http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2004/01/20#scientific-revolution <P>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 <cite>Optics</cite>.</P> <P>I sometimes think this period is the most important one in the history of our species; also one of the most improbable. <P>See also: <a href="alchemy.html">Alchemy</a>; <a href="early-modern-europe.html">Early Modern Europe</a>; the <a href="enlightenment.html">Enlightenment</a>; <a href="history-of-science.html">History of Science</a>; the <a href="renaissance.html">Renaissance</a> <ul>Recommended: <li>J. D. Bernal, <cite>Science in History</cite> <li>Alfred W. Crosby, <cite>The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600</cite> <li><a href="galileo.html">Galileo Galilei</a> <ul> <li><cite>Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican</cite> <li><citE>Siderius Nuncius</cite> = <cite>The Starry Messenger</cite> </ul> <li>Thomas Levenson, <cite>Newton and the Counterfeiter</cite> [<a href="../weblog/algae-2009-09.html#newton">Mini-review</a>] <li>Robert Manddrou, <cite>From Humanism to Science, 1480--1700</cite> <li>William R. Newman, <cite>Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution</cite> <li>Isaac Newton, <cite>Principia Mathematica Philosophia Naturalis</cite> [Those with some calculus will find S. Chandrashekar's <cite>Newton's </cite>Principia<cite> for the Common Reader</cite> much more worthwhile, though] <li>Aram Vartanian, <citE>Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment</cite> <li>Carl Zimmer, <cite>Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain, and How It Changed the World</cite> </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Eric H. Ash, <cite>Power, Knowledge, and Expertise in Elizabethan England</cite> [The (supposed) invention of the social role of the "expert". <a href="http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/3320.html">Blurb</a>] <li>Arun Bala, <cite>The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science</cite> <li>Mario Biagioli, <cite>Galileo's Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/167271.ctl">Blurb</a>] <li>Robert Boyle, <cite><a href="http://www.library.upenn.edu/etext/science/boyle/chymist/">The Sceptical Chymist</a></cite> <li>Edwin Arthur Burtt, <cite>Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science</cite> <li>Mary Baine Campbell, <cite>Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe</cite> [<a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornellpress/cup3_catalog.taf?_function=detail&Title_ID=3229">Blurb</a>] <li>Harold J. Cook, <cite>Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age</cite> [<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1142456">review</a> by Jonathan Israel in <cite>Science</cite>] <li>Paul A. David, "The Historical Origins of `Open Science': An Essay on Patronage, Reputation and Common Agency Contracting in the Scientific Revolution", <a href="http://www.bepress.com/cas/vol3/iss2/art5"><cite>Capitalism and Society</cite> <strong>3:2</strong> (2008): 5</a> <li>Peter Dear, <cite>Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500--1700</cite> <li>Dennis Des Chene, <cite>Physiologia: Natural Philosopy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought</cite> <li>William Eamon, <cite>Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture</cite> <li>Samuel Edgerton, <cite>The Heritage of Giotto's Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution</cite> <li>Benjamin Farrington, <cite>Francis Bacon</cite> <li>Larrie D. Ferreiro, <cite>Ships and Science: The Birth of Naval Architecture in the Scientific Revolution, 1600--1800</cite> [<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/0-262-06259-3">Blurb</a>] <li>J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James (eds.), <cite>Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/0521627540">Blurb</a>] <li>Paula Findlen, <cite>Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy</cite> [<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/5712.html">Blurb</a>. 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.] <li>David Freedberg, <cite>The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History</cite> <li>Stephen Gaukroger, <cite>The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210--1685</cite> <li>Gillispie, <Cite>The Edge of Objectivity</citE> <li>Edward Grant, <cite>Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200--1687</cite> <li>A. R. Hall, <cite>The Scientific Revolutiuon, 1500--1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude</cite> <li>Marie Boas Hall, <cite>The Scientific Renaissance, 1450--1630</cite> <li>Toby Huff, <cite>The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West</cite> [<a href="http://www.cup.org/Titles/49/0521498333.html">Blurb</a>] <li>Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, <cite>Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire</cite> <li>Koestler, <cite>The Sleepwalkers</cite> <li>Margaret C. Jacob <ul> <li><cite>The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution</cite> <li><cite>Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West</cite> </ul> <li>Lisa Jardine, <cite>Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution</cite> <li>Lynn Sumida Joy, <cite>Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in an Age of Science</cite> <li>Pamela Long, <cite>Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/2083.html">Blurb</a>] <li>William R. Newman, <cite>Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution</cite> <li>Walter Pagel <li>Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson, <cite>Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises, and Sensibilities</cite> <li>Eileen Reeves, <cite>Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo</cite> <li>George Saliba, <cite>Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance</cite> [<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/0-262-19557-7">blurb</a>; <a href="http://www.rorotoko.com/index.php/article/george_saliba_book_interview_islamic_science_making_european_renaissance/P0/">author's self-presentation</a>] <li>George Sarton, <cite>6 Wings</cite> (Renaissance Scientists) <li>Pamela H. Smith <ul> <li><cite>The Business of Alchemy</cite> <li><cite>The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution</cite> [Chapters from the artisanal contribution to scientific epistemology] </ul> <li>Pamela H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt (eds.), <cite>Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400--1800</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/239994.ctl">blurb</a>] <li>Julie Robin Solomon, <cite>Objectivity in the Making: Francis Bacon and the Politics of Inquiry</cite> <li>Richard S. Westfall <ul> <li><cite>The construction of modern science: mechanisms and mechanics</cite> <li><cite>Never at Rest</cite> </ul> <li>Edgar Zilsel, <cite>The Social Origins of Modern Science</cite> </ul>