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The first textbook to cover the history of science from antiquity through the Scientific Revolution.
List of contents
1. Cathedrals; 2. Greek Thought; 3. The Birth of Astronomy; 4. Medieval Learning; 5. The Seeds of Revolution; 6. Magic; 7. The Moving Earth; 8. Medicine and the Body; 9. The New Science; 10. The Road to the Principia.
About the author
Ofer Gal is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney and has been teaching the history of science for over a quarter century. He has won numerous prizes and has published monographs, edited volumes and articles, especially about early modern physical sciences, but also on the global knowledge, eighteenth-century chemistry, and various philosophical issues.
Summary
The first textbook covering the history of science from antiquity through the Scientific Revolution. Providing students of all backgrounds with the tools to study science like a historian, Gal covers everything from Pythagorean mathematics to Newton's Principia, introducing the complex relationships between institutions, beliefs and politics.
Additional text
'In this very wide-ranging and superbly illustrated account, Ofer Gal offers an original and instructive survey of the development of the sciences from classical and medieval periods to early modernity. In well-organized histories of medicine and mechanics, astronomy and experiment, this work cleverly shows in persuasive detail the intricate relations between the sciences and their history. Designed to provide a usable textbook for students with background in history and in the sciences, the work explains clearly the relationship between theoretical knowledge and practical know-how, and between the complex and fascinating emergence of modern sciences and the long development of different techniques and understandings of nature.' Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge
