In this first book-length historiographical study of the Scientific Revolution, H. Floris Cohen examines the body of work on the intellectual, social, and cultural origins of early modern science. Cohen critically surveys a wide range of scholarship since the nineteenth century, offering new perspectives on how the Scientific Revolution changed forever the way we understand the natural world and our place in it.

Cohen's discussions range from scholarly interpretations of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, to the question of why the Scientific Revolution took place in seventeenth-century Western Europe, rather than in ancient Greece, China, or the Islamic world. Cohen contends that the emergence of early modern science was essential to the rise of the modern world, in the way it fostered advances in technology.

A valuable entrée to the literature on the Scientific Revolution, this book assesses both a controversial body of scholarship, and contributes to understanding how modern science came into the world.

H•弗洛里斯•科恩（H. Floris Cohen），1946年生，荷兰科学史家，曾任莱顿布尔哈夫博物馆馆长（1975－1982），特温特大学科学史教授（1982－2001），2007年起任乌德勒支大学比较科学史教授。其代表作有：《量化音乐：科学革命第一阶段的音乐科学》（Quan tifying Music. The Science of Music at the First Stage of the Scientific Revolution, 1580－1650，1984）、《科学革命的编史学研究》（The Scientific Revolution. A Historiographical Inquiry，1994）、《世界的重新创造：近代科学是如何产生的》（De herschepping van de wereld. Het ontstaan van de moderne natuurwetenschap verklaard，2007）、《近代科学如何产生：四种文明，一次17世纪的突破》（How Modern Science Came Into the World. Four Civilizations, One 17th Century Breakthrough，2010）等等。