The last of the Aristotelians: The transformation of Jesuit physics in Germany, 1630-1773

The Jesuits dominated higher education in Catholic Germany in the early modern era. The dissertation examines how the change from a qualitative, Aristotelian physics to a mathematized, experimental physics occurred at their universities in Germany. The project, which blends intellectual and religious history with the history of education and of science, is a long-term case study of the function of natural knowledge and of the dissemination of the Scientific Revolution in a tightly-knit social group which had an interest in resisting many aspects of the new physics. It considers numerous social and cultural factors such as the influence of theology on natural philosophy, the institutional constraints imposed on science by the early modern university, and the interaction between the State and the university.; The Jesuits were obliged by their own regulations to teach a physics that was compatible with the truths of the Catholic faith. This meant that they were at odds with many of the metaphysical underpinnings of the new physics, such as atomism. Censorship, which sought to prevent dangerous novelties entering the curriculum, played a significant role within the Order. However, the dissertation avoids simplistic interpretations of the "warfare between science and religion"; on the contrary, the Jesuits found much of value in the new physics, enthusiastically adopting experiment as the premier way of practicing natural philosophy. Until the middle of the eighteenth century, Jesuit natural philosophers strove to adopt much of the theory and practice of the new physics whilst maintaining a traditional, Aristotelian core. After that time, the Jesuits abandoned the last vestiges of Aristotelian physics, embracing atomism and heliocentrism. Ultimately, the dissertation challenges and questions the usefulness of the traditional "grand narrative" of the Scientific Revolution and of the Enlightenment.; In addition to published collections of Jesuit documents, the project uses a range of hitherto neglected Latin sources from a number of sites in Catholic Germany and in Rome, including university lecture notes, disputations and dissertations, censorship reports, and correspondence both within the Order and with the secular authorities.