Inventing the Scientific Revolution
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Authors
Secord, James A
Journal Title
Isis: international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences
ISSN
0021-1753
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
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Secord, J. A. Inventing the Scientific Revolution. Isis: international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.82571
Abstract
As a master narrative for understanding the emergence of the modern world, the concept of a seventeenth-century scientific revolution has been central to the history of science. It is generally believed that this key analytical framework was created in Europe and became widely used for the first time during the Cold War, particularly through the writings of Herbert Butterfield and Alexander Koyré. This view, however, is mistaken. The scientific revolution is largely a product of debates in the United States about social reconstruction in the aftermath of World War I. Promoted in a pioneering book by the Austrian immigrant Martha Ornstein, highlighted in a provocative bestseller by the historian James Harvey Robinson, the scientific revolution was taught in thousands of interwar high schools and colleges. Based on John Dewey’s advocacy of “the scientific method” and on evolutionary psychology and anthropology, the concept underpinned campaigns for women’s rights, racial equality, secular humanism, and global peace. These progressive political ambitions were abandoned after World War II, when the scientific revolution became fundamental not only to forging the history of science as a discipline, but also to redefining what it meant to be “modern” during an era of decolonisation and the consolidation of global capitalism.
Embargo Lift Date
2025-03-17
Identifiers
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.82571
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/335139
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