The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction
by Lawrence M. Principe · Oxford University Press
176-page account of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science covering astronomy, alchemy and chemistry, mechanics, and medicine. Written from the historical actors' own reasoning and motives, and explicitly correcting popular myths about Galileo, religion, and experiment. The entry point: a working historian writing at introductory length, so the beginner gets scholarship rather than the hero-narrative version.
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