A History of Western Science: The Basics

ISBN-13: 9781032346502 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023 / 272 str.

Rienk Vermij

Opis

A History of Western Science: The Basics, offers a short introduction to the history of western science that is accessible to all through avoiding technical language and mathematical intricacies.

Spis treści

Introduction

Part I. The Scientific Revolution

1. Antiquity and the Middle Ages

       Greek philosophers and nature

       Greek mathematics

       Medicine in antiquity

       The classical tradition in mediaeval Europe

2. The sixteenth century: the Aristotelian worldview in decline

       New intellectual currents: humanism and hermeticism

       Natural history and medicine

       Mathematics and ‘natural magic’

       Astronomy

       Philosophy of nature

3. The seventeenth century: a new worldview

       Galileo and a new view of the heavens

       Descartes and mechanistic science

       The emergence of an experimental tradition

       Mathematization of science

       The mathematical science of Isaac Newton

       A revolution in the prevailing worldview?

 

Part II. Autonomous science: methods, theories and researchers 1700-2000

4. The eighteenth century: disseminating the idea of science

       Knowledge and practice: instruments

       Collecting and classifying: natural history

       From alchemy to chemistry

       Newtonian mechanics and its problems

5. The nineteenth century (i): science at the service of the rationalization of society

       A ‘scientific’ system of measurement

       The modern hospital

       Observatories, measuring stations and a global science

       Science and Western imperialism

6. The nineteenth century (ii): professional science

       Universities and professors

       Women in science

       Laboratories

       Classification and conferences

       The rise of the experiment: physiology

       Measuring and experimenting in the study of nature

       Further mathematization

       Statistics

7. The twentieth century: industrial science

       The rise of industrial science

       The science of measurement

       Research institutes

       Control and modelling

       Independence under pressure

 

Part III. The scientific worldview

8. The origin of the world

       The Bible and the new image of the world

       The development of geology

       The origin of the universe

9. The nature of life and the origin of human beings

       Early scientific ideas about humankind and its place in the world

       The idea of evolution

       Darwin’s contribution

       Descent

       The mysteries of the mind

       The mechanism of heredity

       Heredity and evolution

       A science of human beings?

10. The nature of reality

       A rational world?

       The building blocks of reality

       Research into radiation

       The theory of relativity

       Quantum mechanics

       In search of a theory of everything

11. The influence of science on the general worldview

       Scientification?

       Accommodation of scientific findings

       Rejection of scientific findings

 

Concluding remarks

 

O autorze

Rienk Vermij is a Professor at the Department of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology of the University of Oklahoma. His research topics include early ideas on earthquakes, the reception of Copernicanism, and the Enlightenment. He has published several books and many articles.