I. Bernard Cohen

Howard Hathaway Aiken (1900-1973) was a major figure of the early digital era. He is best known for his first machine, the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator or Harvard Mark I, conceived in 1937 and put into operation in 1944. But he also made significant contributions to the development of applications for the new machines and to the creation of a university curriculum for computer science. This biography of Aiken, by a major historian of science who was also a colleague of Aiken's at Harvard, offers a clear and often entertaining introduction to Aiken and his times.

For Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison, science was an integral part of life -- including political life. This is the story of their scientific education and of how they employed that knowledge in shaping the political issues of the day, incorporating scientific reasoning even into the Constitution. General readers, students of American history, and professional historians alike will profit from reading this engaging presentation of an aspect of American history conspicuously absent from the usual textbooks and popular presentations of the political thought of early America. - Back cover.

Examines the scientific work of Benjamin Franklin in fields ranging from heat to astronomy ; provides accounts of the theoretical backgroung of his science, the experiments he performed, and their influence throughout Europe and the U.S.

This volume presents Professor Cohen's original interpretation of the revolution that marked the beginnings of modern science and set Newtonian science as the model for the highest level of achievement in other branches of science. It shows that Newton developed a special kind of relation between abstract mathematical constructs and the physical systems that we observe in the world around us by means of experiment and critical observation. The heart of the radical Newtonian style is the construction on the mind of a mathematical system that has some features in common with the physical world; this system was then modified when the deductions and conclusions drawn from it are tested against the physical universe. Using this system Newton was able to make his revolutionary innovations in celestial mechanics and, ultimately, create a new physics of central forces and the law of universal gravitation. Building on his analysis of Newton's methodology, Professor Cohen explores the fine structure of revolutionary change and scientific creativity in general. This is done by developing the concept of scientific change as a series of transformations of existing ideas. It is shown that such transformation is characteristic of many aspects of the sciences and that the concept of scientific change by transformation suggests a new way of examining the very nature of scientific creativity.

Deals with the establishment of modern science from the age of Leonardo, Vesalius, and Copernicus to the time of Lavoisier, Benjamin Franklin, Volta, Linnaeus, Albrecht von Haller, and Newton. Concludes with a section on science and society, which show us the the magnificent scientific achievement, Diderot's "Encyclopédie", and which culminates in the belief in progress and the limitlessness of science.

Relates man's search from the sixteenth century to the present for a physics to describe the dynamics of a universe in motion.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was one of the greatest scientists of all time, a thinker of extraordinary range and creativity who has left enduring legacies in mathematics and the natural sciences. In this volume a team of distinguished contributors examine all the main aspects of Newton's thought, including not only his approach to space, time, mechanics, and universal gravity in his Principia, his research in optics, and his contributions to mathematics, but also his more clandestine investigations into alchemy, theology, and prophecy, which have sometimes been overshadowed by his mathematical and scientific interests.