18th century
A01=Dror Wahrman
A01=Jonathan Sheehan
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Dror Wahrman
Author_Jonathan Sheehan
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD
Category=HBLL
Category=JBCC9
Category=JFCX
Category=NHD
cognition
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
disorder
divine province
divinity
economics
enlightenment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
europe
european
historical
history
human happiness
Language_English
law
liberty
nature
order
ordered systems
organization
PA=Available
philosophy
politics
Price_€20 to €50
progress
PS=Active
pursuit of knowledge
randomness
reason
religion
religious
science
self-organization
sense
social sciences
society
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780226752051
- Weight: 680g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 29 May 2015
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Why is the world orderly, and how does order occur? Humans inhabit many systems - natural, social, political, economic, cognitive, and others - with seemingly obscure origins. In the eighteenth century, older certainties, rooted in divine providence or mechanistic explanations, began to fall away. In their place arose a new appreciation for complexity and randomness along with an ability to see the world's orders - whether natural or manmade - as self-organizing. If large systems were left to their own devices, eighteenth-century Europeans came to believe, order would emerge on its own without any need for external design or direction. In Invisible Hands, Jonathan Sheehan and Dror Wahrman trace the versatile language of self-organization in the eighteenth-century West. Across an array of domains, including religion, philosophy, science, politics, economy, and law, they show how and why this way of thinking entered the public view and then spread in diverse and often surprising forms. Offering a new synthesis of intellectual and cultural developments, Invisible Hands is a landmark contribution to the history of the Enlightenment.
Jonathan Sheehan is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture. Dror Wahrman is the Ruth N. Halls Professor of History at Indiana University-Bloomington and dean of humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Mr. Collier's Letter Racks: A Tale of Art and Illusion at the Threshold of the Modern Information Age.
