This is one of several books that serve as a corrective to the popular myth that the fall of Rome was followed by the "Dark Ages." In this book, the development of modern science is traced from pre-history through the classical period (Greece and Rome) and afterward. Discoveries and the transmission of learning after the fall of Rome in Islamic lands and in the West is covered in readable detail.
Unlike similar books, the author does not wish to address why science withered away in Islam, instead wanting to end that section on a positive note (something to the effect that we should instead be amazed at how long it lasted). It is also rather more detailed tour on the thought and discoveries of the "ancients".
For anyone who has been steeped in the mythology that the history of scientific progress was Greece/Rome, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, this book (and/or the others listed below) should be required reading. That would cover mostly anyone educated in our colleges and high schools in the last fifty years.
Other books in this vein worth reading:
The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution
,
Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective
,
The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge Studies in the History of Science)
.
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