| PART I | |
| List of Plates | xv |
| 1 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL TIMES | 1 |
| Science as part of the history of ideas or as branch of economic history (Marxism). Technology in palaeolithic and neolithic ages. Geometry and theoretical science created by the Greeks. Aristotle. Ionian Greek atomists. Hellenistic period. Science of the Arabs. Early medieval view of the universe in terms of religious symbolism. The schoolmen. Technical advances of the later Middle Ages. The Renaissance. | |
| 2 THE COPERNICAN THEORY | 16 |
| Revival of astronomy in the fifteenth century for navigation and the calendar. Life of Cepernicus. Neolithic and Greek astronomy. Aristotle's universe. Ptolemy's Alrnagest. Theory of Copernicus. Galileo's discoveries with the telescope. His advocacy of the Copernican theory. Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Tycho Brahe. Kepler. | |
| 3 THE MECHANICAL UNIVERSE | 32 |
| Aristotle's theory of motion. Impetus theory of the schoolmen. Applied to gunnerv. Galileo's dynamical concepts and experiments. lnfluences on Galileo in the establishment of the scientific method. Newton's concepts of mass and force. Law of gravitation and application to the motion of the moon. Life of Newton. Principia. Influence of Newton's work. | |
| 4 THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD | 45 |
| Galen. Vesalius. Galen's theory of the motion of the blood. Serveto. Harvey's experiments and theory of the circulation of the blood. Life of Harvey. | |
| 5 THE PRESSURE OF THE AIR | 57 |
| Torricelli's experiment. Pascal's investigations. Von Guericke's experiments. Boyle. | |
| 6 THE EARLY MICROSCOPISTS | 69 |
| Invention of the microscope. Hooke. Grew. Malpighi. Swammerdam. Leeuwenhoek. | |
| 7 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY | 79 |
| Economic influences on the scientific revolution. Gilbert's work as an example of the fusion of the traditions of the scholar and of the craftsman. Bacon. Descartes. The scientific societies. The influence of science on religion. Latitudinarianism and deism. Hobbes and materialism. | |
| 8 THE CREATION OF MODERN CHEMISTRY | 91 |
| The phlogiston theory. Lavoisier's early experiments on combustion. Life of Lavoisier and further experiments. Life of Priestley. Discovery of oxygen. Lavoisier's solution of the problem of combustion. Cavendish's experiments on the synthesis of water. Lavoisier's explanation. Lavoisier's new chemical nomenclature. His death. | |
| 9 THE HEROIC AGE OF GEOLOGY | 107 |
| Early history of geology. Werner. Guettard. Neptunists and Vulcanists. Hutton, life and work. William Smith. Cuvier. Lyell and uniforrnitarianism. Theory of ice age. Influence of geology on thought. | |
| 10 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY | I22 |
| Chief scientific advances. Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. The Enlightenment. Naturphilosophie. | |
| 11 THE ATOMIC THEORY | 133 |
| Early history of atomism. Life of Dalton. Development of his ideas. Laws of constant composition, multiple proportions and reciprocal proportions. Berzelius. William Higgins. Gay-Lussac's law. Avogadro's hypothesis. | |
| 12 THE WAVE THEORY OF LIGHT | 145 |
| Newton's controversy with Hooke on theories of light. The wave theory of Huygens. Newton's Opticks, Newton's rings, diffraction and polarisation. Young's theory of interference and diffraction. The work of Fresnel. Subsequent history of the æther. | |
| 13 THE CONSERVATION AND DISSIPATION OF ENERGY | 163 |
| Statement of the two principles. Caloric theory of heat. Rumford's experiments. Joule's experiments. Carnot on the theory of the steam engine. Kelvin and Clausius. Mayer. Maxwell and statistical mechanics. Chance and the laws of nature. Einstein's combination of the conservation of energy and of mass. | |
| 14 FIELD PHYSICS | 176 |
| Conception of a field. Life of Faraday. His experiments on electromagnetic induction. His ideas of lines of force. Matter extending into the gravitational field. Light as vibrations along lines of gravitational force. Life of Maxwell. His theory of the electromagnetic field. Hertz. Models in science. | |
