This study examines 17th-century mathematical sciences - astronomy, optics and mechanics - not as abstract ideas, but as vital enterprises that involved practices related to both experience and experiment. Mersenne, Descartes, Pascal, Barrow, Newton, Boyle and the Jesuits are discussed.
List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsNote on Citations and TranslationsIntroduction: The Measure of All Things1: Induction in Early-Modern Europe2: Experience and Jesuit Mathematical Science: The Practical Importance of Methodology3: Expertise, Novel Claims, and Experimental Events4: Apostolic Succession, Astronomical Knowledge, and Scientific Traditions5: The Uses of Experience6: Art, Nature, Metaphor: The Growth of Physico-Mathematics7: Pascal's Void, Natural Philosophers, and Mathematical Experience8: Barrow, Newton, and Constructivist ExperimentConclusion: A Mathematical Natural Philosophy?BibliographyIndex
