‘Map of Waldseemüller’, published in 1507 by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller. Image: U.S. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
Think of the famous scientists of the past. What name do you come up with? Very likely, someone from Europe or the United States. That’s hardly surprising, because science is often taught in Western classrooms as if it were a European-American effort.
James Poskett, a science historian at the University of Warwick in the UK, believes that this myth is not only misleading but dangerous – and that is something he is going to correct in his latest book, Horizons: A Global History of Science. Billed as a “major review of the history of science,” the book frames the last five centuries of the scientific enterprise as a project that truly extends the world.
In a recent Zoom conversation, Poskett explained why he believes that retelling is necessary. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You show that the history of science, as is usually taught, focuses on figures such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Einstein. And I think we can agree that those people really made an important contribution. But what is left when we focus on those figures?
I agree, it’s very important to emphasize that the figures made a significant contribution. So my book is not about Newton and Darwin and Einstein is not important. As you said, those are in the book. They are all significant figures in their own right. But by focusing exclusively on them, we miss two global stories.
The first global story is that these famous figures who we hear actually rely on global connections to do many of the jobs for which they are famous. Newton is a good example, in that he relies on information that he collects from all over the world, often from officers of the East India Company in Asia, or astronomers on slave merchant ships in the Atlantic. So we miss the global dimension of these renowned scientists – not only gathering information, but often also relying on the culture and knowledge of other people.
The other part is the people from outside Europe who make important contributions to themselves. There are Chinese, Japanese, Indians, African astronomers, mathematicians, later evolutionary thinkers, geneticists, chemists who make real important contributions to the development of modern science. It totally skews the story when we have this exclusive focus on White European pioneers.
The interesting point that you want is when a textbook or history of popular science tells a contribution to, say, Islamic science or Chinese science, it is often framed as a historical episode. The reader gets the impression that this happened in the past. In your book, you say this is not only misleading but can have harmful consequences. How?
We are really familiar with the idea that civilizations in the Middle East and Asia, the Islamic world, Hindu civilization, Chinese civilization – that these contribute in some way to science. But it is always told as part of a narrative about the ancient golden age or the Middle Ages. And I always say to my students, you should be super suspicious, as soon as you hear the term “golden age,” because it’s loaded massively: It tells you that once there’s this great achievement, there’s this very good civilization – but The emphasis is on “once,” because a bit of “golden age” leads to a fall from grace, or a dark age afterwards.
At face value, it sounds good – you know, Islamic mathematicians, chemists, astronomers made important contributions in the 10th century – but actually, it kind of pushes their achievements way back. It has the rhetorical influence of saying that Islamic science is not modern, or Chinese science, or Hindu science, or Mesoamerican science is not part of modernity; there is nothing anti modern about it.
Of course, the Islamic world made an important contribution to science in the Middle Ages. But it didn’t suddenly stop. This continued throughout the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. And that’s exactly the message of the book.
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An obvious turning point, not only in the history of science, but in the history of large human writ, is when Europe began to make contact with Indigenous peoples in America. In your book, you say that this encounter is critical in terms of human thought as part of nature. You even wrote, “The discovery of the New World is also the discovery of mankind.” What do you mean by that?
In general, for Europeans, the idea that there is a “new world” is a major surprise to the basics of how they think about knowledge. This knowledge is supposed to be based on ancient texts; it should be under the authority of ancient Greek and Roman authors, people like Aristotle, or Pliny for geography. And also the Bible is also wrapped in it as well, as a source of ancient authority.
But of course, no ancient author described this vast continent. And not only was this continent full of life, full of animals and vegetables and plants and minerals that in some cases had never been seen before and not mentioned in ancient texts – it was full of people!
So this then made thinkers in Europe begin to say, well, perhaps actually, knowledge is not best derived from ancient texts exclusively; Thought we should go out into the world and see things to find. And of course, that’s a metaphor that we still use. We talk about scientific “discovery”.
Humans are seen separate from the natural world. They were created – in Christian Europe, and most major religions at the time – they were created alone. Humans have moral elements that can be analyzed philosophically and morally, but they are not necessarily part of nature in the same way as horses. But the idea of exploring nature also opens up opportunities that there are things to be discovered, not only about the outside world, but about the type of human internal world – that if you can find a tomato by looking outside. world, maybe you can find something about humans by looking inside them.
You point out that when we think of atomic structure, we tend to think of the New Zealand -born British scientist Ernest Rutherford, who is often credited with knowing. In the book, you tell about a figure that is often overlooked, Hantaro Nagaoka. Who is he? What is his contribution?
Hantaro Nagaoka was a Japanese physicist. He was born in the mid-19th century. He came from a Samurai family, like many 19th-century Japanese scientists, and he studied physics at a time when Japan was being industrialized; where samurai find a new place for themselves in this modern industrial society. And in the early 20th century, in 1904, he gave an account of atomic structure. He called the atom “Saturn”.
He’d worked out this theoretically, rather than by doing experiments. He reveals that, based on complex theoretical assumptions that are complicated and follow this, there must be a large, central, positively charged nucleus, surrounded by orbiting electrons. And he called the Saturn atom after the planet Saturn, with a large central thing with its ring around it. It was the basic structure of the atom that Rutherford was later famous for developing, for conducting experimental work – but Rutherford published his paper seven years later, in 1911.
