The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution

It appears that some lament the length of this text and that it might be 'hard' from time to time. I disagree with both impressions. I think readers today are too used to the brief, bulleted, and conclusory rendering of information. What is wonderful about "The Invention of Science" is that it builds, brick by brick, what the edifice of science is and how it got to the preeminence it enjoys today. In teaching young doctoral students I have been disturbed by the degree to which people take "science" as fact and as offering conclusive answers to questions about social problems as well as natural things. Teaching them that the human mind has not always had 'facts' and that our rendering of the physical and historical world is relatively new and is now taken to mean far more than it can often handle. Listen to contemporary political debate and the ways in which all sides talk about 'facts' as if they were irrefutable things, not recognizing that we all take in everything through cognitive lenses and these lenses color all 'facts.' There are things in the world that exist utterly independent of human consciousness. Then, there are things that only exist because of human consciousness like justice, truth, freedom, and science. Wooton's text reminds us of the evolution of human thought into what we now recognize as science. It was not always this way. The detail with which Wooton explores even the evolution of the idea of 'fact' provides a way to more seriously critique what we hear today as facts. There is a soft underbelly here in contemporary thinking and having a grasp of the history behind even this one word, helps us re-think what we and others means when we say, "it is a fact." Wooton is not proposing a smarmy relativism, but he does educate us about the ways human history has changed thought patterns, consistent with available knowledge, media for exchange of ideas, and cultural values such as religion. As such, his work inspires a more independent reading of what we are told by all kinds of authorities who now claim the mantel of having 'facts.'This is perhaps not an undergraduate read. Wooton has clearly drawn in a lifetime of scholarship and this is evident on every page. We should not draw back from this density. it should be a call for closer and more thoughtful reading. This is a book that might be best read in chunks then thought about for while before proceeding. I tend to think of it as a classic of scholarship about the formation of the modern mind.

Rather than the Scientific Revolution, this book seems to be mostly about the historical context of the words "Scientific" and "Revolution". Not the impact of the Scientific Revolution, not the challenges to the establishment dogma, not the improvement to the lives of Europeans; it is about the history of the words... The text mentions hundreds of names a historian would have known well, every page has long footnotes and it may be that his target audience is his fellow historians. I did not complete my graduate degrees so a lot of it was lost on me.

I am a retired academic in the life sciences areas, but I have been only marginally interested in the history, social history, and philosophy of science. Apparently I was isolated in the ivory tower of traditional scientific practice, so I relatively recently became aware of the wide-spread inroads of post-modern PC relativism in the areas of sociology, philosophy, politics, and eventually experimental science. The author takes great trouble to argue his (and mine as well) view of science as a systematic search for truth vs. the post-modern relativists' argument that all systems and beliefs are equivalent and reflect the local conventions of a specific social culture. When the book is perceived as a serious and learned attempt in this context, it immediately bespeaks more than academic importance. Here is how I arrived at the four star ranking: 1. -Its importance in present academic perceptions of sociology, politics, and function/value of science - SIX STARS. In the recent decades the concept of sociological equivalence of belief systems has been systematically undermining our perception of science as a methodical and honest search for facts and (often temporary and often temporarily unattainable) true explanations for the existence of these facts. Although the author writes that relativists should be heard and even sometimes listened to, his sympathy and cold analysis clearly lie elsewhere; 2 -Comprehensive review of ancient and modern sources, augmented by direct quotations and, where needed, English translation -FIVE STARS. As an aside, for the lay reader much of it might be tedious and excessive; 3 - The link between the invention of science and the invention of vocabulary and linguistic basis for science as we perceive it to-day. The author's thesis is that discoveries and experiments were described and analyzed before there were adequate linguistic tools for that purpose, yet the tool had to and did emerge when required. The preoccupation with the philology of science is my opinion excessive and often it is counter-productive in obscuring the forest by too many trees - THREE STARS; 4 - I do agree with many critics that argue that the book could have been cut down to a much much smaller format without losing its impact, or even gaining impact by this type of revision. Clarity of arguments is, pardon the pun, clearly obfuscated by excess of words and excess of academic arguments, leading to repetitions (sometimes necessary because of the dimensions and excessive details) -TWO STARS. 5. The logic for stating the case that in the pursuit of the truth about the world, modern science as the only system that works - FOUR STARS. 6. - The often stressed claim that the invention of the printing press was absolutely necessary for the emergence of international scientific community with common principles of scientific inquiry - FOUR STARS. My own modest contribution to this last argument: The inundation of the science "world" with countless publications, the only criteria being the financial gain for the publisher and the only motivation, the academic promotion of the writer, is disastrous for the public image of modern science. Infinitely more damage is being done by myriad on-line publications that use the web and almost exclusively lack any real scientific value. This regrettable phenomenon is the much sought-after water-on-the-mill of diehard relativists. All that said, this book is a must for a thinking lay (science-wise) person faced with the avalanche of more and more incomprehensible science.

