With readings from Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Darwin, Faraday, and Maxwell, it analyses and discusses major classical, medieval and modern texts and figures from the natural sciences. Grouped by topic to clarify the development of methods and disciplines and the unification of theories, each section includes an introduction, suggestions for further reading and end-of-section discussion questions, allowing students to develop the skills needed to:
§ read, interpret, and critically engage with central problems and ideas from the history and philosophy of science
§ understand and evaluate scientific material found in a wide variety of professional and popular settings
§ appreciate the social and cultural context in which scientific ideas emerge
§ identify the roles that mathematics plays in scientific inquiry
Chapter 1. Hippocrates, Nature of Man (c. 400 BCE)
Chapter 2. Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things (c. 50 BCE)
Chapter 3. Plato, Timaeus (c. 360 BCE)
Chapter 4. Plato, Philebus (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 5. Plato, The Republic (c. 370 BCE)
Chapter 6. Aristotle, The Categories (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 7. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 8. Aristotle, On the Heavens (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 9. Aristotle, Meteorology (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 10. Aristotle, Physics (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 11. Aristotle, On the Soul (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 12. Aristotle, The History of Animals (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 13. Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 14. Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 16. Euclid, Elements (c. 350 BCE)
Chapter 17. Apollonius of Perga, Treatise on Conic Sections (late third century BCE)
Chapter 19. Eratosthenes, Measurement of the Earth (third century BCE)
Chapter 20. Ptolemy, Almagest (second century CE)
Chapter 21. Galen, On the Natural Faculties (second century CE)
Chapter 22. Ioannes Philoponus, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (517 CE)
Chapter 23. Ibn Sina (Avicenna), On Medicine (c. 1020)
Chapter 25. Al-Bīrūnī, The Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Arts of Astrology (1029)
Chapter 26. Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Perspectiva (Book of Optics) (c. 1270)
Chapter 27. Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), On Plants (c. 1256)
Chapter 28. Thomas Aquinas, On the Motion of the Heart (De Motu Cordis) (1270)
Chapter 29. Roger Bacon, Opus Majus: On Experimental Science (1268)
Chapter 30. Nicole Oresme, A Treatise on the Configuration of Qualities and Motions (c. 1360)
Chapter 31. John Buridan, Question on the Eight Books of the Physics of Aristotle (1509)
Chapter 32. Nicolaus Copernicus, The Commentariolus (1515)
Chapter 33. Nicolaus Copernicus, Dedication to On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (1543)
Chapter 35. Tycho Brahe, Instruments for the Restoration of Astronomy (1598)
Chapter 36. Johannes Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (1618–21)
Chapter 37. Galileo Galilei, Starry Messenger, with Message to Cosimo de ’Medici (1610)
Chapter 38. Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
Chapter 39. Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two New Sciences (1638)
Chapter 40. René Descartes, The World (written c. 1630, published 1664)
Chapter 42. René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy (1644)
Chapter 44. Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1627)
Chapter 45. Robert Hooke, An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations (1674)
Chapter 46. Isaac Newton, Principia or the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1697)
Chapter 52. Thomas Young, On the Theory of Light and Colors (1801)
Chapter 56. Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity (1831)
Chapter 57. James Clerk Maxwell, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (1865)
Chapter 59. Isaac Newton (George Starkey), The Key (c. 1650s–1670s)
Chapter 62. Johann Joachim Becher, Concerning the First Principle of Metals and Stones (1669)
Chapter 63. Georg Ernst Stahl, Foundation of the Fermentative Art (1697)
Chapter 64. Georg Ernst Stahl, Random Thoughts and Useful Concerns (1718)
Chapter 65. Georg Ernst Stahl, Dogmatic and Experiential Foundations of Chemistry (1723)
Chapter 66. Joseph Priestley, Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1775)
Chapter 68. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace, Memoir on Heat (1780)
Chapter 69. John Dalton, A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808)
Chapter 73. Rudolf Clausius, On the Nature of the Motion Which We Call Heat (1857)
Chapter 75. Dmitri Mendeleev, The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements (1889)
Chapter 77. Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Interaction of Natural Forces (1854)
Chapter 78. William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (1628)
Chapter 79. René Descartes, Treatise on Man (1664)
Chapter 82. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Natural History: The Theory of the Earth (1749)
Chapter 83. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Natural History: History of Animals (1749)
Chapter 84. Carl Linnaeus, On the Increase of the Habitable Earth (1744)
Chapter 86. Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)
Chapter 89. Georges Cuvier, On the Law of the Correlation of Parts (1800)
Chapter 95. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871)
Chapter 96. Kelvin (William Thomson), The “Doctrine of Uniformity” in Geology Briefly Refuted (1866)
Chapter 97. Fleeming Jenkin, Review of “The Origin of Species” (1867)
Chapter 98. Adam Sedgwick, Letter from Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin (November 24, 1859)
Chapter 99. Richard Owen, Review of “Darwin on the Origin of Species” (1860)
Chapter 100. Asa Gray, Darwin and His Reviewers (1860)
Chapter 101. Thomas Henry Huxley, The Coming of Age of “The Origin of Species” (1880)
Chapter 102. Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868)
Chapter 103. W. F. R. Weldon, On Certain Correlated Variations in Carcinus maenas (1893)
Chapter 104. Gregor Mendel, Experiments in Plant Hybridization (1866)