A Surprising, Gross, and Utterly Fascinating Look at the Birth of Science

Science in the 1600s wasn’t an especially safe endeavor. People were burned at the stake for saying that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Galileo Galilei narrowly avoided that particular fate, but was placed under house arrest. That’s… pretty different from our modern world, where we’re all relying on scientists to understand the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, and, hopefully, come up with a vaccine. How did we get to this point? Well, part of the reason is that, in 1660, a group of natural philosophers and thinkers came together to found what would become known as The Royal Society. That’s according to Adrian Tinniswood, author of The Royal Society: And the Invention of Modern Science. He walks us through the important legacy of the oldest scientific institution in the world, and how it helped shape evidence-based science.