The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World (P.S.) [Kindle Edition]

Edward Dolnick (Author)

Book Description

New York Times bestselling author Edward Dolnick brings to light the true story of one of the most pivotal moments in modern intellectual history—when a group of strange, tormented geniuses invented science as we know it, and remade our understanding of the world. Dolnick’s earth-changing story of Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the birth of modern science is at once an entertaining romp through the annals of academic history, in the vein of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, and a captivating exploration of a defining time for scientific progress, in the tradition of Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

For this narrative of the seventeenth century’s scientific revolution, Dolnick embeds the mathematical discoveries of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Leibniz in the prevailing outlook of their time. God was presumed integral to the universe, so discerning how it worked was a quest as theological as it was intellectual. By directing readers to the deistic drive in their famous achievements, Dolnick accents what otherwise strikes moderns as strange, such as Newton’s obsession with alchemy and biblical hermeneutics. Those pursuits held codes to God’s mind, as did motion and, especially, planetary motion, and Dolnick’s substance follows the greats’ progress in code-breaking, depicting Kepler’s mathematical thought process in devising his laws, Galileo’s in breaking out the vectors of falling objects, Newton’s and Leibniz’s in inventing calculus, and Newton’s in formulating his laws of gravitation. Including apt biographical detail, Dolnick humanizes the group, socializes them by means of their connections to such coevals as the members of the nascent Royal Society, and captures their mental coexistence in mysticism and rationality. A concise explainer, Dolnick furnishes a fine survey introduction to a fertile field of scientific biography and history. --Gilbert Taylor

Review

“Edward Dolnick’s smoothly written history of the scientific revolution tells the stories of the key players and events that transformed society.”

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 1784 KB
• Print Length: 416 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; Reprint edition (February 8, 2011)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004GB1TTA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196,118 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating book that's hard to put down January 10, 2011

By CGScammell TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

God was a mathematician. He designed the world in cosmic codes that only a few men have been able to solve in pieces. Brood over that for a while and then be ready to start a reading adventure with this well-written book.

The year is young and already I have found a book I'd rate as "Best General History book of 2011." This book is that good. Edward Dolnick, who himself is an amateur theoretical mathematician, has a great story to tell that is backed up with documented evidence and a plethora of research. He knows his stuff. He's also an excellent, engaging writer who makes this story of 17th-century scientific geniuses an interesting read. The great part is that you don't have to be a mathematician yourself to enjoy such an entertaining, interesting story, but you may wish you were.

Dolnick takes London of 1665, its stinking, filthy, fecal-infested city streets and turns these rather rancid images into an engrossing story of how Isaac Newton, an ill-tempered and vain man who left Cambridge during a plague outbreak to hide out on his mother's farm, as the setting of this book. Newton, however, wasn't the only one interested in celestial beings or the concept of gravity, motion and speed. There were others in Europe adept at critical thinking who formed what became the Royal Society. The almighty church, however, branded anyone who questioned God's universe as a heretic. Many gifted scientists were killed, others went into hiding. Only the lucky few were able to make themselves heard and live to write about it; Galileo himself died while under house arrest. Thank God for those courageous men or else Dolnick wouldn't have such a fascinating story to tell.

The book is divided into three parts, each focused on a separate theme. The first part focuses on Newton. The second part focuses on the Royal Society and its many quirky members, many of whom conducted tortuous experiments on prisoners and animals. Most didn't like one another and kept their findings often to themselves.

Chapters are short and to the point, which make for quick lunchtime or bedtime reading. There are graphics and drawings all throughout this book to help the reader with a particular image. What makes this book work so well is not only its organization, its easy transitions of chapters, but also Dolnick's talent of weaving both protagonist and background into one awesome combination. It's like reading a well-written, well-acted and well-directed movie. One finishes this book well-educated with the 17th century and sees how the Renaissance and Enlightenment came to be. Not only does one get a good scientific and mathematical background, one also learns how society operated in those days. Even someone with no interest in history will admit this is a great book to take up.

Not since Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond have I read a book of this genre that has been fascinating and interesting to read. This book isn't just for the amateur mathematician, it's for the history buff or anyone who enjoys a good book. This is not to be missed.

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Struggling to decipher God's codebook January 19, 2011

By J. Green VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Science and religion are often at odds in today's highly polarized and contentious world, each sneeringly scornful and antagonistic toward the other. Yet that relationship was very different when some of the greatest leaps of scientific understanding occurred. Edward Dolnick gives us excellent and readable biographical profiles of the greats like Galileo and Kepler, Leibniz and Newton as well others who were instrumental in the birth of modern science. He says "Newton's intent in all his work was to make men more pious and devout, more reverent in the face of God's creation. His aim was not that men rise to their feet in freedom but that they fall to their knees in awe." (pg 308)

But this book is about much more than just the religious thoughts of some of history's greatest thinkers. It also profiles the world they lived in, from the superstitions and diseases the people faced to the unsanitary conditions that produced such maladies (and pity those who had access to the doctors!). And it humanizes them (most were pretty ill-tempered) even though they had talents we can only dream of. It also seeks to convey - in layman's terms - a basic understanding of the principles and truths discovered by these geniuses, and why they were so earth-changing.

I read a significant amount of history and you get used to a certain format when opening a book, a format that conveys a certain seriousness. So I was surprised (and even a little disappointed, too) when I saw the larger and heavier font more typical of pulp fiction. But in spite of that it's a very interesting read, particularly for those of us who aren't as familiar with the history of these men or their discoveries. Actually, (as Dolnick points out) we're more familiar with them than we realize and this book excels not only in pointing out how momentous the discoveries were but also in presenting them in a way that those of us who struggled with physics in high school can follow (or almost follow, and I'll admit my head started to spin when he discussed time and distance and infinity and all those other things that sometimes made math classes unpleasant). The chapters are short and easy to read and understand, in addition to being highly interesting and hard to put down. And it's an excellent overview for those of us not intimately familiar with the science or the period. It's insightful and does it all in a way that shouldn't offend either side in today's debates.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Reading God's Mind December 27, 2010

By Kelly Jo VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

When I got this book, I wondered again why I'd ordered it, because the subject matter is so unlike what I'm into. So I set it aside, to maybe look at later. Later was yesterday, the day after Christmas. I made myself a cup of tea, sat down in the living room with a country and western station on the radio and read the introduction and except for the two times I got up to make more tea, I was in that chair for a little over four hours. I read every word in this book, well not the notes at the end, but all three hundred and twenty pages of mind opening, fascinating reading. I read all that.

Not being a student of the sciences when I was in school, I'm ashamed to say that just about everything in this book was new to me. Sure, I knew the story about Newton and the apple, but that's it.

I knew nothing about a few brilliant men who lived in a time of filth and squalor, when the average lifetime was thirty and when if you got sick you were more likely to survive if you didn't see a doctor. These brilliant men of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge and a German genius, these geniuses, misfits and eccentrics dared to wonder and they changed the world.

This is a story of scientists, before they were called that, of men named Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren, John Hadley, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton. These men stood on the shoulders of Descartes, Kepler and Galileo and their stories, portrayed by Edward Dolnick reads like a novel and once started, this book is almost impossible to put down.

These men set our to read the mind of God and they found order in the universe. They were geniuses, that's a fact, but they were men too, with the petty foibles and jealousies men have and we see them here and it's a part of what makes this book and their story so real.

And another part of what makes this book so darned good is that Mr. Dolnick never talks down to his readers. I learned more than I thought possible in the four hours it took me to read this and it was presented in such a way that I know I'll retain most of it and if I find myself forgetting some of it, like say, Newton's three laws, well, I'll just read the book again, because I can't think of a more pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.