Introduction: Historical Coherence, Complexity, and the Scientific Revolution

Abstract

Historical inquiry today is robust at multiple levels and celebrates novel interpretation and the rich complexity of the past. Although historians show no signs of paralysis in the light of the epistemological challenges of the 1980s and 1990s, many remain disillusioned with traditional periodization schemes. In the case of the Scientific Revolution, this skittishness seems to translate into a sceptical resignation about the possibility that the new scholarship can ever reveal an underlying coherence. As the essays in this forum on the Scientific Revolution demonstrate, however, such resignation is an inadequate response to novelty and complexity. New findings ought to prod historians to search for more intricate and satisfactory patterns.