Scientific Revolution: 1500-1800

by Alfred R. Hall, Alfred R. Hall

The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century was a creation of the middle third of the twentieth, and its historiographical career has mirrored that of the myriad ideas and institutions born at that first rising to wide acceptance, then fragmenting under critical attack, now persisting in changed form. The term "The Scientific Revolution" was coined by Alexandre Koyre in the 1930s and popularized in 1949 by Herbert Butterfield, who famously proclaimed that it "outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom." For two generations of college (and graduate) students, however, the Scientific Revolution was defined not by Koyre or Butterfield but by A. Rupert Hall's book, The Scientific Revolution, 1500-1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude. Indeed, it is no great exaggeration to say that The Scientific Revolution was the subject, and The Scientific Revolution the text around which the new field of the history of science first coalesced. It was the first great exemplar of the belief that science was a valid subject for historical inquiry -- a belief whose offspring Hall did not anticipate nor entirely welcome.

Genres: Science

394 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1971