Benjamin Nelson

Sciences and Civilizations, ‘East’ and ‘West’ Joseph

For some years now, I have been engaged in a series of ‘case histories’ and ‘mental experiments’ whose main aim has been to strengthen the foundations of an evolving comparative historical differential sociology of sociocultural processes and patterns, most notably sciences, in civiliza- tional perspective. As I have conceived them, the ‘case histories’ call for the strict study of determinate ‘civilizational complexes’ with a view to analyzing the variations and the shifting balances of their changing cultural ascendancies resulting from the critical contacts. In this same spirit I am continuing to seek to chart the differential impacts and out-comes of specified ‘intercivilizational encounters’.1

The Early Modern Revolution in Science and Philosophy

The early modern revolution in science and philosophy has been arduously studied and discussed for at least two centuries now.1 Contemporary scholars and publicists2 are everywhere continuing, with undiminished vigor, to explore archives3, plumb sources, and to dispute one another’s interpretations.4 Nonetheless, few would claim that the roots and outcomes of the 17th-century ‘breakthrough’ had been reliably established.5 Indeed, many of the central issues are hardly more clear to us than are the circumstances and ideas which explain the breathless ‘take-off’ of our own century.6

The Medieval Canon Law of Contracts, Renaissance “Spirit of Capitalism,” and the Reformation “Conscience”: A Vote for Max Weber

Do we truly wish to understand the relations of religion, law, economic ethics, moral impulse in the affairs of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation?