Why read Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West?

Book cover of Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West

Book description

This book seeks to explain the historical process by which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries scientific knowledge became an integral part of the culture of Europe and how this in turn led to the Industrial Revolution. Comparative in structure, Jacob explains why England was so much more successful at…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Richard G. Lipsey

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Using the modern view of science, many economic historians have sought to diminish the effects of science on the technologies in the 18th and 19th centuries. This wonderful book by a sociologist documents how science, as it was then practiced, pervaded the whole structure of British society, from preachers teaching that Newton had revealed the architecture that God had imposed during creation, to a journal teaching Newtonian science to women. As Jacob puts it: “The role of science…was not that of general laws leading to the development of specific applications. Instead it…[provided] the theoretical mechanics and the practical mathematics…

From Richard's list on The best books on how technologies have transformed our societies, international relations, and economies.