Almost Zero

Ian Hacking

  • BuyThe Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature by Pierre Hadot, translated by Michael Chase
    Harvard, 399 pp, £19.95, November 2006, ISBN 0 674 02316 1

‘The word “nature” is encountered everywhere,’ notably in the writing and talk of poets, scientists, ecologists and even politicians. ‘But though they frequently employ the word, they seem not to have much considered what notion ought to be framed of the thing, which they suppose and admire, and upon occasion celebrate, but do not call in question or discuss.’ Thus Robert Boyle, progenitor of English science, in A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, 1686.

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