The Day the Universe Changed: How Galileo's Telescope Changed the Truth

by James Burke

In The Day the Universe Changed, James Burke examines eight periods in history when our view of the world shifted in the eleventh century, when extraordinary discoveries were made by Spanish crusaders; in fourteenth-century Florence, where perspective in painting emerged; in the fifteenth century, when the advent of the printing press shook the foundations of an oral society; in the sixteenth century, when gunnery developments triggered the birth of modern science; in the early eighteenth century, when hot English summers brought on the Industrial Revolution; in the battlefield surgery stations of the French revolutionary armies, where people first became statistics; in the nineteenth century, when the discovery of dinosaur fossils led to the theory of evolution; and in the 1820s, when electrical experiments heralded the end of scientific certainty.
Based on the popular television documentary series, The Day the Universe Changed is a bestselling history that challenges the reader to decide whether there is absolute knowledge to discover - or whether the universe is "ultimately what we say it is."

Genres: Science, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History Of Science, Technology, Physics

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

James Burke is a Northern Irish science historian, author and television producer best known for his documentary television series called Connections, focusing on the history of science and technology leavened with a sense of humour.

Reviews

[وائل المنعم · Rating 5 out of 5]

ليس تعليقا على الكتاب - وهو بالمناسبة كتاب رائع وممتع - ولكن فرصة لحكاية قصة حقيقية حزينة طريفة تخص نسختي من هذا الكتاب.

كنت قد أعرت نسختي لأحد أصدقائي الذي تركها بسيارته يوما وإذ بالسيارة تسرق وبعد دفع الفدية استعاد السيارة ولكن بدون الكتاب. يبدو أن اللص المثقف أو أحمد راتب "آخر الرجال المحترمين" قرر الإحتفاظ به. ولذلك ومن هذا المنبر أوجه نداء لكل الأعضاء الأفاضل ان يساعدوني في البحث عن نسختي لدى باعة الكتب القديمة - لا أحلم بأن يكون اللص المثقف شخصيا عضو معنا هنا ويتكرم بإعادة الكتاب لي - النسخة قديمة بها لزق شفاف على الغلاف ومليئة بخطوط وتعليقات على الحواشي بقلم أحمر جاف.

وفي النهاية نصيحة لكل الأصدقاء بعدم ترك كتبهم بسياراتهم خصوصا لو كانت كتب مستعارة.

[Douglas Bittinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely *love* this book. It may well be the only non-fiction book that I have ever said this about, but I found so much entertainment as well as a wealth of education in it that it deserves this banner. Mr Burke takes historically significant moments - some I knew about and some I didn't - and shows us just how these moments turned the entire Universe of knowledge on it's ear. Even if we didn't see it at the time. It is very thought provoking and really opened my eyes to the stodgy way we now think and assume that the "known scientific facts" are irrefutable. What delightful vanity!

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written book on the overly broad topic of the history of science.

The period covered in this book up until the Newton era (17th century) was quite fascinating, especially the focus on Florence which happens to be my favorite city.

This book was published in 1995 but despite its age it is still a good read. There are better books out there covering modern science however (1700 and later).

4 stars.

[Rihab · Rating 3 out of 5]

يتحدث الكتاب عن لحظات التغيير في العالم على مر التاريخ مظهرا لنا التطور العلمي في مختلف مجالات.
تحدث الكاتب عن العالم كيف تغيير بفعل الاحداث التاريخية ليخبرنا عن الشخصيات المهمة التي مرت بها للنهضة العلمية ليمر للانجازات القدامى للتطورات المهمة لنشر العلم و الثقافات
كتاب ممتع و استمتعت به جدا.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe this was the companion book to the wonderful PBS Series of the same title hosted by James Burke (in the 1980's). In it, he pinpoints pinnacle points in scientific history that changed the world as we know it (hopefully you weren't reading that last sentence aloud).

What I love most about this book is that Mr Burke understands that no Scientific "discovery" or theory actually drops from a tree like Newton's apple (no matter how tasty that apple is). He does a wonderful job rewinding from the point of "discovery" to illuminate the culture and people who came before to create just the right atmosphere for "discovery" (I swear I'm going to stop putting that word in quotations). He also carries the narrative long after the discovery to show us the effects it's still having on us today.

We are (in many ways) children of these discoveries. We are able to imagine a Universe where Earth is not the center because of men like Copernicus and Galileo, and that notion changes our point of view. More controversially, men like Darwin have shown us a Universe where "Man" is not the center, and this point of view upsets some people so much that they cannot live in such a world (and so deny it's existence even to this day).

