James R. Barker Assoc. Professor of Contemporary Civilization

Chair, Contemporary Civilization

history of early modern science, technology, philosophy

history of science at Columbia

 

Projects and Publications

The Matter of Calculation: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking about Thinking from Pascal to Babbage

Love, Inclination and Inertia: The Common Good in Early Modern Natural and Political Philosophy

"Matters of Fact [Essay review of Harold Cook, Matters of Exchange (Yale 2007)]" Modern Intellectual History 7,3 (2010): 629-642.

The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution: Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz and the Cultivation of Virtue (University of Chicago Press, 2006)

“Three Errors about Indifference: Pascal on the Vacuum, Sociability and Moral Freedom,” Romance Quarterly 50(2003):99-120.

“Writing and Sentiment: Blaise Pascal, the Vacuum and the Pensées,”  Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 32(2001):139-181.

 

Scholarly Helps

Early Modern Tools

Early Modern Texts

Courses

Spring 2012

The Scientific Revolution in Western Europe, 1500-1750

Fall 2011

Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West

Summer 2011

History of Computing from (Blaise) Pascal to the Internet

Fall 2010

Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West

Methods in History of Science (with Marwa Elshakry)

Spring 2011

Foucault for Historians (with Samuel Moyn)

Past Courses

Lecture

The Scientific Revolution in Western Europe, 1500-1750

The European Renaissance, 1400-1600: an introduction

Seminar

Civilizing Processes, 1500-1750

Subjects and Objects of Renaissance Knowledge

Science Across Cultures (with Joel Kaye and George Saliba)

Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West

Graduate

Introduction to Historical Interpretation and Methods

Topics in Early Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History: Institutions of Knowledge and Belief

Office Hours

Wednesday, 3-5

Address

Department of History

Columbia University

514 Fayerweather Hall

1180 Amsterdam Ave.

MC2513

New York, NY 10027

Email

 

 

 

 

Leibniz, 7.1677 transport mechanism for calculating machine