The Clockwork Universe

This is the remarkable story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease, but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds whoever lived as they wrestled with nature’s most sweeping mysteries. In the seventeenth century—an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of London—when most people saw the world as falling apart, these earliest scientists saw a world of perfect order. They declared that, chaotic as it looked, the universe was, in fact, as intricate and perfectly regulated as a clock.