These are but two examples from the book. I'm always surprised it isn't required reading in all colleges (perhaps it isn't boring enough), but then-- what do I know? Perhaps there are better text books out there. I just can't imagine them.

[Cara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't like this book because James Burke has a huge underlying bias: There is no real truth. I do agree with his idea that our perspective and beliefs shape the way we see the world, and that science and knowledge of the world influences how we see the world around us. Ironically, the reason I didn't like his book is his own bias against Christianity. Burke seems to portray the idea that since our understanding of the truth is always changing, we cannot rely on our beliefs and that there is no real truth. He talks about the christian belief as an ancient belief that no longer has any place in our enlightened times - this seems to be his whole underlying theme. I am using this book as a reference to show that it is important to get different perspectives on historical event: for, his portrayal of the history of Galileo and Darwin and Luther in their stories with the world and influence on the Church is different than the story given from the Catholic perspective. He applauds Darwin for helping to overcome the lies in the church, so that we could do away with the christian religion altogether. Different Historical accounts will have different things they look at, different viewpoints and biases, so it is good to get many perspectives and accounts. This is a good example of why we should read about different perspectives of historic events in order to get a better picture and make our own judgement.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is a companion to the 1980s BBC series by James Burke, The Day The Universe Changed. Burke episodically walks us through some of the turning points in the development and educational evolution of man. The BBC series (shown on PBS in the 80's) is enlightening, provocative, and very entertaining. The book, however, is dry by comparison, and lacks Burke's personal entertaining style and wit.
You can see the BBC series on Youtube; you can also buy the DVD set for home TV viewing, about $100 but worth it. It used to be available exclusively to educational institutions.

[Jason X · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burke quickly covers a wide period of history, philosophy, religion, and science, hitting mostly highlights. Burke's closing summation is outstanding.

At the close, Burke ties everything together elegantly, leaving the reader with unanswered questions, but still satisfied. I especially connected with his observation that our current structures for explaining reality are limited by contemporary methods, truths, and instruments. That we all live a contemporary truth to be replaced is, to me, a fine place to be. That keeps me hopeful for the future and that the World can be a better place. If Burke's claim that discovery is invention and knowledge is man-made, then we are limited only by our imagination.

Audiobook grade B-. Burke is a fine professorial narrator. Like other Overdrive recordings, there were audio glitches.

[فيصل بوعقة · Rating 4 out of 5]

عندما تغيّر العالم - جيمس بيرك

منذ أن وجد الإنسان على الأرض، اضطر للتعامل والتأقلم مع الظروف المحيطة به... وبقيت بعض الظواهر الطبيعية مستعصية على الفهم.. فعمد إلى تفسيرها بتفسيرات نظرية ميتافيزيقية وتبناها كما هي، نظرية فقط : فالبرق هو غضب الآلهة والنجوم هي عيونها.
وأثناء اقامته في الكهوف، تعلم الإنسان أن يعيش بين حيطان اربع لحمايته، وبناء على هذه المعرفة النظرية تمكن أن "يبني" المنازل، ومن هنا ظهرت ثنائية النظرية والتجربة.
ومنذ ذلك الحين، أصبح الإنسان يضع " النظرية" استنادا لخبرته الحسية عن طريق الحواس ثم يجري التجربة لـ"إثبات نظريته". ويكون ناتج التجربة معلومة مبنية تماما على النظرية السابقة سواء بالدحض أو الإثبات، وبالتالي فإن كل بنية معرفية تتركز على بنية معرفية سابقة.
ومع كل معلومة تنبثق من تجربة، يتغير العالم بل تتغير رؤيتنا نحن للعالم. فالإنسان لم يعد يعتقد بأن البرق هو غضب الآلهة.
هذا الكتاب يتجول في أروقة التاريخ، مركزا على سيرورة التطور المعرفي للعالم, متوقفا عند ثماني محطات تاريخية شكلت منعرجا ونقطة تحول للمعارف الإنسانية، موضحا حقيقة تطور العلوم والمعارف، ونسبية الحقيقة، حيث ما كان مسلما به كحقيقة سابقا أصبح خرافة اليوم، وكذلك في المستقبل القريب. ويبحث من خلال هذا العرض التاريخي حوافز تطور المعرفة.
كتاب رائع جداً

