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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disjointed, September 1, 2002
This review is from: Science Goes to War: The Search for the Ultimate Weapon--from Greek Fire to Star Wars (Hardcover)
Certain topics demand a broad scope, particularly topics dealing with warfare and military/weapons development over the span of thousands of years. Science Goes to War, by Ernest Volkman, is an interesting book, but ultimately a shadow of what it could have become had it not been constrained within a largely Eurocentric framework. Worse yet, there are a number of factual errors and omissions which sink the book further, thus threatening its credibility as a reliable source of information on the subject. Science Goes to War is a study of how science has been coopted through the ages to serve the interests of the State. And the State's primary desire has always been new and more destructive weapons which scientists or precursors to scientists have caused to come into fruition through their research. It's unfortunate that the Chinese could not have been included in this study other than to point out how and why they fell behind the Europeans in science and technolgy. Because at various periods in their history, the Chinese showed a great penchant for inventiveness and innovation in the area of weapons technolgy. The Warring States Period is instructive of how chronic warfare in early China led to profound upgrades not only in weaponry but tactics. Considerable Chinese R&D had to have gone into these developments, yet the author misses a grand opportunity to highlight them. The same for India, Africa and pre-Columbian America. What a contribution to his readership the author would have made had he discussed how European raiders on the African coast suffered losses at the hands of Africans armed with poison arrows, and how those poisons were developed by nameless African researchers. This was a form of chemical and biological warfare waged by Africans, because the nature of the poisons they used could be plant or bio-based. The errors in this book range from tiny to monumental. The author states that the English had no knights at the Battle of Agincourt when in fact they did. He displays a curious ignorance about the extent of China's use of gunpowder in warfare prior to the Mongol invasions, and most staggering of all is his erroneous depiction of Pizzaro's encounter with the Incas. According to the book, the Incas, arrayed in battle formation, attacked the Spaniards, who in turn defeated them. In fact, the Incas did not attack first. Both sides were not arrayed facing each other in a fair pre-battle setting. What transpired was a sneak attack by Spanish horsemen and infantry against lightly armed or unarmed soldiers escorting the Inca emperor to meet with Pizzaro. What transpired was a massacre. Volkman gives much attention to the English longbow, while neglecting to eloborate upon the capacities of the composite bow, a weapon he cursorily mentions. The Mongols made maximum use of this bow, which had a heavier pull and greater range than the English longbow. Even more odd is his overlooking of the Vikings, whose ships were marvels of naval technology during that era. The later chapters of the book confers a slight redemptiveness to the entire work in the author's effective illustration of the horrific consequences of an unfettered collusion between science and the State. Science Goes to War could have been much greater in scope had the author shown the ambition to cover ground rarely covered in military history. Instead, this work is average at best.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Astounding and frightning must read, September 9, 2002
This review is from: Science Goes to War: The Search for the Ultimate Weapon--from Greek Fire to Star Wars (Hardcover)
Absolutely one of the best, most accurate, well-documented, and organized books on the subject of science being "the bringer of evil; the bringer of life." It isn't lite reading, but the knowledge gained from its pages will affect the way you think about the risks and benefits of technology forever. Be strong, be brave, be afraid.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Well-written, too simplistic, schizophrenic, August 4, 2002
This review is from: Science Goes to War: The Search for the Ultimate Weapon--from Greek Fire to Star Wars (Hardcover)
I bought this book because I had read several enthusiastic reviews. It started out as a fast, fun read, but quickly became tiresome and repetitive, and then just plain annoying.
Volkman forces history into a standard template: a political entity has a military problem and solves it by applying science, which is done by creating an R&D operation in which scientists abandon "pure" science to create deadly weapons. The same template is applied to everyone from the ancient Assyrians and modern states. History is grossly oversimplied and some events (e.g., the Battle of Agincourt) are warped beyond recognition to fit nicely into Volkman's thesis.
The book's abstract is highly misleading: the book does not "examine":
(1) "the moral dilemmas" - it basically *asserts* (at virtually every juncture) that scientists prostitute themselves when they work on weapons. The last 25-30% could largely be retitled "scientists as war criminals".
(2) "knotty technological problems" - its treatment is only somewhat better than you would encounter in a bland public high school history book. Too often, solutions seem to just magically appear.
(3) "pragmatic necessities ..." - ditto.
The first five chapters have a fast-paced, enthusiastic style and might be useful for piquing a student's interest into looking more deeply into some of the topics here. However, for anyone who already has even a modest background in this area, this book offers little or nothing in the way of insights or alternate perspectives.
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