The Intelligibility of Nature

The Intelligibility of Nature PDF Author: Peter Dear
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226139506
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Throughout the history of the Western world, science has possessed an extraordinary amount of authority and prestige. And while its pedestal has been jostled by numerous evolutions and revolutions, science has always managed to maintain its stronghold as the knowing enterprise that explains how the natural world works: we treat such legendary scientists as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein with admiration and reverence because they offer profound and sustaining insight into the meaning of the universe. In The Intelligibility of Nature, Peter Dear considers how science as such has evolved and how it has marshaled itself to make sense of the world. His intellectual journey begins with a crucial observation: that the enterprise of science is, and has been, directed toward two distinct but frequently conflated ends—doing and knowing. The ancient Greeks developed this distinction of value between craft on the one hand and understanding on the other, and according to Dear, that distinction has survived to shape attitudes toward science ever since. Teasing out this tension between doing and knowing during key episodes in the history of science—mechanical philosophy and Newtonian gravitation, elective affinities and the chemical revolution, enlightened natural history and taxonomy, evolutionary biology, the dynamical theory of electromagnetism, and quantum theory—Dear reveals how the two principles became formalized into a single enterprise, science, that would be carried out by a new kind of person, the scientist. Finely nuanced and elegantly conceived, The Intelligibility of Nature will be essential reading for aficionados and historians of science alike.

The Intelligibility of Nature

The Intelligibility of Nature PDF Author: Peter Dear
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226139506
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
Throughout the history of the Western world, science has possessed an extraordinary amount of authority and prestige. And while its pedestal has been jostled by numerous evolutions and revolutions, science has always managed to maintain its stronghold as the knowing enterprise that explains how the natural world works: we treat such legendary scientists as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein with admiration and reverence because they offer profound and sustaining insight into the meaning of the universe. In The Intelligibility of Nature, Peter Dear considers how science as such has evolved and how it has marshaled itself to make sense of the world. His intellectual journey begins with a crucial observation: that the enterprise of science is, and has been, directed toward two distinct but frequently conflated ends—doing and knowing. The ancient Greeks developed this distinction of value between craft on the one hand and understanding on the other, and according to Dear, that distinction has survived to shape attitudes toward science ever since. Teasing out this tension between doing and knowing during key episodes in the history of science—mechanical philosophy and Newtonian gravitation, elective affinities and the chemical revolution, enlightened natural history and taxonomy, evolutionary biology, the dynamical theory of electromagnetism, and quantum theory—Dear reveals how the two principles became formalized into a single enterprise, science, that would be carried out by a new kind of person, the scientist. Finely nuanced and elegantly conceived, The Intelligibility of Nature will be essential reading for aficionados and historians of science alike.

Revolutionizing the Sciences

Revolutionizing the Sciences PDF Author: Peter Dear
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691194349
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This thoroughly revised third edition of an award-winning book offers a keen insight into how the Scientific Revolution happened and why. Covering central scientific figures, including Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Bacon, this new edition features: • Greater treatment of alchemy and associated craft activities to reflect trends in current scholarship • Extended material on Francis Bacon • A new historiographical essay Reflecting on the origins of scientific practice in early modern Europe, Peter Dear traces the revolution in thought that changed the natural world from something to be contemplated into something to be used. Concise and readable, this book is ideal for students who are studying the Scientific Revolution and its impact on the early modern world. The first edition was the winner of the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize of the History of Science Society.

Discipline and Experience

Discipline and Experience PDF Author: Peter Dear
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226139441
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Although the Scientific Revolution has long been regarded as the beginning of modern science, there has been little consensus about its true character. While the application of mathematics to the study of the natural world has always been recognized as an important factor, the role of experiment has been less clearly understood. Peter Dear investigates the nature of the change that occurred during this period, focusing particular attention on evolving notions of experience and how these developed into the experimental work that is at the center of modern science. He examines seventeenth-century mathematical sciences—astronomy, optics, and mechanics—not as abstract ideas, but as vital enterprises that involved practices related to both experience and experiment. Dear illuminates how mathematicians and natural philosophers of the period—Mersenne, Descartes, Pascal, Barrow, Newton, Boyle, and the Jesuits—used experience in their argumentation, and how and why these approaches changed over the course of a century. Drawing on mathematical texts and works of natural philosophy from all over Europe, he describes a process of change that was gradual, halting, sometimes contradictory—far from the sharp break with intellectual tradition implied by the term "revolution."

