How does today’s physics—highly professionalized, inextricably linked to government and industry—link back to its origins as a liberal art in ancient Greece? This book tells the 2,500-year story, exploring the changing place and purpose of physics in different cultures, and highlighting the implications for humankind’s self-understanding.

Introduction: the Greek way -- Invention in antiquity -- Selection in Islam -- Domestication in Europe -- Second creation -- Classical physics and its cure -- From Old World to new -- The quintessential.