The most recommended books on the scientific revolution

I appreciate this book because it provides an excellent historical overview of an important aspect of science, i.e., the occurrence of scientific revolutions from the 17th to the 20th century, and it does not include psychoanalysis.

Cohen’s book proposes an interesting "theory" of scientific revolutions which inspired me to develop a philosophical model of scientific revolutions, which I dubbed the "chain-of-reasoning" model.

Cohen was a renowned historian of science. His book is very well written and does not require technical knowledge of particular theories. It is very long but it can be studied selectively. 

This book is a pleasure to read as it narrates the interlinks between geography, cosmography, and astronomy in simple language. It takes the reader through an exciting journey from antiquity to the 19th-century developments of astronomy and geography, examining the links and struggles between the sciences and humanities. It exhorts educators and researchers to advocate a truly humanistic science.

It is not surprising that there exists a tension between science, humanities, and other professions today. Astronomy has many narrations of its links to navigation and geography. This book traces these links from antiquity to the 19th century in one place. The quest to map out the stars has not been just for knowledge's sake, after all. 

I have always loved books where the author tries to squeeze the entire world into a few short pages. Carolyn Merchant starts her extraordinary book with the observation that women and nature are often associated with one another—the nurturing mother—then launches into an argument about how the exploitation of the Earth and the domination of women have the same root causes: capitalism, but also patriarchy.

Along the way, I learned about witches, old ideas of magic, and how mining in Europe was once considered sacrilege, a violation of the Earth. After reading this book, I’ll never see science or history in quite the same way.

Edward Grant’s book begins, as mine does, with the medieval rediscovery of Aristotle’s works, but he focuses more intensively than I do on the impact of the new learning on scientific education and discovery. Writing clearly and gracefully, Grant demonstrates that a real scientific revolution began three hundred years before the “Scientific Revolution” of the sixteenth century. Along the way, he has some fascinating things to say about the curriculum of medieval universities and life among the first generation of European scientists. A valuable and enjoyable read.    

I value this book because it presents evolution as a testable theory. Evolution is still a controversial topic, and modern creationists dismiss it as a "mere theory."

Evolution, according to Coyne, is not just a "theory"; it is a theory that explains the facts. It is not only testable but makes predictions. Coyne, who specializes in evolutionary genetics, provides plenty of empirical evidence for evolution and natural selection. In Part I, he describes the six components of evolution. In the ensuing chapters, he looks at fossil records, missing links, transitional forms, and biographic evidence for evolution. He also asks the question: ‘Why Sex?’ and explains how species emerge due to geographic isolation.

Another reason I like this book is that it presents the evidence in a lucid way. It is eminently readable and a good companion to my own book. 

Freud has had a massive influence on Western culture: he created the "psychological human." People interpret slips of the tongue, strange dreams, or neurotic behaviour almost automatically in Freudian terms. Freud never wrote a textbook on psychoanalysis.

In these lectures, which were held at the University of Vienna during World War I, he presented the full range of his theories and observations. It covers Freudian slips, dreams, neuroses, and sexuality. (The unfinished Outline of Psychoanalysis, 1938, includes the Id, Ego, and Superego.)

Freud is a very persuasive and stylish writer who presents his theory as if it were a natural science, comparable to physics. He claims that his contemporaries were hostile to psychoanalysis because of its explosive revelations about human nature. He explains why his theory allegedly completed the Copernican revolution. Freud describes his findings and sets them in a cultural context.

No better overall treatment of the Scientific Revolution during the 17th century is available for the reader who would encounter this material for the first time.

I used this book as a major text in my survey course on the history of modern science. The author also wrote arguably the leading biography of Isaac Newton.

This is a trilogy of historical fiction about, among many other things, the invention of the modern monetary system and the Scientific Revolution. Yes, it’s a heavy lift, as it’s nearly three thousand pages long, but it’s an incredible read. And if you want to get a sense of the sheer weirdness of the early days of science—both the people involved in it, as well as the ideas that they were playing with—these books are absolutely fantastic.

We are living in a time when ideology, myth, superstition, and ignorance seem to have more influence than ever in shaping our future.

This excellent and important book by Shawn Otto explains the forces (political and economic) at work that are aimed at undermining the role that knowledge and rational empirical evidence might play in making rational public policy decisions. This includes the effort to weaken the role that science might ideally play in helping us to address real-world challenges.

As one who studies and seeks to assess disaster preparedness, response, and mitigation, I have come to believe this “war” on science holds the potential to give birth to ever greater and more expensive (especially in terms of human costs) disasters.