The Day The Universe Changed
by James Burke
1985

When humans understood that the earth was flat and it was the center of the universe, all life revolved around that truth. Then, Galileo introduced his telescope. And with that single innovation, architecture, music, literature, science, politics--all of it changed, mirroring the new view of truth. This program is James Burke's examination of the moments in history when a change in knowledge radically altered man's understanding of himself and the world around him.

Few people are able to look at human history and see it not as a jumble of half-remembered names and dates, but as an intricate mosaic of neatly interlocking pieces. Fewer still can describe the patterns and explain the parts of the puzzle so that it not only makes sense, but so that it also fascinates and intrigues, excites and entertains. James Burke tells history like it's the plot of the most interesting mystery ever written.

In The Day the Universe Changed, James Burke examines eight periods in history when our view of the world shifted dramatically: in the eleventh century, when extraordinary discoveries were made by Spanish crusaders; in fourteenth-century Florence, where perspective in painting emerged; in the fifteenth century, when the advent of the printing press shook the foundations of an oral society; in the sixteenth century, when gunnery developments triggered the birth of modern science; in the early eighteenth century, when hot English summers brought on the Industrial Revolution; in the battlefield surgery stations of the French revolutionary armies, where people first became statistics; in the nineteenth century, when the discovery of dinosaur fossils led to the theory of evolution; and in the 1820s, when electrical experiments heralded the end of scientific certainty. Based on the popular television documentary series, The Day the Universe Changed is a bestselling history that challenges the reader to decide whether there is absolute knowledge to discover - or whether the universe is "ultimately what we say it is".