Newton's Physics and the conceptual Structure of the Scientific Revolution
Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. Hardcover. Navy cloth/boards with gilt lettering. Sky blue dj with black lettering. 588 pp. with very occasional bw images. VG and tight but with pencil underlining and margin notes by former owner, Robert Palter, noted Newtonian, science professor, and author of scientific texts. Item #148820
Volume 127 in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series. "The scientific revolution in the 17th century exhibits the irrationality typical of Platonic thought in the revolt against the rationality of Aristotle's theory. But then, the author argues, prevalent historiography has it all upside down, for there is no real conceptual difference between the true Aristotle and the picture of Newton's physics as it is drawn today. This implies that our contemporary historiography of the scientific revolution is actually an Aristotelian interpretation of modern physics. Thus armed, Bechler seeks to interpret the real structure of that physics, as Paltonic in essence. The rationality of the aristotelian philosophy of nature leads to a non-informational conception of explanation. The platonic revolt, which animated the new science, is a strictly informational conception, which views explanation as the combination of ontologically alien and unrelated elements, and so it basically irrational. Both ontologies, however, inescapably end up in the same place: against the straight and clean-cut verbalism of the aristotelian, the platonist is led to a cirularity in his science which he cannot excise, unless he gives up the ideal of certainty which he shares with the arsitotelian. Bechler shows this by a detailed analysis of Galileo, Descartes, and mainly Newton's physics. Newton's critics, Leibniz and Berkely, are then exhibited as the artistotelian reaction." - from the dj.
Price: $200.00