Rienk Vermij is a Professor at the Department of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology of the University of Oklahoma. His research topics include early ideas on earthquakes, the reception of Copernicanism, and the Enlightenment. He has published several books and many articles.

Introduction

Part I. The Scientific Revolution

1. Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Greek philosophers and nature

Greek mathematics

Medicine in antiquity

The classical tradition in mediaeval Europe

2. The sixteenth century: the Aristotelian worldview in decline

New intellectual currents: humanism and hermeticism

Natural history and medicine

Mathematics and 'natural magic'

Astronomy

Philosophy of nature

3. The seventeenth century: a new worldview

Galileo and a new view of the heavens

Descartes and mechanistic science

The emergence of an experimental tradition

Mathematization of science

The mathematical science of Isaac Newton

A revolution in the prevailing worldview?

Part II. Autonomous science: methods, theories and researchers 1700-2000

4. The eighteenth century: disseminating the idea of science

Knowledge and practice: instruments

Collecting and classifying: natural history

From alchemy to chemistry

Newtonian mechanics and its problems

5. The nineteenth century (i): science at the service of the rationalization of society

A 'scientific' system of measurement

The modern hospital

Observatories, measuring stations and a global science

Science and Western imperialism

6. The nineteenth century (ii): professional science

Universities and professors

Women in science

Laboratories

Classification and conferences

The rise of the experiment: physiology

Measuring and experimenting in the study of nature

Further mathematization

Statistics

7. The twentieth century: industrial science

The rise of industrial science

The science of measurement

Research institutes

Control and modelling

Independence under pressure

Part III. The scientific worldview

8. The origin of the world

The Bible and the new image of the world

The development of geology

The origin of the universe

9. The nature of life and the origin of human beings

Early scientific ideas about humankind and its place in the world

The idea of evolution

Darwin's contribution

Descent

The mysteries of the mind

The mechanism of heredity

Heredity and evolution

A science of human beings?

10. The nature of reality

A rational world?

The building blocks of reality

Research into radiation

The theory of relativity

Quantum mechanics

In search of a theory of everything

11. The influence of science on the general worldview

Scientification?

Accommodation of scientific findings

Rejection of scientific findings

Concluding remarks