Praise for The Fabric of the Heavens:

"I cannot remember when I last went through a book, any book, with such all-devouring zest. What is more, even the most complex technicalities are reduced to a positively crystalline clarity: If I can understand them, anyone can. The Fabric of the Heavens is, in every sense of the word, an eye-opener."Peter Green, The Yorkshire Post

"Not until the last chapter of the book is [the reader] allowed to think again wholly as a modern man has become accustomed, by common sense, to think. The discipline is admirably suited to the authors' task, and cunningly devised for the reader's edificationand, indeed, for his delight."Physics Today

Praise for The Architecture of Matter:

"The Architecture of Matter is to be warmly recommended. It is that rare achievement, a lively book which at the same time takes the fullest possible advantage of scholarly knowledge."Charles C. Gillespie, New York Times Book Review

"One is impressed by the felicity of the examples and by the lively clarity with which significant experiments and ideas are explained. . . . No other history of science is so consistently challenging."Scientific American

Praise for The Discovery of Time:

"A subject of absorbing interest . . . is presented not as a history of science, but as a chapter in the history of ideas from the ancient Greeks to our own time."Times Literary Supplement

Authors' Foreword

General Introduction: Cosmology

Part I: The Sources of the Old Order

1. Celestial Forecasting

The Sources

The Problems

The Background of the Problems

The Solution to the Problems

The Wider Issues

How the Babylonians Computed Conjunctions

2. The Invention of Theory

The Sources

The Background

The Character of Greek Theory

The First Theories

From Ingredients to Axioms

Plato's Geometrical Astronomy

3. The Premature Synthesis

Aristotle's Programme

Motion and Change

The Celestial Mechanism

The Size of the Earth's Sphere

4. Doubters and Heretics

Patching up the Dynamics

Amending the Astronomy

Aristarchos' Heliocentric Theory

5. Physics Loses Momentum

Four Questions

The Political Background to Late Greek Astronomy

The Scientific Background: The Retreat from Physics

The Scientific Background: An Acquisition

Ptolemy's Mathematical Astronomy

The Wider Revolt against Philosophy

Archimedes and the Circle

Part II: The New Perspective and Its Consequences

6. The Interregnum

The Roundabout Journey

The Mediaeval Revival

The Background to Copernicus

Mediaeval Arguments about the Moving Earth

Copernicus: His Aim and his Theory

Copernicus: His Achievement

7. Preparing the Ground

The Background of the New Science

The Work of Tycho Brahe

Galileo's Telescopic Discoveries

Johann Kepler's Astronomical Physics

8. The Creation of Mechanics

The Change from Aristotle to Newton

Treating Motion Mathematically

Motion and Force

The New Ideal: Straight-Line Motion

9. The New Picture Takes Shape

The Man and his Task

Newton's Argument

The Character of Newton's Achievement

The Unity of Craft and Theory

10. The Widening Horizon

The Loose Ends: (1) Planetary Inequalities

The Loose Ends: (2) The Mechanism of Gravity

The Larger-Scale Picture

The Wider Influences of Newton

Certainty and Scientific Theory

Index