Reviews for The History of Scientific Discovery: The Story of Science Told Through the Lives of Twelve G...

The average rating for The History of Scientific Discovery: The Story of Science Told Through the Lives of Twelve G... based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-09-27 00:00:00 Robin Armstrong [ Such malcontents are comparable to the fictitious leader of the People’s Liberation Front of Judea, played by John Cleese in Monty Python’s Life of Brian , who was slow to notice any benefits from the Roman occupation of his country: —They bled us white, the bastards. They’ve taken everything we had. . . . And what have they ever given us in return?! —The aqueduct? . . . —Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that . . . —And the sanitation . . . —Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done. —And the roads . . . Irrigation . . . Medicine . . . Education . . . And the wine . . . —All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? (hide spoiler)]

Review # 2 was written on 2018-05-17 00:00:00 Elizabeth Miller Ours may not be the best of all possible worlds; but these pioneers helped to make it an intellectually adventurous and, as d'Alembert suggested, a less ignorant one. Dream was a most welcome birthday present for me personally its publication is also timely given a world which sorely needs to examine its present trajectory. It is a survey by a retired journalist, a layman more than apt to do the heavy lifting about the advocates of a mechanized world, the stirring time in our early Modern period when the ghosts under our bed and the threat of Old Scratch could be outdistanced. The noble products of this were the technology and the trappings of tolerance; unfortunately, it is an ongoing project. Voltaire is included as foil to many: Leibniz, Hume and Rousseau, but Voltaire captures something human and timeless, much as his Candide, when pondering the fortunes of the New World, quips it may not be better but at least it will be different. If only. I am blessed with an adequate familiarity of all the thinkers cited. My chief course of improvement will be to read more Hume. Please forgive the possible vanity, but I often feel like a Hobbes or Spinoza, though I lack the talent and ambition of either. Leibniz had by far the coolest life and Rousseau was quite an asshole.