Cover: The Scientific Revolution, 2nd Edition by Margaret C. Jacob

The Scientific Revolution

A Brief History with DocumentsSecond Edition ©2019 Margaret C. Jacob

This revised edition of The Scientific Revolution highlights the difficulty of engaging, discarding, or assimilating religious paradigms in the course of scientific development. Jacob’s introduction outlines the trajectory of the Scientific Revolution and argues that the revival of ancient
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ISBN:9781319113131

Cover: The Scientific Revolution, 2nd Edition by Margaret C. Jacob

This revised edition of The Scientific Revolution highlights the difficulty of engaging, discarding, or assimilating religious paradigms in the course of scientific development. Jacob’s introduction outlines the trajectory of the Scientific Revolution and argues that the revival of ancient texts in the Renaissance and the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation paved the way for science. The collected documents include writings of well-known scientists and philosophers, such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton, as well as primary sources documenting discoveries in medicine, innovations in engineering, and advances in scientific investigation. New to this edition are the writings of John Toland and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who both attempt to redefine the role of God in an age of science, and an excerpt from Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems that provides context to the popular understanding of Galileo’s conflict with the Catholic Church. Document headnotes, questions for consideration, a chronology, and a selected bibliography support students’ study of the Scientific Revolution.

Features

New to This Edition

"The author clearly explains concepts and adds interesting facts that other readers do not cover. The documents she has chosen are both significant and fascinating."
— Jana Pisani, Ferris State University

"In this book, Margaret Jacob provides a lucid introduction to the transformation in science that occurred in Europe between 1500 and 1750. While acknowledging the importance of political, social, and economic factors, Jacob rightly emphasizes the intellectual developments that led to the modern mechanical and quantitative world views. A carefully chosen set of documents allows the reader to grapple firsthand with these heady changes."
— Brian Ogilvie, University of Massachusetts Amherst

"The introduction and headnotes are excellent. The documents are very well organized and clearly trace the progression of the Scientific Revolution."
— Constantina Gaddis, Onondaga Community College

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Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
List of Maps and Illustrations

PART ONE. INTRODUCTION: THE EVOLUTION AND IMPACT OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
Why Did the Scientific Revolution Happen?
Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Their Early Modern Defenders
Exploration and Technological Innovation
The Emergence of the Scientific Revolution
The New Science
The Mechanical Philosophy
Newtonian Science
Reconciling Science, Religion, and Magic
Spreading the Scientific Revolution
Conclusion: The Long Road to Acceptance

PART TWO. THE DOCUMENTS
1. Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs, 1543
2. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605
3. Galileo Galilei, The Starry Messenger, 1610
4. Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 1632
5. William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, 1628
6. René Descartes, Discourse on Method, 1637
7. Robert Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, 1660
8. Robert Boyle, A Free-Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, 1686
9. Isaac Newton, Letter to Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1672
10. Isaac Newton, Selections from Principia, 1687
11. Isaac Newton, Thirty-first Query to the Opticks, 1718
12. Christiaan Huygens, The Celestial Worlds Discovered, 1698
13. Maria Sibylla Merian, Letter about Her Scientific Work, 1702
14. Maria Sibylla Merian, Butterfly, Hawk-moth, Caterpillar, 1705
15. John Toland, Letters to Serena, 1704
16. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, The Monadology, 1714
17. Jean T. Desaguliers, Physico-Mechanical Lectures, 1717
18. Benjamin Franklin, Experiments and Observations on Electricity Made at Philadelphia in America, 1751

Appendixes
A Chronology of the Scientific Revolution (1514-1752)
Questions for Consideration
Selected Bibliography
Index

Headshot of Margaret C. Jacob

Margaret C. Jacob

Margaret C. Jacob is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has written extensively on aspects of the Enlightenment as well as the cultural roots of the First Industrial Revolution.  Her works include The First Knowledge Economy, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe, and The Newtonians and the English Revolution. She has been president of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.