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Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) is a major influence in twentieth-century thought, a source for many of the ideas of the Vienna circle, Karl Popper, Imre Kalatos, and Thomas S. Kuhn. Yet Duhem's arguments have often been perceived as enigmatic, quirky, muddled, or even disingenuous, because his influence has been greatest outside his native France many of his works have never been translated, and Duhem's readers have mostly been ignorant of the peculiar French cultural and political background during Duhem's lifetime. "German Science" (here translated into English for the first time) is a document of importance for understanding Duhem's better-known works. Duhem's "Aim and Structure of Physical Theory" has been misunderstood because of ignorance of the position set forth in "German Science". At first sight, "German Science" is typical chauvinistic wartime propaganda, thought by the standards of the time and place, Duhem emerges as a moderate and sensitive patriot. The enduring worth of "German Science" lies in its oscillation between the poles of two basic Pascalian premisses: "Principles are intuited" and "Propositions are inferred". The introduction is by Stanley Jaki, author of the biography, "Uneasy Genius: The Life and work of Pierre Duhem".
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Natural knowledge and the learned public in the enlightenment
• The expanding ranks of nature's friends
• Defending learned dignity
• Nature in a local microcosm
• Wooing the polite public
• The nature of the fatherland
• The wellspring of modernity
• The particularity of natural science.

Although many of the practical and intellectual traditions that make up modern science date back centuries, the category of "science" itself is a relative novelty. In the early eighteenth century, the modern German word that would later mean "science, " naturwissenschaft, was not even included in dictionaries. By 1850, however, the term was in use everywhere. "Acolytes of Nature" follows the emergence of this important new category within German-speaking Europe, tracing its rise from an insignificant eighteenth-century neologism to a defining rallying cry of modern German culture. Today's notion of a unified natural science has been deemed an invention of the mid-nineteenth century. Yet what Denise Phillips reveals here is that the idea of naturwissenschaft acquired a prominent place in German public life several decades earlier. Phillips uncovers the evolving outlines of the category of natural science and examines why Germans of varied social station and intellectual commitments came to find this label useful. An expanding education system, an increasingly vibrant consumer culture and urban social life, the early stages of industrialization, and the emergence of a liberal political movement all fundamentally altered the world in which educated Germans lived, and also reshaped the way they classified knowledge.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)