{"product_id":"the-intelligibility-of-nature-how-science-makes-sense-of-the-world-scienceculture","title":"The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World (science.culture)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThroughout the history of the Western world  science has possessed an extraordinary amount of authority and prestige. And while its pedestal has been jostled by numerous evolutions and revolutions  science has always managed to maintain its stronghold as the knowing enterprise that explains how the natural world works: we treat such legendary scientists as Galileo  Newton  Darwin  and Einstein with admiration and reverence because they offer profound and sustaining insight into the meaning of the universe.  In The Intelligibility of Nature  Peter Dear considers how science as such has evolved and how it has marshaled itself to make sense of the world. His intellectual journey begins with a crucial observation: that the enterprise of science is  and has been  directed toward two distinct but frequently conflated endsdoing and knowing. The ancient Greeks developed this distinction of value between craft on the one hand and understanding on the other  and according to Dear  that distinction has survived to shape attitudes toward science ever since.  Teasing out this tension between doing and knowing during key episodes in the history of sciencemechanical philosophy and Newtonian gravitation  elective affinities and the chemical revolution  enlightened natural history and taxonomy  evolutionary biology  the dynamical theory of electromagnetism  and quantum theoryDear reveals how the two principles became formalized into a single enterprise  science  that would be carried out by a new kind of person  the scientist.  Finely nuanced and elegantly conceived  The Intelligibility of Nature will be essential reading for aficionados and historians of science alike.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44960133775413,"sku":"ByrdShop_0226139484","price":91.34,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780226139487.jpg?v=1770392027","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-intelligibility-of-nature-how-science-makes-sense-of-the-world-scienceculture","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}