StephenKMackSD's Blog

 

Timothy Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has been a Visiting Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books including Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford University Press), which was named Book of the Year by Books & Culture .

 

Beijing tightens controls over foreign media

(AP) – 8 hours ago

BEIJING (AP) — China’s capital further tightened restrictions on reporting by foreign journalists on Sunday, the latest sign of the government’s determination to prevent the formation of a Middle East-style protest movement.

The requirement to obtain government permission before any newsgathering in the city center is the latest sign of official jitters sparked by Internet calls for popular protests each Sunday similar to those that have toppled authoritarian leaders in Egypt and Tunisia and continue to roil North Africa and the Middle East. Continue reading →

Seventeenth-century Europe witnessed an extraordinary flowering of discoveries and innovations. This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608, casts Galileo’s discoveries into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. In Europe, there was an extraordinary burst of innovations in microscopy, human anatomy, optics, pneumatics, electrical studies, and the science of mechanics. Nearly all of those aided the emergence of Newton’s revolutionary grand synthesis, which unified terrestrial and celestial physics under the law of universal gravitation. That achievement had immense implications for all aspects of modern science, technology, and economic development. The economic implications are set out in the concluding epilogue. All these unique developments suggest why the West experienced a singular scientific and economic ascendancy of at least four centuries.