February 8, 2018
Featuring Dr. Peter Dear, Professor of History and Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University
The term "the Scientific Revolution" became popular among historians following the
Second World War. Although talk of a "revolution" in science in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries had become common in the eighteenth century, many twentieth-century
historians took to the new term for a variety of reasons that do not now always seem
as persuasive as they once did. In recent decades academic historians of science have
come to doubt the coherence of the concept itself, seeing it as something applied
only in retrospect to a miscellany of different developments in the making of natural
knowledge associated with famous names like Galileo and Newton. But in the last five
or so years, several books have been published that attempt to restore the Scientific
Revolution to its former place as a crowning achievement of European culture. This
talk examines why a controversy exists over the matter, and what might be at stake
for people (not just historians) in calling an entire period by such a name.
This event is the featured lecture of the Institute's weeklong lecture series commemorating "Science and the Scientific Revolution."
The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization
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Mailing Address: Box 42019 - The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, Lubbock, TX 79409-2019 -
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Email
steve.balch@ttu.edu