Abstract
What is “modern” about “modern science”? This is a rather odd question, for in one sense the phrase “modern science” is redundant. Arguably the most distinctive features of modern culture, such as its pro-gressiveness, rationality, objectivity and self-awareness, are exemplified by science itself. And if our concept of modernity is derived from science, than science is modern by definition.
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Notes
For the concept of “guiding assumptions” and its relation to several leading theories of scientific change, see Larry Laudan, Arthur Donovan, et al., Scientific Change: Philosophical Models and Historical Research, in Synthese, 1986, vol.69, no.2.
Arnold Thackray, Atoms and Powers, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1970)
Robert Schofield, “The Counter Reformation in Eighteenth-Century Science — Last Phase,” in Duane H.D. Roller, ed., Perspectives in the History of Science and Technology, (Norman: Oklahoma, 1971), pp. 39–54;
I. Bernard Cohen, The Newtonian Revolution, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1980), pp. 9–10. I have examined this issue in greater detail in my “Newton and Lavoisier: From Natural Philosophy to Positive Science,” paper read at the University of Maryland/Smithsonian Institution Symposium on the Tercentenary of Newton’s Principia, forthcoming.
See Robert E. Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism, (Princeton, 1969)
for a summary of critiques of Schofield’s interpretation, see Simon Schaffer, “Natural Philosophy,” in G.S. Rousseau & Roy Porter, eds., The Ferment of Knowledge, (Canbridge, 1980), pp. 55–91.
Cohen, Newtonian Revolution, p. 131.
See especially Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720, (Ithaca: Cornell, 1976), and her “Newtonianism and the Origins of the Enlightenment: A Reassessment,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1977–78, 11: 1–25.
For detailed studies of Lavoisier’s experimental method, see Marcellin Berthelot, La Révolution chimique — Lavoisier, (Paris, 1890);
Henry Guerlac, Lavoisier — The Crucial Year, (Ithaca: Cornell, 1961);
Frederic L. Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life, (Madison: Wisconsin, 1985).
For detailed studies of Lavoisier’s experimental method, see Marcellin Berthelot, La Révolution chimique — Lavoisier, (Paris, 1890);
Henry Guerlac, Lavoisier — The Crucial Year, (Ithaca: Cornell, 1961);
Frederic L. Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life, (Madison: Wisconsin, 1985).
I have explored this connection in greater detail in my “Lavoisier and the Origins of Modern Chemistry,” in Arthur Donovan, ed., The Chemical Revolution: Essays in Reinterpretation, vol. 4 of Osiris, second series, (Philadelphia: History of Science Society, in press).
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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Donovan, A. (1988). Newton, Lavoisier and Modern Science. In: Scheurer, P.B., Debrock, G. (eds) Newton’s Scientific and Philosophical Legacy. Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 123. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2809-1_14
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