| Acknowledgements | 9 |
| Authors' Foreword | 11 |
| General Introduction: Cosmology | 15 |
| Part 1: The Sources of the Old Order | |
| I. CELESTIAL FORECASTING | 23 |
| The Sources | 24 |
| The Problems | 26 |
| The Background of the Problems | 30 |
| The Solution to the Problems | 34 |
| The Wider Issues | 41 |
| How the Babylonians Computed Conjunctions | 48 |
| II. THE INVENTION OF THEORY | 52 |
| The Sources | 52 |
| The Background | 54 |
| The Character of Greek Theory | 58 |
| The First Theories | 64 |
| From Ingredients to Axioms | 69 |
| Plato's Geometrical Astronomy | 79 |
| III. THE PREMATURE SYNTHESIS | 90 |
| Aristotle's Programme | 91 |
| Motion and Change | 93 |
| The Cdestial Mechanism | 105 |
| The Size of the Earth's Sphere | 112 |
| IV. DOUBTERS AND HERETICS | 115 |
| Patching up the Dynamics | 117 |
| Amending the Astronomy | 119 |
| Aristarchos' Heliocentric Theory | 122 |
| V. PHYSICS LOSES MOMENTUM | 128 |
| Four Questions | 129 |
| The Political Background to Late Greek Astronomy | 131 |
| The Scientific Background: The Retreat from Physics | 133 |
| The Scientific Background: An Acquisition | 136 |
| Ptolemy's Mathematical Astronomy | 137 |
| The Wider Revolt against Philosophy | 145 |
| Archimedes and the Circle | 149 |
| Part II: The New Perspective And Its Consequences | |
| VI. THE INTERREGNUM | 153 |
| The Roundabout Journey | 153 |
| The Mediaeval Revival | 158 |
| The Background to Copernicus | 161 |
| Mediaeval Arguments about the Moving Earth | 165 |
| Copernicus: His Aim and his Theory | 169 |
| Copernicus: His Achievement | 175 |
| VII. PREPARING THE GROUND | 182 |
| The Background of the New Science | 182 |
| The Work of Tycho Brahe | 184 |
| Galileo's Telescopic Discoveries | 189 |
| Johann Kepler's Astronomical Physics | 198 |
| VIII. THE CREATION OF MECHANICS | 210 |
| The Change from Aristotle to Newton | 211 |
| Treating Motion Mathematically | 213 |
| Motion and Force | 221 |
| The New Ideal: Straight-Line Motion | 225 |
| IX. THE NEW PICTURE TAKES SHAPE | 228 |
| The Man and his Task | 229 |
| Newton's Argument | 232 |
| The Character of Newton's Achievement | 238 |
| The Unity of Craft and Theory | 245 |
| X. THE WIDENING HORIZON | 250 |
| The Loose Ends: (I) Planetary Inequalities | 250 |
| The Loose Ends: (2) The Mechanism of Gravity | 256 |
| The Larger-Scale Picture | 261 |
| The Wider Influences of Newton | 264 |
| Certainty and Scientific Theory | 268 |
| Index | 273 |