Customer Reviews

The Birth of a New Physics (Revised and Updated)

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I found this to be a very enjoyable book written in a kind of history book style. There is enough information included to explain the discoveries of Newton and others without getting too technical. I read this book for a college paper on Newton's life.

This is a very nice introduction to the great 17th century revolution in science. Singer concentrates on a single major issue; the emergence of modern dynamics and its ability to provide a universal explanation of motion on Earth and of the Solar system. Singer provides a nice precis of Aristotlean physics, the development of the Copernican system, and the contributions of Galileo and Kepler. He concludes with a chapter on Newton's triumphant development of modern physics. This is not a comprehensive history; there is little here about figures like Huygens or Descartes, but rather a thematic pursuit of a crucial issue. Presented with a minimum of math, this is an excellent exposition of how theory and experiment interacted to produce the basis of modern physics.

This book is a well-written introduction to the lives and discoveries of the three giants at the base of modern science. It doesn't ascribe to the nonsense that most modern philosophers of science spout as defining science as simply a mathematical description of appearances. The book avoids these philosophic aberrations and instead presents the discoveries of Newton, Kepler, and Galileo in a way that properly emphasizes the enormity of their genius, the scope of their inductions and the central importance of their contributions to the scientific method.