Describes advances in scientific knowledge that occurred during the Renaissance in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries.

In this work, the author has crafted both a work of history and a story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book...

"A myth-shattering view of the medieval Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations, which preceded-and enabled-the European Renaissance. The Arabic legacy of science and philosophy has long been hidden from the West. British-Iraqi physicist Jim Al-Khalili unveils that legacy to fascinating effect by returning to its roots in the hubs of Arab innovation that would advance science and jump-start the European Renaissance. Inspired by the Koranic injunction...

For more than thirty years-half his life-he was obsessively devoted to investigating Everything in the natural world. Nothing escaped his interest-how our eyes see, why the sky is blue, what forces build mountains, how light travels, where water comes from, and-most fascinating of all to Leonardo-the inner workings of the human body. Nothing stopped him. It was illegal to dissect human corpses, so he did autopsies in secret, even devising a clever...