NP 'Lost Discoveries': The Non-Western Roots of Science

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

Yes, I've been hearing about Teresi's book. It sounds
interesting, but it begs a question I wonder if it attempts
to answer: if most of the scientific discoveries of The
West were made elsewhere long before, what explains
The West's apparent hegemony beginning around the 16th
century? 

respectfully

In a message dated 11/30/02 3:01:57 PM, pynchonoid at yahoo.com writes:

<< http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/books/review/01HALLLT.html

[...]  The ''standard model'' of the history of
science locates its birth around 600 B.C. in ancient
Greece, where the dramatis personae typically include
Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, Aristotle and
other sages, who laid the modern foundation for math
and the sciences. It was this foundation, buried
during the Middle Ages, that was rediscovered during
the Renaissance. What were the peoples of India,
Egypt, Mesopotamia, sub-Saharan Africa, China and the
Americas doing all this time? ''They discovered fire,
then called it quits,'' Teresi observes sarcastically.
He admits starting this exercise ''with the purpose of
showing that the pursuit of evidence of nonwhite
science is a fruitless endeavor. . . . Six years
later, I was still finding examples of ancient and
medieval non-Western science that equaled and often
surpassed ancient Greek learning.'' 

This catalog of achievement, while not exactly news,
is breathtaking in the sheer sweep of human ingenuity.
The Babylonians developed the Pythagorean theorem at
least 1,500 years before Pythagoras was born. Indian
mathematicians performed multiplication and algebra,
and even ventured toward calculus, a millennium before
Europeans. An Arab astronomer, Ibn al-Shatir, spelled
out the theory of planetary motion 150 years before
Copernicus. The ''Mercator projection'' was used by
Chinese cartographers centuries before the birth of
Mercator. In the third century B.C., physicists in
China pretty neatly summarized Newton's first law of
motion. 

Centuries before Gutenberg, the Chinese used movable
type; by A.D. 868 block printing was so widespread
that government authorities issued edicts to curtail
the proliferation of printed astrological calendars.
In order to play their famous ball games, the Aztecs
invented vulcanized rubber centuries before Goodyear,
and the Chinese were manufacturing ''Bessemer steel''
nearly 2,000 years before Sir Henry Bessemer
''invented'' the process. Francis Bacon once commented
on the ''obscure and inglorious origins'' of the
magnetic compass, gunpowder, and paper and
printmaking, three inventions that he claimed
transformed civilization. ''They all came from
China,'' Teresi writes, and were invented centuries
before the West became aware of them. [...] 

The larger question underlying ''Lost Discoveries'' is
why this astonishing record of human achievement has
been ignored or dismissed for so long. Part of our
reluctance to acknowledge it may stem, understandably,
from cultural pride, although this has sometimes
expressed itself in ungenerous ways. Teresi notes that
Morris Kline, a prominent American historian of
mathematics, once dismissed the mathematical
achievements of the Egyptians and Babylonians as ''the
scrawling of children just learning how to write,''
and the British historian of science G. R. Kaye is
quoted here exhorting his colleagues to search for and
celebrate ''traces of Greek influence'' in the history
of knowledge. ''Our pop science historians --
Bronowski, Daniel Boorstin, Carl Sagan, et al. -- have
certainly been faithful to that directive,'' Teresi
writes. But that is hardly the only reason. ''Of the
thousands of texts in which the Maya recorded their
findings,'' he also notes, ''only four survived the
Spanish book burnings.'' A sad subtext of the entire
book is just how precious, and perishable, even
fundamental knowledge can be. [...] 

review of:

LOST DISCOVERIES 
The Ancient Roots of Modern Science -- From the
Babylonians to the Maya.
By Dick Teresi.
453 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $27. 



First Chapter: 'Lost Discoveries'
@
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/books/chapters/1201-1st-teresi.html

(this first chapter has a focus on Chinese astronomy
thta may hold particular interest for some readers of
Mason & Dixon. )

-Doug >>