| 15 THE RISE OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY | 191 |
| Organic chemistry as the chemistry of carbon. Analysis of organic compounds. Isomerism. Radical theory. Liebig and Wohler. Frankland and valency. Kekule. Stereo-chemistry. The synthetic dye and other industries. Synthesis in biochemistry. | |
| 16 EVOLUTION | 200 |
| Classification. Naturphilosophie. Buffon. Erasmus Darwin. Lamarck. Life of Darwin. The Origin of Species. Reception. Huxley. Fossil record. Time scale of animal evolution. Links between apes and man. Piltdown man. Orthogenesis and decline of Darwinism. | |
| 17 THE GERM THEORY OF DISEASE | 222 |
| Demon theory. Miasma theory. Greatsanitaryawakening. Pasteur, fermentation, diseases of wines and beer, spontaneous generation, diseases of silkworms, puerperal fever, chicken cholera, anthrax, rabies, characteristics of Pasteur. Koch. Lister. Preventive medicine and chemotherapy. | |
| 18 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY | 239 |
| Chief scientific generalisations and prestige of science. Comte. The clash between science and religion. Tyndall. Huxley and the MetaphysicalSociety. Haeckel. Evolution. Spencer. Evolutionaryethics. The development of the industrial revolution. The idea of progress. The respective scientific contributions of France, Britain and Germany. | |
| 19 GENETICS AND NEO-DARWINISM | 254 |
| Theory of blending inheritance Galton. Johannsen. De Vries. Bateson. MendeJ, his life and experiments. Cell theory. Weismann. Mitosis and meiosis. Morgan. Linkage. Crossing-over. Genecomplex. Soviet genetics. Lysenko's criticism of gene theory. Neo-Darwinism. | |
| 20 THE STRUCTURE OF THE ATOM | 276 |
| Periodic system. Evidence for electrical structure. The discharge of electricity through gases. J. J. Thomson and the discovery of the electron. Rontgen. Curies. Rutherford and radioactivity. Nuclear atom. Moseley. Artificial disintegration ofatoms. Synthesis of new elements. | |
| 21 THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY | 300 |
| Newton's concepts of absolute space, time and motion. Mach. Michelson-Morley experiment. Fitzgerald. Lorentz Einstein, life and special theory of relativity. Minkowski. General theory of relativity. | |
| 22 THE QUANTUM THEORY | 314 |
| Planck, life and theory. Einstein's application of quantum theory to photoelectric efl~ect. Bohr's application of quantum theory to nuclear atom. Heisenberg. De Broglie. Schrodinger. Principle of indeterminacy. Theory of complementarity. Principle of causation. Controversy of Bohr and followers with Einstein. | |
| 23 COSMOGONY | 327 |
| Two theories of creation. Greek and Copernican views of universe Nebulae. William Herschel. Measurement of stellar distances Shapley. Hubble. Expanding universe. Einstein's cosmologicai theory. Evolutionary models. Continuous creation. | |
| 24 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY | 338 |
| Mach. Poincare. Modern positivistic view of physical science Logical positivism. Values. Dialectical materialism. Science as a social function. Planning of science. Nobel prizes. Future of science in different countries. | |
| PART II | |
| Selections from the Literature | |
| Note to Part II | 355 |
| 1 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL TIMES | |
| 1 From Aristotle's Physics | 357 |
| 2 From Plutarch's Lives | 358 |
| 3 From The Book of Beasts (a twelfth-century bestiary) | 359 |
| 4 From Jonathan Swift's Predictions for the Year 1708 by Isaac Bickerstaff Esq. | 360 |
| 2 THE COPERNICAN THEORY | |
| 5 From Nicolaus Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs (1543) | 361 |
| 6 From Galileo's letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Concerning the Use of Biblical Quotations in Matters of Science (1615) | 364 |
| 7 From Galileo's Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems--Ptolemaic and Copernican (1632) | 365 |
| 8 From letters written by Johannes Kepler in 1605 | 371 |
