Science is what humans do

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, history of science

In his book Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science, author James Poskett sets out to demonstrate that "The Enlightenment" and the Europe-centered history of how modern science developed is a myth. He succeeds in part, but only in part.

The caricature of scientific development that my generation learned in grade school goes something like this: The old Greeks mainly thought and argued and argued and thought, and then wrote down their conclusions. The writings of the most famous ones, such as Aristotle, became dogma that was considered The Truth for a couple of thousand years. We heard about long arguments regarding the number of teeth horses might have, but that nobody bothered to open a horse's mouth to count the teeth. Greek culture fell into decline, until their writings were discovered by Arabs and translated into Arabic. Finally, with the decline of Islamic culture, these translations, and some Greek language original documents that were preserved, were rediscovered in Europe, as a new, more experimental culture used them to jump-start a scientific revolution based on observation and experimentation. And voilà, the modern age came about. Of course, that's over-simplified; Horizons goes a long way towards leveling the playing field.

It is no surprise to learn that, when the Spanish entered South America, they found that the people had sophisticated knowledge of the natural history of the plants and animals. It makes sense that any thriving culture has to know at least which creatures in the forests around are safe, or dangerous, and perhaps medicinal. In the early chapters of Horizons we read that the Incas and Aztecs passed on much of their knowledge to Spanish doctors and priests, and that various documents produced by both the Spaniards and Indigenous people were sent back to Europe. Similar scenarios ensued wherever Europeans came into contact with Indigenous peoples.

By the 17th Century "natural philosophers" (the old term for scientists), and priests and doctors with natural history interest or training, accompanied voyages of trading in goods or slaves or armies. It makes sense; then as now, nobody seems to be willing to pay for science to be done for its own sake, but businessmen and military leaders will pay a lot for science to be done for the sake of commerce or conquest. There have been visionary national leaders all over the Earth who have sponsored or supported science, at least in part for the sake of science, but there has always been an element—often the dominating element—of commercial and/or military interest.

In later chapters, the early sciences of India and China are discussed. Science in these regions also developed independently, but once the Age of Sail began, cross-pollination between these cultures and those of Europe accelerated scientific development in all regions. The cross-pollination between the sciences of the New World and the Old was less robust, but it was still critical to both agricultural and medicinal sciences to develop on both sides of the Atlantic.

We read that Newton used enormous amounts of others' findings worldwide to develop his science, which culminated in his Principia Mathematica; and later that Einstein obtained inspiration "from everywhere". Perhaps you've read of a fascinating quantum "object" called a Bose-Einstein Condensate, in which a collection of atoms are induced to cohere into a single quantum state. Who was Bose?

If you know any particle physics, perhaps you know that in the Standard Model, the "matter" particles such as the electron are called "fermions" and the "force" or "field" particles such as the photon are called "bosons". Fermions are named for Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, and bosons are named for Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose. Other than a few physicists and physics geeks like myself, nobody in the West even knows that roughly half of quantum physics is based on the work of scientists in (or from) India. Just by the way, both Bose and Einstein were fine musicians. Nearly all scientists have some kind of musical affinity; it goes with the mathematical mind.

It seems as though Mr. Poskett aims to denigrate European contributions to scientific development in favor of a more global view. Does he overdo it? I think so, a little. I believe it is worthwhile to bring all the global scientific contributions into a more equal footing. But it is a mistake to push back too hard on the Europeans. European exploration, including the conquests and all, was the catalyst that brought together roughly a dozen robust scientific traditions, setting up a cross-pollinating explosion of experimentation and research.

A book this dense is not a page-turner. One doesn't read it as a novel; it rewards more measured perusal. The author packs a great many facts into its 400+ pages. I did have to push aside the polemical character of some of the writing. It is still very worthwhile reading.