Out of the Shadow of a Giant: Hooke, Halley, and the Birth of Science By John Gribbin
Out of the shadow of a giantess
Many stolen from others I have read several accounts of such stories and the whole thing leaves me confused about the veracity of recorded history and about how much we are taught which has been written by the victors or the strongest sweeping truth into the gutter of the past The book is aptly entitled Out of the shadow of a giant but who is the giant It is further subtitled Newton stood on the shoulders of Hooke and Halley but that is a quote from Newton who may have been referring to the diminutive size of Hooke and the ease with which he stood on him It is apparent from the tale told by the authors that Newton was of a mathematician whereas Hooke and Halley were the physicists and the story contrasts the differing approaches to scientific study using these 2 disciplines. Out of the shadow of a giantheart This book has inspired me to investigate further the work of these 3 great scientists who set the stage for the rest of scientific study ever since John Gribbin We should be truly grateful to John and Mary Gribbin for this opportunity to find out about two stalwarts of 17th 18th century British science.
Out of the shadow of a giant kindle pdf
John R Gribbin is a British science writer an astrophysicist and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex His writings include quantum physics human evolution climate change global warming the origins of the universe and biographies of famous scientists He also writes science fiction. Out of the shadow of a giant book trailer What if Newton had never lived A compelling dual biography argues that Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley easily could have filled the giant s shoes and deserve credit for the birth of modern science Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley whose place in history has been overshadowed by the giant figure of Newton were pioneering scientists within their own right and instrumental in establishing the Royal Society Although Newton is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time and the father of the English scientific revolution John and Mary Gribbin uncover the fascinating story of Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley whose scientific achievements neatly embrace the hundred years or so during which science as we know it became established They argue persuasively that even without Newton science would have made a great leap forward in the second half of the seventeenth century headed by two extraordinary figures Hooke and Halley Out of the Shadow of a Giant Hooke Halley and the Birth of ScienceEvery school child learn about Newton and his 3 laws of motion about Hooke and his law about springs about Halley and his prediction of the return of his comet but that is about the extent of it All 3 carried out much further scientific research back in the 17th century which is rarely talked about This book by John Mary Gribbin describes the social history around the era of these three greats telling of wars political and royal upheavals fire and pestilence It is difficult to imagine how people survived in those days let alone how scientists managed to pioneer great discoveries This book takes the story even further in 2 intriguing ways Firstly it describes in great details how Hooke and Halley discovered and researched many wonderful things for which they are never given true credit Hooke worked on weather forecasting through his barometer and observation of cloud patterns he studied human respiration worked to build the first vacuum chambers he helped Wren rebuild London after the great fire including St Paul s he even proposed evolution of the species before Darwin Halley travelled the seven seas to catalogue stars of the southern hemisphere but during his voyages as captain of the ship he discovered new lands as far as Antarctica and charted global movements of the winds and tides Secondly and significant for this book the authors claim through old documentary evidence how Newton stole plagiarised and angrily defended his discoverers as his own Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley apparently pronounced Hawley as presumably it was thought of as Hall ley This pair have been unfortunately and unfairly overshadowed by Isaac Newton and this book does a lot to bring them into the open I wish the Gribbins had also included another in Newton s shadow the mathematician John Wallis The aim here is very much to get a feel for the scientific contribution of this pair though we do get some biographical detail particularly of Hooke in whose household it seemed to be decidedly risky to be young and female even if you were his niece with rather less of Halley s life Both men were polymaths to a far greater extent than I had realised for example I had no idea how much architecture Hooke was responsible for including designing some of Wren s churches and coming up with the basic concept behind the St Paul s dome He also did a considerable amount of impressive work on astronomy and geology Similarly we all know of Halley s astronomical ventures but it was delightful to discover of his remarkable scientific exploration exploits as the only non navy man ever to become master and commander of a Royal Navy ship Wonderful stuff which the Gribbins bring to life in a style that is sometimes wry and always engaging. Out of the shadow of a gianteth What was familiar having read a lot about Newton was these two men s interactions with the giant of the book s title Halley came off far better of the two as a far diplomatic character he seemed better able to deal with Newton s caprices and was famously responsible for Newton s great Principia being published. Out of the shadow of a giantknight lyrics Hooke of course had a very rocky relationship with Newton For some time after Newton s death this was portrayed very much from the winner Newton s side The Gribbins redress the balance showing just how much Hooke contributed If anything they are so fair to Hooke that they go a bit too far the other way taking every opportunity to stick the knife into Newton but giving Hooke who I suspect was an equally difficult character the benefit of the doubt There s no doubt that Newton claimed for his own or failed to acknowledge contributions from Hooke but there seemed less effort to show where Hooke or Halley might have done the same for example