Stephen Gaukroger, The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760 (2010)

This is the second volume in Gaukroger's four-volume history of modern science. Gaukroger is extremely erudite, to the point that I often had trouble following. Nonetheless, pride and stubborness kept me going, though I only made it about three-fifths of the way through. The basic tension that Gaukroger follows is that between "matter theory" and micro-corpuscular "mechanism." At times, the two were connected, and each came in several variants. Basically, matter theory explains natural phenomena in terms of the nature (or natures) of matter itself; mechanism explains them in terms of interactions between inert matter. Gaukroger also draws an interesting contrast between a metaphysical tradition of this period launched by Leibniz and an "experimental natural philosophical" one justified by Locke (who looms much larger here than I would have guessed). Gaukroger often goes to the trouble of explaining what terms mean, but they come so fast and furious, and in such intricate connections, that I only occasionally felt I was "getting it." Overall, I was left thinking that my understanding of the scientific revolution is very superficial, indeed.