Dear Me

Dear Me PDF Author: Peter Ustinov
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446472752
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Sir Peter Ustinov's beautifully crafted autobiography is told with exquisite wit and insight. From his birth in April 1921, it spans his extraordinary career as actor, playwright, film star and director, confirming his early belief that he is 'irrevocably betrothed to laughter'. Ustinov's renowned gift for mimicry is exploited to the full in Dear Me. Eccentric relatives, school masters, sergeant majors and manic Hollywood moguls are all brought unforgettably to life.

Dear Peter, Dear Ulla

Dear Peter, Dear Ulla PDF Author: Barbara Nickel
Publisher: Thistledown Press
ISBN: 9781771872171
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Dear Peter, Dear Ulla is an imaginative and beautifully crafted historical middle-grade novel about two cousins who are fast friends even though they have never met. Letters fly back and forth between them, and although Ulla lives in Danzig, Germany, and Peter on a Mennonite farm in Saskatchewan, their lives become inextricably entwined through an intense, empathetic connection that plays out in the first months of World War Two. Peter is a talented pianist and Ulla a skillful storyteller with a talent for drawing--will these skills help or hinder them through the challenges brought about by war? They can't think of one another as enemies, even though that's what the world is telling them that they are. Unfolding in alternating chapters, suspense builds as suspicion mounts all around both young protagonists. Will German-speaking Mennonites on the Canadian prairies be accused of sympathizing with the Nazis? Is Peter safe from the bully who despises him for playing music instead of hockey? Will the Nazis catch Ulla in the act of helping a Jewish friend? Will Ulla's father lose his job entirely because of his views? These urgent questions, and the danger the war will sever the deep connection between Peter and Ulla, will keep young readers enthralled through this deft weaving of complex cultural and moral questions, told here with energy, humour, and empathy. Throughout the novel, the character Ulla sends her cousin Peter drawings she has done along with her letters. These pictures include a battleship attacking the city of Danzig, crowds greeting Hitler on his visit there, other family members, and the basement her family hides in during bombardment. The book's illustrations will depict these drawings.

Revolutionizing the Sciences

Revolutionizing the Sciences PDF Author: Peter Dear
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780333715741
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The European expansion around the globe, which began in the sixteenth century, carried with it new conceptions of knowledge itself. Francis Bacon famously asserted that 'knowledge is power' this book attempts to go beneath the oft quoted slogan to see the various ways in which this conviction played itself out in shaping new perceptions of what natural knowledge was, and what it was good for, in this crucial period. Peter Dear covers the key figures of the period, including Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton and the important schools of thought to create a picture of the development of scientific thought in early modern Europe. The book is accessible to an undergraduate and lay readership, while drawing on recent scholarship to provide an understanding of the cultural foundations of the modern scientific project.

Scientific Practices in European History, 1200-1800

Scientific Practices in European History, 1200-1800 PDF Author: Peter Dear
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351627740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Scientific Practices in European History, 1200–1800 presents and situates a collection of extracts from both widely known texts by such figures as Copernicus, Newton, and Lavoisier, and lesser known but significant items, all chosen to provide a perspective on topics in social, cultural and intellectual history and to illuminate the concerns of the early modern period. The selection of extracts highlights the emerging technical preoccupations of this period, while the accompanying introductions and annotations make these occasionally complex works accessible to students and non-specialists. The book follows a largely chronological sequence and helps to locate scientific ideas and practices within broader European history. The primary source materials in this collection stand alone as texts in themselves, but in illustrating the scientific components of early modern societies they also make this book ideal for teachers and students of European history.

Marsenne and the Learning of the Schools

Marsenne and the Learning of the Schools PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description


Dear Teenager

Dear Teenager PDF Author:
Publisher: Torchlight Publishing
ISBN: 0977978524
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Dear Teenager is a heartfelt attempt to pass down the wisdom of experience from one generation to the next.

Dear Peter Rabbit

Dear Peter Rabbit PDF Author: Alma Flor Ada
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9780689812897
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
One of the Three Little Pigs is hosting a housewarming, and Peter Rabbit would love to go. But he's in bed with a cold after a narrow escape from Mr. McGregor's garden. Meanwhile, Goldilocks is planning her birthday party and hoping her new friend Baby Bear can come (he's forgiven her for breaking his favorite chair). But with the Big Bad Wolf on the prowl and Little Red Riding Hood heading off to grandmother's house, there's no telling how things may end! This lively collection of letters written by famous storybook characters takes us behind the scenes in the land of make-believe.