[Justyna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I cannot really tell what is the purpose of this book. If you are ignorant, you won't get any better understanding, besides few anecdotes served on some surreal plate, that will try convince you, that every discovery was just blind luck without any reason (in one place of the book it is even directly stated). If you already have basic knowledge of given subject, you won't get any better information.
It is just quick jumping on various discoveries with uneven attention (indexing is explained in details, but discoveries in physics are barely touched). Huge minus for almost omitting XIX and XX century discoveries (very brief summary of electromagnetism and relativity) and those centuries define our current life.
I understand, the author is not physicist, but feeling that he has no idea, what he is writing about, made me convinced that I am reading some high school essay retyped poorly from Wikipedia. Long sentences, that sometimes lead who-knows where, cut off relations between subjects in the middle of the chapter, I didn't like that.
Last chapter is just pure chaos - it looks like summary of previous chapters, then it moves into "there is no truth" wild assumptions and interpretations, then injects some new discoveries in the end. Weird, looks like unedited notes.
Not worth any minute of your life, unless you want to write a PhD thesis explaining its high rating.

[Allen McDonnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even better than the video version

I purchased this volume because the BBC video portrayal hosted by the author was very influential on myself as an amateur historian. This volume takes great pains to show how over the course of history the way we view the structure of the Universal Reality has changed, again and again and yet again. What we think we know about the Universe is entirely dependent on our cultural belief structures. A young person from a strict religious community who goes off to university and becomes an atheist undergoes a revolutionary change in their world view. By the same token cultures that reject one interpretation of reality for a time, like germ theory of disease, experience a fundamental change when that theory comes to be accepted by the culture.

[Maynard Handley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing new here.

If you're unfamiliar with the history of science, I guess this is a fairly quick summary. But for anyone who knows anything about this material, there's nothing new here --- no original insights, no unexpected reframing of issues. A reasonable book to give to a friend who wants to know this material, but nothing more than that.

[Mike Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burke’s work discusses changes in how man views the world from the Middle Ages up to the present and argues that knowledge is always relative as there is inevitably something that we don’t know yet. Thus, each new intellectual breakthrough modifies how man looks at the world. I found Burke’s tendency to label specific events as extraordinarily important to be somewhat arbitrary. He seems to argue that if so and so didn’t discover this, we would still be in the dark ages.
In his introduction, he demonstrates how the established civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia tended to attribute unknowns to gods due to each region’s relative wealthy and plenty. In contrast, the Ionian Greeks had to struggle to survive and were thus more interested in finding out a rational explanation for events, so they could be more successful in their more difficult environment of islands with few natural resources. They took knowledge from the other civilizations and applied it in more practical terms to improve their situation. Thus, Burke argues convincingly that the ancient Greeks started the world on the path of rational scientific inquiry.
After the fall of Rome and the loss of most Greek and Roman knowledge, St. Augustine offered escape to the spiritual life in monasteries where credo ut intelligam (understanding only comes through belief). Thus, belief was more important than earthly knowledge guided the thinking of Europeans through the Dark Ages. Martianus Capella, the Carthaginian pro-consul at the fall of Rome, condensed the imperial school curriculum into what became the seven liberal arts: rhetoric, grammar, argument, music, geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy, which became the standard curriculum for the next six centuries. During this period, only monks could read by living in a monastery in a sea of ignorance.
When Charlemagne rose to power, he cracked down on corruption in the monasteries and church to provide a standard religious practice across his empire. In every monastery and cathedral, Charlemagne set up literacy schools and used the seven liberal arts as the curriculum. From the middle of the 8th century onwards, the liberal arts were taught all over Europe. The English scholar Alcuin was brought over from York to head the Palace School at Aachen. Probably Alcuin standardized writing through the development of Carolingian miniscule, a type clear script which was one day to become the model for modern upper and lower case lettering. The Royal Portal of the cathedral at Chartres, sculptors would place an allegory of the trivium and quadrivium as the three and four subject divisions of the curriculum became known. The material for learning had been kept alive by the scriptoria of the monasteries. But Roman numerals made multiplication and division nearly impossible. To the early medieval mind, the universe of Augustine was static and unchanging.
But growing economic forces at work in the new towns brought stress to this viewpoint. The new urban dweller was free of the feudal duties of peasants in the countryside. Stadtluft macht frei. The air of the town makes you free. After a statutory period of residence, a serf there would become a freeman. Merchant who had no place in the feudal hierarchy now had money to buy social status. As aristocrats began to commute their serfs’ dues from service to cash, money began to weaken the old social structure. Ambition began to express itself in outward show. The word “ambition” took on common usage for the first time. Increased cash circulation strengthened the king’s position. Also, anti-Semitism began to increase. Money-lending, which was forbidden by the Christian Church, was permitted under Jewish law, and the Jews, prevented form owning land, turned to the new business currency. Many of them grew rich and were resented. The abacus, introduced to Europe at the beginning of the 11th century had been brought to northern Europe from Spain by Gerbert of Aurillac, a teacher at the Reims cathedral school who was to become Pope Sylvester II in 999. The abacus made math easy by introducing the decimal system of units, tens, hundreds, and so on. Expertise with the abacus was highly prized. The earlier, apathetic view of the world began to change.
The old ways were no longer adequate. Most acutely felt with regard to the lack of good law and of people qualified to administer it. Law had always been part of the training in the trivium, whose rhetoric course was subdivided into demonstrative, deliberative, and judicial argument. The great compendium of Roman law created by the Emperor Justinian and known as the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Laws) had been last since 603. There had also been a key to the laws, the Digest, which contained a summary of all of the main points. Only two copies of the Digest had survived and their whereabouts were unknown. In 1076, a liberal arts teacher called Irnerius found a copy of the Digest, most probably in the library of the Royal Law School in Ravenna. The discovery of the Digest was of major importance in Western European history because it put all Roman law into the hands of both the Church and the citizen. What was of even greater importance was the way in which the Digest was edited. The Digest was extremely complex and difficult to understand. Irnerius made the Digest easier to understand by glossing it, which involved the addition of notes, analyses, and commentaries in the margin of a manuscript. These notes were used by teachers to interpret the text to students.
Bologna had many students being situated at a central crossroads in northern Italy, ideally placed for international access. The city also benefited from the quarrel between the Pope and the Emperor and had relative independence from both. This freedom helped it to develop a secular dynamism that made it both rich and liberal. Soon there were more foreign law students than natives in Bolgna. This new study of the law challenged the old ways of visiting a priest to pray for signs or using trial by combat or throwing a suspect into a river while tied up or relying on astrologers. Now jurisprudence used a rational and analytical approach. Bologna became the seat of the world’s first university, a unique medieval institution. The university was run by the students who hired teachers and set the rules.
Then, in 1085, the Arab citadel of Toledo fell to Spain and the victorious Christians found a literacy treasure of ancient Greek writings as well as Arab innovations such as the astrolabe which the Arabs could tell the date and hour from the position of certain stars. Movable sights on the instrument were aligned with the star and the relevant numbers and signs were read of from windows or at the circumference. The Arabs also used paper, unknown in the West. Internal rifts in the Arab power structure led to the end of the Umayyads in Spain. One of the first European scholars to arrive was Adelard from Bath. He returned to England with his translated texts, the most important of his baggage was the Latin version of an Arab translation of Euclid’s geometry. Adelard acquired the secular, investigative approach of the Arabs. His insights convinced him of the power of reasoning over blind respect for past authority. As more translators arrived, the texts uncovered addressed medicine, astronomy, pharmacology, psychology, physics, mathematics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, music, meteorology, geography, mechanics, hydrostatics, navigation, and history. But what caused the intellectual bombshell to explode was the philosophy that came with it, Aristotle’s system of nature and the logic of argument. Especially important was the work of the Persian doctor Avicenna (Ibn Sina), which was a encyclopedia of Aristotle’s philosophy. Through Avicenna, Europeans leaders of the magic power of argument by syllogism, the use of which would avoid erroneous and illogical conclusions. It involved both deduction and induction. The collection of Aristotle’s works on logic became known as the Organon (the tool). In Paris a Breton philosopher called Pierre Abelard used the dialectical logic to the Holy Scriptures and found inconsistencies in the accepted interpretation of 168 statements from the Bible.
By this time, law had split into two types, civil and canon. A major difficulty of canon law was that of marriage, the key to inheritance. A woman might marry several times, each time taking with her a complicated dowry of property that had originally belonged to one of her husbands’ families. The act of marriage itself was extremely informal. More often than not it was not even conducted in a church. In civil law, problems were typically secular affairs such as boundary disputes, non-payment of debts, ownership of property, individual and community rights.
In the early years of the 13th century, commentaries on Aristotle arrived in Europe from the Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes in the West. He submitted all but divinely revealed truth to the cold light of reason. Where once man said understanding can only come from belief, now they argued belief can only come through understanding.
In the next chapter, Burke goes through the impact of the Black Death and the emergence of the Renaissance and perspective as well as the age of discovery. He talked about how the Florentines were able to use the decimal system to create a superior accounting method for its international banking efforts and how music and numbers were related, going back to Pythagoras. He makes a questionable comment that Florence instituted the first census in Europe, ignoring Roman census efforts as well as the Domesday book of William I. Burke also claims that guilds disappeared by the 14th century, whereas many still existed into the 17th century.
Burke then turns to the printing press and the Reformation as well as the controversy over geocentric vs. heliocentric systems and artillery and physics. Next, Burke addresses the Industrial Revolution and the advances in medicine, giving special credit to French achievements in the 19th century. In particular, he notes how medicine went from a patient-focused to a doctor-focused system. He then makes a questionable case for how Darwin’s theory did result in racism and imperialism. Finally, he ends with an analysis of 20th century developments in physics and quantum theory. While Burke’s work is not without faults, it has fascinating accounts of important developments of the Medieval Age and the Renaissance.

