The Scientific Revolution

20 Jan 2004 08:46

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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; Early Modern Europe; the Enlightenment; History of Science; the Renaissance

Recommended:
• J. D. Bernal, Science in History
• Galileo [Galilei]
  • Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican
  • Siderius Nuncius = The Starry Messenger
• Robert Manddrou, From Humanism to Science, 1480--1700
• William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution
• 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]
• Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment
• Carl Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain, and How It Changed the World

To read:
• Eric H. Ash, Power, Knowledge, and Expertise in Elizabethan England [The (supposed) invention of the social role of the "expert". Blurb]
• Mario Biagioli, Galileo's Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy [Blurb]
• 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 [Blurb]
• Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age [review by Jonathan Israel in Science]
• 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 [Blurb]
• J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James (eds.), Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe [Blurb]
• Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy [Blurb. 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
• Toby Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West [Blurb]
• 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 [Blurb]
• William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution
• Walter Pagel
• Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises, and Sensibilities
• Eileen Reeves, Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo
• George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance [blurb]
• George Sarton, 6 Wings (Renaissance Scientists)
• 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 [blurb]
• Julie Robin Solomon, Objectivity in the Making: Francis Bacon and the Politics of Inquiry