Abstract

A detailed scholarly history of natural science during the centuries when the modern scientific attitude was formed. The author is specially interested in contrasting Greek and medieval science with the modern. While stating some of the continuities between the old and the new conceptions of nature, he sees modern science as making a decisive break with the procedures and theories of the past. Its chief advances, among others, were the removal of magic and esoteric mystery from science, and its insistence on rigorous standards of observing and experimenting. The detailed learning which this volume exemplifies makes it a valuable guide to the scientific literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.--C. L.