Tag: Edward Dolnick

  • Leeuwenhoek and sperm cells

    A quote from The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World by Edward Dolnick ‘Leeuwenhoek jumped up from his bed one night, “immediately after ejaculation before six beats of the pulse had intervened,” and raced to his microscope. There he became the first person ever to see sperm cells.…

  • The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge

    A few quotes from Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World ‘The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, the formal name of this grab-bag collection of geniuses, misfits, and eccentrics, was by most accounts the first official scientific organization in the…

  • God-the-mathematician and Great Chain of Being

    Quotes from Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, Chapter Nineteen From Earthworms to Angels ‘But the renewed emphasis on God-the-mathematician came mostly by way of a different, stranger path. One of the seventeenth century’s most deeply held beliefs had to do with the so-called…

  • Mathematics as Escape

    Quotes from Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, Chapter Twenty-One “Shuddering Before the Beautiful” ‘For the mathematically minded, the notion of glimpsing God’s plan has always exerted a hypnotic pull. The seduction is twofold. On the one hand, delving into the world’s mathematical secrets…

  • Scientists and History

    Quotes from Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World p. 56-57 ‘Scientists tend to have little interest in history, even the history of their own subject. They turn to the past only to pluck out the discoveries and insights that turned out to be fruitful…

  • Newton had Cracked the Code

    Quotes from Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World p. 36 ‘The picture of history was completely false, but Newton and many others had boundless faith in what they called “the wisdom of the ancients”. (The belief fit neatly with the doctrine that the world…