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Professor Stephen Gaukroger

Department of Philosophy,
Main Quad (A14),
University of Sydney, N.S.W. 2006.
Phone: 02 9351 2477 or
02 9517 1289;
Fax: 02 9519 0525

Biographical Information

BA (Philosophy) from the University of London and a Ph.D (History and Philosophy of Science) from the University of Cambridge. Research Fellow in the Philosophy of Science, Clare Hall, Cambridge, 1977-1978; Research Fellow, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, 1978-1980. Since 1981, I have been in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney where I am currently Professor of History of Philosophy and History of Science. In 2003 and in 2008, I was awarded 5-year ARC Professorial Research Fellowships.

I was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1992, and awarded Australian Centenary of Federation Medal for Contribution to History of Philosophy and History of Science, 2003. In 2007, I was elected corresponding member of l’Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences. From 1995-7, I was President of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science; I have also been President of the Australasian Society for the History of Philosophy, 1993-9; Chair of the Australian Academy of Science National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science, 1994-7; and President of the International Society for Intellectual History, 2003-9.

Book series: Editor of the Springer series Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science

Journals: Editor (with Stephen Clucas), Intellectual History Review

Fields of Research

My research is centred around a long-term project on the emergence and consolidation of a scientific culture in the West in the modern era. I am currently in the early stages of work on the third volume of a study of this question, The Naturalization of the Human and the Humanization of Nature: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1750-1825. I have also recently completed a jointly-authored book on the concept of representation (La question de la picturabilité: Les limites de la représentation au XVIIe siècle, with Frédérique Aït-Toauti), and an introduction to objectivity (Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction, OUP)

Selected Publications

A full PDF list of publications and presentations can be found here

Books

  • The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 515pp.
  • The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210-1685. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 575pp.
  • Ed., with Conal Condren and Ian Hunter, The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a Contested Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 292pp.
  • Ed., The Blackwell Guide to Descartes’ Meditations. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 264pp.
  • Descartes’ System of Natural Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 268pp.
  • Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 262pp.
  • Ed., with John Schuster and John Sutton, Descartes’ Natural Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2000, 792pp.
  • Descartes: The World and Other Writings (ed and trans). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 244pp.
  • Ed., The Soft Underbelly of Reason: The Passions in the Seventeenth-Century. London: Routledge, 1998, 179pp.
  • Descartes, An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, 519pp.
  • Ed., The Uses of Antiquity: The Scientific Revolution and the Classical Tradition. Dordrecht & Boston: Kluwer, 1991, 276pp.
  • Arnauld: On True and False Ideas (ed and trans). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990, 249pp.
  • Cartesian Logic: An Essay on Descartes’ Conception of Inference. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 152pp.
  • Ed., Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980, 336pp.
  • Explanatory Structures: Concepts of Explanation in Early Physics and Philosophy. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978, 270pp.

