Intellectual curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 12/16/2010
EAN 9780521170529, ISBN10: 0521170524
Paperback, 370 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Seventeenth-century Europe witnessed an extraordinary flowering of discoveries and innovations. This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608, casts Galileo's discoveries into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. In Europe, there was an extraordinary burst of innovations in microscopy, human anatomy, optics, pneumatics, electrical studies, and the science of mechanics. Nearly all of those aided the emergence of Newton's revolutionary grand synthesis, which unified terrestrial and celestial physics under the law of universal gravitation. That achievement had immense implications for all aspects of modern science, technology, and economic development. The economic implications are set out in the concluding epilogue. All these unique developments suggest why the West experienced a singular scientific and economic ascendancy of at least four centuries.
Part I. Something New Under the Sun
1. Introduction
outline of a new perspective
2. Inventing the discovery machine
3. The new telescopic evidence
4. The 'far seeing looking glass' goes to China
5. 'Galileo's glass' goes to the Muslim world
Part II. Patterns of Education
6. Three ideals of higher education
Islamic, Chinese, and Western
Part III. Science Unbound
7. Infectious curiosity I
anatomy and microbiology
8. Infectious curiosity II
weighing the air and atmospheric pressure
9. Infectious curiosity III
magnetism and electricity
10. Prelude to the grand synthesis
11. The path to the grand synthesis
12. The scientific revolution in comparative perspective
Epilogue
science, literacy and economic development.