[Planxti's Imaginary World · Rating 5 out of 5]

5.0/5 Stars

This is a refreshing view of history.

Connecting the dots between observations that slowly pulled the West out of the medieval period lead to incredible strife and conflict.

Based off of observation these changing 'facts' destroyed lives, started wars, defied well established religions, and forever changed what we know.

Without spoiling the book, the sacrifices and discoveries people made in the name of progress is both fascinating and captivating.

Very enlightening read.

[Amira Elsafty · Rating 5 out of 5]

الكتاب رائع وعرفت منه حاجات كتير جداً
حبيت أكتر شيئ فيه الجزء الخاص بتطور علم الفلك ولقيت نفسي بختار الكتاب اللي بعده عن نفس المجال "كتاب الكون العميق"♥️

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute delight, and a must-have for anyone interested in history, science, or - most importantly - the history of science.

I remember James Burke best from childhood, watching “Tomorrow’s World”, with its tag-team of Baxter, Burke, and Rodd - a sort of genteel, boffin’s equivalent of “Top Gear”’s Clarkson, May, and Hammond. From there, Burke moved on to solo series in which he abstrusely connected different discoveries to show their impact on the modern world. Prior to now, though, I had not read any of his books.

Burke is a supreme populariser of science, and eminently readable, to the point where this book is a real page-turner, with something fascinating on every page. The author’s squirrel mind leaps from topic to topic, linking and interweaving them all, so that seemingly isolated events are shown as being part of a giant matrix of cause and effect. His work in making science interesting for both layman and scientist alike places him alongside the great Carl Sagan (not something I say of many writers).

Burke does not shy away from scientific controversies, nor does he suggest that what we now think of as scientific ‘truth” is totally accurate. In fact, in the book’s final chapter, he goes so far as to point out how much scientific exploration and discovery has been dictated by the social and political mores of the times in which the work took place. He is also frequently equivocal about the good and bad points which science - or more particularly, its adherents - can evoke.

The book is even-handed in its treatment of science and religion to a surprising extent; similarly it does not mock early attempts at understanding the universe by philosophers, soothsayers, and astrologers. The author makes it clear that - although we have progressed far in our understanding - there is nothing which guarantees that our current scientific beliefs are any more true - they are simply the best fit for the evidence. In the final chapter, in fact, he drops the second shoe with his suggestion that our highly vaunted modern science may be no more accurate or definitive than the “sciences” which preceded it - renaissance science, hermeticism, and religion - as all of them have been shaped by the times and culture in which they were created. They become structures on which to hang phenomena, but in order to truly progress, sometimes a structure has to be discarded or adapted, and that can, indeed, change our entire view of the universe.

All in all, for its fascinating passage through history and the philosophy of science, its sheer readability, and the sense of excitement and wonder which the author imparts, the only reason I am giving this book five stars is that it’s impossible to give it six. One of the best popular science books I have ever read.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just remember being disappointed with Burke's sequels, like The Day the Universe Changed, and how he went into limbo.

---

Connections and it sequels
are really the only essential ones

[and some still wonder of the weakness with those sequels, I think that if the illustration is entertaining, and educational, it works. And it's a lot easier for Burke to have fewer mistakes when dealing with technological history, than the philosophical stuff which i quote below)


Connections (1978)
Connections 2 (1994)
Connections 3 (1997)
ReConnections (2004)

---

I don't think many have noticed that

The Real Thing from 1980 about human perception
connects nicely with The Day the Universe Changed in 1985.

'The title comes from the philosophical idea that the universe essentially only exists as one perceives it through what one knows; therefore, if one changes one's perception of the universe with new knowledge, one has essentially changed the universe itself. To illustrate this concept, James Burke tells the various stories of important scientific discoveries and technological advances and how they fundamentally altered how western civilization perceives the world.'

Some feel that Burke's Day the Universe Changed is a simplication of the invention process, and it dimisses how many inventors and inventions fail, and how development of any invention can take quite a number of people, and considerable amount time and effort to get things workable. Let's not even talk about how it might end up a flop on the marketplace.

