Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution
A Global Perspective

This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608 and then Galileo's discoveries, casts the European advancements in modern science, technology, and economic development into a global framework.

Toby E. Huff (Author)

9780521170529, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 October 2010

368 pages, 36 b/w illus. 1 map 3 tables
23 x 15.5 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution disseminates genuine information about the crucial role played by the West in the history of science, showing that after many centuries of near scientific inactivity, the West, beginning in the twelfth century, saw the virtue of absorbing science and natural philosophy from Greco-Islamic sources. For the numerous reasons Huff presents, the culture of the West, with its corporations, universities, and other features, made it feasible for science to emerge as a powerful force. Huff presents this entire process in a lucid and engaging manner, using the telescope as the instrument that most vividly reveals the striking differences between Europe and the civilizations of China, the Mughals, and the Ottomans. I believe his book will have a significant impact on the history of science, and on history generally.' Edward Grant, Indiana University

Seventeenth-century Europe witnessed an extraordinary flowering of discoveries and innovations. This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608, casts Galileo's discoveries into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. In Europe, there was an extraordinary burst of innovations in microscopy, human anatomy, optics, pneumatics, electrical studies, and the science of mechanics. Nearly all of those aided the emergence of Newton's revolutionary grand synthesis, which unified terrestrial and celestial physics under the law of universal gravitation. That achievement had immense implications for all aspects of modern science, technology, and economic development. The economic implications are set out in the concluding epilogue. All these unique developments suggest why the West experienced a singular scientific and economic ascendancy of at least four centuries.

Part I. Something New Under the Sun: 1. Introduction: outline of a new perspective
2. Inventing the discovery machine
3. The new telescopic evidence
4. The 'far seeing looking glass' goes to China
5. 'Galileo's glass' goes to the Muslim world
Part II. Patterns of Education: 6. Three ideals of higher education: Islamic, Chinese, and Western
Part III. Science Unbound: 7. Infectious curiosity I: anatomy and microbiology
8. Infectious curiosity II: weighing the air and atmospheric pressure
9. Infectious curiosity III: magnetism and electricity
10. Prelude to the grand synthesis
11. The path to the grand synthesis
12. The scientific revolution in comparative perspective
Epilogue: science, literacy and economic development.

Subject Areas: Popular science [PDZ], History of science [PDX]