From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe / Edition 1

by Alexandre Koyre

Overview

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a radical change occurred in the patterns and the framework of European thought. In the wake of discoveries through the telescope and Copernican theory, the notion of an ordered cosmos of "fixed stars" gave way to that of a universe infinite in both time and space—with significant and far-reaching consequences for human thought. Alexandre Koyré interprets this revolution in terms of the change that occurred in our conception of the universe and our place in it and shows the primacy of this change in the development of the modern world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801803475
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	01/10/1968
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alexandre Koyré was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. His books include Discovering Plato and Newtonian Studies.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
I. The Sky and the Heavens
II. The New Astronomy and the New Metaphysics
III. The New Astronomy against the New Metaphysics
IV. Things Never Seen Before and Thoughts Never Thought: The Discovery of New Stars in the World Space and the Materialization of Space
V. Indefinite Extension or Infinite Space
VI. God and Space, Spirit and Matter
VII. Absolute Space, Absolute Time and Their Relations
VIII. The Divinization of Space
IX. God and the World: Space, Matter, Ether and Spirit
X. Absolute Space and Absolute Time: God's Frame of Action
XI. The Work-Day God and the God of the Sabbath
XII. Conclusion: The Divine Artifex and the Dieu Fainéant
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

An important contribution to the problem of the transition from the world view characteristic of the medieval centuries to that which rapidly gained acceptance after the seventeenth century.
—Philosophical Quarterly

Koyré has provided the material and has illuminated it with uniformly perceptive and occasionally brilliant commentary . . . An important contribution to the study of 17th-century thought.
—Thomas S. Kuhn, Science

A model of scholarliness without pedantry, of clarity without oversimplification.
—Arthur Koestler, Encounter

Surely a work that will be welcomed alike by the scientist, philosopher, and historian of ideas.
—Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

From the Publisher

Koyré has provided the material and has illuminated it with uniformly perceptive and occasionally brilliant commentary . . . An important contribution to the study of 17th-century thought.

Science - Thomas S. Kuhn

Surely a work that will be welcomed alike by the scientist, philosopher, and historian of ideas.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

An important contribution to the problem of the transition from the world view characteristic of the medieval centuries to that which rapidly gained acceptance after the seventeenth century.

Philosophical Quarterly

A model of scholarliness without pedantry, of clarity without oversimplification.

Encounter - Arthur Koestler

A model of scholarliness without pedantry, of clarity without oversimplification.

— Arthur Koestler

Encounter

Koyré has provided the material and has illuminated it with uniformly perceptive and occasionally brilliant commentary... An important contribution to the study of 17th-century thought.

— Thomas S. Kuhn

Science