Does Burke turn invention into a magic trick, where in each case, the magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat?

And does Burke overstate the positives, as well as the actual technology?
And does Burke distort history (and then does it even more with that perception stuff), and cherry pick the implications of technology?

A lot of this is a paraphrase of some of the reviews and reddit discussions i've seen about Burke.

just link everything together!
changes happenned so simply!
things are so easily connected!

one screwed up fact, definately hurts 'The Connection'

I think Deborah Fitzgerald in Isis summed up the Day the Universe Changed nicely:

"there are few ambiguities, false starts, errors of omission, or losers to progress"

So i think even with some flaws, Burke's Connections is worth it, but not much of his other stuff...
and that goes for his books

the scary thing is some reviews of Connections you get creepy comments like:

"history books will soon be rewritten to include these patterns of interconnecting events, inventions and discoveries leading to technological change"

---

And well I think Burke fails when he tries too hard to force history into some 'cohesive whole'.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Primitive man believed that the heavens were ruled by frightful demons and spirits, and that a giant dragon devoured the moon each night. Medieval man, convinced by the ancient Egyptian astronomers, thought that the moon, sun, and the planets revolved around the earth. Today we believe that the universe is governed by fixed and discoverable physical laws. But what about the man of the future? How many of our 'scientific' principles will he scoff at and denounce as crude superstitions?

"In The Day the Universe Changed James Burke argues that knowledge is a man-made artifact, and that when man's views of reality are changed by knowledge, reality itself changes. Armed with this provocative thesis, he charts a course from the Middle Ages to today, examining those critical periods in history when the ideas and institutions that have transformed man's understanding of the world were born.

The Day the Universe Changed takes as its starting point the rediscovery of the teachings of classical Greece in the eleventh century, which stimulated the passion for scientific learning and divided the medieval world from the modern world. Later chapters consider the rediscovery of perspective geometry in Renaissance Florence and its relation to the notion of individualism; the development of the printing press and the birth of propaganda; the study of cannon trajectories that led to the discovery of the law of gravity; the religious, agricultural, and economic causes of the Industrial Revolution; the pairing of medicine with statistics in Revolutionary France that allowed man to study himself in society; and the origins of evolution and its application in American, Nazi German, and Soviet societies. Finally and appropriately, Burke considers Heisenberg's fearful Uncertainty Principle, which challenges the rational, Newtonian view and suggests that the true nature of the universe may forever elude us.

"Systems of belief are discarded as new knowledge renders them apparently invalid. However, if each 'truth' is solid in its time, then is knowledge only what we make it? Is there absolute knowledge to find, or is the universe ultimately what we say it is? James Burke challenges the reader to decide, in this fascinating and original examination of our intellectual heritage."
~~front & back flaps

This is a fascinating book, however I watched the television series several times which made the book less interesting to me.

[kartik narayanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Day the Universe Changed” examines the history of science. James Burke talks us through various periods in our history starting from the 11th century on and shows us the evolution of science in various fields. These fields range from medicine to astronomy, relativity to natural history and so on.
The chapters/subjects covered are below.
The Way We Are: It Started with the Greeks
In the Light of the Above: Medieval Conflict – Faith & Reason
Point of View: Scientific Imagination in the Renaissance
A Matter of Fact: Printing Transforms Knowledge
Infinitely Reasonable: Science Revises the Heavens
Credit Where It’s Due: The Factory & Marketplace Revolution
What the Doctor Ordered: Social Impacts of New Medical Knowledge
Fit to Rule: Darwin’s Revolution
Making Waves: The New Physics – Newton Revised
Worlds Without End: Changing Knowledge, Changing Reality
This book is based on the BBC series, presented by James Burke, in the 1980s, which covered the same topics. The series is available on YouTube.
James Burke clearly demonstrates how we have moved from “Credo ut intelligam” ((I come to understanding only through belief) to “intelligo ut credam” (belief can come only through understanding). This is a fundamental shift in human behaviour. James Burke shows us how the tiniest innovation in one field by one person influenced or created a whole new area of science. In addition, There are tons of fascinating titbits which are interspersed in this book. This book opens up our mind to new concepts and help us appreciate how the various fields in science have come about in existence.
James Burke is a noted science historian who has written a slew of brilliant non-fiction books. I particularly loved ‘Changes’ which might be a more accessible book to the average person than this one.
I would highly recommend this book to all. If you are interested in science, this book is a must-read. If you find it hard to read, please watch the videos instead. I would put them on the same level as Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

[Susannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burke is a very clear, concise and intelligent writer who carefully chooses the events he believes to be the most signal in changing our understanding of the way the universe works. He ends his book with the thesis that since all facts and information are filtered through the societal understanding of the people who look for and interpret them, truth itself is relative, and the way we understand the universe today is not necessarily the final say. In fact, history would suggest that another change is coming. Supported by examples, though necessarily a top-level view, this book is a terrific overview of how "truth" itself can vary with new discovery and comprenhension.

