Science Meets Politics : Machiavelli's Influence and the Birth of Political Science

Gábor Almási

ISBN 10: 900473693X / ISBN 13: 9789004736931

Published by Koninklijke Brill BV Jun 2025, 2025

About this Item

Neuware - Machiavelli's early influence was more penetrating than has ever been believed, and this book explains why. The surprising answer leads the reader into the depths of the history of science, connecting Machiavelli's thought to new ways of thinking about experience, history, nature, and politics. This book argues that Machiavelli's works resonated with readers not merely because of the political and moral questions they raised and answered, but equally because of the ways in which Machiavelli engaged with these questions. His method reinforced the readers' own belief in the importance of an inductive and comparative approach, which relied on facts and numbers drawn from history and experience. An impressive book that, for a change, measures Machiavelli's writings not against 21st-century binary schemes, but rather against the knowledge categories and strategies of his 16th-century contemporaries and successors. Navigating skillfully among texts and authors both well-known and recondite, the author shows how the Florentine's ideas prompted and shaped a revolution in Western thought. William J Connell, Professor of History, Seton Hall University If you have ever wondered why Francis Bacon frequently quoted and lavished praise on Niccolò Machiavelli, this is the book for you. In it, Gábor Almási situates the latter with regard to the science of his time and shows that he was read initially in Italy, then in France, and finally in England as the exponent of an empiricism - divorced from theology, metaphysics, and morals - as pertinent to the study of the natural world as it is to the study of politics. Paul A. Rahe, Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage, Hillsdale College.

Seller Inventory # 9789004736931

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Science Meets Politics : Machiavelli's Influence and the Birth of Political Science
• Publisher: Koninklijke Brill BV Jun 2025
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 900473693X
• ISBN 13: 9789004736931
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 235W x 155H x 29D millimeters 235 millimeters width by 155 millimeters height by 29 millimeters depth
• Weight: 800 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Machiavelli’s early influence was more penetrating than has ever been believed, and this book explains why. The surprising answer leads the reader into the depths of the history of science, connecting Machiavelli’s thought to new ways of thinking about experience, history, nature, and politics. This book argues that Machiavelli’s works resonated with readers not merely because of the political and moral questions they raised and answered, but equally because of the ways in which Machiavelli engaged with these questions. His method reinforced the readers’ own belief in the importance of an inductive and comparative approach, which relied on facts and numbers drawn from history and experience.

An impressive book that, for a change, measures Machiavelli's writings not against 21st-century binary schemes, but rather against the knowledge categories and strategies of his 16th-century contemporaries and successors. Navigating skillfully among texts and authors both well-known and recondite, the author shows how the Florentine's ideas prompted and shaped a revolution in Western thought.
William J Connell, Professor of History, Seton Hall University

If you have ever wondered why Francis Bacon frequently quoted and lavished praise on Niccolò Machiavelli, this is the book for you. In it, Gábor Almási situates the latter with regard to the science of his time and shows that he was read initially in Italy, then in France, and finally in England as the exponent of an empiricism – divorced from theology, metaphysics, and morals – as pertinent to the study of the natural world as it is to the study of politics.
Paul A. Rahe, Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage, Hillsdale College

About the Author

Gábor Almási, Ph.D. (1972), is a lecturer at the University of Innsbruck. His interests range from Renaissance studies to pre-modern nationalism. He has published extensively on the fortunes of Machiavelli, including a monograph on Kaspar Schoppe’s Secretissima instructio (ELTE BTK, 2014).