The Folio Book of Science

This anthology gathers twenty-four essays and extracts of scientific writing, chosen to show how observers have described nature from antiquity to the late twentieth century. Opening pieces include Aristotle on animal form and Pliny on amber; later selections take in Leonardo, Robert Hooke, Darwin, Thomas Huxley, and more recent voices such as Richard Feynman and Richard Dawkins. Subjects run across anatomy, evolution, physics, geology, and palaeontology, with attention to women whose work was long overshadowed. Each piece is a self-contained argument or report rather than a chapter of one treatise. The book is a survey of scientific prose, not a textbook and not a history of institutions.

Bound in green cloth blocked with a design by Neil Gower. Illustrated title-page and 24 black & white integrated illustrations. Printed endpapers. Image blocked dark green cloth slipcase.