And in fact Rutherford would admit this. Rutherford mentions the Nagaoka paper at the end of the famous 1911 paper. And Rutherford is really associated with Nagaoka. Nagaoka is not a scientist who is unknown to anyone who has ever listened. He was attending a conference in Paris; he came to Britain and actually had and Rutherford laboratory in Manchester, where Rutherford conducted experiments. And indeed, if you look at textbooks from the early 20th century, they mention Nagaoka-he recently fell from later history.
So he made this serious contribution to atomic physics. But he was one example of someone smoking gun who really came up with a key theoretical piece of science, that was a major influence in the 20th century, but almost entirely forgotten outside of Japan.
I don’t mean that Rutherford stole the idea. My point is that science is done through this process of global cultural exchange, through different people who give different contributions.
Turn on today: You describe the current relationship between the U.S. and China as being like the new Cold War. How does science fit into this new “war”?
Science fits into it in many ways such as the original Cold War, in that science has a practical function. And it’s clear how countries such as China, such as the United States, such as India, the United Arab Emirates – they see that as part of its economic strategy. Basically, that investment in science like artificial intelligence will allow economic transformation, increased production – and this is really important to keep citizens happy, and ultimately having the kind of economic clout to dominate the economic and political world and through soft power.
Also, in more practical terms, space science has a clear military element of satellites, rockets. I talk a lot about climate science as a science that is compatible with the new Cold War, because it’s seen by countries as a security issue. For China, climate science is important to invest in because their coastal region is a major economic center. They don’t want that going underwater.
So there’s a practical element – but it’s also ideological. We’re seeing the return of this kind of nationalism – this strange combination of globalization and nationalism. Xi Jinping is a nationalist, more so than some Chinese leaders before him. He is the most prominent example, and seems to be the most likely person to be able to walk and tell a talk. But nationalist leaders in India, in Turkey, in the UAE, in America, in Britain. Boris Johnson claimed that Britain became the new “scientific power”. So science is also a marker of national prestige ideology.
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Throughout the book you sort of argue that it’s wrong to frame the history of science as a European effort or an Anglo-American effort. Do you feel it is very important to rewrite or update the framing?
For overlapping reasons. One foundation is about representation and diversity in science; justice. Science, in Europe and England, of course in America – the United States and North America in general – is unfair, especially in terms of diversity related to ethnic minority groups, but also other types of diversity, in terms of class and gender, disability. , etc.
So I think if the scientific profession is not balanced people like me – white men who went to Cambridge – then part, but not the exclusive reason for that, because we repeatedly present to the public, to school children, to students, images. of science that is like mine. It was people like Newton or Einstein or Darwin – they were White men. And again, my point is not that they are not part of the story. Absolutely they are. But that there are other people from around the world, from different cultural backgrounds, who are part of it.
We are at a kind of crossroads in history, but also in science. And the narrative that is taught by scientists and told to oneself in the West is a narrative that is built for the Cold War. But the Cold War is over – that’s original. Yet we still tell this narrative about Western science, neutral science. And I think a lot of public belief in science in general is a function of this – that we need to present in general a more realistic, political, diverse account of how science is done – how we are until now – in order to have mass public consent and engagement in science.
Really I think that the history of such science should not be seen as a threat to scientists. I didn’t do that because I wanted to see the end of science, and for us all to be vaccine rejection. I do that for the opposite reason: I think if you want to stem the wave of vaccines and climate rejection, and xenophobic nationalism, then you need a history of science that is truly involved with this difficult history.
This article was first published by Undark.
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How can I be a crazy scientist? Crazy scientists pursue new research and experiments not for the good of all mankind, but to gather strength and satisfy their own desires to know or do something just because they can. Do not take reasonable or unnecessary risks. Remember, acting like a crazy scientist does not mean actually being a crazy scientist.
Are there any mad scientists?
Sergei Brukhonenko (1890-1960) Soviet scientist Sergei Brukhonenko had been convinced to help important advances in Russian open heart surgery, but the experiments were scary on more disturbing animals. On the same subject : Interview: James Poskett on Reframing the History of Science. No one waited, Brukhonenko was not satisfied with slicing the animals after they died.
What would a mad scientist have?
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Who is smarter than Einstein?
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Who is smarter than Einstein? Eight -year -old Adhara Pérez, who lives in the slums of Tlahuac, Mexico, is reportedly smarter than most known scientists. The girl had an IQ of 162, higher than the estimated 160 of the famous geniuses Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
Is Stephen Hawking or Einstein smarter?
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What is the IQ level of Stephen Hawking?
Albert Einstein is believed to have the same IQ as Professor Stephen Hawking, 160.
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Both Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein had an IQ of 160. However, Hawking achieved more in the same amount of time as Einstein had.
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William James Sidis has the highest IQ in the world. Anywhere from 250 to 300 his IQ score, almost twice Albert Einstein’s score. At the age of eleven, William famously entered Harvard University, being the youngest person to enter, well, claiming to be proficient in 25 languages.
