In the Dark

9 Responses to “On the “History of Science””

1. 

   Anton Garrett Says:
   March 26, 2026 at 8:24 am

   Twaddle driven, most probably, by those who wish to denigrate the achievements of Western Civilisation – in this case its achievements in the last 500 years in mathematics, the last 400 years in physics, the last 300 years in chemistry and the last 200 years in the biomedical sciences.

   The issue of motivation interests me little, and I fully accept that the ‘prehistory’ of these sciences, before the timescales I have mentioned, involve several other cultures. But the achievement of Western Civ in those subjects within those recent timescales is unique and huge, and includes a coherent timeline i.e. history. I am happy to dispute that here or elsewhere.

   Peter – Lorraine Daston’s husband is Gerd Gigerenzer whom we met in Arizona.

   “That’s right, there’s no such thing as the history of science, and this is a blog post about it. (Sorry Steven Shapin, that’s the best line anyone ever wrote as an opening to a history book and I am going to keep stealing it forever and ever).”

   I suspect Shapin adapted this from “There is no God and Dawkins is his prophet.”

   Reply
   • 

     Raul Jimenez Says:
     March 26, 2026 at 10:18 am

     I totally subscribe to the first paragraph. The contribution by Western civilization in last 500 years is indeed dominant. This is a fact. People can have opinions about this but will be non factual.

     But I also think that the Greeks contribution more than two millennia ago is also massive.

     Reply
     • 

       telescoper Says:
       March 26, 2026 at 12:01 pm

       ..and the Babylonians before the Greeks.
     • 

       Anton Garrett Says:
       March 26, 2026 at 2:09 pm

       In mathematics the Greeks far exceeded the Babylonians or anybody else. They invented the notion of step-by-step proof from axioms; they came up with the idea of pure number (rather than two sheep, five cows, ten units of length etc); and they built up a library of significant results unprecedented in the ancient world – eg how to construct a further prime from any set of primes, so that the number of primes is infinite; and the proof that if (2^n -1) is prime (a Mersenne prime) then (2^n -1)*2^(n-1) is perfect. Both are in Euclid.

       Their astronomy was excellent too, although I don’t think they were the first to predict eclipses.

       But the Greeks believed that you should be able to work out the universe by pure thought, and had no idea of designed interventionist experiment. *That* was the new ingredient in modern science. It involves the capability to do gedankexperiments and then realise them. This capability involves visualisation. Western Europe gained more practice at visualisation; geometric diagrams, maps and tree diagrams – such as family trees – were universal, but representational art was discouraged in Islam whereas mediaeval art flourished in Western Europe. Perspective was invented there. The falling cost of paper from the 14th century also encouraged the committing of mental imagery onto paper together with one’s thoughts about it; every research physicist experiences the interplay of writing and thinking. Finally, a critical mass of interacting scholars was needed, which Western Europe possessed as universities grew, largely from monastic institutions – a transition that did not occur in the Byzantine world.
     • 

       telescoper Says:
       March 26, 2026 at 5:27 pm

       Obviously the Greeks did extend mathematics way beyond the Babylonians, but it is the case that many results we attribute to the Greeks (e.g. Pythagoras) were known to the Babylonians very much earlier (around 1800 BCE).

       I was interested to discover recently that the “false position” (regular falsi) method of numerical root-finding also appears on a cuneiform tablet from ancient Babylon.
     • 

       Raul Jimenez Says:
       March 26, 2026 at 5:38 pm

       Hi Peter, I think it is the level of abstraction that makes a difference between Babylonians and Greeks. At the time of early Greek scientists (e.g. Anaximander) Chinese astronomers had far superior measurements of celestial events but were unable to abstract those data into theories. Recall that Greeks nearly discovered differential calculus; if they had, getting ODE/PDEs is not far, and once you get that hammer, a lot of nails can be hot on their heads.
     • 

       telescoper Says:
       March 26, 2026 at 5:41 pm

       Indeed there is such a difference, but I don’t think one can deny that the Greeks learned from the Babylonians, just as others subsequently learned from the Greeks….
     • 

       Anton Garrett Says:
       March 26, 2026 at 8:55 pm

       Yes, the ‘method of exhaustion’ known to the Greeks is their remarkably prescient stab at the integrodifferential calculus. The history of mathematics is at least in part the history of finding the right ways to express your insight (try long division in Roman numerals) and they didn’t have dy/dx. Nor did Newton, but he was just amazing.
2. 

   Raul Jimenez Says:
   March 26, 2026 at 4:16 pm

   I find myself agreeing with Anton Garrett word-by-word…a first.

   Reply