[Mousa Alsabahi · Rating 5 out of 5]

الكتاب أشبه بفلم وثائقي -في الحقيقه هو مفرغ من فلم وثائقي- يحكي تاريخ العلم واهم المحطات والاشخاص التي مرت بها النهضه العلميه

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in the 1980’s when I was watching the original James Burke histories of Science/Culture television programs, I was a full on fan. His earlier sally: Connections, fascinated me with the way he could chain together inventions, the need for that invention and how this combined with that to get us to contemporary gizmos and wonderous technology. Literally from dirty underwear to the modern computer. .
Later came The Day The Universe Changed, the broadcasts for which this is the companion book. Again, Burke does a fine job of chaining together what people were thinking, with what new devices made possible. His larger point being that much of what we are taught as unknown to or inconceivable by other countries, cultures or times may have been thought of , then ignored because there was something about that time or place that failed to follow up with the potential represented by that new idea. His conclusion is that there is no human certainty (truth) about anything only a local greater or lessor appreciations for these notions over those.

Variations on the debate over who First discovered America, or an effort to apply relativity to everything. He makes his point, you can agree or not. Maybe Force does not equal Mass times Acceleration. “Force” may be the wrong word, and there are many learned arguments that we do not have a good definition of Mass.

In the 1980’a a lot of this seemed new and uniquely argued. Now there is a regular televised industry around these kinds of “never before known “factoids strung together in presentations of various aspects of history. Usually between various formulated ‘real ‘world competitions, usually cooking and haunted swamp cemeteries. Burke was among the first, but now it can read as stale even hackneyed.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a companion to the 10 part PBS television series with the same title, so I presume that the ten chapters in the book correspond to the content of the various episodes of the series. The premise of this history of innovation is to explore those inflection points in the history of Western Culture when our concept or understanding of the Universe changed in some significant way, with the goal of understanding the impacts these shifts had on the way people lived, worked, and believed.

From the discovery of the lost texts of the ancient Greek philosophers in the Arab library in Spain, which fostered a revolution in critical thought that challenged the view that Nature wasn't worth contemplating or trying to understand, to Newton's descriptions of gravity that seemed to suggest that all of the Universe was subject to precise mathematical description, to the uncertainty created by the discovery of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity, each chapter shows us how the prevailing world view impacted vast and diverse aspects of life and explains how the new discoveries changed all of that.

The final chapter is a lengthy discussion of the limitations of science to provide a final, definitive description of the Universe. All scientific investigation is governed by the framework that it operates within, and so the scope of what it can know is necessarily limited by the scop e of what can be known or understood from that point of view. It is a reminder that we never know as much as we think we do, and that at any time a new idea may radically change the framework, rendering much of what we thought we knew to be invalid. As this book shows, it has happened over and over through history, and it is certain to happen again.

[Afra Fath · Rating 3 out of 5]

يتحدث الكاتب عن لحظات التغيير في العالم على مر التاريخ مظهرا لنا التطور العلمي في مختلف المجالات.
وكيف تغير العالم بفعل الاحداث التاريخية بتناوله للشخصيات المهمة التي مرت بها النهضة العلمية.
وذلك التطور الزمني نتج عنه ولادة افكار جديدة، كلما نبثقت فكرة جديدة محت ما قبلها وحولته لخرافات واساطير. الا تلك الثوابت التي تتطور لا تغيير. فكل فكرة جديدة تثبت بالتجربة التي تثبت النظرية. وأن كل جديد اليوم هو قديم في المستقبل كاستمرارية للتغيرات الكونية.
يقول الكاتب نحن نتاج معارفنا، عندما تتغير البنية المعرفية نتغير نحن أيضا.
فيبحر بنا من هذا المنطلق عبر مقياس العلم والتجربة في أهم الابتكارات والاحداث التي اسهمت في تاريخ ومعالم الحضارة البشرية في التطور العالمي المعرفي لمجالات متعددة من فلسفة وفن وعمارة وصناعة والطب والفلك ��النقلة العلمية والصناعية الكبيرة حتى أكتشاف الة الطابعة وغيرها. من قبل الثورة الصناعية وحتى نهاية القرن التاسع عشر الميلادي. ويتناول تأثير الحضارة الاسلامية في الاندلس علي أوربا.
والملاحظ في رؤيته انها شملت تتبع المسار العلمي وربطه بالعمل. فهو يعتبر ان البنية الفكرية الكونية هي بنية مؤسسية منحها النظام التعليمي الاستمرارية . ومع ذلك فهو لا يملك منهج شامل لتفسير الحقائق في كل الازمان لانه بحث عن حقائق وقتية.
باختصار جميع الافكار في كل الازمان هي أفكار سليمة على قدم المساواة. فقط تتغير النظريات مع تغير الكون بمعنى ان الحقيقة نسبية.

