The Useful Spectacle: The Origin of Popular Science (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798215896020)

"There's no better way to open the mind than curiosity."
-- Abbot Pluche

Today, everyone enjoys the results of science... but it took so long to get there.
Cicero was the first to translate scientific language so that his fellow citizens could understand it.
Then, Galileo used dialogue to try convincing the Aristotelians that Earth moved. He failed, but his example lived on and inspired other scientists to do the same, until the scientific revolution started by Copernicus was accepted.
And finally, Charles Darwin's idea of evolutionism was matter of an heated debate in Oxford, and Victorian satirical periodicals made even fun of it; but because of all of this, the theory of the tree of life became widely spread and known.

And there's even more: the first scientific community, the origin of the peer review process and also the most famous scientific journals, like Nature...

Discover the marvellous history that led from scientific authority to the public participation in science.