The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution

David Wootton

12/2015 · Harper Collins

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This “fantastic revisionist history . . . captures the excitement of the scientific revolution and makes a point of celebrating the advances it ushered in” (Financial Times).

We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. In The Invention of Science, historian David Wootton reveals why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history. Spanning continents and centuries, Wootton chronicles the factors that led to this crucial transformation, and the fascinating people who made it happen.

Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that merged to 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, Wootton 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.

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David Wootton is the Anniversary Professor at the University of York. His previous books include Paolo Sarpi, Bad Medicine, and Galileo. He gave the Raleigh Lectures at the British Academy in 2008, the Carlyle Lectures at the University of Oxford in 2014, and the Benedict Lecture at Boston University in 2014.