EAN: 9780691235844

DEAR PETER THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

From the award-winning author of Revolutionizing the Sciences   a monumental historical account
of how we came to see the world through the lens of science   Science is the basis of our
assumptions about ourselves and our world  from ideas about our evolutionary past to our
conceptions of the vast expanses of space and the smallest particles of matter. In this
panoramic book  acclaimed historian of science Peter Dear uncovers the roots of such beliefs 
revealing how they constitute a natural philosophy that has been developed and refined over the
course of centuries—and how the world as we have come to know it was by no means inevitable. 
In a sweeping  multifaceted narrative  Dear describes some of the most breathtaking
accomplishments in the advance of human knowledge  such as Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and
gravitation  Carl Linnaeus’s taxonomy  Antoine Lavoisier’s new chemistry  Charles Darwin’s
theory of evolution  and Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity. Challenging the notion that
science is only about “making discoveries ” he shows how our world has been formed by people 
institutions  and cultural assumptions  giving rise to disciplines ranging from biology and
astrophysics to electromagnetism and the social sciences.  Taking readers from the early
eighteenth century to today  The World as We Know It reveals how our ideas about our place in
the universe were bequeathed to us by individuals  cultures  and a curiosity that knows no
bounds.

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