I have read a great deal about the development of Western science, and this book gives the best overall explanation of the complex interplay of factors that led to the astounding development of science.
Few people realize just how unlikely the development of science was. China has been the most advanced civilization on the planet for over 2,000 years (only because it had the largest population), but China never had anything remotely like science. It developed magnificent technology through endless trial and error, and Chinese scholars made lots of acute observations about the natural world, but they never came close to anything like rigorous analytical science as produced by the Scientific Revolution. The result was a little Western punk armed with modern firearms pushing around a mature and sophisticated civilization in the nineteenth century. Only in the last forty years has China learned to embrace Western science to realize its full potential, and they still have some catch-up to do.
Western science was the result of a long, long sequence of events that (in my opinion) began with the depredations of the Sea Peoples over 3,000 years ago. This led to the rise of a unique civilization in Greece. Here Mr. Cohen picks up the story, explaining in some detail the two competing philosophical styles that dominated Greek thought on natural phenomena. The first, which he calls the 'Athenian school' was a top-down, theory-first style. The second was a bottom-up, data-first style, which he called the 'Alexandrian school'. Unfortunately, the text here is a bit muddled; I had difficulty grasping exactly what Mr. Cohen meant in his explanations of these two schools. He added to the confusion with his extensions of the schools by referring to "Athens-plus" and "Alexandria-plus". I think that he would have done better to simply talk about these two basic threads (theory versus empiricism) and their development over the course of time. He also introduces a third thread, which I never really understood. I suspect that part of the problem arises from the inevitable difficulties of translating sophisticated ideas from one language to another.
There were a number of places in the text where I sensed that Mr. Cohen's grasp of the underlying science was weak; I cannot fault him here, because mastering the historical material is all by itself a Herculean achievement. But if Fate were to grant him a second youth, I'd love to see what he could accomplish by adding a strong education in science to his already impressive credentials.
This book requires some previous knowledge of the subject material. If you don't already know the basic contributions of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, then you will have difficulty grasping the key material.
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 5, 2020
The Rise of Modern Science This is an excellent summary for the layman of the author's magisterial previous ...
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 10, 2015
