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

Stephen Gaukroger has a BA (Philosophy) from the University of London and a Ph.D (History and Philosophy of Science) from the University of Cambridge. He was 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 he has been in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney where he is currently Professor of History of Philosophy and History of Science.

He 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. From 1995-1997, he was President of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science; he has also been President of the Australasian Society for the History of Philosophy, 1993-1999; Chair of the Australian Academy of Science National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science, 1994-1997. He is currently President of the International Society for Intellectual History. In 2003 he was awarded a 5-year ARC Professorial Research Fellowship.

Book series: Editor of the Springer series Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science
Series advisor to The Routledge Philosophers.

Journals: co-editor of Intellectual History Review
Member of the editorial boards of Australasian Journal of Philosophy, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and Episteme.

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 early modern era. I am presently working on the persona of the philosopher in the modern era, and on volume 2 of ‘Science and the Shaping of Modernity’: The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility, 1680-1750.

Selected Publications

Selected Publications (a full list of publications and presentations can be found here (pdf))

Books
Monographs

The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210-1685. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 575pp.
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.
Descartes, An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, 519pp.
Cartesian Logic: An Essay on Descartes’ Conception of Inference. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 152pp.
Explanatory Structures: Concepts of Explanation in Early Physics and Philosophy. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978, 270pp.

Translations

Descartes: The World and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 244pp.
Arnauld: On True and False Ideas. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990, 249pp.

Edited Collections

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. With Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 264pp.
Ed., with John Schuster and John Sutton, Descartes’ Natural Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2000, 792pp.
Ed., The Soft Underbelly of Reason: The Passions in the Seventeeth-Century. London: Routledge, 1998, 179pp.
Ed., The Uses of Antiquity: The Scientific Revolution and the Classical Tradition. Dordrecht & Boston: Kluwer, 1991, 276pp.
Ed., Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980, 336pp.

Selected Publications

“The Role of Natural Philosophy in the Development of Locke’s Empiricism”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, forthcoming.
“Descartes: Life and Work”, in Janet Broughton and John Carriero, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Descartes (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming 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.