Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY
- CHAPTER II ECONOMIC CHANGE AND GROWTH
- CHAPTER III THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THOUGHT AND MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT
- CHAPTER IV RELIGION AND THE RELATIONS OF CHURCHES AND STATES
- CHAPTER V EDUCATION AND THE PRESS
- CHAPTER VI ART AND ARCHITECTURE
- CHAPTER VII IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE
- CHAPTER VIII LIBERALISM AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
- CHAPTER IX NATIONALITIES AND NATIONALISM
- CHAPTER X THE SYSTEM OF ALLIANCES AND THE BALANCE OF POWER
- CHAPTER XI ARMED FORCES AND THE ART OF WAR: NAVIES
- CHAPTER XII ARMED FORCES AND THE ART OF WAR: ARMIES
- CHAPTER XIII THE UNITED KINGDOM AND ITS WORLD-WIDE INTERESTS
- CHAPTER XIV RUSSIA IN EUROPE AND ASIA
- CHAPTER XV THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848
- CHAPTER XVI THE MEDITERRANEAN
- CHAPTER XVII THE SECOND EMPIRE IN FRANCE
- CHAPTER XVIII THE CRIMEAN WAR
- CHAPTER XIX PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM, 1830–66
- CHAPTER XX THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE AND ITS PROBLEMS, 1848–67
- CHAPTER XXI ITALY
- CHAPTER XXII THE ORIGINS OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR AND THE REMAKING OF GERMANY
- CHAPTER XXIII NATIONAL AND SECTIONAL FORCES IN THE UNITED STATES
- CHAPTER XXIV THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
- CHAPTER XXV THE STATES OF LATIN AMERICA
- CHAPTER XXVI THE FAR EAST
- References
CHAPTER III - THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THOUGHT AND MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY
- CHAPTER II ECONOMIC CHANGE AND GROWTH
- CHAPTER III THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THOUGHT AND MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT
- CHAPTER IV RELIGION AND THE RELATIONS OF CHURCHES AND STATES
- CHAPTER V EDUCATION AND THE PRESS
- CHAPTER VI ART AND ARCHITECTURE
- CHAPTER VII IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE
- CHAPTER VIII LIBERALISM AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
- CHAPTER IX NATIONALITIES AND NATIONALISM
- CHAPTER X THE SYSTEM OF ALLIANCES AND THE BALANCE OF POWER
- CHAPTER XI ARMED FORCES AND THE ART OF WAR: NAVIES
- CHAPTER XII ARMED FORCES AND THE ART OF WAR: ARMIES
- CHAPTER XIII THE UNITED KINGDOM AND ITS WORLD-WIDE INTERESTS
- CHAPTER XIV RUSSIA IN EUROPE AND ASIA
- CHAPTER XV THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848
- CHAPTER XVI THE MEDITERRANEAN
- CHAPTER XVII THE SECOND EMPIRE IN FRANCE
- CHAPTER XVIII THE CRIMEAN WAR
- CHAPTER XIX PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM, 1830–66
- CHAPTER XX THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE AND ITS PROBLEMS, 1848–67
- CHAPTER XXI ITALY
- CHAPTER XXII THE ORIGINS OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR AND THE REMAKING OF GERMANY
- CHAPTER XXIII NATIONAL AND SECTIONAL FORCES IN THE UNITED STATES
- CHAPTER XXIV THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
- CHAPTER XXV THE STATES OF LATIN AMERICA
- CHAPTER XXVI THE FAR EAST
- References
Summary
In the mid-nineteenth century the pursuit of scientific knowledge at last attained true autonomy and independence. Emerging as a consistent discipline with experiment and observation as its sanctions and mathematics as its logic, science extended its province far into space, and brought millions of years within the scope of its pronouncements. Emancipated from the limitations imposed by formal reasoning and dogmatic theology, an unquestionable force of certainty was claimed for scientific truths such as had never before been granted to any products of the intellect; and though only a small part of the swift advance in material civilisation that was made in this period can be directly attributed to contemporary progress in science, vast accretions of potential power were being built up. The formative period of modern science in which its character, its methods and its problems were established may be said to have ended about 1830; the modern age, with the technical ascendancy of science, to have begun about 1870. The interval is both classical, in that it contains the fulfilment of much that had been originated earlier, and transitional, because the beginning of recent science lies within it. Without abrupt discontinuity there was a remodelling of activity, a displacement of some guiding concepts of scientific thought by others. A single individual, like James Clerk Maxwell, might in one investigation add a coping-stone to the fabric of Newtonian celestial mechanics, while in another he helped to lay the foundations of the new theoretical physics. The doctrine of universal gravitation received its fullest vindication in 1845–6 from the discovery of the planet Neptune in accordance with theoretical predictions, when Newton's optical theories had already been shaken by the newer theory of wave-motion.
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- The New Cambridge Modern History , pp. 49 - 75Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1960