Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective [Hardcover]

This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608 and then Galileo's discoveries, casts the European advancements in modern science, technology, and economic development into a global framework.This study begins with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608 and then casts Galileos discoveries with it into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. These and subsequent unique developments in modern science, technology, and educational practice suggest why the West experienced a singular scientific and economic ascendancy of at least four centuries.This study begins with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608 and then casts Galileos discoveries with it into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. These and subsequent unique developments in modern science, technology, and educational practice suggest why the West experienced a singular scientific and economic ascendancy of at least four centuries.Seventeenth-century Europe witnessed an extraordinary flowering of discoveries and innovations. This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608, casts Galileos discoveries into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. In Europe, there was an extraordinary burst of innovations in microscopy, human anatomy, optics, pneumatics, electrical studies, and the science of mechanics. Nearly all of those aided the emergence of Newtons revolutionary grand synthesis, which unified terrestrial and celestial physics under the law of universal gravitation. That achievement had immense implications for all aspects of modern science, tls!