Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science

I strongly suspect that this book is a waste of paper. I expected it to be more organized, but it is just a bunch of disconnected essays by various people "debunking" some straw man myth about science. These very short essays set up some myth that people who actually are interested in the topic do not really subscribe to and then try to attack that myth, often in a vapid and ineffective way. Better to go to some sort of real work on any of these subjects than to waste your time on these mini-essays with their cheap shots and footnotes.

The first essay "That there was no scientific activity between Greek Antiquity and the Scientific Revolution" is just a terrible start, in part because it lacks a definition of scientific activity. It also show more uses the fact that Caesar sent for a Greek scholar from Alexandria when he decided he needed to reform the calendar to demonstrate that there was no scientific activity in the Roman Empire This strikes me as too ludicrous an argument to argue with. Read Neal Stephenson's "Mother Earth, Mother Board" for a better treatment of the importance of the library of Alexandria in antiquity. show less