Reviews for History of Western Society 9e VC & Discovering the Western Past V2 5eV2

The average rating for History of Western Society 9e VC & Discovering the Western Past V2 5eV2 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-11-26 00:00:00 Antonio Cotten In the introductory chapter to The Scientific Revolution: A Brief History with Documents, Margaret C. Jacob asserts that the Scientific Revolution must be seen as a product of the religious chaos that gripped Europe in the early modern period. She is careful to hedge this claim with doubts that the birth of science as we know it may be attributed to any single cause, but her thesis is clear: the sudden rupture with premodern natural philosophy must be understood as a consequence of the conflict which tore Christendom asunder in the century prior to the great scientists of the seventeenth century. In advancing this thesis, she situates herself against three opposing views of the Scientific Revolution: the first an accumulative account, the second a Great Man history, and the third an interrogation of whether the new science was in fact “rational” (3). This is all clear enough, and Jacob excels formally in situating herself in relation to the historical discourse. Indeed, in the summary of the Scientific Revolution which makes up the bulk of her introduction, Jacob offers a great deal of supporting evidence for the role of religious conflict in the genesis of the new science. As she notes, premodern natural philosophy was a thoroughly religious enterprise, guided by the Scholastic philosophers and their Muslim counterparts, both parties united in their adherence to (a heavily diluted and filtered) Aristotle, “the most powerful influence in science until the seventeenth century” (6). The emergence of Protestantism necessitated a break with Scholasticism, and such a break had implications for natural philosophy just as much as theology. With the Catholic Church no longer the absolute authority on what constitutes “truth,” the vacuum that emerged proved a fertile environment for any number of new and radical ways of thinking, the new science being perhaps the most successful. Jacob cannot be faulted for any lack of evidence – the problem with her thesis lies in the multiplicity of complications which arise in her account of the economic and technological (or “artisanal”) changes that preceded and catalyzed the development of modern science. That religious conflict played a major part in the intellectual ferment leading to science as we know it is beyond dispute, but as Jacob notes, this paradigm shift “coincided with the explosive growth of overseas trade and exploration” (6). It was made possible by technological innovations, most importantly the printing press and advances in optical engineering, and in turn made possible further developments in industrial technology (7-9). Jacob admits this all, but the evidence she provides accords these facts with a primary significance in the Scientific Revolution, one which seems at odds with her thesis. As she notes in her conclusion, the Scientific Revolution worked in tandem with the capitalist economy, and breakthroughs in research paved the way for the West’s economic and political hegemony in our own time (33). If this is the case, then Jacob ought to reformulate her thesis. A final point of contention is Jacob’s very bold claim in the final paragraph of her introduction that “gradually, rationalism and empiricism came to displace tradition and religious dogmatism.” Across the globe, every society which was touched by the new science (often via imperial coercion, a theme underdeveloped here) was deeply changed – this is true, but it is a truism. Rather than “displacing” tradition and religious dogmatism outright, early modern science and philosophy are better understood as prompting a transformation in traditional thought. Scottish common-sense realism, one of the key philosophical expressions of the Enlightenment, lies at the foundation of many modern evangelical movements. The scientific foregrounding of experience informed the Wesley brothers, architects of the Methodist movement, certain offshoots of which exemplify what Jacob calls “those who hate the modern world,” those who reject science in “favor [of] occult or mystical forces that will provide an alternative set of explanations” (2). Jacob’s overview of early modern science is stellar and accessible, but the primacy she accords to religion is not apparent, her attention to concurrent political developments is lacking, and her naïve assertion that science stamped out the demons of unreason (one is reminded of Goya’s El sueño de la razón produce monstruos) reveals a lack of engagement with the Enlightenment roots of much supposedly anti-modern fervor.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-14 00:00:00 Bubba Smith I had mistaken this book for something more than it was. It leads with a dull introductory essay with little of anything value and follows with an assortment of haphazard excerpts from 17th-18th century scientific writing. The excerpts are so short however, (no more than 2-3 pages each) and so lacking in explanatory details ( where obscure and obsolete phrasings are concerned) as to be almost entirely useless. You're better off seeking out the full originals, or reading thorough synopsis of each.