Customer Reviews

Lost Discoveries : The Ancient Roots of Modern Science--from the Babylonians to the Maya

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I'm usually fascinated by histories of science that expand our understanding past the standard picture that science started with the ancient Greeks and has largely been carried out in the West. So I dived into Lost Discoveries with great excitement. Unfortunately, I soon found myself putting the book down and wandering off to other things. Having finally finished it, I see it as a remarkably comprehensive and valuable step towards a broader understanding of early and non-Western scientific contributions, but also as having some significant flaws.

On the positive side, Teresi has gathered together a great deal of scholarly work on Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Maya, and Arab science and mathematics, and presents it clearly and understandably. He more than makes the case that we need to deepen our understanding of the ancient roots of science and broaden our acceptance of the idea that science has existed in many non-Western cultures. Readers will come away not only with these big and very important ideas, but with many fascinating details about advances and discoveries made long before they were made in the West.

On the other side of the ledger, I found myself seriously put off by the author's willingness to present just about any story that ever expressed any culture's mythology about the creation or structure of the cosmos as a meaningful predecessor of current cosmological thinking. Maybe I'm just not post-modern enough to grant equal scientific weight to an ancient creation myth as to the inflationary Big-Bang theory. The ancient story may be poetic and psychologically very meaningful, but it can't predict the primordial percentages of hydrogen and helium, or the wrinkles in the cosmic microwave background. Similarly, when Teresi writes that when particle physicists finally find the Higgs boson, they will validate the Buddhist idea of "maya," I found myself wishing that the author had used a finer sieve when chosing what to write about and what to leave out.

Still, anyone who is interested in the history of science, and at all curious about what kinds of science and mathematics predated or paralled the canonical Western scientific tradition, will find Lost Discoveries well worth reading.

Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation

This book contains a wealth of facts, many not widely appreciated. However, it is tragically flawed by its confused and ambiguous definitions of science, technology, and mathematics.

Science is the investigation of the natural world using REPRODUCIBLE observations as the ultimate arbitrators of truth and the organization and systemization of those observations. Mathematics is the investigation of the meaning of axiomatic systems using deductive logic as the arbitrator of truth. Technology is the body of knowledge and facilities used by humans to create artifacts. Both science and mathematics are tools in the process of creating technology.

Lacking a clear understanding of these definitions, the author wanders about in the last 4,000 years of history confusing the development of technologies with science, science with mathematics, technology with mathematics, and worst, myth with all three.

Thus, for example, he notes that Pythagorean triples (e.g., 5x5 = 4x4 + 3x3) were know to the ancient Babylonians 1000 years before Pythagoras lived. The Babylonians, however, did not state the theorem or prove it. This distinction is pivotal from the point view of a mathematician. Mathematics as we know it today began when the first theorem was proved.

Likewise, "reproducible observation", the essence of science, did not become an identifiable and prevalent methodology by which to seek truth about the natural world until about the time of Galileo Galilei in Sixteenth Century Europe. Thus, although there has been a great deal of under reporting by European historians of technologies developed by Chinese, Indian and other civilizations, this book fails to make the crucial distinction between science and technological development, the history of which trails back at least 40,000 years and is certainly not confined to white European inventors.

Some scientists, notably Richard Feynman, have claimed that the development of science does not much depend the pre-development of mathematics, asserting that when the scientific need arises the mathematics will be developed by the scientists. However, it is difficult to imagine that Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century science would have occurred had three thousand years of mathematical development not preceded it. The author rightly emphasizes the fact that much of this early mathematics can be attributed to non-Europeans. Unfortunately, this point is almost entirely lost in the jumble of imprecision engendered by the lack of coherent definitions of the disciplines of mathematics and science.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, throughout the book the author repeatedly reports myths or half-baked and unsupported ideas that seem to presage some modern scientific fact or theory, he then implies that the myths were the precursors of the science. For example, 3,000 thousand years ago an Indian cult had the notion that all things consisted of vibrations. The author reports this and then announces that this may have been the beginning of quantum mechanics. It is as though he was rummaging around in garbage dump, found a shoe box, held it up and proclaimed here is the precursor of the radio because it had about the same shape at that of early radios.

This book is worth reading because of its factual content, but constant mental surveillance is required to avoid being caught up in the author's confusion about the nature of the basic entities he is discussing and his persistent tendency to give primitive myths the status of the precursors of modern scientific knowledge.

In "Lost Discoveries," Dick Teresi sets out to prove (and largely succeeds) that many of our science discoveries, previously attributed to Hellenic and other white-European civilizations, were actually preceded by--or flat out ripped off from--non-white, non-Western types, such as the Chinese, Sumerians, Babylonians, Mesoamericans, Africans, Indians, etc. He selects several general areas of scientific endeavor--mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, geology, and mechanical invention--and shows examples from each of how Man's understanding of the laws of the universe is much older than we think. And he names names. The book ends up being a fantastic compendium of science knowledge, with enough interesting trivia to keep the average dinner-party know-it-all armed for a lifetime.

What Teresi explains is that claiming Copernicus was the first to hypothesize that Earth orbits the Sun is like claiming that Columbus was the first to discover America. That ignores the natives, the Mesoamericans, the Vikings, and probably a few more. The same can apparently be said about who decided Earth was round, who invented paper, and on and on. There were plenty of smart thinkers in older times, and their discoveries have been "lost" or ignored for a variety of reasons. These, too, Teresi tries to detail.

Part of Teresi's problem is deciding how to differentiate between a notion and scientific proof. A 3,000-B.C. barbarian looking out across the ocean, noting its curvature, and deducing that Earth is round is not the same as Columbus sailing three ships out there and not falling off. Teresi really begins to stretch matters in favor of the ancients when he drags out their cosmic mythologies and tries to claim its early quantum physics.

A minor annoyance is that the book's premise would have been better if discoveries were traced back to their true origin without regard to race. Show the evidence and the links, and let the chips fall where they may. Teresi patronizes "non-white, non-western" types by trying to validate their heritage; and jumps on the PC bandwagon as he insults European descendents by constantly reaching for the conclusion that old dead white guys are never as smart as we're led to believe. As if it matters. He even hints that due credit for non-white discoveries may have been suppressed over the centuries by a vast conspiracy fueled by racial prejudice. This book would have been better if he'd just left Rodney King out of it. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

The author of "Lost Discoveries" claims he began to write "with the purpose of showing that the pursuit of evidence of nonwhite science is a fruitless endeavor," but his goal changed when he kept finding "examples of ancient and medieval non-Western science that equaled and often surpassed ancient Greek learning." The book he wrote instead is a compendium of miscellaneous ancient, non-Western discoveries or beliefs in what he calls the "hard sciences." (An unfortunate lapse: By "nonwhite," Teresi apparently means non-European; his investigation includes other Caucasian civilizations.)

Non-Western scientific background is definitely a topic worthy of a book for the general reader, and, although there's some fascinating stuff here (and a solid bibliography that will expand anyone's reading list), "Lost Discoveries" suffers from several shortcomings. One problem is the book's organization. Teresi divides his discussion into distinctions that were unknown a few centuries ago--mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, physics, geology, chemistry, and technology--and then divides each of these chapters by localities. As a result, the book has little narrative flow and makes for some awfully dry reading--the type of disconnected paragraphs one usually finds in textbooks or reference works. I found it difficult to read this book for more than a few pages at a stretch.

Furthermore, since modern scientific specialties were, of course, unknown to ancient investigators, his categorization results in some odd choices. For example, beliefs concerning the shape of the earth (round, flat, or square) are discussed in geology as well as cosmology. Similarly, he arbitrarily divides up the work of alchemists among several chapters. Since ancient and medieval studies span many disciplines, there is a lot of annoying (and often verbatim) repetition: we read about the yin-yang duality and ch'i in the sections on astronomy, physics, geology, and chemistry; about Jainism with regards to cosmology, physics, and chemistry; and how Avicenna influenced physics, geology, and chemistry.

Teresi was cofounder of Omni Magazine, which had a reputation (some might call it notoriety) for including articles on topics that strayed well beyond science and into paranormal exploration and New Age quackery. Although "Lost Discoveries" is usually on firmer scientific ground, the author occasionally recalls his earlier career with an eager enthusiasm to find direct or symbolic connections between ancient learning and modern scientific investigation. This is particularly true in his chapter on cosmology. (Teresi's obvious distaste for Big Bang theory doesn't help here.) The Mangaian creation myth, describing an infant universe emerging from a coconut root, may offer interesting literary and cultural insights, but it in no way "anticipates" modern cosmological theories of an inflationary universe. Elsewhere, it's simply preposterous to find intimations of quantum theory in the ancient Indian "yadrccha" (chance) or of the Higgs field in the Buddhist "maya" (the weight of the universe). One may as well argue that William Bennett is a quantum physicist every time he walks into a casino.

It's too bad that Teresi didn't organize his research by civilization and time period, compare these societies on their own terms (rather than ours), chart their influences on each other and on subsequent cultures, and avoid misguided attempts to find inklings of 21st-century theories and knowledge in every ancient myth. Readers looking for a stronger investigation of the wonders of non-Western science, technology, and civilization should check out Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" or Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's "Civilizations."

This book is about the scientific achievements of non-Western peoples such as the Babylonians, Arabs, Mayans, Chinese and others. This is a fascinating subject that is given inadequate attention, and thus this could have been a great book. Unfortunately it's trash.

The book's author, Dick Teresi, is formerly from Omni magazine, a "science" magazine best known for its credulity about UFOs and the paranormal- not the best sign. The book is badly written, full of innaccuracies, exaggerations, and misinterpretations. At his loopiest, Teresi insists that ancient peoples anticipated modern theories such as quantum mechanics and modern cosmology, based upon very vague connections to their religious and metaphysicial beleifs. This rather indicates that Teresi has a limited understanding of the basis of science itself (based upon verifiability and predictability) and probably isn't qualified to write a book on this subject

Teresi also seems to have a big axe to grind against the West and against Western science, and the book is full of denigrations of Western civilization. Teresi goes beyond noting that it was influenced by non-Western achievements and seems to argue that it stole all its achievements from them. After awhile, this becomes irritating, especially since his reasoning is so poor.

The book had a lot of interesting information that I hadn't heard before, but given the book's low credibility, I was never sure whether the info was trustworthy.

It's too bad, because it's a fascinating subject, which deserves a better-written popularization than this.

Teresi clearly harbours a resentment for modern science and a wide-eyed awe for anything ancient non-Western cultures did. This incredibly annoying book keeps drawing ridiculous parallels between various myths and legends of ancient cultures and concepts from modern science. A typical quote:

The 8.64 billion years that mark a full day-and-night cycle in Brahma's life is about half the modern estimate for the age of the universe. That the Hindus could conceive of the universe in terms of billions of years was, according to [Carl] Sagan, "no doubt by accident." Yes, it's possible that they were just lucky. But the similarities between Indian and modern cosmology do not seem accidental.

Teresi seems to think the ancients actually knew what was going on - that the stretched parallels to modern science he sees in their myths couldn't possibly be coincidental:

Many ancient cultures had inklings of quantum theory. Rutherford has a radioactive source of alpha particles to probe the nucleus. J. J. Thomson had cathode-ray tubes for discovering the electron. The ancients had no such equipment. Where did the concept of field come from, so new to us and yet so prevalent in past cultures?

The whole book is like this. If you want a decent history of pre-Western science, run screaming from this book and look for something else.

No wonder Dick Teresi had to include a disclaimer that his ideas do not reflect the ones of the scientists he has consulted. The idea of presenting the history of science was a good one, unfortunately D. Teresi did not bother to research his sources well, if at all. Perhaps this was an excepted method when writing about UFOs, but it does not work for science. Together with his conjectures which are beyond far-fetched, this book is too frustrating to read for anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of history and some sense for the usefulness of scientific fact. Just to put at least one of the statements in his book straight, Faraday did not learn science and devise the dynamo from solely being a book binder (as D. Teresi claims), but from his extensive work as an assistant in a laboratory of David Humphry, an English chemist (which is never mentioned in Teresi's book). In summary, I wish someone would write a book about the ancient roots of our science using facts and confirmed, well researched sources. The National Enquirer approach used by D. Teresi is not suitable to the topic. This is the only book I have ever returned.

Any book that attempts to revise the prevalent Western/White/Post-Industrial/European/American(?) weltanschauung by uncovering and suggesting the HUGE influences of Eastern/Hindu/Islamic/Chinese thought and technology, is bound to get flack.

What's heartwarming is that Teresi's book has not got much flack...yet!!

This being the first book of its kind that I have read outside India, I have nothing to compare it with. There are any number of indian publications under the title "Vedic Mathematics", that illustrate the sophistication possible with non-mainstream mathematics. I remember reading a totally original vedic proof of "Pythagoras'" theorem that was elegant, complete and just 3 lines long!

However, the author covers so much ground, and attempts to pack tons of information in a moderately sized book (around 300 pages), that at times the facts come faster than the mind can process. And although he's taken the easy way out by classifying chapters with broad categories, that has lead to a lot of repetition of facts within the book. A more efficient categorization would be by actual elements of discussion - say 1) Algebra 2) Civic Amenities 3)Metallurgy . This way a discourse of the general aspects of a civilization could have been relegated to appendices, and the bok itself would have more of a "tabular" comparison approach. But that's just me.

Kudos to Teresi for the amount of research done for this book. The references list a staggering number of sources, and so much about my own culture (Indian) was revealed to me through this book. Sadly, the text books in India are lame reincarnations and faded copies of books instituted during the British rule. Consequestly, facts like the metallurgical supremacy of South India (Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka ) in ancient times (iron-ore mined in Africa was converted to high grade steel in India and later forged into Damascus blades), and the invention of hand-made cotton textiles, do not appear in school texts.

I would whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in assigning credit where it is due. And, to those who say "what does it matter?"...it DOES matter to those cultures who have been stripped of pride in their own accomplishments and heritage; I believe that the kind of awareness this book fosters, would reduce some of the prejudice, short-sightedness and ignorance in the world.

You know you're not in for a dry recitation of facts when the chapter on mathematics begins with the author and his fourth-grader son and his son's friends waiting in line at Taco Bell. The boys start guffawing at the menu. There were three sizes of drinks, and three prices: $1.19, $1.49, and $1.79. "The kids were laughing," Teresi writes, "at the sign beneath the prices: UNLIMITED REFILLS!" This sign, as Teresi explains, is an example of the concept known as "infinite sets." (An infinite number of small drinks is equivalent to an infinite number of large drinks, so there's no reason to pay the higher price of large drinks.) Infinite sets were understood by Indian scientists in the sixth century BC but apparently haven't made it to Taco Bell. From there, he goes on to explain the real -- and surprisingly entertaining -- origins of mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, physics, and other sciences. Gleefully mocking both the pretensions of chauvinistic Western scientists and the half-baked multi-cultis who believe that the Egyptians invented airplanes and used telekinesis, this book is a romp and celebration of human genius, which can be found in all cultures and time periods.

Lost Discoveries is an attempt to dissuade the reader from the opinion that the West (Post-Columbian North America, Europe, and Ancient Greece) was the sole founder and developer of the modern sciences. Teresi uses facts and opinions from a variety of sources to prove his theory, as well as his personal opinion about a discovery or theory currently being discussed. Much of his factual evidence is properly founded in scientific proof, the evidence largely being the work of a multitude of historians.
However, a sizeable amount of the opinions and theories he puts forward are taken to an extreme and are not to be taken as factual evidence by the reader. Some of these statements are somewhat misleading and the reader should be wary of trusting these opinions without proper knowledge of the aspect and/or historical topic being discussed. This being said, there is a good amount of truth to be had in the book and Teresi provides some compelling evidence in support of Eastern scientific knowledge and development.
The writing style Teresi presents is strong in the earlier chapters, yet looses strength as the book goes on. It also seems that the last two chapters were hurriedly compiled and completed. The book is disorganized in places, presenting facts and evidence that would likely be better suited in supporting another topic. However Teresi does, at times, present facts in a very appealing manner and is quite convincing in the earlier chapters. Although due to later chapters the reader may find himself/herself questioning the credibility of the earlier chapters.
Overall Lost Discoveries provides an interesting and fascinating read with factual evidence that will urge the reader to question their ideas of history and scientific heritage. But due to the large quantities of opinion, it is suggested that the reader use the book as a source for books and documents that can be studied and proven to have scientific value. The book had a wealth of potential, and should have been properly completed. Perhaps Teresi will release a revised edition to better present the topic.