The Science Book

10 INTRODUCTION

THE BEGINNING

OF SCIENCE

600 BCE–1400 CE

20 Eclipses of the Sun can
be predicted
Thales of Miletus

21 Now hear the fourfold
roots of everything
Empedocles

22 Measuring the
circumference of Earth
Eratosthenes

23 The human is related
to the lower beings
Al-Tusi

24 A floating object displaces
its own volume in liquid
Archimedes

26 The Sun is like fire, the
Moon is like water
Zhang Heng

28 Light travels in straight
lines into our eyes
Alhazen

SCIENTIFIC

REVOLUTION

1400–

34 At the center of

everything is the Sun

Nicolaus Copernicus

40 The orbit of every planet

is an ellipse

Johannes Kepler

42 A falling body

accelerates uniformly

Galileo Galilei

44 The globe of the Earth

is a magnet

William Gilbert

45 Not by arguing, but by

trying Francis Bacon

46 Touching the spring of

the air Robert Boyle

50 Is light a particle

or a wave?

Christiaan Huygens

52 The first observation of

a transit of Venus

Jeremiah Horrocks

53 Organisms develop in

a series of steps

Jan Swammerdam

54 All living things are

composed of cells

Robert Hooke

CONTENTS

55 Layers of rock form on top

of one another

Nicolas Steno

56 Microscopic observations

of animalcules

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

58 Measuring the speed

of light

Ole Rømer

60 One species never springs

from the seed of another

John Ray

62 Gravity affects everything

in the universe

Isaac Newton