Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science

Acknowledgments
Introduction [Ronald L. Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis]
I. Medieval and Early Modern Science
- Myth 1. That There Was No Scientific Activity between Greek Antiquity and the Scientific Revolution [Michael H. Shank]
- Myth 2. That before Columbus, Geographers and Other Educated People Thought the Earth Was Flat [Lesley B. Cormack]
- Myth 3. That the Copernican Revolution Demoted the Status of the Earth [Michael N. Keas]
- Myth 4. That Alchemy and Astrology Were Superstitious Pursuits That Did Not Contribute to Science and Scientific Understanding [Lawrence M. Principe]
- Myth 5. That Galileo Publicly Refuted Aristotle’s Conclusions about Motion by Repeated Experiments Made from the Campanile of Pisa [John L. Heilbron]
- Myth 6. That the Apple Fell and Newton Invented the Law of Gravity, Thus Removing God from the Cosmos [Patricia Fara]
II. Nineteenth Century
- Myth 7. That Friedrich Wöhler’s Synthesis of Urea in 1828 Destroyed Vitalism and Gave Rise to Organic Chemistry [Peter J. Ramberg]
- Myth 8. That William Paley Raised Scientific Questions about Biological Origins That Were Eventually Answered by Charles Darwin [Adam R. Shapiro]
- Myth 9. That Nineteenth-Century Geologists Were Divided into Opposing Camps of Catastrophists and Uniformitarians [Julie Newell]
- Myth 10. That Lamarckian Evolution Relied Largely on Use and Disuse and That Darwin Rejected Lamarckian Mechanisms [Richard W. Burkhardt Jr.]
- Myth 11. That Darwin Worked on His Theory in Secret for Twenty Years, His Fears Causing Him to Delay Publication [Robert J. Richards]
- Myth 12. That Wallace’s and Darwin’s Explanations of Evolution Were Virtually the Same [Michael Ruse]
- Myth 13. That Darwinian Natural Selection Has Been “the Only Game in Town” [Nicolaas Rupke]
- Myth 14. That after Darwin (1871), Sexual Selection Was Largely Ignored until Robert Trivers (1972) Resurrected the Theory [Erika Lorraine Milam]
- Myth 15. That Louis Pasteur Disproved Spontaneous Generation on the Basis of Scientific Objectivity [Garland E. Allen]
- Myth 16. That Gregor Mendel Was a Lonely Pioneer of Genetics, Being Ahead of His Time [Kostas Kampourakis]
- Myth 17. That Social Darwinism Has Had a Profound Influence on Social Thought and Policy, Especially in the United States of America [Ronald L. Numbers]
III. Twentieth Century
- Myth 18. That the Michelson-Morley Experiment Paved the Way for the Special Theory of Relativity [Theodore Arabatzis and Kostas Gavroglu]
- Myth 19. That the Millikan Oil-Drop Experiment Was Simple and Straightforward [Mansoor Niaz]
- Myth 20. That Neo-Darwinism Defines Evolution as Random Mutation Plus Natural Selection [David J. Depew]
- Myth 21. That Melanism in Peppered Moths Is Not a Genuine Example of Evolution by Natural Selection [David W. Rudge]
- Myth 22. That Linus Pauling’s Discovery of the Molecular Basis of Sickle-Cell Anemia Revolutionized Medical Practice [Bruno J. Strasser]
- Myth 23. That the Soviet Launch of Sputnik Caused the Revamping of American Science Education [John L. Rudolph]
IV. Generalizations
- Myth 24. That Religion Has Typically Impeded the Progress of Science [Peter Harrison]
- Myth 25. That Science Has Been Largely a Solitary Enterprise [Kathryn M. Olesko]
- Myth 26. That the Scientific Method Accurately Reflects What Scientists Actually Do [Daniel P. Thurs]
- Myth 27. That a Clear Line of Demarcation Has Separated Science from Pseudoscience [Michael D. Gordin]
Notes
Contributors
Index

Edited by Ronald L. Numbers

Kostas Kampourakis

Product Details

Related Subjects

Related Links

Also Available As

Awards & Accolades

Recent News

From Our Blog

‘manifold glories of classical Greek and Latin’