The Origins of Modern Science: From Antiquity to the Scientific Revolution

Half title
Title page
Imprints page
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Note from the Publisher
Acknowledgements
1 Cathedrals
	The Cathedral
		Philosophy: The Cathedral that is Science
		History: The Cathedral as a Turning Point
		Historiography: Culture and Knowledge
	Ways of Knowing
		Know-How: The Arch
		Knowing-That: The World of the Cathedral Builders
	Tensions and Compromises
		Belief and Authority: The Church
		Augustine and the Problem of Evil
		Augustine’s Resources: Plotinus
	Conclusion: Reflections on the History of Knowledge
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
2 Greek Thought
	Knowing-About as Know-How
	Plato and the Culture of Theory
		Plato: Truth and Episteme
		Estrangement
		The Pythagoreans and their Mathematical Reality
		The Concept of Proof
		Plato in Athens
	Parmenides’ Problem and Its Import
		Parmenides’ Challenge
		The Atomists
		Greek Philosophies and Parmenides’ Challenge
	Aristotle and the Science of Common Sense
		Aristotle’s Life and Times
		Aristotle vs. his Predecessors
		Aristotle’s Alternative
		Aristotle’s World
		The Cosmos
		Natural Philosophy and the Causes of Change
	Conclusion
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
3 The Birth of Astronomy
	Looking Up
	Making the Phenomena
		The Two Spheres Model
		How It Works
	Making Time
		The Astronomer’s Role
		Positions and Regularities
	Saving the Phenomena
		Spheres
		Eudoxus’ Nested Spheres
		The Empirical Side of Theoria
	The Moving Earth Hypothesis
	The Legacy of Greek Astronomy: Ptolemy’s Orbs
	Conclusion
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
4 Medieval Learning
	The Decline of Greek Knowledge
		The Burning of the Library
		The Schools of Athens
		From the Greek Polis to the Roman Empire
	The Encyclopedic Tradition
		The First Roman Encyclopedists
		Pliny’s Natural History
		The Medieval Encyclopedists
	Christianity and Learnedness
		The Changing Cultural Role of Christianity
		The Monastery and the Scriptorium
		Medieval Know-How
		Education and the Church
	The University
		Sovereignty and Its Bounds
		Interlude: The Foundations and Decline of Academic Freedom
		Masters, Students and Pedagogy
		Curriculum
		The Great Translation Project
	Muslim Science
		The First Translation Project
		Originality and Traditionality
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
5 The Seeds of Revolution
	Monotheism and Pagan Science
		The Fundamental Discrepancy
		Ibn Rushd
		Moshe ben Maimon
		Thomas Aquinas and Thomism
	The Renaissance
		The New City-State and Its Prince
		The Humanists
		The Meeting of Scholar and Artisan
	The Movable Press and Its Cultural Impact
		The Invention
		Imitation and Inspiration
	Global Knowledge
		Navigating the Open Seas
		Discoveries
		Global Commerce
		Knowledge for the New Age
	Global Institutions of Knowledge
		Trade Companies
		The Jesuits
	Conclusion
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
6 Magic
	Spectator vs. Participant Knowledge
		The Magical Tradition(s)
		Tense Relations
	Magical Cosmogonies
		Kabbalah
		Hermetica
	Magical Epistemology
		Antiquity and Secrecy
		Circumventing Reason: The Strange Role of Language
	Magical Cosmologies
		The Symbolic World
		The Organic World
	Scientific Magic
		Alchemy
		Astrology
	Magic and the New Science
		Natural Magic
		The Magical Renaissance
		Knowledge Is Power
	Conclusion
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
7 The Moving Earth
	Introduction
		Press and Reformation
		Counter-Reformation and the Calendar Reform
	The Copernican Revolution
		Conservatism
		Revolutions
		Motivations
	After Copernicus
		Andreas Osiander and the Timid Interpretation
		Giordano Bruno and the Radical Interpretation
		Tycho Brahe and the New Empirical Astronomy
	Kepler and the Physicalization of the Heavens
		The Marvelous Order of the Copernican Heavens
		Kepler’s Life and Times
		The New Physical Optics
		The New Physical Astronomy
	Galileo and the Telescope
		The Telescope
		Climbing the Walks of Life
		The Copernican Tribute
	The Galileo Affair: The Church Divorces Science
		The First Procedure: Reason vs. Revolution
		Galileo’s Trial
	Conclusion
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
8 Medicine and the Body
	Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood
		Harvey in Padua and London
		Harvey’s Heart and Blood
		Harvey’s Way into the Body
		Harvey’s Curriculum
	The Learned Tradition
		Hippocrates and the Hippocratic Corpus
		Galen and the Systematization of Medicine
		Muslim Learned Medicine
		Christian Learned Medicine
	The Healing Tradition
		The Leechbook
		Practical Remedies
		Learned Resources
		Practitioners
			Apothecaries
			Witches
			Surgeons and Barbers
			Midwives
	The New Medicine and the New Body
		Paracelsus and the Alchemical Body
		Iatrochemistry
		Van Helmont and the Invading Disease
	The Rise of Anatomy
		Early Questions and Limits
		Humanists and Artists
		Back to the University: Vesalius and the Padua School
	Conclusion: Tradition, Innovation and the New Body
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
9 The New Science
	Galileo’s Mechanical World
		The Aristotelian Theory of Motion and Its Discontents
			Buridan and Impetus Theory
			The Mysteries of Free Fall
		Galileo’s Resources
			Archimedes and the Simple Machines
			Tartaglia and the Symmetrical Trajectory
		Galileo’s Investigations
			The Parabolic Trajectory
			Pendulums, Inclined Planes and the Law of Free Fall
	Descartes and the Mechanical Philosophy
		Descartes’ Life and Times
		The Mechanical Ontology
		The New Mechanized Sciences
	Founding the New Science
		The Collapse of the Old Order
		Bacon’s Idols
		Descartes’ Common Sense
		The Academies
		Boyle and the Royal Society
	The Experimental Legacy
		Who Was Allowed in?
		The Air Pump
		Vacuum in Vacuum
	Conclusion: The Independent Life of the Instrument
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
10 Science’s Cathedral
	The Two Savants
		Robert Hooke
		Isaac Newton
	The Correspondence: Forging a New Question
		The Falling Earth
		The Falling Stone
		Newton’s Mistake
	Setting the Question Right
	Conclusion: The New Celestial Mechanics
	Coda: The Principia
	Discussion Questions
	Suggested Readings
Index