Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1690-1755

重要的是，我们要理解我们文化背后的价值观，而这种理解的一种形式是历史。科学为所有形式的认知探究提供了标准，这一观点是现代文化的内在组成部分，而科学所表达的公正和客观的概念与我们对文化价值的评估密切相关。然而，这一概念在近代早期出现的历史表明，在将认知价值同化为科学价值或将这些价值外推为一般文化和政治价值方面，没有什么是不言自明的。

It is important that we understand the values underlying our culture, and one form of such understanding is historical. The idea that science provides the standards for all forms of cognitive enquiry is an intrinsic part of modern culture, and the notions of impartiality and objectivity that it is taken to express are closely tied in with estimations of the value of our culture. The history of how this conception emerged in the early-modern period shows that there was nothing self-evident in the assimilation of cognitive values to scientific ones, however, or in the extrapolation of these to general cultural and political values.