• The best books on The Scientific Revolution - Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750 by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park
  • The best books on The Scientific Revolution - Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture by William Eamon
  • The best books on The Scientific Revolution - Leviathan and the Air-Pump by Simon Schaffer & Steven Shapin
  • The best books on The Scientific Revolution - Probability and Certainty in 17th Century England. A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law and Literature by Barbara Shapiro
  • The best books on The Scientific Revolution - The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire by Pamela Smith

The best books on The Scientific Revolution, recommended by Vera Keller

The scientific revolution is often seen as having transformed the way we think and ushered in the modern world, but in highlighting the work of a few key individuals, it has distorted the reality of how science advances in society and how it interacts with truth. Here, Vera Keller, Professor of History at the University of Oregon, challenges popularly held assumptions about the scientific revolution and explains how its meaning, significance and importance have been disputed and misunderstood.

  • The best books on The History of Science - Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, and Medicine by John Pickstone
  • The best books on The History of Science - The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix by James Watson
  • The best books on The History of Science - The Scientific Revolution by Steven Shapin
  • The best books on The History of Science - This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William E. Burrows
  • The best books on The History of Science - Galen and the World of Knowledge by Christopher Gill (Editor)

The best books on The History of Science, recommended by Matthew Cobb

The best books on the history of science—from the ancient world to the space race, recommended by Matthew Cobb, Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester and author of a number of history and history of science books. His book on neuroscience, The Idea of the Brain, was shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize, Britain’s most prestigious nonfiction book award.  

  • The best books on Galileo Galilei - Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
  • The best books on Galileo Galilei - Galileo’s Telescope: A European Story by Franco Giudice, Massimo Bucciantini and Michele Camerota, translated by Catherine Bolton
  • The best books on Galileo Galilei - Letters to Father: Sister Maria Celeste to Galileo by Suor Maria Celeste (Virginia Galilei) and Dava Sobel (editor and translator)
  • The best books on Galileo Galilei - On Trial for Reason: Science, Religion, and Culture in the Galileo Affair by Maurice A. Finocchiaro
  • The best books on Galileo Galilei - Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei & Stillman Drake (trans.)

The best books on Galileo Galilei, recommended by Paula Findlen

The trial of Galileo by the Roman Inquisition was one of the most public confrontations between the new science emerging in the 17th century and the Catholic Church but, nearly 400 years later, there’s still a lot of scope to argue what it was about. Here historian of science Paula Findlen, a professor at Stanford University, explains the endless fascination of Galileo Galilei, the Renaissance man who turned a telescope to the sky and took the world by storm, and recommends the best books to start learning more about him.

  • The best books on Isaac Newton - Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton by Richard S. Westfall
  • The best books on Isaac Newton - A Portrait of Isaac Newton by Frank E. Manuel
  • The best books on Isaac Newton - Newton and the Origins of Civilization by Jed Z. Buchwald & Mordechai Feingold
  • The best books on Isaac Newton - Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton by Rob Iliffe
  • The best books on Isaac Newton - Isaac Newton and Natural Philosophy by Niccolò Guicciardini

The best books on Isaac Newton, recommended by William Newman

John Maynard Keynes famously cast Isaac Newton not as the first scientist of the age of reason, but the last of the magicians. How should we interpret the million words he wrote, in secret, on alchemy? What should we make of Newton’s heretical religious views? William Newman talks us through the best books for a better understanding of the complex man who was one of the greatest physicists of all time.

  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - In Byron's Wake: The Turbulent Lives of Lord Byron's Wife and Daughter: Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace by Miranda Seymour
  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception and Secret Authorship of 'The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' by James Secord
  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - Mathematics in Victorian Britain by Adrian Rice, Raymond Flood & Robin Wilson
  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua
  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - Middlemarch by George Eliot

The best books on Ada Lovelace, recommended by Ursula Martin

Ada Lovelace has become an iconic figure for women in science and is often credited with the invention of modern computing. But, as Ursula Martin—mathematician, computer scientist and Lovelace biographer—explains, all of that is a bit overblown. The Lovelace myth obscures the truth about a woman who was certainly a very brilliant mathematician, but who was also often frustrated in her scientific ambitions, in poor health and unhappy.

  • The best books on The History of Philosophy - The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature by Pierre Hadot
  • The best books on The History of Philosophy - The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece by Geoffrey Lloyd & Nathan Sivin
  • The best books on The History of Philosophy - The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India, 1450–1700 by Jonardon Ganeri
  • The best books on The History of Philosophy - Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution by William Newman
  • The best books on The History of Philosophy - Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy by Scott L. Pratt

The best books on The History of Philosophy, recommended by Justin E. H. Smith

Today, we think of scientists and philosophers as distinct, but it wasn’t always this way. Back when the Royal Society was founded in the 1660s, figures like Newton, Descartes and Boyle all thought of themselves as ‘natural philosophers’. Justin E. H. Smith, professor of philosophy at the Université de Paris, introduces us to what he sees as the real history of philosophy.

  • The best books on The Body - Smell in Eighteenth-Century England: A Social Sense by William Tullett
  • The best books on The Body - Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography by Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully
  • The best books on The Body - The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution by Faramerz Dabhoiwala
  • The best books on The Body - Sleep in Early Modern England by Sasha Handley
  • The best books on The Body - The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris by Colin Jones

The best books on The Body, recommended by Karen Harvey

We assume that many of our bodily functions—sleeping and smiling, for example—are ‘natural’ and culturally invariant. But their characteristics and expression are heavily influenced by their cultural milieu. Professor Karen Harvey explains how attitudes to the body in the 18th century were radically rethought in the light of changing scientific and cultural views of its nature and function.

  • The best books on The History of Science and Religion - The Warfare Between Science and Religion: The Idea That Wouldn't Die Edited by Jeff Hardin, Ronald L Numbers, and Ronald A Binzley
  • The best books on The History of Science and Religion - Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives by John Hedley Brooke
  • The best books on The History of Science and Religion - Science, Technology & Society in Seventeenth Century England by Robert K Merton
  • The best books on The History of Science and Religion - Theology and the Scientific Imagination by Amos Funkenstein
  • The best books on The History of Science and Religion - The Empirical Stance by Bas van Fraassen

The best books on The History of Science and Religion, recommended by Peter Harrison

Have science and religion been fundamentally at war throughout history? Are they incompatible? Has religion always held back scientific progress? These views may seem intuitive but few historians would defend them. Professor Peter Harrison looks at the complexity of science-religion interactions, including the cases of Galileo and Darwin, and considers how we frame the debate.