I just finished reading this highly informative and entertaining book. The extraordinary flowering of scientific discoveries coming from Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries is one of the defining events of the history of mankind. It created the foundations of the modern world and led to the rise of Europe and its offshoots to global primacy which endures to this day. In this well researched book, the author compares and contrasts the political, social and educational institutions of Europe with that of China, India and the Muslim world in a effort to answer the question: why the Scientific revolution took place in the west and not elsewhere ? The author used the invention and the spread of the telescope as a probe of the scientific aptitude of the various cultures. He shows that while the telescope fired the imagination of Europeans and led to an avalanche of discoveries which fundamentally changed their worldview, it barely caused a ripple elsewhere. For example, the telescope reached the court of Mughal emperor Jahangir in India in 1615, but it had no impact whatsoever on the Indian elite. The author argues that the emergence of unique autonomous institutions (corporations) like merchant guilds, professional societies and Universities with a strong emphasis on the teaching of the workings of the natural world in Europe during the middle ages, the parallels of which are not to be found anywhere else, created the fertile intellectual milieu which enabled the rapid rise and spread of science and the scientific method later on. This book presents a refreshing break from the stultifying climate of political correctness which so dominates the intellectual space these days. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in knowing why the world today looks the way it does. amazon.in/Intellectual-Curiosity-Scientific-Revolution-Perspective/dp/0521170524/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394377072&sr=8-1&keywords=intellectual+curiosity+and+the+scientific+revolution
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 15:02:52 +0000
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