About this item
A companion to such acclaimed works as The Age of Wonder, A Clockwork Universe, and Darwin's Ghosts - a groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our world.We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. Yet today, science and its practitioners have come under political attack. In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history.The Invention of Science goes back five hundred years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently, but came to intersect and create a new worldview. Here are the brilliant iconoclasts - Galileo, Copernicus, Brahe, Newton, and many more curious minds from across Europe - whose studies of the natural world challenged centuries of religious orthodoxy and ingrained superstition.From gunpowder technology, the discovery of the new world, movable type printing, perspective painting, and the telescope to the practice of conducting experiments, the laws of nature, and the concept of the fact, Wotton shows how these discoveries codified into a social construct and a system of knowledge. Ultimately, he makes clear the link between scientific discovery and the rise of industrialization - and the birth of the modern world we know.
About the Author
MA, PhD (Cantab) , FRHistSDavid Wootton is Anniversary Professor of History. He works on the intellectual and cultural history of the English speaking countries, Italy, and France, 1500-1800. He is currently writing a book entitled Power, Pleasure and Profit based on his Carlyle Lectures at the University of Oxford in 2014. His most recent book is The Invention of Science, published by Allen Lane. In 2016 he will give the annual Besterman Lecture at the University of Oxford. He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and has held positions in history and politics at four British and four Canadian universities, and visiting postions in the US, before coming to York.
