The most recommended books on the scientific revolution

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.

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.  

While this book is not about science, it gives the social context for how ancient scientific and anti-scientific ideas developed in slave-owning societies and before. It is the best description of the development of human society to the end of the ancient period that I’ve ever read.

Unfortunately, some of the anti-science ideas of ancient slave-owners, discredited in the scientific revolution, are still with us today, and Child explains how they came to be.

I'm fascinated by the connection between our modern world and how we got here, and this book takes a deep dive into just that. Johnson looks at the most common objects we often accept as if they've been a part of life forever (such as eyeglass lenses), and traces not only how they were created, their impact on our lives.

I find Johnson's writing incredibly informative without being pedantic and always entertaining. He's got an eye for unintended consequences and pays homage to the spirited determination innovators tend to have. As an inventor I note his appreciation for those brilliant mistakes that turn into brilliant technologies, a great lesson in the value of taking chances.

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.

Shapin makes the audacious claim that there never really was a scientific revolution in Early Modern Europe, despite the fact that “the scientific revolution” has been a central organizing idea in the history of science and the history of Western culture more generally.

His provocative book provides a useful and engaging assessment of the utility of the concept of “the scientific revolution” for making sense of developments in the history of science.  He challenges us to think about the place of radical changes in the history of science, and whether the claims scientists make about such changes are merely rhetorical constructions.

Despite Shapin’s arguments, I am inclined to think something very significant happened in the sciences in the 16th and 17th Centuries, something that deserves to be called “revolutionary”. But Shapin’s book will certainly make readers reflect on what they mean by scientific revolution.

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.

This book is a delightful read, full of interesting evolutionary details and a rigorous defence of Darwinism.

Steve Jones was a professor of genetics at UCL, London. His book is an updated version of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, faithfully following Darwin’s chapter plan. However, it adds to the discussion what is lacking in Darwin’s book, namely genetics. For instance, it discusses AIDS as an example of descent with modification and the evolution of whales and wolves.

There is one exception to the faithful retracing of Darwin’s topics. After Chapter XIII on Mutual Affinities, Jones inserts an Interlude in which he shows that Darwin’s argument is applicable to humans. He argues that evolution is still ongoing but at a slower pace.

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.