Intellectual curiosity and the scientific revolution : a global perspective /  Toby E. Huff.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-339) and index.

I. Something new under the sun -- Introduction -- Inventing the discovery machine -- The new telescopic evidence -- The "far seeing looking glass" goes to China -- The discovery machine goes to the Muslim world -- pt. II. Patterns of education -- Three ideals of higher education : Islamic, Chinese, and Western -- pt. III. Science unbound -- Infectious curiosity I : anatomy and microbiology -- Infectious curiosity II : weighing the air and atmospheric pressure -- Infectious curiosity III : magnetism and electricity -- Prelude to the grand synthesis -- The path to the grand synthesis -- The scientific revolution in comparative perspective -- Epilogue : science, literacy, and economic development

"Seventeenth-century Europe witnessed an extraordinary flowering of discoveries and innovations. This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608, casts Galileo's discoveries into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. In Europe, there was an extraordinary burst of innovations in microscopy, human anatomy, optics, pneumatics, electrical studies, and the science of mechanics. Nearly all of those aided the emergence of Newton's revolutionary grand synthesis, which unified terrestrial and celestial physics under the law of universal gravitation. That achievement had immense implications for all aspects of modern science, technology, and economic development. The economic implications are set out in the concluding epilogue. All these unique developments suggest why the West experienced a singular scientific and economic ascendancy of at least four centuries"--  Provided by publisher.

Local access dig.pdf. [Huff-Intellectual curiosity.pdf]

The rise of early modern science : Islam, China, and the West / Toby E. Huff.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 385-406) and index.

Introduction -- 1. The comparative study of science -- 2. Arabic science and the Islamic world -- 3. Reason and rationality in Islam and the West -- 4. The European legal revolution -- 5. Madrasas, universities, and sciences -- 6. Cultural climates and the ethos of science -- 7. Science and civilization in China -- 8. Science and social organization in China -- 9. The rise of early modern science -- Epilogue: Educational reform and attitudes towards science since the eighteenth century.

Publisher's description: This study examines the long-standing question of why modern science arose only in the West and not in the civilizations of Islam and China, despite the fact that medieval Islam and China were more scientifically advanced. To explain this outcome, Tony E. Huff explores the cultural - religious, legal, philosophical, and institutional - contexts within which science was practiced in Islam, China, and the West. He finds in the history of law and the European cultural revolution of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries major clues as to why the ethos of science arose in the West, permitting the breakthrough to modern science that did not occur elsewhere. This line of inquiry leads to novel ideas about the centrality of the legal concept of corporation, which is unique to the West and gave rise to the concepts of neutral space and free inquiry.

Local access dig.pdf. [Huff-Early Modern Science.pdf]