The Scientific Revolution
05 Sep 2024 13:33
Something which happened (largely) in western Europe between (for the most part) 1500 and 1700. The conventional dates, for a while, were 1543, when Vesalius and Copernicus published, and 1704, when Newton published his Optics.
I sometimes think this period is the most important one in the history of our species; also one of the most improbable.
- See also:
- Alchemy
- Atomism
- Early Modern Europe
- the Enlightenment
- Epicureanism
- Galileo
- History of Science
- the Renaissance
- Recommended, big picture:
- J. D. Bernal, Science in History
- Robert Manddrou, From Humanism to Science, 1480--1700
- Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton [Which is necessarily also a book about many other things...]
- David Wootton, The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution
- Recommended, details:
- Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600
- Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism: A Visual, Lexical, and Conceptual History
- Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
- Thomas Levenson, Newton and the Counterfeiter
- William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution
- George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance [author's self-presentation]
- Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment
- Monika Wulz, "Collective Cognitive Processes around 1930. Edgar Zilsel's Epistemology of Mass Phenomena", phil-sci/4740
- Carl Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain, and How It Changed the World
- Recommended, primary sources:
- Galileo Galilei
- Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican
- Siderius Nuncius = The Starry Messenger
- Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica Philosophia Naturalis [Those with some calculus will find S. Chandrashekar's Newton's Principia for the Common Reader much more worthwhile, though]
- To read:
- Joyce Appleby, Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination
- Eric H. Ash, Power, Knowledge, and Expertise in Elizabethan
England</cite> [The (supposed) invention of the social role of the "expert".]
- Arun Bala, The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science
- Philip Ball, Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything
- Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino, The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle: Mechanicism, Chymical Atoms, and Emergence
- Avner Ben-Zaken, Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1560--1660
- Domenico Bertoloni Meli
- Mario Biagioli, Galileo's Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy
- Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist
- Edwin Arthur Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science
- Mary Baine Campbell, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe
- H. Floris Cohen, How Modern Science Came into the World: Four Civilizations, One 17th-Century Breakthrough
- Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age [review by Jonathan Israel in Science]
- Paul A. David, "The Historical Origins of `Open Science': An Essay on Patronage, Reputation and Common Agency Contracting in the Scientific Revolution", Capitalism and Society 3:2 (2008): 5
- Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500--1700
- Dennis Des Chene, Physiologia: Natural Philosopy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought
- William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
- Samuel Edgerton, The Heritage of Giotto's Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution
- Benjamin Farrington, Francis Bacon
- Larrie D. Ferreiro, Ships and Science: The Birth of Naval Architecture in the Scientific Revolution, 1600--1800
- J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James (eds.), Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe
- Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy [Findlen has also written "Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe," which sounds interesting, tho' I don't know where it's published.]
- David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History
- Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210--1685
- Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity
- Edward Grant, Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200--1687
- A. R. Hall, The Scientific Revolutiuon, 1500--1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude
- Marie Boas Hall, The Scientific Renaissance, 1450--1630
- Deborah Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution
- John Henry, The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science
- Michael E. Hobart, The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide
- Toby Huff
- Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire
- Koestler, The Sleepwalkers
- Margaret C. Jacob
- The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution
- Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West
- Lisa Jardine, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution
- Lynn Sumida Joy, Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in an Age of Science
- Pamela Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance
- Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy
- Bruce T. Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution
- William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution
- Margaret J. Osler, Reconfiguring the World: Nature, God, and Human Understanding from the Middle Ages to Early Modern Europe
- Walter Pagel
- Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises, and Sensibilities
- Meredith K. Ray, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy
- Eileen Reeves, Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo
- Timothy J. Reiss, Knowledge, Discovery and Imagination in Early Modern Europe: The Rise of Aesthetic Rationalism
- George Sarton, 6 Wings (Renaissance Scientists)
- A. Mark Smith, From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern Optics
- Pamela H. Smith
- The Business of Alchemy
- The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution [Chapters from the artisanal contribution to scientific epistemology]
- Pamela H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt (eds.), Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400--1800
- Julie Robin Solomon, Objectivity in the Making: Francis Bacon and the Politics of Inquiry
- Richard S. Westfall, The construction of modern science: mechanisms and mechanics
- Edgar Zilsel, The Social Origins of Modern Science
Last major update 01/20/2004 08:46:03
