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Science in the age of sensibility : the sentimental empiricists of the French enlightenment / Jessica Riskin.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2002.Description: 1 online resource (xii, 338 pages) : illustrationsContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9780226720852
  • 0226720853
  • 0226720780
  • 9780226720784
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: Science in the age of sensibility.DDC classification:
  • 509.44/09/033 21
LOC classification:
  • Q127.F8 R57 2002eb
NLM classification:
  • 2003 A-236
  • Q 127.F8
Other classification:
  • TB 2360
Online resources:
Contents:
Introduction : sensibility and enlightenment science -- The blind and the mathematically inclined -- Poor Richard's Leyden jar -- From electricity to economy -- The lawyer and the lightning rod -- The mesmerism investigation and the crisis of sensibilist science -- Languages of science and revolution -- Conclusion : the legacy of the sentimental empiricists.
Summary: Empiricism today implies the dispassionate scrutiny of facts. But Jessica Riskin finds that in the French Enlightenment, empiricism was intimately bound up with sensibility. In what she calls a "sentimental empiricism," natural knowledge was taken to rest on a blend of experience and emotion. Riskin argues that sentimental empiricism brought together ideas and institutions, practices and politics. She shows, for instance, how the study of blindness, led by ideas about the mental and moral role of vision and by cataract surgeries, shaped the first school for the blind; how Benjamin Fr.
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
eBook eBook e-Library EBSCO Science Available
Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-321) and index.

Print version record.

Introduction : sensibility and enlightenment science -- The blind and the mathematically inclined -- Poor Richard's Leyden jar -- From electricity to economy -- The lawyer and the lightning rod -- The mesmerism investigation and the crisis of sensibilist science -- Languages of science and revolution -- Conclusion : the legacy of the sentimental empiricists.

Empiricism today implies the dispassionate scrutiny of facts. But Jessica Riskin finds that in the French Enlightenment, empiricism was intimately bound up with sensibility. In what she calls a "sentimental empiricism," natural knowledge was taken to rest on a blend of experience and emotion. Riskin argues that sentimental empiricism brought together ideas and institutions, practices and politics. She shows, for instance, how the study of blindness, led by ideas about the mental and moral role of vision and by cataract surgeries, shaped the first school for the blind; how Benjamin Fr.

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