The Clockwork Universe

Resumen del libro

A New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed science writer illuminates the true story of the birth of the modern era-a moment when a group of strange, tormented geniuses, including Isaac Newton, invented modern science and remade our understanding of the world

"Dolnick's book is lively and the characters are vivid." -New York Times Book Review

They inhabited a world of dirt and disease, but one group of driven, idiosyncratic geniuses pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. The Clockwork Universe blends history and science, capturing a portrait of some of the world's greatest thinkers as they wrestled with nature's most sweeping mysteries and paved the way for our understanding of the world today.

At the end of the seventeenth century-an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of London-many saw a world lapsing into chaos, but the men of the Royal Society saw a world of perfect order. This was the tail end of Shakespeare's century, when the natural and the supernatural still twined around each other. Disease was a punishment ordained by God, astronomy had not yet broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens. In a time when little was known and everything was new, these brilliant, ambitious, and curious men believed in angels, alchemy, and the devil, and they also believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws-declaring it to be as intricate and perfectly regulated as a clock. The contradiction tormented them as individuals, but their struggle would change the course of history for the world.

The Clockwork Universe is the fascinating and compelling story of the bewildered geniuses of the Royal Society, the men who made the modern world.

Biografía del autor

Edward Dolnick (Marblehead, Massachusetts, 1952) trabajó co mo redactor jefe de la sección de Ciencia de x{0026}lt;em The Boston Globex{0026}lt;/em y ha colaborado además en x{0026}lt;em The Atlanticx{0026}lt;/em , x{0026}lt;em The New York Times Magazinex{0026}lt;/em , x{0026}lt;em The Washington Postx{0026}lt;/em y otros destacados medios. Es autor de ocho libros.