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Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe

David B. Ruderman
Foreword by Moshe Idel

Early Modern History and Literature, History, Jewish Studies, Jewish Thought

Paperback
Published: August 2001
ISBN: 9780814329313
Pages: 432 Size: 6x9
Illustrations: 13 black and white images
$24.99
Review

Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery is pioneering in this examination of scientific discourse in the dynamic and fascinating period of early modern Jewish history.

— David N. Myers

Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe is a major contribution in understanding the cultural processes involved in the emergence and development of the consumer phase of science. It covers many Jewish authors and their writings from the middle of the 16th until the late 18th centuries in Europe. The book's combined approach to the history of science and Jewish thought strongly emphasises analysis of the mentalities that informed some of the prominent figures of Jewish thought in this time period. Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe takes a comprehensive look at the processes taking place in the minds of European Jewish intellectuals in Italy, Amsterdam, Prague, and London. The main purpose of this book is the description of the modalities of reception of the new sciences, complicated by the traditional reticence toward "alien sciences" found in many medieval Jewish writers still influential in the early modern period.

David B. Ruderman is a professor of modern Jewish history and the director of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book is Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry's Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton University Press, 2000).

Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery is pioneering in this examination of scientific discourse in the dynamic and fascinating period of early modern Jewish history. The book can be used widely in courses on medieval and modern Jewish history, as well as courses on Jewish thought. It is a readable text that doesn't intimidate the uninitiated.

– David N. Myers, University of California, Los Angeles