This thoroughly revised third edition of an award-winning book offers a keen insight into how the Scientific Revolution happened and why. Covering central scientific figures, including Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Bacon, this new edition features: • Greater treatment of alchemy and associated craft activities to reflect trends in current scholarship • Extended material on Francis Bacon • A new historiographical essay Reflecting on the origins of scientific practice in early modern Europe, Peter Dear traces the revolution in thought that changed the natural world from something to be contemplated into something to be used. Concise and readable, this book is ideal for students who are studying the Scientific Revolution and its impact on the early modern world. The first edition was the winner of the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize of the History of Science Society.

From Copernicus, who put the earth in orbit around the sun, to Isaac Newton, who gave the world universal gravitation, the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries transformed the way Europeans understood their world. In this book, Peter Dear offers an accessible introduction to the origins of modern science for students and general readers. This second edition further explores the practice and influence of alchemy, the social standing of early scientists, and the role of medicine and medical practitioners. Provides a comprehensive overview of principal themes and topics Discusses central figures, including Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, and describes the world in which they lived--and the new world they helped create Features a rich variety of illustrations, a glossary of terms, and a list of further reading

This heavily revised third edition of an award-winning text offers a keen insight into the development of scientific thought in early modern Europe. Including coverage of the central scientific figures of the time, including Copernicus, Kelper, Galileo, Newton and Bacon, this book provides a comprehensive overview of how the Scientific Revolution happened and why. Highlighting Europe's colonial and trade expansion in the sixteenth and 17th centuries, Peter Dear traces the revolution in scientific thought that changed the natural world from something to be contemplated into something to be used. This book is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Early Modern history, European history, history of medicine, history of science and technology and the history and philosophy of science. The first edition was the winner of the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize of the History of Science Society. New to this Edition: - Greater treatment of alchemy and associated craft activities, to reflect ongoing new scholarship - More focus on geographical issues, especially relating to Spain and its New World territories, as well as Eastern Europe, but also further afield in Islamic territories including the Ottoman Empire, and South and East Asia - New material on the themes of 'science and religion', gender and class - More extensive treatment of the relationship in this period of medicine to the various sciences and especially to new natural philosophies - Incorporation of new scholarship throughout - A whole chapter dedicated to Francis Bacon - Further discussion of the gendered elements of natural philosophy - A brand new historiographical essay

Although the Scientific Revolution has long been regarded as the beginning of modern science, there has been little consensus about its true character. While the application of mathematics to the study of the natural world has always been recognized as an important factor, the role of experiment has been less clearly understood. Peter Dear investigates the nature of the change that occurred during this period, focusing particular attention on evolving notions of experience and how these developed into the experimental work that is at the center of modern science. He examines seventeenth-century mathematical sciences—astronomy, optics, and mechanics—not as abstract ideas, but as vital enterprises that involved practices related to both experience and experiment. Dear illuminates how mathematicians and natural philosophers of the period—Mersenne, Descartes, Pascal, Barrow, Newton, Boyle, and the Jesuits—used experience in their argumentation, and how and why these approaches changed over the course of a century. Drawing on mathematical texts and works of natural philosophy from all over Europe, he describes a process of change that was gradual, halting, sometimes contradictory—far from the sharp break with intellectual tradition implied by the term "revolution."

The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century has often been called a decisive turning point in human history. It represents, for good or ill, the birth of modern science and modern ways of viewing the world. In What Galileo Saw, Lawrence Lipking offers a new perspective on how to understand what happened then, arguing that artistic imagination and creativity as much as rational thought played a critical role in creating new visions of science and in shaping stories about eye-opening discoveries in cosmology, natural history, engineering, and the life sciences.When Galileo saw the face of the Moon and the moons of Jupiter, Lipking writes, he had to picture a cosmos that could account for them. Kepler thought his geometry could open a window into the mind of God. Francis Bacon's natural history envisioned an order of things that would replace the illusions of language with solid evidence and transform notions of life and death. Descartes designed a hypothetical "Book of Nature" to explain how everything in the universe was constructed. Thomas Browne reconceived the boundaries of truth and error. Robert Hooke, like Leonardo, was both researcher and artist; his schemes illuminate the microscopic and the macrocosmic. And when Isaac Newton imagined nature as a coherent and comprehensive mathematical system, he redefined the goals of science and the meaning of genius.What Galileo Saw bridges the divide between science and art; it brings together Galileo and Milton, Bacon and Shakespeare. Lipking enters the minds and the workshops where the Scientific Revolution was fashioned, drawing on art, literature, and the history of science to reimagine how perceptions about the world and human life could change so drastically, and change forever.

The European expansion around the globe, which began in the sixteenth century, carried with it new conceptions of knowledge itself. Francis Bacon famously asserted that 'knowledge is power' this book attempts to go beneath the oft quoted slogan to see the various ways in which this conviction played itself out in shaping new perceptions of what natural knowledge was, and what it was good for, in this crucial period. Peter Dear covers the key figures of the period, including Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton and the important schools of thought to create a picture of the development of scientific thought in early modern Europe. The book is accessible to an undergraduate and lay readership, while drawing on recent scholarship to provide an understanding of the cultural foundations of the modern scientific project.

The development of science, according to respected scholars Peter J. Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus, expands our knowledge and control of the world in ways that affect-but are also affected by-society and culture. In Making Modern Science, a text designed for introductory college courses in the history of science and as a single-volume introduction for the general reader, Bowler and Morus explore both the history of science itself and its influence on modern thought. Opening with an introduction that explains developments in the history of science over the last three decades and the controversies these initiatives have engendered, the book then proceeds in two parts. The first section considers key episodes in the development of modern science, including the Scientific Revolution and individual accomplishments in geology, physics, and biology. The second section is an analysis of the most important themes stemming from the social relations of science-the discoveries that force society to rethink its religious, moral, or philosophical values. Making Modern Science thus chronicles all major developments in scientific thinking, from the revolutionary ideas of the seventeenth century to the contemporary issues of evolutionism, genetics, nuclear physics, and modern cosmology. Written by seasoned historians, this book will encourage students to see the history of science not as a series of names and dates but as an interconnected and complex web of relationships between science and modern society. The first survey of its kind, Making Modern Science is a much-needed and accessible introduction to the history of science, engagingly written for undergraduates and curious readers alike.