The age of genius : the seventeenth century and the birth of the modern mind
Grayling, A. C.2016
Books
Find it!
What happened to the European mind between 1605, when an audience watching Macbeth at the Globe might believe that regicide was such an aberration of the natural order that ghosts could burst from the ground, and 1649, when a large crowd, perhaps including some who had seen Macbeth forty-four years earlier, could stand and watch the execution of a king. In this turbulent period, science moved from the alchemy and astrology of John Dee to the painstaking observation and astronomy of Galileo, from the classicism of Aristotle, still favoured by the Church, to the evidence-based, collegiate investigation of Francis Bacon. And if the old ways still lingered and affected the new mind set - Descartes's dualism an attempt to square the new philosophy with religious belief; Newton, the man who understood gravity and the laws of motion, still fascinated to the end of his life by alchemy - by the end of that tumultuous century 'the greatest ever change in the mental outlook of humanity' had irrevocably taken place.
Main title:
Author:
Grayling, A. C., author
Imprint:
London : Bloomsbury, 2016.London Bloomsbury, 2016.©2016
Collation:
x, 351 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some colour), map ; 24 cm.
Notes:
Formerly CIP.Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Machine generated contents note: pt. I INTRODUCTION -- 1.Seeing the Universe -- 2.The Epoch in Human History -- pt. II A TIME OF WARS -- 3.The Origins of the Wars -- 4.The Loss of the Palatinate -- 5.The Mercenary Captains -- 6.The Edict of Restitution, 1629 -- 7.The Swedish Apogee -- 8.From Wallenstein to Breisach -- 9.Towards Westphalia -- 10.In the Ruins of Europe -- 11.The Maritime Conflicts -- pt. III THE CUMULATION OF IDEAS -- 12.The Intelligencers -- 13.The Short Ways to Knowledge -- 14.Dr Dee and the Potent Art -- 15.The Rosicrucian Scare -- pt. IV FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE -- 16.From Magic to Method -- 17.The Birth of Science -- 18.War and Science -- pt. V THE SOCIAL ORDER -- 19.Society and Politics -- 20.Language and Belief -- pt. VI CONCLUSION -- 21.Is It a Myth?.
ISBN:
9780747599425 (hardback)9781408870389 (paperback)
Dewey class:
940.252
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
22139