Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

32. Ibid., page 208. See Moynahan, Op. cit., page 439, for the different attitudes to scripture as between Galileo and Newton. Unlike Galileo, Newton did not feel ‘confined’.

33. J. D. Bernal, Extension Op. cit. page 209.

34. Schmuel Shanbursky (edited, introduced and selected by), Physical Thought from the Presocratics to the Quantum Physicists, London: Hutchinson, 1974, pages 310–213.

35. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., page 212.

36. Shanbursky (editor), Op. cit., pages 269 and 302. G. MacDonald Ross, Leibniz, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984, page 31, for the division of the calculus into differentiation and integration.

37. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., page 217.

38. For an excellent, edited version of Newton’s work on ‘opticks’, see Shanbursky (editor), Op. cit., pages 172 and 248; see also R. E. Peierls, The Laws of Nature, London: Allen & Unwin, 1955, pages 24 and 43.

39. There was another – very different, rather more prosaic – reason for interest in the prism. The quality of cut glass was improving all the time and as a result there was a boom in chandeliers. Among their other attractions, they glittered in different colours. Alan Macfarlane says that the scientific revolution would not have happened as it did, but for the development of glass. Fifteen of the great experiments could not have been performed without glass. Times Higher Educational Supplement, 21 June 2002, page 19.

40. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., page 221.

41. Shanbursky (editor), Op. cit., page 312.

42. Wightman, The Growth of Scientific Ideas, page 135. The next step forward was the realisation that light also travelled in waves. Christiaan Huygens, who made this particular breakthrough, was helped in his observations by means of a ‘magic crystal’, known as Iceland spar. Put a crystal of Iceland spar on the page of an open book, slide it over the paper, and you will observe that the print appears double. Moreover, as you slide the crystal around, the two images move relative to one another. Huygens was the first to grasp that the explanation lay in assuming that light is a wave. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., pages 225–227.

43. James Gleick, Isaac Newton, Op. cit., page 15.

44. Bernal, Extension, Op. cit., pages 235–236.

45. William A. Locy, The Growth of Biology, London: G. Bell, 1925, pages 153–154.

46. Carl Zimmer, The Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain and How It Changed the World, London: Heinemann, 2004, page 19.

47. Locy, Op. cit., page 155.

48. In the High Middle Ages, the church remained hostile to the dissection of human bodies, but this resistance was not always what it seemed. For example, in his bull, De Sepultis, issued by Pope Boniface in 1300, dissection of cadavers for scientific purposes was prohibited, but the primary purpose of the bull was to put a stop to the dismembering of Crusader bodies, which made them easier to carry home, but added to the risk of disease. Locy, Op. cit., pages 156–157. For Vesalius’ drawings, see Charles Singer, A History of Biology, London and New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1959, page 103.

49. Ibid., pages 82ff.

50. Locy, Op. cit., page 160

51. Zimmer, Op. cit., page 20.

52. Locy, Op. cit., page 168.

53. Ibid., pages 169ff. See also William S. Beck, Modern Science and the Nature of Life, London: Macmillan, 1958, page 61, for the fall of Galenism.

54. Locy, Op. cit., page 174. See also Zimmer, Op. cit., page 21, for how all this changed ideas about the soul.

55. Locy, Op. cit., pages 175–176.

56. Arthur Roch (editor), The Origins and Growth of Biology, London: Penguin, 1964, pages 178 and 185; and Zimmer, Op. cit., page 66.

57. Locy, Op. cit., page 184. Roch (editor), Op. cit., page 175, has an extract on Harvey’s motives in publishing his book.

58. He also refers twice to a magnifying glass.

59. Locy, Op. cit., page 187.

60. Ibid., page 188; and Zimmer, Op. cit., page 69.

61. Though see Zimmer, Op. cit., page 69, for some mistakes of Harvey.

62. Locy, Op. cit., page 196.

63. Ibid., page 197.

64. Roch (editor), Op. cit., pages 100–101.

65. Locy, Op. cit., page 201.

66. Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982, page 138.

67. Locy, Op. cit., page 208.

68. Ibid., page 211.