Quinn, in arrestingly clear prose, connects the political-philosophical intentions of Machiavelli, Bacon, and Descartes in an incisive portrayal of their kindred way of thinking and its inherent difficulties, which have become major problems for us. Yet he gives us hope. It is a delight to read.

Ann Charney Colmo, Professor Emeritus, Dominican University, USA

In Early Modern Origins of Natural and Political Science, Timothy Sean Quinn brings to bear more than fifty years of reflection, scholarship, and classroom teaching on one of the most consequential questions in the history of ideas: how did the modern understanding of nature arise, and what are its political and spiritual consequences? Through a careful and penetrating reading of Niccolò Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, and René Descartes, Quinn illuminates the intellectual revolution that reshaped the relationship between science, politics, and human aspiration.

Steven Frankel, Professor of Jewish Civilization, University of Florida, USA

Many have claimed that the origins of modern science's disposition toward nature-of nature understood as manipulable and of man as standing in dire need of its manipulation-are to be found in Machiavelli. Timothy Sean Quinn spells out in illuminating detail the textual grounds for this claim, carefully demonstrating how Bacon and Descartes assimilate Machiavelli's political teaching into their new concept of nature. Readers learn how Bacon's novel search for “laws of nature” replaces the study of natural kinds, how Descartes' new “method” and mathematization of physics were designed to contribute to the technological instrumentalization of beings, the “mastery of nature.” The new understanding was intended to liberate us from the given world, to reorient the practice of science and to reorganize the life of civil society. While the new understanding has in some was been enormously successful, we have at least since Husserl had warnings of the inhumanity of modern scientific humanitarianism, warnings amplified by Heidegger's descriptions of the transformed world as a “standing reserve” (Bestand) awaiting technological exploitation. Quinn's careful account of the origins of the modern technological disposition amply justifies his concluding call for a return to a non-manipulative orientation, one that would “embrace human finitude, in full awareness of its hazards and its satisfactions

Timothy W. Burns, Professor of Political Science, Baylor University