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Professor Stephen Gaukroger

BA London University, MA PhD Cambridge University,
FAHA Professor of the History of Philosophy and the History of Science;
ARC Professorial Research Fellow
Room 441 Carslaw


Stephen's research is centred on a long-term project on the emergence and consolidation of a scientific culture in the West in the modern era. Two volumes have already appeared: The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210 - 1685 (2005) and The Collapse of Mechanisim and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760 (2010).

Current projects

Stephen is currently in the early stages of work on the third volume of a study of this question, The Naturalisation of the Human and the Humanisation of Nature: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1750-1825. This will bring the project to the half-way stage.

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Selected Publications

Books

  • Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2012.
  • 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 Seventeeth-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.
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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.
  • "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.
  • "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 Role of Natural Philosophy in the Development of Locke's Empiricism", British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 17 (2009), 57-86.
  • "The Academie 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): 3-16.
  • "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.
  • "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 Co
    mpanion 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 (Cambridge: 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 83.
  • "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): 187-97.
  • "Bachelard and the Problem of Epistemological Analysis," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 7 (1976): 189 244.

Full list of publications here

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Areas of Supervision

Science and philosophy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Other professional contributions

  • Editor of the Springer series Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science
  • Editor (with Stephen Clucas) of the quarterly journal Intellectual History Review
  • Member of the Editorial Board: British Journal for the History of Philosophy; Philosophical Quarterly.
  • Stephen 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, elected corresponding member of l'Academie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences.
  • From 1995-7, Stephen was President of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science; also 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.
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