The Shape of Enlightenment Science

Abstract

Between the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688/9 and the French Revolution lay the century of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’. To refer to it like that is, of course, to draw attention exclusively to its cultural and intellectual character, and to ignore the political, military and technical achievements of the time. It may also be to assent to the oddly optimistic assessment of their own age by many who saw little contradiction between its grandiose pretensions and what we should see as the sterility of much of its thought. However this is a convenient label, if only because it tells us how the eighteenth century often regarded itself. And for that attitude science was in no small measure responsible.