Fascinating description of the emergence of new ideas in the 1500's and 1600's that constitute what we think of as science. The book gives a detailed description of the changes in meaning of words such as "discover", "experiment" and "mechanical" and of the conceptual difficulties involved in getting rid of ideas such as reliance on authority and logical deduction instead of physical experiments. The author goes into deep detail about these changes and relied on extensive studies of old documents and letters. In the last part of the book he describes the tension between the concept of science as a collection of theories based on public experiments and the rival concept of science as a social construct. Of course, science is both of those things, although historians of science don't seem to want to admit the first and scientists themselves don't want to admit the second.

This book has a simple but provocative thesis: science was invented at a particular time and at a particular place. When and where? From the 16 to 17th centuries, in Western Europe. One reviewer - who surely has not read the book with great care, if he has read the book at all - has accused the author of 'Eurocentrism'.This label simply misses the point - which is a very simple one. There is no doubt that other cultures invented things and even sporadically discovered things. But the key difference in the West, in the 16th and 17th Centuries, was the intellectual revolution in attitudes to authority. Before the 16th Century, in the West, it was assumed that there was no new knowledge to be had. The ancients knew all that was to know and that there was nothing new under the sun. Other civilisations likewise had the quest for knowledge circumscribed by the authority of ancient or revealed texts - Confucianism in China, the authority of the Koran in the Ottoman Empire.So, before the 16th Century, the West was like every other advanced culture; all assumed that there was nothing to new to know. From the 16th and 17th Centuries, the West diverged from the rest of the world in utterly overturning this assumption. The ancients did not know everything. There were things to be discovered. This is a simple idea but shattering in its implications. As the the author states:" ... it was the idea of discovery that made the new science, and the new set of intellectual values that underpinned it, possible. When you think about it, this is a simple and obvious truth - but it is that one historians of science, who want to maintain that every culture has its own science and that they are all equally valid, have failed to grasp. The discovery enterprise is no mote universal than cricket, baseball or soccer ...(p. 108)Indeed, Newton, when he discovered the theory of gravity, was at first convinced that the ancients must have already known it - they just lacked the mathematics to express it. Such seeming modesty from Newton of all people was not a reflection of his humility (he was hardly the most modest of men) but of the grip of the dead hand of the past still had on him. Had he lived a 100 years later, he would not have thought that.The author then goes on to examine all the facets of what we consider to be science: facts (no such word in English before this period), experiments, verification, hypotheses/theories, evidence and judgement, the discovery of natural laws, the applying of mathematics to describe and explain physical reality. All these features emerged from the the West in the space of two centuries and it is a method - like western medicine - that has universalised itself.If I have to knock one star off it is because I did not find the book the easiest of reads, from the sheer accumulation of detail the author amasses to back his underlying case, the clarity and persuasiveness of which is easy to accept. Still, I learned a lot and I would want to revisit it, for I am sure it will yield further insights on a second reading.

Unlike many books by expert historians, Wootton is a master of straightforward and clear writing.Wooton's thesis will resonate with working scientists, and will shock many schooled in relativist sociology or history.Clear evidence is laid our that much of what underlies the scientific revolution is a unique cultural achievement. That is, concepts of discovery, of hypothesis, of experiment are not innate, but are in a sense a discovery. In this, he resonates with Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man.The contrast of pre-scientific and post-scientific worlds is laid out clearly, and Wootton poses the essential question: Why? Why did humans exist for 100,000 years without being scientific? What is science?His core thesis is that, much like democracy or the novel, science is an invention. Without it, ideas which are impossible now are credible: werewolves, witches, and alchemy. After science, they are impossible.The physical tools of science are mentioned: telescope and barometer. But paramount are conceptual tools. Like the idea that there are facts, and that someone might be mistaken in holding a fact. This complex state – robust claims which paradoxically render bad ideas vulnerable to test, and therefore to improvement, underlies science. The discovery and refinement of ideas such as "proof", "theory", "observation", "experiment" are each uncovered.You will come away with an enhanced respect for the western scientific revolution. For the progress it gives us, and the long series of inventions and discoveries that needed to be made, nurtured, and incorporated into culture. The change of culture to accept challenge without fear of chaos, and instead with an excitement at discovery.Hard to recommend this highly enough.

I enjoy more the biographical approach to history. No matter the history - of ideas, of poetry, of philosophy as such, or whatever - I love to read and learn of times and places and how such related to those who lived in ages other than my own. Here we are told that Columbus discovered America in 1492, a prelude not to the conditions on board ship or some such, but of a long long discussion of the word "discovery" in all its historic ramifications. Eventually I gave up. If I had wanted a book on linguistics I would have chosen one.The Copernican Revolution in thought and suchlike has long been a subject of interest to me. Again, John Caputo and his various books on "truth" and "hermeneutics", have given me much food for thought. Alas this book did not hold my interest. Not for me.

A staggering, and intellectually challenging book, but worth the effort. Deeply erudite, intricately argued and vast and ambitious in scope, this is, in my opinion, the definitive history of the development of science in the West that puts previous attempts such as Kuhn's in their place. Read it and see Western science in a wholly different way.

Good quality, would repeat