The Collected Papers of Peter J. W. Debye Book

While this survey of natural philosophy is indeed comprehensive, I felt it to be quite haphazard and lacking structure beyond the historical timeline given. Moreover, Grant tends to overemphasize biographical sketches of thinkers as well as the issue of translating text across cultures, which I found to be tangential to the philosophical exposition for which I was hungry. What much of the book starts out with in terms of Aristotles writing, the rest leaves to understanding how people grappled with, translated, regurgitated, or refuted his works, rather than discussing the theoretical and practical advancements made thereafter, by the likes of physicists or other natural philosophers. Perhaps we are left with wondering what happened during this timeframe in terms of major contributions to the field? Or was there no one until Francis Bacon no more influential? Otherwise, I felt underwhelmed at the knowledge I gleaned from the text, much more likely to glaze over another name (which, to the authors' credit, is thoroughly researched), in order to find any real meaty takeaways on how this field advanced over the course of history. Three stars.

As a qualifier, I particularly enjoyed the sections on Aristotelian natural philosophy, the turbulent relationship between natural philosophy and theology, as well as the reasoning behind why the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic schools did not take root in Islamic society. And in his conclusion, Grant does make the apt point that maybe we wouldn't have had the scientific revolution of the enlightenment occurred when it did had we not underwent the tumult of "probing and poking around" not taken place.