Introduction

Setting the scene

Plato and Aristotle

From the Roman Empire to the Empire of Islam

The Western Middle Ages

The Renaissance

Nicholas Copernicus and a new world

New Methods of science

Bringing mathematics and natural philosophy together: Johannes Kepler

Mathematics and mechanics: Galileo Galilei

Practice and theory in Renaissance medicine: William Harvey and the circulation of the blood

The spirit of system: René Descartes and the mechanical philosophy

The Royal Society and experimental philosophy

Experiment, mathematics, and magic: Isaac Newton

The Newtonian enlightenment

The chemical revolution: Priestly and Lavoisier; John Dalton and beyond

Newtonian optimism: natural theology and natural order

The making of geology: from James Hutton to Charles Lyell

The history of plants and animals: successive emergence or evolution?

Religion and progress in Victorian Britain: Robert Chambers versus Hugh Miller

Bringing it all together?: Charles Darwin's evolution

Darwinian aftermaths: religion; social science; biology

Beyond Newton: energy and thermodynamics

Newton deposed: Einstein and relativity theory

Mathematics instead of a world picture: from atomism to quantum theory.