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Difference between revisions of "Science Since Babylon"
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Added more of an actual summary to chapter 1, left the scattered notes that form a longer summary. Might trim down further later.
(Added more of an actual summary to chapter 1, left the scattered notes that form a longer summary. Might trim down further later.) |
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==Preface== | ==Preface== | ||
===to the Enlarged Edition=== | ===to the Enlarged Edition=== | ||
Now, more than ever, science if being used as the hammer to solve all of society’s problems. Thus taking it away from it’s true purpose. | |||
“Today as never before, our higher educational system and the culture it enfolds teeter critically on a sharp division between education in the ancient sense of the term and a somewhat blatantly utilitarian viewpoint in which science is seen as a begetter of technological fixes for national needs.” | “Today as never before, our higher educational system and the culture it enfolds teeter critically on a sharp division between education in the ancient sense of the term and a somewhat blatantly utilitarian viewpoint in which science is seen as a begetter of technological fixes for national needs.” | ||
“Science is a very exceptional and peculiar activity of all mankind, and one is not at liberty to regard it as that which can be applied to make technology.” | “Science is a very exceptional and peculiar activity of all mankind, and one is not at liberty to regard it as that which can be applied to make technology.” | ||
This new edition has 3 extra | This new edition has 3 extra chapters: | ||
# The history of automata | # The history of automata | ||
## “[it] serves as a link between the development of clockwork and the mechanistic philosophy that has played a central role in the conceptual side of science.” | ## “[it] serves as a link between the development of clockwork and the mechanistic philosophy that has played a central role in the conceptual side of science.” | ||
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== 1. The Peculiarity of a Scientific Civilization == | == 1. The Peculiarity of a Scientific Civilization == | ||
===Summary=== | ===Summary=== | ||
# Science is a cornerstone of the modern (western) world, and unique to it. | |||
## Having a scientific revolution in the west is an anomaly. | |||
### “In my opinion one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.” | |||
# Different cultures were good at different types of mathematics, and the type they were good at is a reflection of their culture and them more broadly. | |||
## “One need only examine the attitudes of each civilization toward the square root of two. The Greeks proved it was irrational; the Babylonians computed it to high accuracy.” | |||
## He postulates, since these culture’s approach to math is a reflection of some underlying way of thinking, then we should stop considering our collective failure to teach children mathematics as simply one of bad teaching. If the child has a “Babylonian brain”, then trying to teach Greek style math will results in failure. | |||
# Price postulates that a necessary ingredient for the scientific revolution was the clashing of these different sciences (and their cultures). | |||
## It worked in the west since the Greeks and Babylonians both worked on the same topics but in vastly different ways. | |||
## To help prove this he points at China, where mathematicians knew and were proficient at both Greek and Babylonian “style” math, and consciously did not have a scientific revolution. | |||
## Given this, we should strive to maintain distinct ways of thought and merge them together as distinct pieces of a whole, rather than trying to create a homogenous way of thinking. | |||
# When it comes to the development in science, we again think of the exception as the norm. The rate of progress in chemistry and biology are compared to those in physics, and it is questions why they are so slow by comparison. | |||
## The correct framing isn’t “why is biology so slow”, but rather “why was physics so quick”. And the answer is that other fields (math and astronomy) accelerated it. | |||
# Modern people can only conceive of science as something with a mathematical underpinning. | |||
## The two are essentially inseparable in modern thought; anything not on a solid mathematical foundation is not seen as a “real” science until that “error” has been corrected. | |||
### See the way that social science and other soft sciences are consistently ridiculed for their lack of math. | |||
## “Since the historical origin of that backbone seems such a remarkable caprice of fate, one may wonder whether science would have been at all possible and, if so, what form it might have taken if a situation had existed in China which caused the chemical and biological sciences to make great advances before astronomy and physics.” | |||
Science is a cornerstone of the modern (western) world. | Science is a cornerstone of the modern (western) world. | ||
* “We cannot construct a respectable history of Europe or a tolerable survey of western civilization without it. It is going to be as important to us for the understanding of ourselves as Graeco-Roman antiquity was for Europe during a period of over a thousand years”. | * “We cannot construct a respectable history of Europe or a tolerable survey of western civilization without it. It is going to be as important to us for the understanding of ourselves as Graeco-Roman antiquity was for Europe during a period of over a thousand years”. | ||