A Short History of Scientific Thought

Description

Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Boxes, Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Setting the Scene: Natural Philosophy in Ancient Greece 2 Plato and Aristotle 3 From the Roman Empire to the Empire of Islam 4 The Western Middle Ages 5 The Renaissance 6 Nicholas Copernicus and a New World 7 New Methods of Science 8 Bringing Mathematics and Natural Philosophy Together: Johannes Kepler 9 Mathematics and Mechanics: Galileo Galilei 10 Practice and Theory in Renaissance Medicine: William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood 11 The Spirit of System: René Descartes and the Mechanical Philosophy 12 The Royal Society and Experimental Philosophy 13 Experiment, Mathematics, and Magic: Isaac Newton 14 The Newtonian Enlightenment 15 The Chemical Revolution: Priestley and Lavoisier; John Dalton and Beyond 16 Newtonian Optimism: Natural Theology and Natural Order 17 The Making of Geology: From James Hutton to Charles Lyell 18 The History of Plants and Animals: Successive Emergence or Evolution? 19 Religion and Progress in Victorian Britain: Robert Chambers versus Hugh Miller 20 Bringing it All Together? Charles Darwin’s Evolution 21 Darwinian Aftermaths: Religion; Social Science; Biology 22 Beyond Newton: Energy and Thermodynamics 23 Newton Deposed: Einstein and Relativity Theory 24 Mathematics Instead of a World Picture: From Atomism to Quantum Theory Afterword Index