[Sarah Bodaly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I once had a teacher say there were two types of people: those who liked history, and those who liked science. I initially wasn’t so sure I agreed with that; I liked both history and science. But – I liked physical science – geology and anatomy and biology and astronomy… Physics and all of that theoretical stuff – nope. So – I’m a history person.
If you’re a science person, who likes a little history on the side, you will enjoy this book. If you’re a history person who likes a little science on the side, move right along, and find yourself another book.
Galileo, Newton, Darwin, too … a vast percentage of this book is about the scientific discoveries that were beginning at the end of the Middle Ages, with some Renaissance art and archaeology stuff added in. In the scope of time, yes, they were important and pivotal moments, but . . . I read some reviews that said his BBC documentary was exponentially better than the book. 😉

[Joseph Carrabis · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is little doubt (to me) that James Burke is the God of How This Led To That. If you haven't seen or read Connections, add it to your must read/watch list as quickly as you can (and follow up by watching/reading). He followed up Connections with The Day the Universe Changed and it was an equally worthy read and watch.
I do not recommend Connections II and III. Marketing got involved (something Burke even mentioned in an interview).
But Connections and The Day the Universe Changed are excellent. Want to know how we got computers? Burke shows how an incident in the Fertile Crescent was necessary for computers to exist. Want to know how we got Television? Burke demonstrates how a the discovery of Lodestone made it possible.
Read them. Learn. Enjoy!

[Jason Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Ode to Relativism

In “The Day the Universe Changed,” Burke traces eight instances linked to technological advances that led to wholesale reassessment of truth in Western civilization. Each is a fascinating tale and Burke goes to great lengths to draw out the changes and their impacts. His thesis, as I understand it, is that the expression of scientific viewpoints is a nuanced function of prevailing social opinions and the best evidence available. This “relativism” challenges those in search of orthodoxy as it ultimately leads to the conclusion that the best viewpoints of tomorrow will be entirely different from those today - just as they veer wildly from those of yesteryear. I suppose the real question is can society encompass a lack of absolutes?

[Rob Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had just read Connections, so probably just a bit too much James Burke over a two month period. Very interesting stuff, as expected, and a fairly enjoyable read. The last chapter helps contextualise the point he's driving at and I sort of feel I should have read it first! A colleague told me this was a TV series, so perhaps if I had watched it at the same time I would have understood the overal idea a bit better and read more out of all the stories. Important arguments and well documented, important stuff and actually sort of pairs well with Sapies/Homo Deus.

[Basem Refae · Rating 4 out of 5]

استطاع الكاتب ان يعطي فكرة مهمة عن أهم الابتكارات او الاحداث التي ساهمت في التطور الحضاري فالبحث هنا شمل 8 اتجاهات هي الطب والهندسة والفلسفة والفلك و الجيولوجيا و غير ذلك و الملاحظ في هذا الكتاب كيف ان الكاتب لم يبرز الحروب والصراعات أبدا و إنما اكتفى بمقياس التطور الحضاري عن طريق التجربة والعلم و كان اسلوبه موجها لجميع المستويات و هذا ما جعل هضم الكتاب سهلا بالنسبة للمبتدئ و المتوسط و خصوصا عندما يتعمق في أحد الأبواب فبالنسبة لي كان موضزع الفلك أصعب موضوع لما فيه من تخصص كبير بالنسبة للكاتب وعموما أنصح بقراءته و محاولة عدم النوم أثناء القراءة 😁😁

[D.L. Morrese · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the library closed (due to COVID-19), I'm going through my shelves and selecting various things to reread. This book came out near the top of the list mainly because it goes with the TV series, which I also rewatched. I'd rate the TV shows a solid 4.5 stars because good series about the progress of human understanding of the universe are rare. The book ranks a bit lower mainly because there are more good books on the subject.