The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy (Second Edition)

Through a collection of works from key thinkers in natural philosophy, the second edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy illuminates the central role scientific writing played in developing modern philosophical thought. This revised and expanded edition includes many new translations and incorporates works by foundational eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers not in the first edition, including selections from works by Jean-Baptiste, le Rond d’Alembert, Denis Diderot, Émilie Du Châtelet, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Joseph Priestley, Immanuel Kant, Carl Linnaeus, William Paley, and Charles Robert Darwin. These new additions provide students with a more comprehensive understanding of the scientific context in which the major philosophical works of the modern era were written and complement the selections from works by Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, and Isaac Newton that are retained from the first edition.

SKU
98315g

Selected Readings

Edited by Michael R. Matthews

November 2022 - 208 pp.

Sample: Click here to preview this book

Ebook edition available for $13.50, see purchasing links below.

Grouped product items
Format ISBN Price Qty
Paper 978-1-64792-086-9
$16.00
Examination 978-1-64792-086-9
$2.00

Through a collection of works from key thinkers in natural philosophy, the second edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy illuminates the central role scientific writing played in developing modern philosophical thought. This revised and expanded edition includes many new translations and incorporates works by foundational eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers not in the first edition, including selections from works by Jean-Baptiste, le Rond d’Alembert, Denis Diderot, Émilie Du Châtelet, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Joseph Priestley, Immanuel Kant, Carl Linnaeus, William Paley, and Charles Robert Darwin. These new additions provide students with a more comprehensive understanding of the scientific context in which the major philosophical works of the modern era were written and complement the selections from works by Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, and Isaac Newton that are retained from the first edition.

Review of the first edition:

"Students will find it approachable and accessible, and they will have at their fingertips a good deal of material for discussion of theories of matter and method in seventeenth-century science.”
—Catherine Wilson, in Canadian Philosophical Review

 

About the Author:

Michael Matthews is an Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.