| 3 THE MECHANICAL UNIVERSE | |
| 9 From Aristotle's Physics | 372 |
| 10 From Galileo's Dialogue concerning The Two Chief World Systems--Ptolemaic and Copernican (1632) | 373 |
| 11 From Galileo's Dialogues concerning Two New Sciences (1638) | 374 |
| 12 From Isaac Newton's Principia (1687) | 375 |
| 4 THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD | |
| 13 From Robert Boyle's A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things (1688) | 380 |
| 14 From William Harvey's An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (1628) | 380 |
| 5 THE PRESSURE OF THE AIR | |
| 15 From a letter of Evangelista Torricelli to Michelangelo Ricci (1644) | 382 |
| 16 From the account, submitted by Monsieur Perier to Monsieur Pascal, of the experiment performed on the Puy de Dôme, 19 September 1648 | 384 |
| 17 From Otto von Guericke's New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum (1672) | 386 |
| 18 From Robert Boyle's A Continuation of New Experimentstouching the Spring and Weight of Air (1669) | 388 |
| 6 THE EARLY MICROSCOPISTS | |
| 19 From Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665) | 392 |
| 20 From Antony van Leeuwenhoek's letters to the Royal Society on his 'Little Animals' (1676-92) | 394 |
| 7 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY | |
| 21 From Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627) | 399 |
| 22 From Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1620) | 402 |
| 23 From René Descartes' Discourse on Method (1637) | 403 |
| 24 From Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651) | 404 |
| 8 THE CREATION OP MODERN CHEMISTRY | |
| 25 Antoine Lavoisier's sealed note of 1 November 1772 | 406 |
| 26 From Joseph Priestley's Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1775) | 407 |
| 27 From Henry Cavendish's Experiments on Air (1781) | 409 |
| 28 From Antoine Lavoisier's Elementary Treatise on Chemistry (1789) | 410 |
| 9 THE HEROIC AGE OF GEOLOGY | |
| 29 From James Hutton's Theory of the Earth (1795) | 413 |
| 30 From William Smith's Stratigraphical System of Organized Fossils (1817) | 418 |
| 31 From Georges Cuvier's Essay on the Theory of the Earth (1821 ) | 419 |
| 32 From Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-3) | 421 |
| 10 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY | |
| 33 From John Locke's An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) | 424 |
| 34 From George Berkeley's The Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) | 425 |
| 35 From David Hume's An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748) | 426 |
| 36 From Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1787) | 428 |
| 37 Prom Denis Diderot's Conversation of a Philosopher with the Maréchale de X (1776) | 430 |
| 38 From Voltaire's A Treatise on Toleration (1763) | 432 |
| 39 From Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret (1823) | 434 |
| 11 THE ATOMIC THEORY | |
| 40 From Lucretius' De Rerum Natura | 436 |
| 41 From John Dalton's A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808) | 437 |
| 42 From Amadeo Avogadro's Essay on a Manner of Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies, and the Proportions in which they enter into these Compounds (1811) | 440 |
| 12 THE WAVE THEORY OF LIGHT | |
| 43 From Christiaan Huygens' Treatise on Light (1690) | 442 |
| 44 From Isaac Newton's Opticks (1704) | 443 |
| 45 From Dr Thomas Young's Reply to the animadversions of the Edinburgh Reviewers on some papers published in the Philosophical Transactions (1804) | 445 |
| 46 From Augustin Fresnel's Memoir on the Diffraction of Light (1819) | 448 |
| 13 THE CONSERVATION AND DISSIPATION OF ENERGY | |
| 47 From James Joule's lecture, On Matter, Living Force and Heat (1847) | 452 |
| 48 From J. R. Mayer's paper, Remarks on the Forces of Inorganic Nature (1842) | 454 |
| 49 From Sadi Carnot's Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824) | 456 |
| 14 FIELD PHYSICS | |
| 50 Michael Faraday on Lines of Force and the Field | 458 |
