officially end my reading of The British Journal for the History of Science, and before tackling other articles from other journals and books. In discussions over the historiography of the “Scientific Revolution,” almost all the authors I have recently […]
The “Scientific Revolution” as Narratology (Part 2)
Posted on October 29, 2013 Leave a Comment
In 1948 English historian Herbert Butterfield presented a series of lectures for the History of Science Committee at the University of Cambridge. There he argued that historians have overlooked an episode of profound intellectual transformation—one apparently comparable in magnitude to the rise of Christianity and that was deeply implicated in the very formation of the […]
Peter Dear’s Historiography of Not-so-Recent Science
Posted on May 2, 2013 Leave a Comment
I came across Peter Dear’s “Historiography of Not-so-Recent Science” (Hist. Sci. 1, 2012) while doing some research last week at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Memorial Library. It is a fine article, reviewing some of the most recent themes and trends on the historiography of science on the period c. 1500-c.1700; that is, on the late Scientific […]