Halley s ideas on demographics were surely to some extent based on Graunt s but he isn t mentioned Two examples of showing perhaps unfair favour to Hooke the Gribbins are very sarcastic about Newton s waffly fluid ideas as a possible explanation of how gravity works but don t point out that all the attempts of the period were either based on fluid concepts or streams of particles Hooke s attraction isn t an explanation at all but merely an observation of its effect and was much criticised via Newton s use of it at the time We are also told that Newton s first law of motion was Hooke s of course except it was hardly novel as it came from Hooke Galileo came close to it and even Aristotle implied it if only to show why he thought a vacuum was untenable. Out of the shadow of a giantdead However I don t want to make too much of the bias towards Hooke The contribution Hooke made certainly needs rebalancing if you take the popular view that still persists of Newton being the stand out super genius of his era As the Gribbins point out Newton was a superb mathematician this is why I d like Wallis introduced for comparison but a less imaginative physicist than Hooke. Out of the shadow of a giant biography chapter 1 Altogether then a great opportunity to find out about the sheer breadth of achievement of these two remarkable figures and to bring them out from under Newton s shadow Recommended John Gribbin Hooke deserved better John Gribbin After I accepted the premis that Isaac Newton was a nutbag and a paranoid and vengeful mathematician alchemist and probably took Robert Hookes ideas as his own lived long after his rival and dropped his portrait down the Royal Society s privy then the exclamation marks and asides and partisan tone got up my nose I get it OK It is from about this point in the history of science that I start to struggle the inverse square law leaves me cold I must have a medieval mind much like Newton before Hooke and believe the universe if full of magical fluidy swirls A good book but a little childish and dotty with asterix John Gribbin Is Isaac Newton over rated This is the question that the book ultimately asks and I enjoyed how the authors answered it From the book descriptions I thought that this book would be similar to an alternative history a sort of what would have happened had Isaac Newton not been born would science have grown the way it did Authors John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin didn t take this approach but instead wrote two interlacing biographies of Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley two great leaders of the scientific revolution The biographies are very good and it was great to have these scientists brought out of the shadow of Isaac Newton I recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of science. Out of the shadow of a giant book pdf 5 upping it to 4 I had no idea that Newton was such a jerk I learned a lot about this period in the history of science but I was occasionally annoyed by the multiple We re only mentioning topic X right now but we ll get back to it later There must have been a similar formulation used at least 10 times in this book Still overall entertaining John Gribbin A really informative and interesting view into Hooke and Halley s lives which have been passed over frequently in science history Though a little dense I really enjoyed the combination of scientific discovery and personal lives and squabbles Gribbin does an excellent job of humanizing everyone involved We tend to think of historical scientists as one dimensional only in the light of their noteworthy accomplishments but Gribbin goes deep into both the personal lives and the non scientific achievements of Hooke Halley and many others My primary gripe with the book is some of the blanket assumptions made about certain individuals Gribbin seems to have made up his mind about Newton in particular and while there is definitely much to complain about some of his claims are discarded exclusively because they came from Newton a known liar John Gribbin Excellent view into under credited scientists and gave me new appreciation of now shadowy figures of science we may never know of. Out of the shadow of a giantknight lyrics It goes on a bit too long with the justified evidence of Newton s villainous nature All well presented but the I read historical scientific biographies of scholars the I dread the seemingly inevitable slog of credit stealing squabbling and general childishness of all Also disappointed but not surprised of the common use of domestic hires and underage incest that is inevitable when documenting any truthful history of the general male population For some reason I maintain some underlying dream that higher evolved intelligences would also naturally have evolved higher emotional intelligence towards fellow humans but the second statement already listed above about general childishness should prevent such delusions John Gribbin I really enjoyed this book I did not know all of Hooke s and Halley s contributions to science and culture in general In particular I was not aware that Hooke came up with the inverse square law of gravitation before Newton. Out of the shadow of a giantdead The descriptions at the very end of Halley s observations of the transits of Mercury and Venus and the solar eclipse of 1715 were very cool The determination of the decreasing radius of the sun is amazing John Gribbin In this book the authors show that Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley do not get the credit they deserve and Isaac Newton stole some of Hooke s ideas Full review John Gribbin 
.
| Out of the Shadow of a Giant: Hooke, Halley, and the Birth of Science By John Gribbin |
| 0300226756 |
| 9780300226751 |
| English |
| 328 |
| Hardcover |
| book out of the shadow of a giant dragon |
| shadow of the giant audiobook |
| out of the shadow of a giant book review |
| out of the shadow of a giant book pdf |
| out of the shadow of a giant book summary |
| out of the shadow of a giant book trailer |
| pdf out of the shadow of a giant book |
| pdf out of the shadow of a giant pdf |
| out of the shadow of a giant pdf download |
| out of the shadow of a giant pdf free |
| out of the shadow of a giant pdf free download |
| epub out of the shadow of a giant book |
| out of the shadow of a giant epub ebook |
| out of the shadow of a giant epub ebook free download |
| out of the shadow of a giant epub ebook free |