
The Invention of Science
A New History of the Scientific Revolution
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Narrated by:
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James Langton
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By:
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David Wootton
A groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our world.
We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. Yet today science and its practitioners have come under political attack. In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history.
The Invention of Science goes back 500 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, Wootton shows how these discoveries codified into a social construct and a system of knowledge ideas of truth, knowledge, progress. Ultimately he makes clear the link between scientific discovery and the rise of industrialization - and the birth of the modern world we know.
©2015 David Wootton (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...




















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Good but too much
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Must read for many reasons
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New Postmodern Historiography of History o Science
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The narration was flawless.
A detailed and persuasive set of arguments
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But Wootton magisterially demonstrates that science as we know it required grappling, mistakes, gargantuan misconceptions and strenuous argument to be lodged where it sits today, ostensibly implacable if not entirely unapproachable. In fact, science doesn't "know" today what it will "know" tomorrow. It's a set of procedures, undertakings, theories tested, retested and refined into edgy, always pulsing, custom. It's not truth. It's one pathway through the human mystery. Its inquiries never culminate. Its watchword is always "Behold!"
That's why it's hard. And that's how it entices us. It doesn't bow to mystery, nor does it ever claim to entirely vanquish it.
Wootton is a deeply learned, subtle, witty and profoundly considerate writer -- none of his chapters are too long, for one thing. More importantly, he's both graceful and honest. His citations are scrupulous, his claims always supported right before your eyes. He gives you the tools you need to expand on or refute what he says.
It's a life-changing book. Science at its heart is thinking in earnest, imagination followed by application. Scientists are warriors. They want certainty and are not entirely comfortable when they invariably have to settle for less. This book will show you that fighting for what seems to you to be accurate will nearly always prove to be worth it. For even if you are wrong, you are suddenly on a higher path toward an understanding you didn't beforehand even know was possible.
One of the great, essential books of my lifetime.
Pretty Much the Whole Ball of Wax
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Informative but tedious
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So so
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well done
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A boring argument about semantics
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Would you try another book from David Wootton and/or James Langton?
I'd be very careful about trying another book from Wooton.Has The Invention of Science turned you off from other books in this genre?
No, I'm happy to read other history books on science.What character would you cut from The Invention of Science?
The author. He's there too much, lecturing us on every detail. I'd prefer to have the people making discoveries be the caracters.Any additional comments?
This book may be useful for an academic who wants every detail drawn out in excruciating detail, but it's painfully slow for me.Tedious, dryly academic
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