With engaging wisdom and literary skill, Professor Butterfield illuminates the dynamic growth of science, beginning with the impetus theory of the late Middle Ages.
He shows how bold, original thinkers like Galileo, Bacon, and Copernicus ventured outside the strictures of Aristotelian physics to overcome scholastic restraints. He also traces the impact of Newton, Harvey, Boyle, and others upon the thinking of their times and their effects on other modes of thought. This brilliant examination brings the reader to the eighteenth century-and the very threshold of modern science.