History of Science
Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17First version: Before 13 March 1995
Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder
Somewhat arbitrarily, I'll include history of mathematics here, except for such references as I leave under math. Also, there are history-of-science references scattered throughout these notebooks under particular topics...
- See also:
- Philosophy of Science and Scientific Method
- the Scientific Revolution
- Sociology of Science
- Recommended (very misc.):
- Margaret Alic, Hypatia's Heritage
- J. L. Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam
- Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600
- Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way
- Jacob L. Heilbron, The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories
- Isis
- George Gheverghese Joseph, The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics
- Jim Al-Khalili, The House of Wisdom
- G. E. R. Lloyd
- George Malagaris, Biruni
- Michel Morange, A History of Biology
- Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China
- George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance [author's self-presentation]
- George Sarton, The Study of the History of Science
- Charles Singer
- From Magic to Science: Essays in the Scientific Twilight
- A Short History of Scientific Ideas to 1900
- Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding
- To read:
- Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance
- Anthony Aveni, Empires of Time
- Margaret Baron, The Origin of the Infinitessimal Calculus
- J. D. Bernal, Science in History
- Jeffrey M. Binder, Language and the Rise of the Algorithm [Learned of from this review]
- Carl Boyer, The History of Calculus and Its Conceptual Development
- David M. Bressoud, Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas
- C. M. Brown, Benjamin Silliman: A Life in the Young Republic
- Jed Z. Buchwald, "Discrepant Measurements and Experimental Knolwedge in the Early Modern Era", Archive for History of Exact Sciences 60 (2006): 565--649
- Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500--1676
- John L. Cisne, "How Science Survived: Medieval Manuscripts' 'Demography' and Classical Texts' Extinction", Science 307 (2005): 1305--1307
- Marshall Clagett
- Greek Science in Antiquity
- Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages
- Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestial Life Debate 1750--1900. The Idea of a Plurality of Worlds from Kant to Lowell
- Lorraine Daston (ed.), Science in the Archives: Pasts, Presents, Futures
- Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (eds.), Histories of Scientific Observation
- Peter Dear, The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World
- Peter Dear (ed.), The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument: Historical Studies
- Ute Deichmann, Biologists Under Hitler
- Arthur Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration, and Revolution
- Benjamin Farrington
- Greek Science
- Science and Politics in the Ancient World
- Tore Frangsmyr, J. L. Heilbron and Robin E. Rider (eds.), The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century [online]
- Emma Gee, Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition
- Charles Coulston Gillispie
- The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas
- Pierre-Simon Laplace, 1749--1827: A Life in Exact Science
- Science and Polity in France: The End of the Old Regime
- Science and Polity in France: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years [Review in American Scientist]
- G. J. Goodfield, The Growth of Scientific Physiology
- Loren R. Graham, Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union
- Edward Grant, Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200--1687
- Peter Harrison, Ronald L. Numbers and Michael H. Shank, Wrestling with Nature: From Omens to Science
- Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy in the Renaissance
- J. L. Heilbron, Weighing Imponderables and Other Quantitative Sciences around 1800
- Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb, and Catherine Westfall, Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience
- Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra (eds.), The Enterprise of Science in Islam
- Thomas Holden, The Architecture of Matter: Galileo to Kant
- Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Investigative Pathways: Patterns and Stages in the Careers of Experimental Scientists
- Toby Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West
- Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire
- Jacques Jouanna, Hippocrates
- David Knight, The Making of Modern Science: Science, Technology, Medicine and Modernity, 1789--1914
- John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe
- Lancaster, Quantitative Methods in Biological and Medical Sciences: A Historical Essay
- G. E. R. Lloyd
- Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science
- The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science
- Pamela Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance
- J. Mann, Murder, Magic and Medicine
- Majno, Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World
- Clemency Montelle, Chasing Shadows: Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Early History of Eclipse Reckoning
- Reviel Netz, The Transformation of Mathematics in the Early Mediterranean World: From Problems to Equations
- O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity
- Mary Jo Nye, From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry: Dynamics of Matter and Dynamics of Disciplines, 1800--1950
- Giuliano Pancaldi, Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment
- M. Pera, The Ambiguous Frog: The Galvani-Volta Controversy on Animal Electricity
- Kim Plofker, Mathematics in India
- Derek de Solla Price, Science since Babylon
- Helena M. Pycior, Nancy G. Slack and Pnina G. Abir-Am (eds.), Creative Couples in the Sciences
- Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises, and Sensibilities
- Harry Robin, The Scientific Image: From Cave to Computer
- Francesca Rochberg, Worldmaking and Cuneiform Antiquity: An Anthropology of Science
- Alan J. Rocke, Image and Reality: Kekule, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination
- R. A. Skelton, Thomas Marston and George D. Painter, The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation
- A. Mark Smith, From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern Optics
- Stafford, Artful Science
- Justin K. Stearns, Infectious Ideas: Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean
- Brett D. Steele and Tamera Dorland (eds.), The Heirs of Archimedes: Science and the Art of War Through the Age of Enlightenment
- Dick Teresi, Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science From the Babylonians to the Maya [Harsh review by Anthony Grafton]
- Lynn White, Jr., Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered
- H. Woolf, The Transit of Venus: A Study of Eighteenth Century Science
- Yoshikawa and Kauffman (eds.), Science Has no National Borders
