The Birth of Modern Science

This history of the birth of modern science shatters the illusion that science is 'dry' and divorced from culture by exploring the powerful clashes between traditions and value systems that gave rise to it. The author shows how many of the characteristics that distinguish science today emerged in the midst of the wars and plagues of the seventeenth century and defines what was new about this form of knowledge.

Paolo Rossi is Professor emeritus at the University of Florence and member of the "Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei". In 1985 he was awarded the Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society. His previous books in English include Francis Bacon from Magic to Science (1968), Philosophy Technology and the Arts in the Early Modern Era(1970), and The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of the Nations from Hooke to Vico (1984)

Series Editor's Preface

vii

Jacques Le Goff

Introduction

1

(8)

European Science

A Revolution and its History

About this Book

Obstacles

9

(9)

Forgetting What we Know

Physics

Cosmology

Vile Mechanics

Secrets

18

(11)

``Margaritae ad porcos''

Hermetic Knowledge

Public Knowledge

The Hermetic Tradition and the Scientific Revolution

Secrets and Public Knowledge

Engineers

29

(12)

Practice and Discourse

Engineers and Machines

The Workshop

Leonardo da Vinci

``Discourse'' and ``Construction''

Knowledge that can Grow

Art and Nature

Daedalus and the Labyrinth

The Unseen World

41

(15)

Printing

Ancient Books

The Old and the New

Illustration

New Stars

The Discovery of an Unknown Visual World

The New World

A New Universe

56

(17)

Copernicus

The World in Pieces

Tycho Brahe

Kepler

Galileo

73

(26)

Early Works

Astronomical Discoveries

Nature and the Bible

Hypotheses and Realism

Copernicus is Condemned

The Book of Nature

The Chief Systems

The Destruction of Aristotelian Cosmology

Geometrization, Relativity, and Inertia

The Tides

Galileo's Tragedy

The New Physics

Descartes

99

(9)

A System

``I Come Forward Masked''

Mathematical Equations meet Geometry

Physics and Cosmology

The World as Geometry

Countless Other Worlds

108

(14)

An Infinite Void

An Infinitely Populated Infinite Universe

Galileo, Descartes, and the Infinite Universe

We are not Alone in the Universe

Huygens' Conjectures

The End of Anthropocentrism

Mechanical Philosophy

122

(17)

The Need for Imagination

Mechanisms and Mechanics

The Natural and the Artificial: To Know and to Make

Animals, Men, and Machines

Can Mechanists still be Christians?

Leibniz and the Critique of Mechanics

Chemical Philosophy

139

(9)

Chemistry and its Forefathers

Paracelsus

Paracelsians

The Iatrochemists

Chemistry and Mechanical Philosophy

Mechanics and Vitalism

Magnetic Philosophy

148

(9)

Strange Events

Gilbert

Jesuits and Magic

Cautious Experiments and Daring Devices

The Sulfur Globe

Music and Trantism

The Heart and Generation

157

(7)

The Sun of the Microcosm

Ovists and Animalculists

Preformation Theory

Time and Nature

164

(11)

The Discovery of Time

Strange Rocks

How are Natural Objects Made?

A Sacred Theory of the Earth

Leibniz and the Protogaea

Newtonians and Cartesians

Classification

175

(8)

``Poa bulbosa''

Classification

Universal Languages

A Language for the Discussion of Nature

To Name is to Know

Mnemonic Aids

The Essential and the Incidental

Instruments and Theories

183

(9)

Sensory Aids

Intellectual Aids

Academies

192

(11)

The University

The Academy

The First Academies

Paris

London

Berlin

Bologna

Publications

Newton

203

(27)

The Principia

The ``General Scholium''

The Opticks

Newton's Life

A Brief Interlude on the Manuscripts

The ``Queries''

The Cosmic Cycles

Chronology

Knowledge of the Ancients

Alchemy

Newton's Religion and the Apocalypse

Interpreting the Bible and Nature

Conclusion

Chronology

230

(5)

Bibliography

235

(16)

Index

251

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The Birth of Modern Science

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials