Scientifica Historica

How the world's great science books chart the history of knowledge

Brian Clegg

• Publisher: Ivy Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781782408796
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Science History
• Index: History

Scientifica Historica isan illustrated, accessiblereview of those books that marked the development of science from ancient civilizations to the new millennium. The book is divided into five eras and explores the leading scientificpioneers, discoveries and books within them:

• Ancient World – looks at the beginnings of language, plus the first ever scientific documents produced and translated
• Renaissance in Print – explores the effects of the invention of the printing press and the exploration of the seas and skies
• Modern Classical – surveys the nineteenth century and the development of science as a profession
• Post-Classical – dissects the twentieth century and the introduction of relativity, quantum theory and genetics
• The Next Generation – reviews the period from 1980 to the modern day, showing how science has become accessible to the general public

Plus an introduction to the history and development of writing and books in general, and a list of the 150 greatest science books published.
From carvings and scrolls to glossy bound tomes, this book beautifully illustrates the evolution of scientific communication to the world. By recounting the history ofscience via its key works—those books written by the keenest minds our world has known—this book reflects the physical results ofbrilliant thought manifested in titles that literally changed the course of knowledge.

1

ANCIENT WORLD
LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS

FOR CENTURIES THERE have been debates over what makes humans unique among the animals. Biologists frequently insist that there is nothing special about the species Homo sapiens. The term ‘exceptionalism’ is used in biology circles in a derogatory fashion to describe the attempt to give us a special status. And, certainly, there are few human abilities that aren’t duplicated in some fashion by other animals. However, Homo sapiens far exceeds other species in its collective capabilities to adapt its environment for life, and the driver for this ability seems to be creativity.

This remarkable trait was present when Homo sapiens first evolved, over 200,000 years ago. Creativity means that humans do not simply accept things as they are and live in the present, but can think outside the moment and ask questions such as ‘Why does that happen?’ or ‘What if I did this?’ or ‘What could I do to make things different?’

When early humans looked beyond scratching an existence to the full might of nature – from the Sun and the stars to the devastating power of lightning and hurricanes – the first responses to the question ‘Why does that happen?’ involved deities or magic. The assumption was that there had to be supernatural forces, capable of actions that were forever beyond our understanding, even if they perhaps could be placated by human rituals. However, with the establishment of static gatherings of people in the early cities, there was an opportunity to begin to take what we would now consider a more scientific approach.

First came the use of numbers (although arguably a separate discipline to science, mathematics is so tightly tied to the sciences that we will be considering it an integral part of Scientifica Historica). More accurately, what seems to have come first was the tally, a mechanism for counting that did not require numbers. Say, for example, a neighbour borrowed some loaves of bread and you wanted to make sure that your loaves were all replaced. Without numbers, you could put a pebble in a safe place for each loaf the neighbour took. When they handed over a replacement loaf, you would throw away a pebble corresponding to it until there were no pebbles left.

We don’t know for certain how long such systems were used as they leave no permanent record, but a number of ancient bones have been discovered that appear to have tally marks on them. The Ishango bone, which is over 20,000 years old, is a baboon’s leg bone, found on what is now the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has a series of notches carved into it, which are widely interpreted as being a tally. The even older Lebombo bone, dating back over 40,000 years, also has a series of notches, though there is more dispute about their nature.

Tally markers can preserve information remarkably well, as witnessed by the fact that these bones still exist so long after they were first created. Such bones can be considered the earliest ancestor of a written record. Of a similar age to the Lebombo bone are some of the early cave paintings, which provide another form of communication that had the potential to establish traditions across a period of time.

Keeping a long-term written record may not have had significance for the makers of the bone tallies, but as cities and trade grew, the need for accounting meant that records began to be kept. At the time, these may simply have been markers of financial transactions, however the ability to keep information to a later date, and to share it, would be crucial for the development of a scientific view of the world.

FOUR VIEWS OF THE ISHANGO BONE, CA. 20,000–18,000 BCE

The series of notches on this baboon leg bone are thought to be tally marks, housed in the Royal Belgian Institure of Natural Sciences.

From tallies to writing

Over the centuries, straightforward pictures and simple notch-based tallies developed into pictograms. As the name suggests, pictograms were image-based, but unlike cave paintings they were stylised into a standard form to represent individual concepts. Some modern Chinese characters still take this form – the character for ‘door’ for example, looks a little like a door.

With some thought, pictograms could also be used to convey less concrete notions. For example, a series of pictograms could be used to communicate the process of putting bread into a basket. If we see a loaf of bread, then a hand, then a loaf in a basket, the message is fairly clear. (For a modern example of a message using pictograms, think of an IKEA instruction sheet.) In that basic form there is no separate symbol to display the concept of ‘in’ or ‘into’, meaning that we need an awful lot of pictograms. There would need to be, for example, a different symbol for a loaf in a basket and for a dog in a basket. But it is not hard to imagine something like an arrow being used to indicate the relationship of ‘in’, after which we just need the pictograms for bread (or dog) and basket with that linking arrow image. A symbol such as this arrow i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Ancient World Laying the Foundations
• 2 Renaissance in Print the Revolution in Books
• 3 Modern Classical Victorian Stability
• 4 Post-Classical the World Turned Upside Down
• 5 The Next Generation Transforming Understanding
• Bibliography
• Index
• Picture Credits
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright