The Clockwork Universe
In the late seventeenth century, chaos and disease reigned. Streets overflowed with filth and the murder rate was five times higher than it is today. Sickness was divine punishment, astronomy and astrology were indistinguishable, and the world's most brilliant, ambitious, and curious scientists were tormented by contradiction. They believed in angels, devils, and alchemy, yet also believed that the universe followed precise mathematical laws that were as intricate and perfectly regulated as the mechanisms of a great clock. The Clockwork Universe captures these thinkers as they wrestled with nature's most sweeping mysteries.