Patricia Fara

This book has an ambitious title and an ambitious project: it's here to cover the development of "science" from 2000 B.C.E. to 2000 C.E. (more or less). It's not a history of scientific discoveries, or scientific biographies, but a history of science as a process, a history of what it has meant throughout history to do science, to think like a scientist, to see like a scientist. Patricia Fara begins with the ancient Chinese, Babylonians, and Greeks, and works her way forward, pointing out show more how many people we now retroactively think of as scientists were not really doing anything in accord with the modern scientific process. Or indeed, how modern science is usually not as dispassionate as we think it ought to be, pointing out the sexist, capitalist, or imperialist pressures that move and warp the direction of science throughout time.

Perhaps predictably, for me the book really came alive when it got to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when institutionalized and professionalized and disciplinarized science really comes into existence, all important to what we modern folk think of when we think of "science." She talks about that Enlightenment drive to systematize (which we see in things like Linnaeus's taxonomy, or the various racial classification schemes, or fictionally, in Causabon's Key to All Mythologies), and then that Victorian drive to discover underlying laws that explain the systems: "the goal of nineteenth-century scientists was to unify and discipline the world by finding simple laws that described the behaviour of everything-- people as well as things, minds as well as bodies" (233). And, of course, this all has dark implications, as the "numerical concept of normality enabled subjective judgements to creep right back in again. It was only a short step from describing to prescribing, from social mapping to social engineering. [Francis] Galton was just one of many Victorian scientists who believed that measuring physical characteristics would yield unbiased knowledge of people's mental abilities, psychological tendencies, and racial origins" (262-3). Though Fara can, perhaps, over-emphasize the unsavory and negative aspects of science, I think she does so with thoroughness and fairness; despite its wide span, this is a well-researched and detailed book, and I think it is hard to argue with the conclusions she draws.

This is one of those books where one's biggest complaint upon reading it is that one didn't read it before! It sounds like damning with faint praise, but in addition to being intellectual thorough, it's just very readable. Mimicking the way the ancients tried to arrange the universe, Fara divides her book into seven sections of seven chapters apiece, which means that at 8 pages apiece, each chapter is short and focused, which makes it easy to move through, and also easy to go back to and cite; I am sure this book will find its way into my dissertation. It would also make pieces of it easy to assign to students-- in that far off day when I get to teach a "science and literature" class, I am sure a couple chapters of this book will be in it. And you can't say that about very many academic books! show less

Patricia Mara’s Science: A Four Thousand Year History is the most enjoyable science history I have ever read and I have read a few. It is enlivened by her strong opinions that make it clear that more than one of our science heroes were unpleasant people to know. She points out how often a false scientific theory reaches preeminence because of good marketing, good luck or good connections, though in the end, science’s self-correcting ethos of trying to prove everything wrong works in the show more long run.

Science: A Four Thousand Year History is organized in seven units of seven chapters–a prime number product of prime numbers. Her first chapters is called Sevens and talks about the special properties of seven. It has many scientific, religious, mathematical and cultural points of significance. This brings Mara to one of the central themes of the book, what gets to be science and what is left out. It’s all about classification, isn’t it? The Arts & Sciences? What is art, what is science and who decides? Why is astronomy science and astrology hoodoo?

The answers change over time and one thing she wants readers to understand is that today’s answers may one day sound as wrong headed as yesterday’s alchemists. For a time, Lysenkoism seemed as sensible as Mendelism, until millions starved to death as a result of his dominance of Soviet science. And Mendel never even knew the significance of his discoveries.

Mara takes time to point out the contributions of women to science, and how hard it often was for them to make those contributions in a world where they were considered lesser. Well, where they are still considered lesser. She also brings a perceptive class analysis to how science developed and why some scientists were less successful despite their great achievements while men with lesser accomplishment carried the day for a time.

You can read the rest of the review here: https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/science-a-four-thousand-y... show less

An exploration of how British women scientists in the early years of the 20th Century struggled to be taken seriously in their chosen professions, fought for suffrage and equal rights, and stepped in – many voluntarily – to do vital scientific work during the First World War. Many of these early pioneers have been overlooked and it’s great to see some of their names recovered from obscurity and given recognition. While it mainly looks at the work of better educated women who were show more already attempting to work as scientists, it also highlights the highly technical and dangerous roles of working-class women in munitions and other war-related industries whose names are often lost to us. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of women in science and technology, and a very good read too. show less

Mixed feelings about this. Quite a revelation how Newton spent 30 years of his life as supervisor and then Master of the Mint in London, scheming to ingratiate himself with “people of quality“ and the monarchy, and also as a not very benevolent president of the Royal Society. However, a lot of material about the appalling moral deficiencies of the English economy at the time, founded as it was on the slave trade. Very valid points, but maybe only tangiently related to the story of show more Newton's life in London. show less