English Science: Bacon to Newton (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521316835)

Seventeenth-century England witnessed an unprecedented flourishing of natural philosophy, inspired by Francis Bacon's call for a new science based on observation and experiment, to be carried out in collective research projects, whose findings would be communicated in clear language. This anthology documents the effect of Bacon's ideas in the remarkably fruitful period following 1660. It includes his sketch of a scientific research institute in the New Atlantis (1627), which inspired the founding of the Royal Society in 1662, as acknowledged by Thomas Sprat in its History, excerpted here. Bacon's plea for an appropriate language for science also affected the Royal Society, as Sprat records, and gave birth to a number of schemes for man-made artificial languages, represented here by John Wilkins's Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668). The selections are accompanied by a general introduction, extensive notes, contemporary illustrations, a glossary of obsolete and technical terms and an updated bibliography

Author: Brian Vickers
ISBN-10: 0521316839
ISBN-13: 9780521316835
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/21/1987
Pages: 260
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.73lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.59d