52 records matched your query       

Author:

Gaukroger, Stephen author.

Title:

The natural and the human : science and the shaping of modernity, 1739-1841 / Stephen Gaukroger.

Edition:

First edition.

Publisher:

Oxford University Press,

Copyright Date:

2016

Description:

viii, 402 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Subject:

Science--Europe--History--18th century.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [353]-393) and index.

Contents:

Introduction. PART I. 1 The dichotomies of understanding : The place of reason -- Systematic knowledge -- Reason and sensibility -- The challenge to reason -- The limits of certainty -- The anatomy of reason. 2 Rethinking the nature of matter : The reaction to mechanism -- Chemical composition -- Chemical "elements" -- Vital forces -- The unity of force -- Naturalization. PART II. 3 Anthropological medicine : The idea of an anthropological medicine -- Matter and sensitivity -- M©♭decins philosophes -- Social medicine -- The demise of sensibility. 4 Philosophical anthropology : Metaphysics and psychology -- Language and art -- The shaping of experience -- The legitimacy of anthropological explanation. 5 The natural history of man : The problem of classification -- Anthropology and natural history -- Comparative anatomy -- Comparative geography -- Comparative history. 6 Social arithmetic : The Fable of the Bees -- The naturalization of morality -- The quantification of everyday life -- The average man. PART III. 7 The naturalization of religion : The limits of reason -- The historicization of Christianity -- The evolution of religions -- Aesthetic humanism and the cultivation of the self. Conclusion. Bibliography of works cited -- Index.

Summary:

Stephen Gaukroger presents an original account of the development of empirical science and the understanding of human behavior from the mid-eighteenth century. Since the seventeenth century, science in the west has undergone a unique form of cumulative development in which it has been consolidated through integration into and shaping of a culture. But in the eighteenth century, science was cut loose from the legitimating culture in which it had found a public rationale as a fruitful and worthwhile form of inquiry. What kept it afloat between the middle of the eighteenth and middle of the nineteenth centuries, when its legitimacy began to hinge on an intimate link with technology? The answer lies in large part in an abrupt but fundamental shift in how the tasks of scientific inquiry were conceived, from the natural realm to the human realm. At the core of this development lies the naturalization of the human, that is, attempts to understand human behavior and motivations no longer in theological and metaphysical terms, but in empirical terms. one of the most striking features of this development is the variety of forms it took, and the book explores anthropological medicine, philosophical anthropology, the "natural history of man," and social arithmetic. Each of these disciplines re-formulated basic questions so that empirical investigation could be drawn upon in answering them, but the empirical dimension was conceived very differently in each case, with the result that the naturalization of the human took the form of competing, and in some respects mutually exclusive, projects.

ISBN:

0198757638
9780198757634

OCLC:

(OCoLC)917362552

Locations:

USUX851 -- Iowa State University - Parks Library (Ames)