Article ID: CBB506010564

Daring to Conjecture in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Sciences (2022)

unapi

This essay explores seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century programs of natural inquiry where conjecture—an uncertain category of knowledge—played a vital role in the advancement of the sciences. It shows how early modern investigators used conjectures as a bridge between knowledge and ignorance and the process of conjecturing as a way to expand the mental state of inquiry. In publishing their conjectures, they were heeding Francis Bacon’s call to inspire hope and urge fellow experimenters to continue researching complex natural phenomena. Fellow investigators could help to test, verify, revise, invalidate, or propose new inferences in a dialectical, collaborative process. The author argues that, by the eighteenth century, public conjecturing marked a particular kind of broad-minded experimental philosopher. This essay situates conjectures within agnotology—the study of culturally produced ignorance—and Baconian communication of knowledge and ignorance. It explores the philosophical and moral tensions investigators navigated when specifying nature’s unknowns.

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Authors & Contributors
Anstey, Peter R.
Schmit, Christophe
Chalmers, Alan Francis
Yeo, Richard R.
Wragge-Morley, Alexander
Strazzoni, Andrea
Concepts
Philosophy of science
Experiments and experimentation
Natural philosophy
Explanation; hypotheses; theories
Natural history
Experimental philosophy
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
20th century
19th century
Early modern
Renaissance
Places
England
Italy
Great Britain
Europe
Institutions
Royal Society of London
School of Milan
Experimentalists
Académie Royale des Sciences (France)
Observatoire de Paris
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