num_pages: 456
description: Including a translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris by Simon Schaffer". . . Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer have ventured beyond ordinary history of science or history of ideas to produce a novel "exercise in the sociology of scientific knowledge.' . . . a historical study rich in new interpretations and notable for the use of sources of a kind not hitherto fully exploited by scholars".--Clive Holmes, American Historical Review "Shapin and Schaffer work out the implications of these debates [between Hobbes and Boyle] for the history of science with great skill of interpretation and exposition. They use their findings and their analysis to give an explanation of the experimental enterprise in general, which, although it is not philosophical in nature, always takes philosophy most seriously. This is simply one of the most original, enjoyable and important books published in the history of science in recent years".--Owen Hannaway, Technology and Culture "If any proof of the intellectual buoyancy or intrinsic worth of the history and philosophy for science was needed, nothing better could be provided than this study by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. . . . Their findings suggest the futility of wrenching science from its ideological context, and not only with respect to the seventeenth century; they also detect parallels with the crisis of confidence affecting contemporary science".--Charles Webster, The Times Literary SupplementContents: 	Understanding experiment -- Seeing and believing : the experimental production of pneumatic facts --Seeing double : Hobbes's politics of plenism before 1660 --The trouble with experiment : Hobbes versus Boyle --Boyle's adversaries : experiment defended --Replication and its troubles : air-pumps in the 1660s --Natural philosophy and the restoration : interests in dispute --The polity of science : conclusions --Translation of Hobbes's Dialogus physicus.
language: English
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life
titlecomplete: Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life
genres: Sociology, History, Science, Politics, Philosophy, 17th Century, History Of Science, Physics, Academic, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 482
publisher: Princeton University Press