Science and the Enlightenment

Science and the Enlightenment is a general history of eighteenth-century science covering both the physical and life sciences. It places the scientific developments of the century in the cultural context of the Enlightenment and reveals the extent to which scientific ideas permeated the thought of the age. The book takes advantage of topical scholarship, which is rapidly changing our understanding of science during the eighteenth century. In particular it describes how science was organized into fields that were quite different from those we know today. Professor Hankins's work is a much neede.

""Cover ""; ""Half Title ""; ""Title Page ""; ""Copyright ""; ""Contents ""; ""Preface ""; ""I The Character of the Enlightenment""; ""Reason and Nature""; ""Science and Literature""; ""The Categories of Science""; ""The Mechanical Philosophy""; ""Science and Philosophy""; ""II Mathematics and the Exact Sciences""; ""The Meaning of Analysis""; ""Motion Along a Curve""; ""Mechanical Principles""; ""Mechanics and Enlightenment Philosophy""; ""Three Tests of Universal Gravitation""; ""Positional Astronomy""; ""Physical Astronomy""; ""III Experimental Physics""; ""The Subtle Fluids""

""Electricity""""The Early History of Electricity""; ""Benjamin Franklin's One-Fluid Theory""; ""The Leyden Jar""; ""The Discovery of Current Electricity""; ""Heat and Temperature""; ""Latent Heat""; ""IV Chemistry""; ""The Vaporous State of Matter""; ""Gas Chemistry""; ""The Problem of Combustion""; ""The Phlogiston Theory""; ""Lavoisier's Experiments on Combustion""; ""Oxygen and the Vaporous State of Matter""; ""The Rationalization of Chemistry""; ""Chemical Atomism""; ""V Natural History and Physiology""; ""The Mechanical Philosophy and the Study of Life""; ""Experimental Physiology""