History 213/313

Book Review

Write a 5-page double-spaced review of a recent book on the Scientific Revolution, due no later than 5:00 pm on January 31, 2003 in the Main Office of the History Department (Bldg. 200). Send me an electronic copy as well (pfindlen@stanford.edu) The papers will also be posted at http://www.stanford.edu/class/history213/papers. Each of you should upload your paper to: /afs/ir/cass/history213/WWW/papers/yoursunetid in addition to turning in the hard copy to the History office. The server host name is transfer.stanford.edu. Only you can write to your individual space, but all can view it. If you have any trouble uploading it, send it to rrogers@stanford.edu, by the 5pm deadline, and she will put it up for you.

Keep in mind the following goals for writing a good review: (1) summarize the goals and content of the book; (2) tell the reader what is interesting about its approach, evidence, etc.; and (3) offer an appraisal of its strengths and weaknesses, or more generally reflect on what this book suggests about the nature of the Scientific Revolution.

Below is a list of recent – and some classic – monographs from which you might choose (feel free to suggest other options though you must get my approval if you do something not on this list). Since the goal is to have each of you pick a different book, let me know what you propose to do as soon as possible.

Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Man: Science, Technology and Ideologies of

Western Dominance

Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing

Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Equivalence and Priority: Newton versus Leibniz

Mario Biagioli, Galileo Courtier

Ann Blair, Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science

Edwin Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science

Andrea Carlino, Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning

John Robert Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe and His Assistants

Lesley Cormack, Charting an Empire: Geography at the English Universities

Alfred Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe 1200-1600

Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature

Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution

B.J.T. Dobbs, The Janus Face of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought

William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature

Rivka Feldhay, Galileo and the Church

J.V. Field, Kepler’s Geometric Cosmology

Roger French, William Harvey’s Natural Philosophy

Daniel Garber, Descartes Embodied

Stephen Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy

Anthony Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos: The World and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer

Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences,

1666-1803

Fernand Hallyn, The Poetic Structure of the World: Copernicus and Kepler

Owen Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word

Deborah Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels

Erica Harth, Cartesian Women

John Heilbron, Science in the Church

Toby Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science : Islam, China and the West

Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England

Arthur Koestler, The Watershed: A Biography of Johannes Kepler

Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe

Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution

Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution

Nicholas Jardine, The Birth of the History and Philosophy of Science

Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book

David Lux, Patronage and Royal Science in Seventeenth-Century France

William Newman, Gehennical Fire

Pietro Redondi, Galileo Heretic

Eileen Reeves, Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo

Rose-Mary Sargent, The Diffident Naturalist: Robert Boyle and the Philosophy of

Experiment

Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex: Women in the Origins of Modern Science

Timon Screech, The Lens Within the Heart: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular

Imagery in Later Edo Japan

Steven Shapin, The Social History of Truth: Science and Civility in Seventeenth-Century

England

Pamela Smith, The Business of Alchemy

Alice Stroup, A Company of Scientists: Botany, Patronage and Community at the

Seventeenth-Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences

Charles Webster, The Great Instauration

Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition