Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution

Jardine does a fantastic job of weaving together the narrative of the early scientific revolution. She plays on the personalities of the various individuals involved, describing their relationships with each other and the ways in which they coordinated and fought over information. She presents an honest yet fair appraisal of the methods involved in so many of the ground-breaking discoveries of the time. She describes the excesses and methods that would be condemned today without falling into anachronistic criticisms. Excellent book. Well worth the read.

This is a somewhat episodic historic of a critical period in the scientific revolution, when the Royal Society was in full flower with Newton, Halley, Hooke, Flamsteed, and other luminaries ushering in the era of scientific discovery that led to our science (and society) today.Each chapter focuses on a different topic: planetary astronomy, measurement, chemistry, microscopy, etc. This is a distinctive approach with both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is that each chapter is a focused little history, easy to follow and to understand. The disadvantage is that incidents that bear in more than one area tend to be discussed repetitively, which becomes a little confusing at times. However, perhaps this helps to emphasis Jardine's thesis: that this was an era when the men of intellect did not categorize themselves into branches of science, or even between science and art. So Hooke, Newton, and some others appear in many chapters in many areas of inquiry.All in all, it's a very readable and interesting book with numerous illustrations, though strangely some of the illustrations appear both as black-and-white illustrations with the text and as inserted color plates. It's not clear what the point of that is. Still, a fascinating and readable book about the flowering of science.

In her latest book, Lisa Jardine proves a fascinating guide as she leads us through the scientific revolution. She has chosen a period populated by a truly engaging cast of characters, each of whom Jardine brings fully to life, presenting the work of Hooke, Wren, Newton and many others in its social context. The result is a unique insight into the 17th century, offering something to interest both experts and the general reader. Professor Jardine's insistence that science and art have been artificially sundered illuminates both past and present: her protagonists straddle the two realms with ease, and suggest that the separation of the disciplines in the public imagination is wholly unjustified. Professor Jardine is also keen to demonstrate that the notion of the lone scientist making breakthroughs in isolation is a myth - throughout history, scientists have relied upon the work of others, whether or not this previous work has been officially recognised. Jardine, a consummate communicator of complex ideas, manages to both advance her theories, and entertain the reader - an achievement which should not be underestimated, resulting in a truly remarkable work of scholarship.