Historical commitments of European science / Alistair C. Crombie.
Abstract:
A brief analysis is given of the primary origins of Western science with the ancient Greeks, followed by the development of modern European scientific thinking in these stages: through the logical control of argument mastered by the philosophical community of the medieval universities; the designed and measured control of materials and practices achieved by the rational artists of the Renaissance; and the reasoned control of scientific investigation established by the experimental philosophers of the seventeenth century. The rational constructive artist and the rational experimental scientist appear as products of the same intellectual culture, as exemplary men of virtù. A consideration of the intellectual and moral style integrating these movements in the arts and sciences offers a means of defining the identity of science within Western culture and of relating this to other historical cultures
Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di storia della scienza di Firenze A. 7, fasc. 2 (1982), p. 29-51