The Earth has been around 4.5 billion years, but it's only in the last 350 that we have be able to understand this from radioactive dating. Our exploration of this planet and the surrounding cosmology can be traced to the beginnings of the Royal Society that brought scientists and philosophers together.

This book is a fantastically overwhelming and enticing compendium of articles from writers about the Royal Society. The book begins most strongly with the prominent scientists who were asking the big questions. Newton's discoveries of the gravitation applying to the earth and other planetary bodies gave a rise to universal physical laws. Leibniz's theory of our world's orderliness and the principles of logic that would be cited in computer science. Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection that reshaped our idea of the divine order.

Like Bryson's fantastic "A Short History of Nearly Everything", the book invites digging into different chapters, jumping around, making connections between chapters. Not all chapters are as equally exciting. The early philosophical questions were far more exciting to me than engineering feats of bridge building (sorry engineers). Like any compilation, some work was more exciting than others.

Really great book that gave me an appreciation of the Royal Society. A great entry to wonder and intrigue.