| Acknowledgements | 8 |
| 1. Introduction | 11 |
| Part One / Ancient Science | |
| 2. Science in the Ancient Civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt | 15 |
| 3. The Natural Philosophies of the Pre-Socratic Greeks | 25 |
| 4. Natural Philosophy in Athens | 35 |
| 5. Greek Science of the Alexandrian Period | 48 |
| 6. Rome and the Decline of Ancient Science | 61 |
| Part Two / Science in the Orient and Medieval Europe | |
| 7. The Science and Technology of the Chinese | 73 |
| 8. The Science of India | 89 |
| 9. Science and Technology in the Muslim World | 95 |
| 10. Technology and the Craft Tradition in Medieval Europe | 103 |
| 11. The Scholarly Tradition During the Middle Ages | 112 |
| Part Three / The Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth ad Seventeenth Centuries | |
| 12. The Copernican System of the World | 127 |
| 13. Gilbert, Bacon, and the Experimental Method | 138 |
| 14. Galileo and the Science of Mechanics | 148 |
| 15. Descartes: The Mathematical Method and the Mechanical Philosophy | 165 |
| 16. The Scientific Revolution and the Protestant Reformation | 175 |
| 17. The Theory of Universal Gravitation | 192 |
| 18. Optics During the Seventeenth Century | 208 |
| 19. Medicine, and the Theory of the Circulation of the Blood | 214 |
| 20. From Alchemy to Medical Chemistry | 227 |
| 21. Some Early Modern Applications of Science | 243 |
| 22. The Scientific Societies of the Seventeenth Century | 256 |
| Part Four / Eighteenth-Century Science: The Development of National Scientific Traditions | |
| 23. The Application of Science During the Eighteenth Century | 269 |
| 24. The Background to Eighteenth-Century Science | 279 |
| 25. Astronomy, and the Newtonian Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century | 289 |
| 26. The Phlogiston Theory and the Chemical Revolution | 302 |
| 27. The Idea of Progress in the Mechanical World of the Eighteenth Century | 314 |
| 28. Evolution, and the Great Chain of Beings | 331 |
| 29. German Nature-Philosophy | 349 |
| 30. Embryology: The Development of Individual Organisms | 363 |
| 31. The Structure and Function of Living Organisms | 374 |
| 32. The Cell Theory | 387 |
| Part Five / The Science of the Nineteenth Century: The Agent of Industrial and Intellectual Change | |
| 33. The Development of Geology | 395 |
| 34. Theories of the Evolution of the Species During the Nineteenth Century | 412 |
| 35. Scientific Institutions in France and Britain During the Nineteenth Century | 435 |
| 36. Chemistry and the Atomic Theory of Matter | 449 |
| 37. The Wave Theory of Light | 468 |
| 38. The Development of Electricity and Magnetism | 474 |
| 39. Thermodynamics: The Science of Energy Changes | 486 |
| 40. Science and Engineering | 503 |
| 41. The Applications of Chemistry and Microbiology | 513 |
| Part Six / Twentieth-Century Science: New Fields and New Powers | |
| 42. Some Aspects of Modern Biology | 529 |
| 43. The Theory of Relativity | 541 |
| 44. The Quantum Theory and the Structure of the Atom | 549 |
| 45. Astrophysics and Theories of World Structure | 564 |
| 46. Science and the National Movements in Italy and Germany | 578 |
| 47. Some Aspects of American and Soviet Science | 589 |
| 48. Science and History | 599 |
| Bibliography | 607 |
| Index | 619 |