The birth of modern science was linked to the rise in Western Europe of a new sensibility, that of the scientific intellectual. Such a person was no more technician, looking at science as just a job to be done, but one for whom the scientific stand-point is a philosophy in the fullest sense. In The Scientific Intellectual, Lewis S. Feuer traces the evolution of this new human type, seeking to define what ethic inspired him and the underlying emotions that created him.Under the influence of Max Weber, the rise of the scientific spirit has been viewed by sociologists as an offspring of the Protestant revolution, with its asceticism and sense of guilt acting as causative agents in the rise of capitalism and the growth of the scientific movement. Feuer takes strong issue with this view, pointing out how it is at odds with what we know of the psychological conditions of modern societies making for human curiosity and its expression in the observation of and experiment with nature.Feuer shows that wherever a scientific movement has begun, it has been based on emotions that issue in what might be called a hedonist-libertarian ethic. The scientific intellectual was a person for whom science was a 'new philosophy,' a third force rising above religious and political hatreds, seeking in the world of nature liberated vision, a intending to use and enjoy its knowledge. In his new introduction to this brilliantly readable volume, Professor Feuer reviews the book's critical reception and expands the scope of the original edition to include fascinating discussions of Francis Bacon, Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, Thomas Hardy, and others. The Scientific Intellectual will be of interest to scientists and intellectual historians.

Seventeenth-century Europe witnessed an extraordinary flowering of discoveries and innovations. This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608, casts Galileo's discoveries into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. In Europe, there was an extraordinary burst of innovations in microscopy, human anatomy, optics, pneumatics, electrical studies, and the science of mechanics. Nearly all of those aided the emergence of Newton's revolutionary grand synthesis, which unified terrestrial and celestial physics under the law of universal gravitation. That achievement had immense implications for all aspects of modern science, technology, and economic development. The economic implications are set out in the concluding epilogue. All these unique developments suggest why the West experienced a singular scientific and economic ascendancy of at least four centuries.

Examines the influences on and impact of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

He also examines the divergences in the way research is organized and controlled both in different fields, and in the same field in different historical circumstances." "This book will be of interest to all graduate students and academics concerned with the social study and management of knowledge, science, technology, and the history and philosophy of science."--BOOK JACKET.

By investigating the re-emergence of intellectual, moral, and civic virtues in the practice and teaching of science, this text challenges the increasing professionalization of science; questions the view of scientific knowledge as objective; and highlights the relationship between democracy and science. Written by a range of experts in science, the history of science, education and philosophy, the text establishes the historical relationship between natural philosophy and the Aristotelian virtues before moving to the challenges that the relationship faces, with the emergence, and increasing hegemony, brought about by the professionalization of science. Exploring how virtues relate to citizenship, technology, and politics, the chapters in this work illustrate the ways in which virtues are integral to understanding the values and limitations of science, and its role in informing democratic engagement. The text also demonstrates how the guiding virtues of scientific inquiry can be communicated in the classroom to the benefit of both individuals and wider societies. Scholars in the fields of Philosophy of Science, Ethics and Philosophy of Education, as well as Science Education, will find this book to be highly useful.

Since the seventeenth century our ideas of scientific authorship have expanded and changed dramatically. In this ambitious volume of new work, Mario Biagioli and Peter Galison have brought together historians of science, literary historians, and historians of the book. Together they track the changing nature and identity of the author in science, both historically and conceptually, from the emergence of scientific academies in the age of Galileo to concerns with large-scale multiauthorship and intellectual property rights in the age of cloning labs and pharmaceutical giants. How, for example, do we decide whether a chemical compound is discovered or invented? What does it mean to patent genetic material? Documenting the emergence of authorship in the late medieval period, authorship's limits and its fragmentation, Scientific Authorship offers a collective history of a complex relationship.

Does technology change who we are, and if so, in what ways? Can humanity transcend physical bodies and spaces? Will AI and genetic engineering help us reach new heights or will they unleash dystopias? How do we face mortality, our own and that of our warming planet? Questions like these—which are only growing more urgent—can be answered only by drawing on different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing. They challenge us to bridge the divide between the sciences and the humanities and bring together perspectives that are too often kept apart. Great Minds Don’t Think Alike presents conversations among leading scientists, philosophers, historians, and public intellectuals that exemplify openness to diverse viewpoints and the productive exchange of ideas. Pulitzer and Templeton Prize winners, MacArthur “genius” grant awardees, and other acclaimed writers and thinkers debate the big questions: who we are, the nature of reality, science and religion, consciousness and materialism, and the mysteries of time. In so doing, they also inquire into how uniting experts from different areas of study to consider these topics might help us address the existential risks we face today. Convened and moderated by the physicist and author Marcelo Gleiser, these public dialogues model constructive engagement between the sciences and the humanities—and show why intellectual cooperation is necessary to shape our collective future. Contributors include David Chalmers and Antonio Damasio; Sean Carroll and B. Alan Wallace; Patricia Churchland and Jill Tarter; Rebecca Goldstein and Alan Lightman; Jimena Canales and Paul Davies; Ed Boyden and Mark O’Connell; Elizabeth Kolbert and Siddhartha Mukherjee; Jeremy DeSilva, David Grinspoon, and Tasneem Zehra Husain.