Edwin Burttand the Drama of Early Modern Science

In the beginning of the 20th century as a reaction to the positivist conception of the development of science some philosophers and historians started to point out that European science had substantive philosophical presumptions that influenced its very formation. An American philosopher Edwin Arthur Burtt made his contribution to the criticism of the positivist image of science by publishing in 1925 his The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. In it he claimed that the scientific revolution of the 16–17th centuries was a result of deep changes in philosophical views on nature, space and movement. Burtt attributed the crucial role in this process to the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities that allowed to proclaim to be real and objective only the qualities that could be measured. Burtt’s work influenced later scholars such as Alexandre Koyré, while Burtt’s own book never did become widely known, staying in the shadow of the later scholarship on the subject.