To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
A masterful commentary on the history of science from the Greeks to modern times, by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg—a thought-provoking and important book by one of the most distinguished scientists and intellectuals of our time.
In this rich, irreverent, and compelling history, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg takes us across centuries from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad and Oxford, from Plato’s Academy and the Museum of Alexandria to the cathedral school of Chartres and the Royal Society of London. He shows that the scientists of ancient and medieval times not only did not understand what we understand about the world—they did not understand what there is to understand, or how to understand it. Yet over the centuries, through the struggle to solve such mysteries as the curious backward movement of the planets and the rise and fall of the tides, the modern discipline of science eventually emerged. Along the way, Weinberg examines historic clashes and collaborations between science and the competing spheres of religion, technology, poetry, mathematics, and philosophy.
An illuminating exploration of the way we consider and analyze the world around us, To Explain the World is a sweeping, ambitious account of how difficult it was to discover the goals and methods of modern science, and the impact of this discovery on human knowledge and development.
Steven Weinberg
Steven Weinberg writes and illustrates kids' books about dinosaurs, roller coasters, beards, and chainsaws. He lives in the Catskills in New York.
Read more from Steven Weinberg
To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5AstroNuts Mission Three: The Perfect Planet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Middle Kid Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThird Thoughts: The Universe We Still Don’t Know Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Great Ancient China Projects: You Can Build Yourself Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmazing Arctic and Antarctic Projects: You Can Build Yourself Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to To Explain the World
Related ebooks
Galileo: And the Science Deniers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World According to Physics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Brief History of Physical Science Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Are Numbers Real?: The Uncanny Relationship of Mathematics and the Physical World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Universe: Leading Scientists Explore the Origin, Mysteries, and Future of the Cosmos Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Equation that Couldn't Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of the Infinite: The Pleasures of Mathematics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of Pi Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Is God a Mathematician? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beginning and the End of Everything: From the Big Bang to the End of the Universe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Totally Random: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics (A Serious Comic on Entanglement) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Little Book of Big History: The Story of Life, the Universe and Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Science & Mathematics For You
The Big Book of Hacks: 264 Amazing DIY Tech Projects Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Stone Unturned: The True Story of the World's Premier Forensic Investigators Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/518 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Gov't Told Me: And the Better Future Coming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Systems Thinker: Essential Thinking Skills For Solving Problems, Managing Chaos, Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Activate Your Brain: How Understanding Your Brain Can Improve Your Work - and Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/52084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Free Will Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for To Explain the World
57 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5There was a lot about Greek "scientists", who are not nearly as quotable as the scientists in "The Invention of Science". But there is also an enormous appendix of technical notes which give a mathematical presentation of many of problems discussed in the main part of the book. These are fun if you like mathematics. They are quite unusual too, and indicate a lot of application on the part of the author. Five stars for effort!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book is not for everyone, but if you want details on the dizzying array of spheres, circles, epicycles and whatnot that people have used over the last 2,500 years or so to to try to explain celestial motion, this book has them--often in excruciatingly painful detail. It often reads like an incredibly dull textbook. The basic point that Weinberg is making here is that our ancestors did not approach questions about the universe the way we do today. It may seem absurd, possibly even insane to us today, but the idea that learning about the world involved close, careful, detailed, and methodical investigation of actual physical reality didn't seem to occur to them. From early Greek philosophers to about the time of Galileo two thousand years later, men (almost all were male) largely based their theories of how the world worked on cultural traditions, authority, unsubstantiated assumptions, or brutally enforced religious dogma. They often went through a lot of Rube Goldberg-like mental contortions to force the observations they did make to fit those preconceived notions. Weinberg is making a valid and important point. Humans did not always have a scientific, rational way of thinking, but I can't help believing it could have been made via a more readable book. He doesn't attempt to offer a reason for how or why our scientific way of thinking came about, and just saying that it's a sign of our species maturing doesn't really explain it, but we have learned how to learn, and that's an important step.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The author is a Nobel laureate physicist who teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a very cogent explicator of difficult scientific concepts. In this book, he tackles the history of the modern scientific method of thinking from the ancient Greeks through the scientific revolution of the 17th century. In doing so, he emphasizes astronomy and physics, the fields that exhibited the ideas that most rocked the way men viewed the universe and man’s place in it, at least until Darwin came along.The book covers well traveled ground in the history of science, but with a working scientist’s viewpoint. He unabashedly judges the intellectual stars of the past through modern eyes. Consequently, Plato, Francis Bacon, and Rene Descartes come out looking rather inconsequential, whereas Galileo and Newton appear truly heroic. This book can be read on two very different levels. The first 267 pages follow the tried and true formula of popularizing scientists by avoiding equations. However, Weinberg allows the serious scientist or mathematically literate reader a view of what the ancient thinkers were really doing in his 100 pages of “Technical Notes.” There, he actually shows how to calculate the value of pi, the geometry of diurnal parallax, the trigonometry of Kepler’s elliptical motion of the planets, the least-time derivation of the law of refraction, and the calculus of Newton’s dynamics, among other arcana. Evaluation: I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in how our current view of the cosmos came about.(JAB)
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confession time: I studied history at university and one of the first thing I learned - you can’t judge the past by the present for a whole lot of reasons not least of which is that they didn’t have the same access as us to, well, history. Which brings me to the recent book by Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World. Weinberg isn’t an historian and feels no need to follow this rule. In fact, he rejects it out of hand which meant at least to me once I got over the shock of his approach some rather unorthodox but still interesting thoughts on the history of science. Take for instance his views on Aristotle versus Plato:“I confess that I find Aristotle frequently tedious, in a way that Plato is not but although often wrong Aristotle is not silly, in the way that Plato sometimes is.”He begins his foray into the history of science in classical Greece. He feels the early Greek philosophers were arrogant and smug in their ruminations about science while lacking any proper methodology or, to be precise, any methodology. To make matters worse, they were almost invariably wrong even about things they could have easily verified if they tried doing some real work outside of their heads. He is more impressed with the Hellenistic Greeks who actually developed methods to calculate such things as the size of the earth and were surprisingly accurate in their calculations. After Greece, he looks at other non-western countries only as they influenced western thought and even then pretty much dismisses any contribution by them to science. The one exception to this is the Arab scientists who made some very important scientific advances. His main concern, however, remains the west and he has some interesting views on many of the thinkers who are often seen as the precursors of modern science. For example, he admires Galileo and Isaac Newton despite some of their more wacky theories but he clearly thinks Descartes gets way too much praise for his contributions to science. He also limits his ruminations to pre-Enlightenment and to physics and astronomy. One thing I learned way back in those halcyon university days: all history has biases if only in the facts an historian chooses to look at and regardless of whether I agree with his tendency to make judgmental statements about his subjects and their lack of real scientific methods, it certainly made for some interesting reading. Admittedly, I am not a scientist although I find it intriguing but it’s hard to study any history without encountering science eg Newton, not Luther, is considered by many historians as the beginning of Early Modernity. I will also admit I didn’t always understand the science as Weinberg laid it out, especially the astronomy. But, despite his unorthodox approach to history and my lack of knowledge on the subject, it was definitely fascinating and more than a little enlightening to read a history of science written by a scientist.