ENGLISH

Ordering the World in the Eighteenth Century (Studies in Modern History)

Book information

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Year
2006
ISBN
1403938202, 9781403938206, 9780230518889
LCC
CB411 .O73 2005
Open Library ID
OL22717738M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (2330591 bytes)
Pages
264\264
Orientation
yes
Scanned
no
Time added
2011-08-31 04:54:40

Description

The Eighteenth century is often represented, applying Tom Paine's phrase, as "The Age of Reason": an age when progressive ideals triumphed over autocracy and obscurantism, and when notions of order and balance shaped consciousness in every sphere of human knowledge. Yet the debates which surrounded the development of eighteenth-century thought were always open to troubling doubts. Was nature itself truly an ordered entity, as Newton had argued, or was it a mass of chaotic, randomly moving atoms, as some materialist thinkers believed? This book explores the tensions and conflicts in these debates through a series of interdisciplinary essays from leading international scholars, each challenging the idea that the eighteenth century was an age of order.

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