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Ordering the World in the Eighteenth Century

Diana Donald author Frank O'Gorman author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Palgrave Macmillan

Published:16th Dec '05

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Ordering the World in the Eighteenth Century cover

The Eighteenth century is often represented, applying Tom Paine's phrase, as 'The Age of Reason': an age when progressive ideals triumphed over autocracy and obscurantism, and when notions of order and balance shaped consciousness in every sphere of human knowledge. Yet the debates which surrounded the development of Eighteenth-century thought were always open to troubling doubts. Was nature itself truly an ordered entity, as Newton had argued, or was it a mass of chaotic, randomly moving atoms, as some materialist thinkers believed? This book explores the tensions and conflicts in these debates through a series of interdisciplinary essays from leading international scholars, each challenging the idea that the Eighteenth century was an age of order.

ISBN: 9781349519231

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

251 pages

1st ed. 2006