Overview
- Introduces a new interpretation of the genesis of the idea of scientific progress in early modern science and philosophy
- Revisits the discovery of the temporality of knowledge
- Rectifies misunderstandings relating to the idea of progress
Part of the book series: International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées (ARCH, volume 250)
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Keywords
- Idea of Scientific Progress
- Early Modern Science and Philosophy
- Bernard de Fontenelle
- Académie des Sciences
- History of Human Spirit
- Early Modern Epistemology
- History of science
- Philosophy of science
About this book
This volume offers a new interpretation of the genesis of the idea of scientific progress in early modern science and philosophy. The interpretation argues that the idea of scientific progress was not a historical category, but an epistemological one. The main thesis of the book posits that the idea of scientific progress was a methodological means of dealing with the contingency of nature. To illustrate the novelty of the idea, the individual chapters compare several features of Renaissance natural philosophy with a new regime of knowledge that included time as an inevitable factor of empirical research. The temporal regime of knowledge is illustrated by the work of Bernard de Fontenelle and his colleagues at the Académie des sciences in Paris at the end of the 17th century. The new interpretation remedies a gap in recent scholarship where the idea of scientific progress has been overlooked even though the early modern natural philosophers themselves used it to describe the nature of their research. The book places both well-known texts and less-studied documents in a new light, thus contributing to the lively and rich debate on the origins and nature of early modern science and philosophy. It is of interest to scholars studying the history of early modern philosophy and science.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Daniel Špelda works as a professor at the Department of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic). In his research, he has concentrated on the philosophical problems, concepts, and categories that played a role in the development of early modern science, including curiosity, teleology, progress, and the centre of the universe. In recent years, he has addressed the question of how the early modern natural philosophers understood the history of their field and their position in the course of cultural history.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Origins of the Idea of Scientific Progress
Book Subtitle: Bernard de Fontenelle and His Contemporaries
Authors: Daniel Špelda
Series Title: International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-60525-3Due: 25 July 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-60528-4Due: 25 July 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-60526-0Due: 25 July 2024
Series ISSN: 0066-6610
Series E-ISSN: 2215-0307
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 229