The Scientific Counter-Revolution

Gorman invites us to witness the transformations in scientific knowledge and practice from the vantage point of the Roman College. This deeply researched study explores how and why Christopher Clavius became the model Jesuit mathematician, and what successive generations did with this legacy. The result is a rich, multi-dimensional portrait of Jesuit science and its contributions to major scientific controversies of the seventeenth century that resists oversimplification. * Paula Findlen, Professor of Early Modern Europe and History of Science, Stanford University, USA * Using a remarkable range of printed and manuscript sources, this perceptive book traces significant Jesuit scholars and mathematicians to illuminate the experimentation, correspondence and long-range organisational authority that helped to provide some of the most important resources for new knowledge in early modern Europe. Gorman's impressive analysis also speaks to wider debates on the relationship between social organisations, faith and authority. * Simon Schaffer, Professor of History of Science, University of Cambridge, UK * This is a finely researched and richly documented book ... The Scientific Counter-Revolution is a highly valuable addition to the recent corpus of literature that has served the abandonment of a conflictual approach to the relationship between early modern science and Catholicism without replacing conflict with an equally inappropriate image of harmony . * Exchange *