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Published Dec 2015
784 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
A companion to such acclaimed works as The Age of Wonder, A Clockwork Universe, and Darwin's Ghosts—a groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our world.
We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. Yet today, science and its practitioners have come under political attack. In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history.
The Invention of Science goes back five hundred years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently, but came to intersect and create a new worldview. Here are the brilliant iconoclasts—Galileo, Copernicus, Brahe, Newton, and many more curious minds from across Europe—whose studies of the natural world challenged centuries of religious orthodoxy and ingrained superstition.
From gunpowder technology, the discovery of the new world, movable type printing, perspective painting, and the telescope to the practice of conducting experiments, the laws of nature, and the concept of the fact, Wotton shows how these discoveries codified into a social construct and a system of knowledge. Ultimately, he makes clear the link between scientific discovery and the rise of industrialization—and the birth of the modern world we know.
"Wooton's arguments stand effectively on their own, making the final chapters directed at his historian colleagues feel like bloated academic infighting." - Publishers Weekly
"This highly linguistic take on the scientific revolution is not for the easily daunted ... Although academics, who will catch the foreshadowing, will have no trouble following Wootton's argument, casual readers are likely to quit before they reach the payoff." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. A superbly lucid examination of a dramatic revolution in human thought that deserves a place on the shelf with Thomas Kuhn and David Deutsch." - Kirkus Reviews
"…perceptive, thought-provoking, deeply erudite and beautifully written." - Nature
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Wootton is the Anniversary Professor at the University of York. His previous books include Paolo Sarpi, Bad Medicine, and Galileo. He gave the Raleigh Lectures at the British Academy in 2008, the Carlyle Lectures at the University of Oxford in 2014, and the Benedict Lecture at Boston University in 2014
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