Selected Papers

  • “Picturability and the Mathematical Ideals of Knowledge”, in Desmond Clarke and Catherine Wilson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in the Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 338-60.
  • “Descartes”, in Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (London: Routledge, 2011), 678-86.
  • “Descartes’ Theory of Perceptual Cognition and the Question of Moral Sensibility”, in John Cottingham and Peter Hacker (eds.), Mind, Method and Morality: Essays in Honour of Anthony Kenny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 230-51.
  • “The Unity of Natural Philosophy and the End of Scientia”, in Jill Kraye, John Rogers, and Tom Sorell (eds.), Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy: Seventeenth-Century Thinkers on Demonstrative Knowledge from First Principles (New York: Springer, 2010), 19-34.
  • “The Role of Natural Philosophy in the Development of Locke’s Empiricism”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 17 (2009) 19-34.
  • “The Académie des Sciences and the Republic of Letters, 1669-1730: Fontenelle and The Shaping of a New Natural-Philosophical Persona’, Intellectual History Review 17 (2008), 385-402.
  • “Bacons Psychologie von Wahrnehmungskognition”, in Dominik Perler and Markus Wild (eds.), Sehen und Begreifen: Wahrnehmungstheorien in der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008): 71-94.
  • “Descartes: Life and Work”, in Janet Broughton and John Carriero, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Descartes (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).
  • “Knowledge, Evidence, and Method”, in Donald Rutherford, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 39-66.
  • “Spinoza’s Physics”, in Michael Hampe and Robert Schnepf, eds, Klassiker Auslegen: Spinozas Ethik (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2006), 123-32.
  • “The Persona of the Natural Philosopher” in C. Condren, S. Gaukroger and I. Hunter, eds, The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 17-34.
  • “Science, Religion and Modernity”, Critical Quarterly 47/4 (2005), 1-31.
  • “The Autonomy of Natural Philosophy: From Truth to Impartiality”, in Peter Anstey and John Schuster, eds, The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century (Dordrecht & New York: Springer, 2005), 131-64.
  • “Francis Bacon” in Steven Nadler, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): 298-307.
  • ”The Hydrostatic Paradox and the Foundations of Cartesian Dynamics” (with John Schuster), Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 33A (2002): 535-72.
  • “The Foundational Role of Hydrostatics and Statics in Descartes’ Natural Philosophy” in S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster, and J. Sutton, eds., Descartes’ Natural Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2000): 60-80.
  • “The Resources of a Mechanist Physiology and the Problem of Goal-Directed Processes”, in S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster, and J. Sutton, eds., Descartes’ Natural Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2000): 383-400.
  • “The Role of Matter Theory in Baconian and Cartesian Cosmologies”, Perspectives on Science 8 (2000): 201-22.
  • “‘Beyond Reality’: Nietzsche’s Science of Appearances,” in B. E. Babich & R. S. Cohen (eds.), Nietzsche, Theories of Knowledge, and Critical Theory (Nietzsche and the Sciences I) Dordrecht: Kluwer (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 203), 1999: 37-49.
  • “Justification, Truth, and the Development of Science”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 29A (1998): 97-112.
  • “The Ten Modes of Aenesidemus and the Myth of Ancient Scepticism,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995): 371-87.
  • “The Sources of Descartes’ Procedure of Deductive Demonstration in Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy,” in J. Cottingham (ed), Reason, Will and Sensation: Studies in Cartesian Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994): 47-60.
  • “Descartes: Methodology,” in G. H. R. Parkinson (ed), The Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol 4: The Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism (London: Routledge, 1993): 167-200.
  • “The Nature of Abstract Reasoning: Philosophical Aspects of Descartes’ Work in Algebra,” in J. Cottingham (ed), Cambridge Companion to Descartes, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992: 91-114.
  • “Descartes' Early Doctrine of Clear and Distinct Ideas,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 585-602.
  • “Theories of Meaning and Literary Theory,” in R. Freadman and L. Reinhardt (eds), On Literary Theory and Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Encounter (London: Macmillan, 1991): 162-183.
  • “Experiment and the Molecularity of Meaning,” in H. Le Grand (ed), Experimental Enquiries (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990): 193-213.
  • “Descartes’ Conception of Inference,” in R. Woolhouse (ed), Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1988): 101-32.
  • “Romanticism and Decommodification: Marx’s Conception of Socialism,” Economy and Society 15 (1986): 287-333.
  • “Vico and the Maker’s Knowledge Principle,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 3 (1986): 29-44.
  • “The Metaphysics of Impenetrability: Euler’s Conception of Force,” British Journal for the History of Science 15 (1982): 132 54.
  • “The One and the Many: Aristotle on the Individuation of Numbers,” Classical Quarterly N.S. 32 (1982): 312-22.
  • “Aristotle on the Function of Sense Perception,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 12 (1981): 75-89.
  • “Descartes’ Project for a Mathematical Physics,” in S. Gaukroger (ed), Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1980): 97-140.
  • “Aristotle on Intelligible Matter,” Phronesis 25 (1980): 187-197.
  • “Bachelard and the Problem of Epistemological Analysis,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 7 (1976): 189-244.