Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology)

Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology

by Mordechai Feingold (Editor)

Founded in 1540, the Society of Jesus was viewed for centuries as an impediment to the development of modern science. The Jesuit educational system was deemed conservative and antithetical to creative thought, while the Order and its members were blamed by Galileo, Descartes, and their disciples for virtually every proceeding against the new science. No wonder a consensus emerged that little reason existed for historians to take Jesuit science seriously. Only during the past two decades have scholars begun to question this received view of the Jesuit role in the Scientific Revolution, and this book contributes significantly to that reassessment. Focusing on the institutional setting of Jesuit science, the contributors take a new and broader look at the overall intellectual environment of the Collegio Romano and other Jesuit colleges to see how Jesuit scholars taught and worked, to examine the context of the Jesuit response to the new philosophies, and to chart the Jesuits' scientific contributions. Their conclusions indicate that Jesuit practitioners were indeed instrumental in elevating the status of mathematics and in stressing the importance of experimental science; yet, at the same time, the Jesuits were members of a religious order with a clearly defined apostolic mission. Understanding both the contributions of Jesuit practitioners and the constraints under which they worked helps us to gain a clearer and more complete perspective on the emergence of the scientific worldview.

Genres: History

520 pages, Hardcover

First published September 13, 2002

About the author

Mordechai Feingold (D.Phil., University of Oxford, 1980; M.A., 1976; B.A., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1972) is an intellectual and institutional historian of science, from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, and has served as Kate Van Nuys Page Professor of the History of Science and the Humanities at Caltech since 2019. Previously he was Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia.

His research focuses on how the rise of modern science has transformed Western culture from a humanistic, religious, and unified culture during the sixteenth century into a scientific, technological, secular, and fragmented one by the nineteenth century.