In this episode Simon Schaffer, Professor of History of Science at the University of Cambridge, visits three events pivotal to the genesis of Isaac Newton's paradigm-shattering book the Principia Mathematica.
For most of history, different peoples, cultures and religious groups have lived according to their own calendars. Then, in the 11th century, a Persian scholar attempted to create a single, universal timeline for all humanity.
Autocrats have deployed automatons as weapons since antiquity, not just in Ancient Greek myth but in reality.
As technology changes, so do ideas about the borders of the self and the nature of privacy.
A microhistory offers new insights into the creation of the Royal Society amid the intellectual brilliance of Restoration England.
Child genius, engineer, inventor and physicist, Nikola Tesla died on 7 January 1943.
Since its surprising discovery on the Aegean seabed over a century ago, the Antikythera mechanism has intrigued astrologers, classicists and historians of science.
The idea that the ancients believed in Antipodean lands to balance the globe is a modern invention – and wrong.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw a revolution in Chinese forensic science, when traditional techniques were replaced by new methods from the West. Today, the world confronts another moment of transformation in forensic science.
