Investigations of Nature: Europe in a Global World, 1450s-1780s

Investigations of Nature takes us on a guided tour through history, when voyages of exploration and exploitation were tied to technological advances in navigation and warfare; religious unity was broken with huge political, economic, and intellectual consequences; and the new art of printing led to an explosion of information. After a brief introduction, each part of this book—from sections on the Renaissance to the Epistemic Revolution to the Enlightenment—opens with a chapter discussing a defining characteristic: geography and navigation characterize the Renaissance as the age of discovery and colonialism; astronomy and optics characterize the Epistemic Revolution as the age of new instruments, such as the telescope; and universal gravity in Newton’s time characterizes the Enlightenment as the age of quantification, with welcome and unwelcome consequences and reflection on the status of our theories. Heavily illustrated and with a practical historiographic guide and bibliography for further reading, this book is an indispensable teaching tool for anyone seeking an accessible survey of the Renaissance or the Enlightenment.