Just finished (after several breaks) David Wootton's
The Invention of Science, a fascinating account on what exactly went on during the Scientific Revolution, and what we mean when we talk about a Revolution.
As he said, in the 17th century, a "learned man" knew about witches, and werewolves (although there's none in England, of course, but you can find them in Belgium), and how mice spontaneously appear in bundles of straw. Everyone knows that the corpse of a murdered man will bleed in the presence of its murderer, or that placing an ointment on a dagger will cure the wound that this dagger made. And he even knows why that happens, because of one of the four purposes of thing, which the ancients knew all about.
In the 18th century, the same well-educated may have looked thru a telescope and knows well that the earth orbits the sun. No one he knows believe in witches, and any who did would probably be soundly mocked. The world is mechanistic, and progress is everywhere.
Along the way, you pick up fascinating stuff, notably why the vocabulary of science is rife with legal terms and constructions, and how people that were really smart could completely say things that were nuts, and even that they knew were nuts.
Highly recommended, if you want to understand how we go from there to here... and how you could go back.
Like that
