The Oxford History of Science offers an accessible and entertaining introduction to the history of science as well as a valuable and authoritative reference work. It provides a chronological account of the variety of human efforts to understand the natural world over three millennia, from the ancient world to the present day. Written by leading scholars, it offers chapters on the ancient world, Islamic science, and the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. It shows how the transformations that have taken place in the ways in which humans have tried to understand the world around them are very much the products of the cultures in which they took place.</p