Overview

Science: A Four Thousand Year History rewrites science's past. Instead of focussing on difficult experiments and abstract theories, Patricia Fara shows how science has always belonged to the practical world of war, politics, and business. 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 in their quest for success. Fara sweeps through the centuries, from ancient Babylon right up to the latest hi-tech experiments in genetics and particle physics, illuminating the financial interests, imperial ambitions, and publishing enterprises that have made science the powerful global phenomenon that it is today. She also ranges internationally, illustrating the importance of scientific projects based around the world, from China to the Islamic empire, as well as the more familiar tale of science in Europe, from Copernicus to Charles Darwin and beyond.Above all, this four thousand year history challenges scientific supremacy, arguing controversially that science is successful not because it is always right - but because people have said that it is right.

Full Product Details

Author:   Patricia Fara (, Senior Tutor, Clare College, Cambridge)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.20cm , Height: 2.90cm , Length: 24.20cm
Weight:   0.863kg
ISBN:  

9780199226894

ISBN 10:   019922689
Pages:   424
Publication Date:   12 March 2009
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Out of stock  

Table of Contents

Introduction; PART I: ORIGINS; 1. Sevens; 2. Babylon; 3. Heroes; 4. Cosmos; 5. Life; 6. Matter; 7. Technology; PART II: INTERACTIONS; 8. Eurocentrism; 9. China; 10. Islam; 11. Scholarship; 12. Europe; 13. Aristotle; 14. Alchemy; PART III: EXPERIMENTS; 15. Exploration; 16. Magic; 17. Astronomy; 18. Bodies; 19. Machines; 20. Instruments; 21. Gravity; PART IV: INSTITUTIONS; 22. Societies; 23. Systems; 24. Careers; 25. Industries; 26. Revolutions; 27. Rationality; 28. Disciplines; PART V: LAWS; 29. Progress; 30. Globalization; 31. Objectivity; 32. God; 33. Evolution; 34. Power; 35. Time; PART VI: INVISIBLES; 36. Life; 37. Disease; 38. Rays; 39. Particles; 40. Genes; 41. Chemicals; 42. Uncertainties; PART VII; 43. Warfare; 44. Heredity; 45. Cosmology; 46. Information; 47. Rivalry; 48. Environment; 49. Futures; Postscript

Reviews

An impressive and commendable effort to square the circle, to tell science's history, from the beginning. Martin D. Gordin, Science It offers pretty exciting material. Michael D. Gordin, Science ...unfailingly enjoyable...The punchy, short chapters make Science suitable for commuting or reading in bed. It can be prescribed as a remedy or palliative for many maladies, including scientistic hubris and the myopia of anyone who still has faith in progress Felipe Fernandez- Armesto. Times Literary Supplement Patricia Fara...is now one of our most entertaining, incisive and irreverent historians of science. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Times Literay Supplement Wide-ranging and provocative. The Economist Epic history of science. Jo Marchant, New Scientist Fara's book could not be more wide-ranging, beginning [with] the quest to take the story of science as far back as she possibly can, and ending bang up to date. Jim Bennett, BBC History Magazine It is a book to provoke thought and argument. An impressive achievement. Jim Bennett, BBC History Magazine Patricia Fara has written a fascinating account. John Gribbin, Literary Review

Fara (History and Philosophy of Science/Univ. of Cambridge; Scientists Anonymous: Great Stories of Women in Science<\i>, 2007, etc.) aims to correct the romantic notion that science reflects the progress of noble heroes and selfless discoverers.Instead, writes the author, it is the work of ambitious men - yes, men - out for fame, glory and profit. Fara begins in the Middle East with the Babylonian priests who scanned the night skies for portents of the future, developing star maps, calendars and methods of calculation to be absorbed later by Greeks and Romans. The author covers all the familiar figures, from the pre-Socratic Greeks through Watson and Crick, but she is harsh on the legacies of many of them, except for the occasional woman. Thus Aristarchus, the Greek credited with a pre-Copernican belief that the earth revolved around the sun? He's not important, says Fara, because nobody believed him. Leonardo's sketch of a helicopter? Since he never actually built the machine, it doesn't count. The author describes Newton more in terms of his work in alchemy than his discoveries about the laws of motion, and she denigrates him for his power plays and slighting of others. Snobbery, selfishness and the quest for power characterized members of Britain's Royal Society, and their counterparts abroad. Fara fares better in her analysis of how Big Science became a boon to governments in the Manhattan Project and the space race, and why developing countries are so eager to join the nuclear club. She also looks at the current backlash against genetic engineering, and the effects of the Green Revolution in the developing world. She concludes that for all that science dominates modern life, it is ever provisional, awaiting the next discovery or corrective.Less of the warts-and-all style and more straightforward reporting would have made this account more palatable. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Patricia Fara lectures in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and is the Senior Tutor of Clare College. She is the author of numerous books, including Fatal Attraction: Magnetic Mysteries of the Enlightenment and Newton: The Making of Genius. Her writing has appeared in New Scientist, Nature, The Times, and New Statesman, and she writes a regular column for Endeavour.

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