AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SCIENCE

An anthology of primary sources, as scientists throughout all scientific history, are quoted in their own words, to make a composite picture of the development of science through the ages. The contributions of the early Greek scientists, in medicine and architecture and the science of the stare; the Middle Ages and the beginnings of engineering and attempts to make man fly (Leonardo); the Renaissance, and the start of metallurgy, and beginnings of chemistry, and the contributions of Copernicus and Gal in changing the conception of the universe, the start of printing -- Gesner, even before Gutenberg; strides forward in medicine and surgery, with Pare and Vesalius, with Harvey and his physiology. Then as science grows up -- Francis Bacon and Descartes and Pascal -- interest in vital statistics, in Newton's theory of gravitation, in understanding of elasticity, in dentistry, in botany. And with the Industrial Revolution, physics and chemistry and processes of evolution made famous by men such as Franklin, Dalton, Darwin. Scientific exploration -- study of natural history -- further developments along the lines of biology, geology, eugenics, heredity, and psychology, and the recognition of the part played by germs and the need for public health and trained nursing. Finally, the modern world in which modern concepts of matter, dynamic electricity, radio, light, heat control, knowledge of theory of flight, of rays, of photography; relativity (Einstein) and the quantum theory, the new physics, electronics, anthropology, and psychoanalysis --broad range of development on all fronts, each focussed on a selection from the writings of one of its great advocates. At the close, something of the philosophy back of science, in the words of the beloved physician, Caler, and of the great surgeon, Cushing, and the naturalist, Donald Culross Peattie....An unusual approach to an overall picture of science growth.