Books by Stephen (University of Sydney) Gaukroger

This book covers French philosophy from its origins in the sixteenth century up to the present, analysing it within its social, political, and cultural context. Throughout, the book explores the dilemma sustained by the markedly national conception of French philosophy, and its history of speaking out on matters of universal concern.

Stephen Gaukroger presents an original account of the development of science and our understanding of ourselves during a period which saw a fundamental shift in how the role of science was seen. At the core of the shift lies the aim of understanding human behaviour and motivations in empirical rather than theological and metaphysical terms.

How did we come to have a scientific culture - one in which cognitive values are shaped around scientific ones? Stephen Gaukroger presents a rich and fascinating investigation of the development of intellectual culture in early modern Europe, a period in which understandings of the natural realm began to fragment.

Shows that science was bitterly contested during the early modern period. Rejecting the traditional picture of secularization, this work argues that science in the seventeenth century emerged not in opposition to religion but rather was in many respects driven by it.

This ambitious and important book, first published in 2001, provides a truly general account of Francis Bacon as a philosopher. It will be recognized as a major contribution to Baconian scholarship of special interest to historians of early-modern philosophy, science, and ideas.

Towards the end of his life, Descartes published the first four parts of a projected six-part work, The Principles of Philosophy. This was intended to be the definitive statement of his complete system of philosophy. In this book, Gaukroger examines the whole system, and reconstructs the last two parts from Descartes' other writings.