Science on the Move: Recent Trends in the History of Early Modern Science^*

Abstract

O ne of the most important developments of the period ca. 1400-1750, which I will call early modern, was the rise of a new philosophy, the new experimental science. 1 This used to be understood as a history of European achievement from the Renaissance forward, a universe-changing paradigm shift that defined the modern world. There is no doubt that the growth of modern science forms one of the most significant phenomena of the modern age, affirmed today in the massive public and private funding for research into natural science and medicine. But the question for the historian is, What does this modern phenomenon have to do with the early modern period? The last generation has been an exciting time to come of age in the history of science: the field has definitively emerged from its beginnings in the history of philosophy, intellectual history, and the discrete histories of sciences written by and for their practitioners, to offer answers to * I am grateful to Marty Elsky and Sheila Rabin for inviting me to write this article, and for their patience in receiving it. In writing this essay, I had before me the previous two

History and the Future of Science and Religion

“…In the early modern period the interplay between science and religion was especially prominent in the areas that modern science has refused to recognize as science proper (Smith 2009). Modern science has marginalized the supposedly occult inquiries (inquiries into the hidden property of things) such as alchemy, astrology, and magic, but historians of science of the last three decades have shown that these subjects have been at the center of elite and vernacular understandings of the natural world in the early modern period.…”

Mediated education in early modern travel stories: How travel stories contribute to children’s empirical learning

“…With regard to adults, it has been generally assumed that the early modern knowledge culture increasingly depended on an active, empirical mode of producing knowledge, and on the capacity to explore their own environment: scholars as well as craftsmen acquired knowledge from empirical experiences and observations (Smith 2009;Van Miert 2013;Harkness 2007;Cook 2007). At first sight, this ideal of knowledge production seems to be incompatible with books as classical teaching instruments and transmitters of cut-and-dried information.…”

Corn, cochineal, and quina: The “Zilsel Thesis” in a colonial Iberian setting

“…Pamela Smith considers the recent attention to commerce and the global development of science in the early modern period to be “the most paradigm‐changing trend in the history of science,” Smith, , p. 368.…”