The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century
Anstey, Peter R. / Schuster, John A.
The seventeenth century marked a critical phase in the emergence of modern science. But we misunderstand this process, if we assume that seventeenth-century modes of natural inquiry were identical to the highly specialised, professionalised and ever proliferating family of modern sciences practised today.
In early modern Europe the central category for the study of nature was ‘natural philosophy’, or as Robert Hooke called it in his Micrograp...