| 51 From James Clerk Maxwell's A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873) | 460 |
| 52 From Heinrich Hertz's Electric Waves (1892) | 461 |
| 15 THE RISE OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY | |
| 53 From a paper by Jean Dumas and Justus von Liebig, Note on the present state of Organic Chemistry (1837) | 463 |
| 54 From Edward Frankland's paper, On a New Series of Organic Bodies containing Metals (1852) | 465 |
| 55 From August Kekule's paper, The Constitution and Metamorphoses of Chemical Compounds and the Chemical Nature of Carbon (1858) | 466 |
| 56 From August Kekulé's paper, Studies on Aromatic Compounds (1865) | 467 |
| 16 EVOLUTION | |
| 57 From Jean Baptiste Lamarck's Zoological Philosophy (1809) | 469 |
| 58 From Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859) | 473 |
| 17 THE GERM THEORY OF DISEASE | |
| 59 From Joseph Lister's article, On a New Method of Treating Compound Fracture, Abscess, etc., with Observations on the Conditions of Suppuration (1867) | 482 |
| 60 From Louis Pasteur's paper, Method for Preventing Rabies after Bites (1885) | 484 |
| 61 From Robert Koch's lecture, On Bacteriology and its Results (1890) | 489 |
| 18 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY | |
| 62 From Auguste Comte's The Positive Philosophy (1840-2) | 492 |
| 63 From John Tyndall's Apology for the Belfast Address (1874) | 493 |
| 64 FromT.H.Huxley's lecture On the Physical Basis of Life (1868) | 494 |
| 65 From Ernst Hæckel'sThe Riddle of the Universe (1899) | 496 |
| 66 From Herbert Spencer's First Principles (1862) | 497 |
| 19 GENETICS AND NEO-DARWINISM | |
| 67 From August Weismann's The Germ-Plasm, A Theory of Heredity (1892) | 499 |
| 68 From Gregor Mendel's paper, Plant-Hybridisation (1865) | 500 |
| 69 From T. H. Morgan's The Theory of the Gene (1926) | 502 |
| 70 From a statement by the Praesidium of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences (1948) | 502 |
| 71 From T. D. Lysenko's address, The Situation in Biological Science (1948) | 503 |
| 20 THE STRUCTURE OF THE ATOM | |
| 72 From J. J. Thomson's paper, Cathode Rays (1897) | 506 |
| 73 From the paper by E. Rutherford and F. Soddy, The Cause and Nature of Radioactivity (1902) | 508 |
| 74 From Ernest Rutherford's Bakerian lecture, Nuclear Constitution of Atoms (1920) | 510 |
| 21 THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY | |
| 75 From Albert Einstein's lecture, The Theory of Relativity (1921) | 513 |
| 22 THF QUANTUM THEORY | |
| 76 From Max Planck's Nobel Prize address, The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory (1920) | 517 |
| 77 From Niels Bohr's article, Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics (1949) | 518 |
| 78 From Werner Heisenberg's lecture, Recent Changes in the Foundations of Exact Science (1934) | 520 |
| 23 COSMOGONY | |
| 79 From Edwin Hubblc's The Observational Approach to Cosmology (1937) | 522 |
| 80 From Albert Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity (1950) | 524 |
| 81 From Hermann Bondi's Cosmology (1952) | 525 |
| 24 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY | |
| 82 From Isaac Newton's Opticks (1704) | 527 |
| 83 From Ernst Mach's lecture, The Economical Nature of Physical Enquiry (1882) | 528 |
| 84 From Henri Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis (1902) | 529 |
| 85 From Albert Einstein's lecture On the Method of Theoretical Physics (1933) | 530 |
| 86 From Arthur Eddington's The Philosophy of Physical Science (1938) | 534 |
| 87 From Raphael Demos' article, Doubts about Empiricism (1947) | 536 |
| 88 From Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908) | 541 |
| 89 From Frederick Engels' Dialectics of Nature (written c. 1872-82, first published 1927) | 543 |
| 90 Letter by M. Polanyi to Nature on The Cultural Significance of Science (1940) | 544 |
| 9l From C. D. Darlington's article, Freedom and Responsibility in Academic Life (1957) | 545 |
| Bibliography | 547 |
| Sources of the Extracts | 555 |
| Appendix: CLASSIFICATION OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 562 |
| Index | 565 |