THE SCIENTISTS: A HISTORY OF SCIENCE TOLD THROUGH THE LIVES OF ITS GREATEST INVENTORS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK John R Gribbin | 646 pages | 10 Aug 2004 | Random House USA Inc | 9780812967883 | English | New York, United States THE SCIENTISTS | Kirkus Reviews Though the names and discoveries become more and more prolific as the book reaches the 19th century, Gribbin does an admirable job of organizing his narrative around coherent topics e. View Full Version of PW. Gribbin, Author. More By and About This Author. But once science and technology got together, progress really took off. I will leave the debate about why the Renaissance happened when and where it did to the historians. If you want a definite date to mark the beginning of the revival of Western Europe, a convenient one is , the year the Turks captured Constantinople on 29 May. By then, many Greek-speaking scholars, seeing which way the wind was blowing, had already fled westwards initially to Italy , taking their archives of documents with them. There, the study of those documents was taken up by the Italian humanist movement, who were interested in using the teaching found in classical literature to re-establish civilization along the lines that had existed before the Dark Ages. This does rather neatly tie the rise of modern Europe to the death of the last vestige of the old Roman Empire. But an equally important factor, as many people have argued, was the depopulation of Europe by the Black Death in the fourteenth century, which led the survivors to question the whole basis of society, made labour expensive and encour- aged the invention of technological devices to replace manpower. Even this is not the whole story. Johann Gutenberg's development of moveable type in the mid-fifteenth century had an obvious impact on what was to become science, and discoveries brought back to Europe by another technological development, sailing ships capable of crossing the oceans, transformed society. A convenient round number is ; but from the present perspective an even better choice of date might be , the year Isaac Newton published his great work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and, in the words of Alexander Pope, 'all was light'. The point I want to make is that the scientific revolution did not happen in isolation, and certainly did not start out as the mainspring of change, although in many ways science through its influence on technology and on our world view became the driving force of Western civilization. I want to show how science developed, but I don't have space to do justice to the full historical background, any more than most history books have space to do justice to the story of science. I don't even have space to do justice to all of the science here, so if you want the in-depth story of such key concepts as quantum theory, evolution by natural selection or plate tectonics, you will have to look in other books including my own. My choice of events to highlight is necessarily incomplete, and therefore to some extent subjective, but my aim is to give a feel for the full sweep of science, which has taken us from the realization that the Earth is not at the centre of the Universe and that human beings are 'only' animals, to the theory of the Big Bang and a complete map of the human genome in just over years. Home 1 Books 2. Read an excerpt of this book! Add to Wishlist. Sign in to Purchase Instantly. Members save with free shipping everyday! See details. He begins with Copernicus, during the Renaissance, when science replaced mysticism as a means of explaining the workings of the world, and he continues through the centuries, creating an unbroken genealogy of not only the greatest but also the more obscure names of Western science, a dot-to-dot line linking amateur to genius, and accidental discovery to brilliant deduction. By focusing on the scientists themselves, Gribbin has written an anecdotal narrative enlivened with stories of personal drama, success and failure. A bestselling science writer with an international reputation, Gribbin is among the few authors who could even attempt a work of this magnitude. Filled with pioneers, visionaries, eccentrics and madmen, this is the history of science as it has never been told before. He lives in Sussex, England. Read an Excerpt From the Introduction My aim is to outline the development of Western science, from the Renaissance to roughly the end of the twentieth century. Show More. Related Searches. Gribbin nominates William Gilbert, an Elizabethan Englishman, as the first true scientist, citing experiments that laid the foundation for an understanding of magnetism and electricity. Galileo knew Gilbert's work and adopted his methods, emphasizing experiment as the one sure route to scientific truth. Gribbin traces that theme through the lives and work of scientists down the ages. Refreshingly, he avoids the temptation to paint his subjects as unique geniuses, often pointing out cases such as Alfred Russel Wallace's independently duplicating the work of Darwin. Newton was driven by his intense rivalries with almost every other scientist of his day, notably Robert Hooke, the leading light of the Royal Society at the time when it lay on the cutting edge of discovery. The French Revolution was a dangerous time for scientists, leading to the death of Lavoisier, the founding father of chemistry; Cuvier, a central figure in biology, rode out the Reign of Terror by making himself an indispensable administrator. The opportunistic Benjamin Thompson changed his coat and his nationality numerous times, while performing work that led to a basic understanding of heat. Physicist George Gamow was an inveterate trickster who added a colleague's name to one of his papers to get a play on words. Gribbin entertainingly records their triumphs and eccentricities, the near-misses and the rival claims for precedence of the giants and the spear- carriers, always with a firm eye to the main story. An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults. A neurobiologist reveals the interconnectedness of the natural world through stories of plant migration. He smoothly balances expansive historical exploration with recent scientific research through stories of how various plant species are capable of migrating to locations throughout the world by means of air, water, and even via animals. They often continue to thrive in spite of dire obstacles and environments. One example is the response of plants following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Mancuso also tracks the journeys of several species that might be regarded as invasive. Even without actual photos and maps, it would have been beneficial to readers to include more finely detailed plant and map renderings. Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres. Both of these early influences engrossingly combine in this adroit story of a dedication to science. The Scientists by John Gribbin: | : Books John Gribbin, PhD, trained as an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge before becoming a full-time science writer. When you buy a book, we donate a book. Sign in. Halloween Books for Kids. Read An Excerpt. Aug 10, ISBN Add to Cart. Also available from:. Jul 30, ISBN Available from:. Paperback —. Also by John Gribbin. Product Details. Inspired by Your Browsing History. This View of Life. David Sloan Wilson. Everything All at Once. The Sirens of Mars. Sarah Stewart Johnson. Infinite Wonder. Scott Kelly. My Brief History. Stephen Hawking. The Glass Universe. Why Evolution Is True. Jerry A. Matthew Stanley. Andrew Berry , James D. Watson and Kevin Davies. Elemental Haiku. Mary Soon Lee. Improbable Destinies. Jonathan B. David J. The Wizard and the Prophet. Charles Mann and Charles C. Science in the Soul. Richard Dawkins. Calder: The Conquest of Space. My Inventions and Other Writings. Nikola Tesla. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. NOOK Book. From the Introduction My aim is to outline the development of Western science, from the Renaissance to roughly the end of the twentieth century. This means leaving to one side the achievements of the Ancient Greeks, the Chinese, and the Islamic scientists and philosophers who did so much to keep the search for knowledge about our world alive during the period that Europeans refer to as the Dark and Middle Ages. But it also means telling a coherent story, with a clear beginning in both space and time, of the development of the world view that lies at the heart of our understanding of the Universe, and our place in it today. For human life turned out to be no different from any other kind of life on Earth. As the work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace established in the nineteenth century, all you need to make human beings out of amoebas is the process of evolution by natural selection, and plenty of time. All the examples I have mentioned here highlight another feature of the story-telling process. But this does not mean that science has progressed as a result of the work of a string of irreplaceable geniuses possessed of a special insight into how the world works. Geniuses maybe though not always ; but irreplaceable certainly not. Scientific progress builds step by step, and as the example of Darwin and Wallace shows, when the time is ripe, two or more individuals may make the next step independently of one another. It is the luck of the draw, or historical accident, whose name gets remembered as the discoverer of a new phenomenon.