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Science: A Four Thousand Year History 1st Edition

by Patricia Fara (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 75 ratings
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In Science, Patricia Fara rewrites science's past to provide new ways of understanding and questioning our modern technological society. Sweeping through the centuries from ancient Babylon right up to the latest hi tech experiments in genetics and particle physics, Fara's book also ranges internationally, challenging notions of European superiority by emphasizing the importance of scientific projects based around the world, including revealing discussions of China and the Islamic Empire alongside the more familiar stories about Copernicus's sun centered astronomy, Newton's gravity, and Darwin's theory of evolution.

We see for instance how Muslim leaders encouraged science by building massive libraries, hospitals, and astronomical observatories and we rediscover the significance of medieval Europe long overlooked where, surprisingly, religious institutions ensured science's survival, as the learning preserved in monasteries was subsequently developed in new and unique institutions: universities. Instead of focussing on esoteric experiments and abstract theories, she explains how science belongs to the practical world of war, politics, and business. And rather than glorifying scientists as idealized heroes, she tells true stories about real people men (and some women) who needed to earn their living, who made mistakes, and who trampled down their rivals.

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  1. ISBN-10
    0199580278
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0199580279
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    April 5, 2010
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.72 x 5.06 x 1.07 inches
  8. Print length
    481 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Very well-written and highly readable. The language is clear and the arguments are lucid. Frequent examples and anecdotes enliven dry, theoretical concepts. With the author's engaging style of writing, even those dealing with topics that might not normally have captured one's interest become a pleasure to read."--American Scientist

Book Description

A groundbreaking and provocative new look at the history of science.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (April 5, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 481 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199580278
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199580279
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.72 x 5.06 x 1.07 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 75 ratings

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Patricia Fara

Patricia Fara

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
75 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

SpartinStuff
5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and short
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2013
I thought this book was quite entertaining. It is quite a brief book, so don't expect everything scientific to be covered. The few things that are covered are done briefly, making this a good book to read in short bursts of time. The slowest section is the section during the Middle Ages, but that is just because many of the historical figures were unfamiliar to me. The book does a good job portraying many scientists as humans and not just otherworldly geniuses which I think hype can often times create. (Don't get me wrong, these are very intelligent and rare people but keep in mind they are not gods...) . Also, keep in mind that this is a contextual look at the history of science, not an in depth look at every scientific theory ever created, which would be impossible to cover everything.
9 people found this helpful
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L. Mosier
4.0 out of 5 stars Easy Read
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2010
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I had to purchase this text as the "textbook" for my history of science course. I was expecting this to be much like the standard textbook that you read in college, but it is just a book on the history of science. I like how the book is organized; it is sectioned by timeframe and categories, but it also draws from other events to make comparisons.
9 people found this helpful
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Dufbug DeRopa
1.0 out of 5 stars A deeply flawed, politically-tinctured failure to present a history of science.
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2017
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The author is so busy setting up historiographic straw-men and knocking them down, that there is almost no time or room left for actual science or actual history. What are presented as facts and "the actual history" (as opposed to the author's great chimera "eurocentric history") are actually oracular statements that are never supported. The political ax-grinding is so pervasive, so off-putting that it makes the book difficult to read, let alone learn from.

Strangely, the book only makes a bit of sense if one already knows some history of science. Then the pet peeves and politically-blinkered judgements can be fitted into some kind of background. Tellingly, there is not a single chart, equation, formula, symbol, explanation, or diagram in the book's 482 pages. When reading it, there was more than one place where I was certain that the author does not know science to a level that would grant authority to comment on it -- the author may know history, and have strong views about historiography, but is adrift with science itself.

