It Started With Copernicus: How Turning the World Inside Out Led to the Scientific Revolution

Howard Margolis

ISBN 10: 007138507X / ISBN 13: 9780071385077

Published by McGraw-Hill, 2002

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G007138507XI4N00

Synopsis:

A compelling new theory of the psychological roots of the Scientific Revolution

The standard account of the rise of Western science recently has come under fire by historians who claim that there was nothing revolutionary about the Copernican Revolution and that science did not suddenly become modern in its aftermath. How, then, explain the fact that, after 14 centuries of barely noticeable scientific progress, virtually all of the major discoveries that formed the foundation of modern science were made within a few years of 1600? In It Started with Copernicus, social theorist Howard Margolis answers with a controversial new theory of the psychological roots of the Scientific Revolution. Margolis points out that Copernicus's great discovery was not that the Earth revolved around the sun­­since Aristarchus had proposed it 1,800 years earlier­­but that entertaining such a seemingly unlikely idea would solve other problems. Thus, he provided a model for Kepler, Galileo, Steven, Gilbert, and others who would go on to lay the foundations of modern science.

About the Author:

Howard Margolis is a professor in the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and the Fishbein Center for History of Science at the University of Chicago. He has held research appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, publishing extensively on cognition, public policy, history of science, and mathematical models of social choice.

Bibliographic Details

Title: It Started With Copernicus: How Turning the ...
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Publication Date: 2002
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket