Abstract
It was in 1660s England, according to the received view, in the meetings of the Royal Society of London, that science acquired the form of empirical enquiry that we recognize as our own: an open, collaborative experimental practice, mediated by specially-designed instruments, supported by civil, critical discourse, stressing accuracy and replicability. Guided by the philosophy of Francis Bacon, by Protestant ideas of this-worldly benevolence, by gentlemanly codes of decorum and integrity and by a dominant interest in mechanics and a conviction in the mechanical structure of the universe, the members of the Royal Society created a novel experimental practice that superseded all former modes of empirical inquiry – from Aristotelian observations to alchemical experimentation.
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References
Shapin, Steven. 1994. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sprat, Thomas. 1667. The History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge. London: Printed by T. R. for J. Martyn and J. Allestry.
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Wolfe, C.T., Gal, O. (2010). Embodied Empiricism. In: Wolfe, C.T., Gal, O. (eds) The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3686-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3686-5_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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