Measure for Measure A Musical History of Science

by Levenson, Thomas

• ISBN13: 9780684804347
• ISBN10: 0684804344
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-12-05
• Publisher: Touchstone

Summary

In Measure for Measure, Thomas Levenson offers a compelling account of how scientific thinking developed from the day 2,500 years ago when Pythagoras discovered the musical scale to the present day. The story unfolds through the tales of instruments scientific and musical: the organ, the microscope, the still, the scales, Stradivari's miraculous violins and cellos, computers, and synthesizers. What emerges is a unique portrait of science itself as an instrument, our single most powerful way of understanding the world. Yet perhaps the most important invention of modern science has been the power to countenance its own limitations, to find the point beyond which science can explain no more, to rediscover that science, like music, is an art. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Thomas Levenson is an award-winning television producer and the author of one previous book, Ice Time. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 9
By Design	p. 17
A Perfect Order	p. 19
All Is Founded in Perfection	p. 39
Nothing in Vain	p. 71
Sound and Light	p. 109
An Unbounded Prospect	p. 119
It Is a Great Secret	p. 121
Our Powers Increase Without Limits	p. 155
The Exactitude of Their Proportions	p. 193
We Cannot Go Back to That	p. 233
Making Sense of the Whole	p. 241
Light in the Cave	p. 243
We Need News Instruments Very Badly	p. 274
Description Is Revelation	p. 315
Acknowledgments	p. 319
Bibliography	p. 323
Index	p. 333
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