The Scientific Revolution A Brief History with Documents

by Jacob, Margaret C.

• ISBN13: 9780312653491
• ISBN10: 0312653492
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-12-11
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

This volume by Margaret C. Jacob explores the Scientific Revolution from its origins in the early sixteenth century to its widespread acceptance in Western societies in the late eighteenth century. Jacob's introduction outlines the trajectory of the Scientific Revolution and argues that the revival of ancient texts in the Renaissance and the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation paved the way for science. The collected documents include writings of well-known scientists and philosophers, such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, and Isaac Newton, as well as primary sources documenting innovations in medicine and engineering, advances in scientific investigations, and the popularization of the scientific revolution through academies and their journals. Document headnotes, questions for consideration, a chronology, and a selected bibliography support students' study of the Scientific Revolution.

Author Biography

Margaret C. Jacob (Ph.D., Cornell University) is professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published widely on science, religion, the Enlightenment, freemasonry, and the origins of the Industrial Revolution. Her first book, The Newtonians and the English Revolution (1976), won the Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Her most recent monograph is Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (2006).

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. v
Preface	p. vii
List Of Illustrations	p. xiii
Introduction: The Evolution and Impact of the Scientific Revolution	p. 1
Why Did the Scientific Revolution Happen?	p. 2
Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Their Early Modern Defenders	p. 4
Exploration and Technological Innovation	p. 6
The Emergence of the Scientific Revolution	p. 9
The New Science	p. 10
The Mechanical Philosophy	p. 13
Newtonian Science	p. 22
Reconciling Science, Religion, and Magic	p. 26
Spreading the Scientific Revolution	p. 29
Conclusion: The Long Road to Acceptance	p. 37
The Documents	p. 43
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs, 1543	p. 45
The Advancement of Learning, 1605	p. 51
The Great Instauration, 1620	p. 56
The Starry Messenger, 1610	p. 59
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, 1628	p. 64
Discourse on Method, 1637	p. 70
New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, 1660	p. 84
A Free-Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, 1686	p. 91
On the Formation of the Teeth in Several Animals; the Structure of the Human Teeth Explained..., 1683	p. 93
Letter to Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1672	p. 95
Selections from Principia, 1687	p. 99
Thirty-first Query to the Opticks, 1718	p. 104
The Celestial Worlds Discovered, 1698	p. 107
Letter about Her Scientific Work, 1702	p. 115
Butterfly, Hawk-moth, Caterpillar, 1705	p. 118
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1713-1714	p. 120
Physico-Mechanical Lectures, 1717	p. 123
Experiments and Observations on Electricity Made at Philadelphia in America, 1751	p. 130
Appendixes
A Chronology of the Scientific Revolution (1514-1752)	p. 134
Questions for Consideration	p. 138
Selected Bibliography	p. 139
Index	p. 145
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