What Is the History of Science the History Of

Early Modern Roots of the Ideology of Modern Science

Bibliographic Data

ID4174653
AuthorsPeter Dear (corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume96
Issue3
Pages390-406
Publication date2005-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/447747
OpenAlexW2295974131
LanguageEN
Citations received37
References cited15

The mismatch between common representations of "science" and the miscellany of materials typically studied by the historian of science is traced to a systematic ambiguity that may itself be traced to early modern Europe. In that cultural setting, natural philosophy came to be rearticulated (most famously by Francis Bacon) as involving both contemplative and practical knowledge. The resulting tension and ambiguity are illustrated by the eighteenth-century views of Buffon. In the nineteenth century, a new enterprise called "science" represents the establishment of an unstable ideology of natural knowledge that was heavily indebted to those early modern developments. The two complementary and competing elements of the ideology of modern science are accordingly described as "natural philosophy" (a discourse of contemplative knowledge) and "instrumentality" (a discourse of practical or useful knowledge; know-how). The history of science in large part concerns the story of their shifting, often mutually denying, interrelations

Contemplation · Miscellany · Natural Philosophy · Historical Philosophy and Science · History of Science and Natural History · Philosophy and History of Science

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub