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Darrera modificació: 2011-08-03
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Fara, Patricia, Science: A Four Thousand Year History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009, xv + 408 pp. + 59 làm.
- Resum
- 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. -- 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, Newton: The Making of Genius, and Scientists Anonymous: Great Stories of Women in Science. Her writing has appeared in New Scientist, Nature, The Times, and New Statesman, and she writes a regular column for Endeavour.
"Patricia Fara 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 everprovisional, 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]
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: Decisions
43: Warfare -- 44: Heredity -- 45: Cosmology -- 46: Information -- 47: Rivalry -- 48: Environment -- 49: Futures
* Postscript
- Matèries
- Història de la ciència
Divulgació
- Notes
- Fitxa de l'editor: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199580279.do ...
Reimpr.: 2010; reimpr. en rústica: 2010.
Ha rebut el Dingle Prize 2011 de la British Society for the History of Science (BSHS), per al millor llibre d'història de la ciència escrit en anglès i adreçat a un públic il·lustrat ampli de no especialistes.
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