John A Schuster (2012) ‘The European Birth of Modern Science: An Exercise in Macro and Comparative History’ (Essay Review of H.F. Cohen, How Modern Science Came into the World), Metascience 21 657-665. Posted here is the extended version, roughly 1000 words longer. Additional passages, not in the Metascience version, appear in blue.
Author Archives: Dr. John A. Schuster
Schuster 2010. Review of McGuire and Machamer on Descartes Changing Mind
Schuster 2010. Review of Ted McGuire and Peter Machamer on Descartes’ Changing Mind Appeared in Renaissance Quarterly 63 (2010) pp. 579-81
Essay Review of Desmond Clarke, Descartes A Biography. Schuster 2009
Appeared online in Journal of Historical Biography 5 (Spring 2009): 48-83. Extended critique of Clarke on Descartes’ early scientific career foreshadowed arguments in my Descartes-agonistes (2013). This review should be compared with more sympathetic approach to other parts of Des Clarke’s legacy in Schuster paper ‘Did Descartes Teach a Philosophy of Science or Pursue Strategies of Natural …
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Schuster Launch of Honeywill Book on Lamarck and Ted Steele
My remarks at Glebe Books, Sydney, August 2008 to launch Ross Honeywill’s book Lamarck’s Evolution which includes a great deal of material on Australian neo-Lamarckian molecular geneticist Ted Steele’s scientific career and the infamous ‘Steele’ affair at the University of Wollongong (attempted peremptory dismissal for whistleblowing on soft marking of fee paying foreign students)…read on …
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Schuster What was Seventeenth Century Physico-Mathematics?, Oxford 2008
J. A. Schuster: What was Early 17th Century Physico-Mathematics, for Quadrennial Conference of the US, UK and Canadian History of Science Societies, Keble College Oxford, July 2008: Double Session on Connecting Disciplines: Mathematics, Natural Philosophy and Reason in the Early-Modern Era, organised by Stephen Gaukroger and John Schuster.
Schuster. From Natural Philosophy to Sciences, NEER Conference, Perth WA 2007
J.A. Schuster, From Natural Philosophy to Sciences: Transformations, Not Ruptures in Early Modern Knowledge Networks –the Disputed Case of the Early Royal Society: Conference of ARC Network of Early European Researchers [NEER] July 2007. Note: This item had over 19700 hits on the previous iteration of this website. I might very well suspect why this …
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Descartes on Vortical Celestial Mechanics. Schuster 2005
Penultimate version of published chapter: J.A. Schuster, “‘Waterworld’: Descartes’ Vortical Celestial Mechanics–A Gambit in the Natural Philosophical Contest of the Early Seventeenth Century”, pp.35-79 in Peter Anstey and John Schuster (eds.) The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century: Patterns of Change in Early Modern Natural Philosophy (Springer, 2005) (pages in published version entered in brackets)
Descartes on Hydrostatics, Corpuscular-Mechanism and the Origins of His Dynamics, Gaukroger and Schuster 2002
Stephen Gaukroger and John Schuster: ‘The Hydrostatic Paradox and the Origins of Cartesian Dynamics’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 33 2002, 535-572.
Aristotelianism and its Alternatives. Schuster 2002
Penultimate version, prior to translation into Italian for publication as Chapter 27 in Daniel Garber, ed., L’Età della Rivoluzione Scientifica (Vol 5. of Storia della Scienza Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2002) pp. 337-357. Intended title in English was, ‘The Organisation of Knowledge: The Grand Programs of Natural Philosophy and the Rise of Disciplinary Differentiation by …
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How Descartes Discovered the Law of Refraction and Constructed its Mechanical Rationales. Schuster 2000
The penultimate pre-publication version of J.A.Schuster, ‘Descartes Opticien: The Construction of the Law of Refraction and The Manufacture of its Physical Rationales 1618-1629′, in Stephen Gaukroger, John A. Schuster and John Sutton (eds.) Descartes’ Natural Philosophy: Optics, Mechanics and Cosmology (Routledge, London, 2000), pp. 258-312. Final pagination inserted in brackets throughout.Section 5.2 mentions that the …
Descartes-agonistes 