The Language of Nature: Reassessing the Mathematization of Natural Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century

Geoffrey Gorham · Benjamin Hill · Edward Slowik · C. Kenneth Waters

Jun 2016 · U of Minnesota Press

Ebook

384

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About this ebook

Galileo’s dictum that the book of nature “is written in the language of mathematics” is emblematic of the accepted view that the scientific revolution hinged on the conceptual and methodological integration of mathematics and natural philosophy. Although the mathematization of nature is a distinctive and crucial feature of the emergence of modern science in the seventeenth century, this volume shows that it was a far more complex, contested, and context-dependent phenomenon than the received historiography has indicated, and that philosophical controversies about the implications of mathematization cannot be understood in isolation from broader social developments related to the status and practice of mathematics in various commercial, political, and academic institutions.

Contributors: Roger Ariew, U of South Florida; Richard T. W. Arthur, McMaster U; Lesley B. Cormack, U of Alberta; Daniel Garber, Princeton U; Ursula Goldenbaum, Emory U; Dana Jalobeanu, U of Bucharest; Douglas Jesseph, U of South Florida; Carla Rita Palmerino, Radboud U, Nijmegen and Open U of the Netherlands; Eileen Reeves, Princeton U; Christopher Smeenk, Western U; Justin E. H. Smith, U of Paris 7; Kurt Smith, Bloomsburg U of Pennsylvania.

About the author

Geoffrey Gorham is associate professor of philosophy at Macalester College.

Benjamin Hill is associate professor of philosophy at University of Western Ontario.

Edward Slowik is associate professor of philosophy at Winona State University.

C. Kenneth Waters is professor of philosophy at the University of Calgary.

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