As with some other modern soi-disant science historians, the author has bugaboos that she worries at like an aching tooth: the “scientific hero” or “lone genius,” and the injustice of attributions misplaced or unplaced. While it is possible to make a misleading, treacly romance of most scientific discoveries and make a hero of the individual involved, the fact remains that most advances have been the work of one person, sometimes two, working in the West. More importantly, other histories of science do not present such romances -- the apparent need the author feels to correct these wrongs is quite misplaced. That “heroes’ arise from this appears to give historians cause for fault hunting, mote magnifying, and otherwise searching for feet of clay. That Newton was a suppressive tyrant as president of the Royal Society of London, eager and combative after his own legacy, does not detract from his having discovered and promulgated the remarkable and long-useful universal law of gravitation or his insights in spectral dioptrics. Whether He, Archimedes, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, Fresnel, or Einstein would have been an apt guest for Sunday dinner, an appropriate date for my niece, or a good counselor and neighbor, is unimportant and quite beside the point.
19 people found this helpful
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Earl B. Alexander
4.0 out of 5 stars Science: A Four Thoousand Year History
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2011
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This is not an ordinary history of science book. The science history is revealed in its social settings, which is very interesting. It includes personal aspects of the scientists as well as their extraordinary accomplishments. My greatest frustration was that the narrative is not entirely linear and I had consulted a time table to place passages in the text in chronological perspective.
7 people found this helpful
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David Milliern
2.0 out of 5 stars Good Idea, Monumental Failure in Execution
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2011
Fara's framework for this book, and intended mode of developing it was great. The problem is that the actual fleshing out is horrendous. Fara's concept seems to be to draw an outline of the history of science that is done by way of essays. Nearly all sections of her romp through history of science are 3-5 pages, which would make it a nice reference book, on top of a nice front-to-back read, but the essays are horrible in writing, material chosen and organization. In attempting to adehere to principles that maintain that science is a universal (global) phenomenon, possessing a nebulous definition of what science really is, she really loses perspective of the central subject, that is, science. I challenge anyone to randomly crack into this book, read the essay, and then tally how many bits of information you get about science versus something that is not science. I assure you, each essay talks more about context (or something having nothing to do with science) than anything that can be remotely considered "science." Now, context is not bad, but Fara fails to make further references to why the context is important to the science or scientists. (note:I was anticipating the goal of this book to be the association of such a context with the history of science.) If You would like to read about the times of, say Kepler, you would be better served in reading a book on the years in which that person lived.

I read each section of this book, thinking, "What does any of this have to do with the title of the section?" At times, Fara makes more references to comparative literature of the times than she does to the science and scientists. At other times, I feel as though this book is a nothing more than a published set of notes, because it seems so chaotic in its assortment. The book never develops a flow.

I think the most disconcerting thing about this book is it seems very confused in its intended audience. It is far too complicated for the layman, making subtle references to ideas that a scholar would know. On the other hand, if the book was intended for scholars of the history of science, then it is banal, pedestrian, and its existence is superfluous, as it suits no needs of the scholar in HPS. I am also concerned that some of the points made throughout are not entirely correct, either lacking in complete explication or simply incorrect.

On the positive side, there were a dozen bits of useful information that I took away from this work, but that is not much for nearly 400 pages of reading.
20 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Vivek Mishra
5.0 out of 5 stars Best book of this kind
Reviewed in India on September 2, 2022
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Very good read
Nice book very informative
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ROBERTO RODARTE HERNANDEZ
5.0 out of 5 stars Buen producto y se rápida entrega
Reviewed in Mexico on September 13, 2020
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El artículo llegó antes de lo esperado (Como una semana antes). El libro no traía algún tipo de empaque o hule convencional que se maneja en libros, pero no venía para nada maltratado.
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Ralph Blumenau
5.0 out of 5 stars Science set in its social context
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2010
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The author reminds us that the original meaning of `science' covered all knowledge, and the branch we now call science was previously called Natural Philosophy. The word `scientist' was coined only in 1833. How science in the modern sense came to separate itself from other kinds of knowledge is one of the themes of this survey which awesomely ranges over all the sciences. Other themes that frequently recur in it include:

1. Debunking the cult of the lone genius who advances knowledge purely by his own discoveries. Although Newton acknowledged that he stood on the shoulders of giants, many other famous scientists are shown as ruthless and successful self-publicists. So we often ignore the earlier ideas on which they drew, and we sometimes ascribe to them the contributions of their later followers. Particularly from the late 17th century onwards, scientists are helped by being part of communities operating in well-organized scientific institutions. Patricia Fara also repeatedly notes the time interval between scientific discoveries and their general acceptance.

2. Showing that even what now seem the most ludicrous `scientific' procedures like alchemy have made contributions to later science - in this case, for example, the notions of experimental chemistry, the creation of some apparatus, the isolation of certain chemicals and, perhaps above all, the willingness to manipulate nature, not merely to understand it. So not only alchemists but also magicians like Paracelsus and John Dee, whose mathematical skills made many people believe in their medical prescriptions, find a place in Patricia Fara's history of science.

3. Showing how the pursuit of science was, until fairly recently, not regarded as an end in itself, but was shaped to support pre-existing philosophical or theological concepts. One example is the effort of Kepler and Copernicus to marry their observations respectively to Neoplatonic and Pythagorean notions of harmony. Botanical and anthropological classifications reflected and then reinforced existing prejudices about the hierarchies of gender and race. And even today, Patricia Fara points out, preconceived ideas can influence the compilation and interpretation of data - not to mention the occasional falsification of data or suppression inconvenient results in battles between scientists.

4. Pointing out that the material about which scientists have theorized has often been provided by hosts of unnamed and unacknowledged practical men and sometimes women. During the despised Middle Ages, it was some humble technical inventions and innovations that made revolutionary contributions to progress in agriculture, and instruments initially designed by artisans for practical purposes (navigating, timing, weighing and measuring) provided the initial tools, sometimes refined or adapted by scientists, for scientific progress. The snobbish distinction between gentlemen and aristocrats who "philosophized" about science and those who worked with their hands (and for gain) runs through much of the history of science. Only rarely were those women who collaborated with their menfolk in scientific work acknowledged; and not until 1945 were the first two women actually admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society. And when in the 19th century explorer went to remote parts of the globe on scientific expeditions, in their sense of European superiority they scarcely mentioned the native guides whose local knowledge contributed so much to theirs.

5. Stressing that any successful development of science depends on supportive infrastructures - technological, economic, institutional, political, and cultural. There are interesting illustrations of how the development of science has been affected when it was left largely to free enterprise and commerce (as in 19th century Britain), compared with how it fared with state support (for better, as in 19th century Germany) or worse (as in 19th century France).

6. Combatting (surely outdated) Eurocentric histories of science and stressing the scientific ideas that reached Europe from China, India and the Middle East. Apparently it was not until Joseph Needham's work in the 1950s that Europeans appreciated just how many inventions originated in China and not in the European Renaissance; and there are some socio-political suggestions why Chinese and Arabic inventions did not lead to the explosive efflorescence to which they would lead in Europe.

Apart from these themes, a wealth of fascinating material is packed into this book. Having started with the Babylonians, its last section is a thoughtful and thought-provoking survey of where the different sciences stand today, and also of how important aspects of it are enmeshed in international commercial and military rivalries.

Inevitably there are some passages which many non-scientist will find difficult to follow, especially when we reach modern physics; but they are remarkably few. The style is always limpid and sometimes conversational; the tone pleasantly iconoclastic, occasionally sarcastic and once or twice even cynical in the attribution of motives. And the many illustrations, though often too small for comfort (you can often find bigger versions on Google Images), are beautifully chosen and analyzed to show the social attitudes which inspired them.

A splendid achievement.
17 people found this helpful
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Alex Trier
1.0 out of 5 stars Fara 4000years
Reviewed in Germany on November 25, 2010
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I decided on buying this book after skimming through a very expensive Spanish translation. The organization of the subject had appealed to me as very innovative.
The book however turned out to be a great disappointment - second- and third-hand info slapped together in newspaper jargon, little science, no history. Fara rides on irresponsible generalizations and outright frivolity on top of inaccuracies and - sometimes - mistakes.
Fara's book is a serious threat to the scientific and historical education of the public.
One thing, however. Hat off to Fara's talent for coming up with great quotations. The quotations are worth all those sovereigns up to one shilling , which then would pay for the rest of the stuff.

