Abstract

Ever since Herbert Butterfield’s lectures at Cambridge in 1948, the period known as the "Scientific Revolution" has intrigued historians and has gradually come to challenge the "Renaissance" as a significant marker in the periodization of intellectual history. This phenomenon has generated great interest among historians of science, but because the earlier practitioners of this discipline thought largely in terms of a positivist philosophy of science, it also tended to restrict the scope of studies concerning the origins of the "new science." Generally, the mechanical philosophy and the exact mathematical description of nature have been singled out as the dominant factors that made the Scientific Revolution possible. The role of experiment has been much debated, but due credit has rarely been given to the powerful impetus given the new movement by two other ancient traditions: Aristotelian physics with its empirical orientation, its logical rigor, and its insistence on a realist interpretation of nature; and the alchemical or hermetic tradition, with its reliance on experimentation, its appreciation of the crafts, and its general utilitarian outlook. The articles collected in this volume make a serious attempt to fill the lacunae that have thus been created, and on balance, objectivity, and clarity of presentation they score very high indeed. They will interest philosophers mainly because of their recurring concern with the problems of rationality and irrationality in science, the role of mysticism in intellectual discovery, the challenges to authority and the quarters from which they came, and the value of recent subjectivist philosophies of science to account for the "revolution" that was eventually produced.