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A Brief History of Science: As Seen Through the Development of Scientific Instruments
A Brief History of Science As Seen Through the Development of Scientific Instruments Author:Thomas Crump Fascinating and enlightening, this encyclopedic volume by mathematician and anthropologist Thomas Crump explores the wedding of scientific technology to the advancement of civilization as he examines the design and production of the instruments that have continually redefined the horizons of the world we observe and perceive. He thus shows that ... more »the driving desire of diverse peoples and cultures throughout the course of history to further their understanding of the universe has resulted in an unending development of increasingly more sophisticated instruments to measure our material reality's components and extend its frontiers. While human genius had devised numerous tools to record and measure the expanses of time and space well before the seventeenth century--from astronomical charts and calendars to Arabic numerals and algebraic notation, all of which Crump's comprehensive history includes--not until the 1600s would an essentially modern technology be born. With Galileo's telescopic exploration of the skies at the beginning of the seventeenth century and Newton's experiments with the prism and light at its end, the optical instruments fundamental to all scientific research had been invented, as Crump amply illustrates before proceeding to electromagnets, cathode tubes, thermometers, vacuum pumps, X rays, accelerators, semiconductors, microprocessors, and instruments currently being designed to operate in subzero temperatures. Here, then, in one dramatically detailed and succinctly narrated volume, is the enduring human quest for knowledge through technology. Here, too, is the proof that what is knowable is, and has always been, far more compelling than what is known.« less