Wonders and the Order of Nature

科学史的一个主要任务是理解 科学崛起并成为变革的推动力 我们的文化。 这个项目清楚地表明， 科学革命中的现代科学不仅仅是 这一现象与拒绝托勒密体系有关， 最终被牛顿引力理论所取代。 这场革命超越了这一狭隘的科学成就， 为系统地研究自然奠定基础。 这种研究 要求自然观察者去寻找 自然法则 帕克博士和她的合作者洛林·J· 达斯顿，正在寻求文件和分析不断变化的看法， 自然法与自然秩序在西方文化中的地位 被广泛地定义为科学革命。 他们正在追查 科学写作的一种转变，从强调 反常的和奇异的（畸形的出生，天体 幽灵、异常气象现象、外来植物和 动物）的观点，特权的典型和定期。 他们认为，前一种观点，既产生于新的 欧洲探险时代的发现， 与宗教斗争有关的征兆和奇迹， 改革，代表-尽管它不熟悉-一个关键的 新科学的巩固阶段。 其主要 来源是十六和十七世纪作家的作品， 但他们也在利用非科学来源--文学， 法律的和艺术的--将这些发展与其他方面联系起来 当代文化的。

A major task for the history of science is to understand how science rose and became such a driving force in the transformation of our culture. This project makes it clear that the rise of modern science in the Scientific Revolution was not simply a phenomenon connected to the rejection of the Ptolemaic system and its eventual replacement by the Newtonian theory of gravitation. The revolution went beyond this narrower scientific achievement to lay the foundation for a systematic study of nature. Such a study required the observer of nature to search for regularities and natural laws. Dr. Park, with her collaborator, Dr. Lorraine J. Daston, are seeking to document and analyze changing views of natural law and natural order in Western culture during the period broadly defined as the Scientific Revolution. They are tracing the shift in scientific writing from a view of nature that emphasized the anomalous and the bizarre (monstrous births, celestial apparitions, unusual meteorological phenomena, exotic plants and animals) to a view that privileged the typical and the regular. They argue that the former view, which grew out of both the new discoveries of the age of European exploration and the focus on portents and prodigies associated with the religious struggles of the Reformation, represented--despite its unfamiliarity--a critical phase in the consolidation of the new science. Their principal sources are the works of sixteenth and seventeenth century writers, but they are also drawing on non-scientific sources--literary, legal, and artistic--to relate these developments to other aspects of contemporary culture.