Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1690-1755

重要的是，我们要理解我们文化的价值观，这种理解的一种形式是历史的。科学为所有形式的认知探索提供标准的想法是现代文化的固有组成部分，它所表达的公正性和客观性的概念与我们文化价值的估计密切相关。然而，这一概念在近代早期如何出现的历史表明，在将认知价值观同化为科学价值观，或将这些价值观外推到一般文化和政治价值观方面，没有什么是不言而喻的。

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.