Phil of Early Modern Science

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

We are going to try to understand better what science was in the early modern period. We will examine philosophically the nature of the scientific enterprise in the early modern period in something like the way we would examine the nature of the scientific enterprise today, that is by studying the sciences themselves and interrogating them philosophically. However it seems inappropriate to begin with the standard problems of philosophy of science and project those back onto the theories, practices, disciplines, etc. of the early moderns. So our first task will be outlining the philosophy of science categories appropriate to early modern science. We will be asking: What is scientific knowledge in the early modern period? How does one get it? Is it the same as scientific knowledge today, even if the particular content is different? What answers do the practitioners of such science give to these questions? We begin with a few weeks of secondary sources from historians of science. These will, I hope, serve to alert us to the challenges, resources, and preoccupations of the scientists of the early modern period. After that we will dig mostly into primary sources and try to understand the sciences while we develop the tools for this on the fly. We’ll return to secondary sources toward the end. The rough progression in topics is this: Origins of science in Renaissance medicine; preoccupation with the body as measuring device and device measured; the scientific background of the early moderns; the role of witnessing (as a social and as a religious activity); physics and the foundation of experiment. I hope it works. I hope it’s fun. I hope we all learn something.