The Scientific Revolution

Last update: 13 Dec 2024 21:01
First version: 3 October 1994; major edit 20 January 2004

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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, close ups:
• 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
• David Wootton, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies
• 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
  • Thinking with Objects: The Transformation of Mechanics in the Seventeenth Century
  • Mechanism, Experiment, Disease: Marcello Malpighi and Seventeenth-Century Anatomy
• 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
• 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
  • The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West
  • Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective
• 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