| FOREWORD by Mary Hesse | v |
| PREFACE | vi |
| PART ONE-INTRODUCTION | |
| The importance of science in the making of the modern world | 1 |
| PART TWO | |
| The origins of modern science | |
| 2.1 Classical Greece and Greek astronomy | 9 |
| 2.2 The Copernican revolution | 18 |
| PART THREE | |
| The 17th-century scientific revolution | |
| 3.1 Galileo and his conflict with the Catholic Church | 32 |
| 3.2 Developments in the experimental tradition: new instruments and medical knowledge | 44 |
| 3.3 Descartes, the mechanical philosophy and the rise of mathematics | 58 |
| 3.4 Newton and his Principia | 65 |
| 3.5 Communication between scientists: the origins of the scientific community | 78 |
| PART FOUR | |
| The development of the scientific revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries | |
| A - WIDER CONSEQUENCES IN THE 18th CENTURY | |
| 4.1 Newton and the Enlightenment | 87 |
| 4.2 The origins of the social sciences (by Caroline Cox) | 103 |
| 4.3 The American and French revolutions: ideas and consequences | 117 |
| 4.4 The early Industrial Revolution | 129 |
| B - THE GROWTH IN SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE | |
| 4.5 The origins of modern chemistry | 144 |
| 4.6 The making of geologv | 156 |
| 4.7 Physics in the early 19th century | 165 |
| 4.8 Biology and Darwin's theory of evolution | 174 |
| C - ACCELERATION IN THE 19th CENTURY | |
| 4.9 Science and the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century | 186 |
| 4.10 The rise of the social sciences (by Caroline Cox) | 196 |
| 4.11 Science, industrialisation and the world-wide expansion of European influence | 212 |
| PART FIVE | |
| Science and technology in traditional China | 222 |
| PART SIX | |
| The growth of science in the 20th century | |
| 6.1 Science and the 20th century | 240 |
| 6.2 Electromagnetic waves and relativity: Maxwell and Einstein | 251 |
| 6.3 Einstein's work and some of its social implications | 263 |
| 6.4 Genetics and molecular biology | 276 |
| 6.5 Developments in the medical sciences (by Caroline Cox) | 294 |
| 6.6 The unification of chemistry and physics: Mendeleev, Bohr and Schrodinger | 311 |
| 6.7 The origins and development of statistics and computing | 324 |
| 6.8 The physical evolution of the universe: the modern world picture | 338 |
| PART SEVEN | |
| The philosophy of science, political systems and the development of technology in the 20th century | |
| 7.1 The philosophy of science, the scientific community and political systems | 357 |
| 7.2 Science and National Socialism in Nazi Germany | 368 |
| 7.3 Science, technology and government in liberal capitalist societies | 378 |
| 7.4 Science and the Russian Revolution | 389 |
| 7.5 Science and technology in Japan since the Meiji restoration | 408 |
| 7.6 Science and technology in China before and after 1949 | 418 |
| PART EIGHT | |
| Case-studies of specific issues | |
| 8.1 Science, technology and economic development in the third world (by Peter Mould) | 429 |
| 8.2 Nuclear power and energy resources | 441 |
| 8.3 Semiconductor physics and the computer revolution | 453 |
| 8.4 Some applications of biological knowledge | 464 |
| 8.5 Malthus revisited? The population explosion and the limits to growth debate | 471 |
| 8.6 The natural and the social sciences: similarities and differences (by Caroline Cox) | 481 |
| PART NINE--CONCLUSION | |
| Science and the making of the modern world | |
| GUIDE TO FURTHER READING | 490 |
| INDEX | 502 |