((Alex Trier , Santiago , Chile))
2 people found this helpful
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therealus
5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 15, 2009
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Back in the seventies, Jacob Bronowski's TV series, and more particularly the book of the series The Ascent Of Man, had a profound impact on my worldview. The book is still on my shelves and, though it's a long time since I last read it, it has been read many times over the years. Bronowski's skill was his ability to combine a history of science with a history of civilisation, to the point where the two are shown as they really are, inextricably intertwined. Whilst slightly less broad-ranging in its scope, Patricia Fara's Science: A Four Thousand Year History looks much more deeply into the science component. Inevitably there are overlaps, to the point where they both use Joseph Wright's The Orrery as an illustration, but ultimately the two experiences are complementary, not a duplication.

Overall Fara's book is a remarkable endeavour, not quite on the scale of Cynthia Stokes Brown's Big History, which takes in the history of everything within a similar space, but certainly equalling it in bringing the helicopter down to get a slightly more refined view.

Along the way, Fara is not afraid to sully a few sacred cows: Darwin, for example, was not only in keeping with his times in his misogyny - some of his pronouncements look very much like a foundation for the nasty wing of eugenics; Pasteur seems to have had no qualms about using people as human guinea pigs for his concoctions; and Fleming sat on his discovery of penicillin for 15 months before it was finally brought into usefulness by a small army of scientists and American finance.

The book is very much a work of its time, considering not only the way in which the contribution of women has been marginalised in common mythologies, but also that often the progress of science is not quite as heroic (in the sense of one person doing all the work) as these mythologies often portray: there is a whole army of unsung contributors, with the people who are remembered often being those best at self-promotion. This is a point well brought out, with considerably more detail, in Martin Rudwick's Bursting The Limits Of Time, a study of early geology and palaeontology.

In discussing the research of William Crookes into radiation, Fara captures the essence of scientific endeavour: "If you automatically reject the unfamiliar, and refuse to investigate it, then nothing new will be revealed," and this is a point repeatedly made through example.

Crookes, incidentally, sometimes becomes Crooke, but the possessive, Crookes's, is rendered correctly; the possessive of Descartes is given both as Descartes's (correct, though annoyingly and not surprisingly Word tries to "correct" this form) and Descartes' (incorrect; how would you pronounce it, given that nothing after the "r" is used in French pronunciation?). This I put down to editing, and similarly with when the strains of cramming 4000 years of history show at the beginning of Part 6 Chapter 2, when Fara seems to suggest that the Spanish Reconquista was completed in the late 11th Century, when in fact what she's talking about is the recovery of Toledo (1085) - Toledo does not get mentioned until later. But talking of the Reconquista, she seems to swallow the notion, which many commentators have questioned, that something was being "retaken" by the "Spanish", ignoring the Crusader intent of Los Reyes Catolicos, Isobel and Ferdinand, whose provinces were properly just Castile and Aragon.

Quite rightly, Fara gives due credit to non-European contributors to scientific progress, particularly those of the Middle East (including, as it happens, pre-Reconquista Spain). She does so, though, almost as if she alone realises this contribution, whereas Bronowski, forty years ago, acknowledged it, as do at least two more recent books, Peter Bentley's The Book Of Numbers and John Gill's Andalucía.

And I can't complete a review of this kind of book without mentioning, at the risk of attracting the ire of certain reactionaries, the use of BC/AD against BCE/CE to indicate dates. Where some authors who should know better (including, ironically, the imam of atheism himself, Richard Dawkins!) stick to BC/AD, Fara sits on the fence, using BCE and AD! Now I really don't get that!

Cavils aside, though, this is an excellent book, putting in perspective four millennia of scientific endeavour, and giving an indispensable view of whose shoulders we're standing on nowadays.
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