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.
Chapter 2. The Idea of the Scientific Revolution
Chapter 3. Inventing Discovery
Chapter 5. The Mathematization of the World
Chapter 10. Hypotheses/Theories
Chapter 11. Evidence and Judgement
Chapter 13. The Disenchantment of the World
Chapter 14. Knowledge is Power
Chapter 15. In Defiance of Nature
Chapter 16. These Postmodern Days
A Note on Greek and Medieval ‘Science’
Notes on Relativism and Relativists
A Note on Dates and Quotations