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Title: Lost Discoveries : The Ancient Roots of Modern Science--from the Babylonians to the Maya by Dick Teresi ISBN: 0-684-83718-8 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.26 (19 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A lot to offer, with a few flaws
Comment: 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
Rating: 3
Summary: Fascinating ancient beliefs with tenuous modern connections
Comment: 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."
Rating: 4
Summary: Towards a more balanced world view
Comment: 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.
So far, Teresi's book has not been much reviled...which is quite heartwarming. A couple of readers did point out errors in "fact" as presented in the book. However, since this is not a textbook of school-level science , we can forgive him that. It has a much wider scope and intention. Don't loose the trees for the mangoes!!
This being the first book of its kind that I have read outside India, I have nothing to compare it with. 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, things 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). The fact that India was a pre-eminent power in cotton textiles and silk that were exported all over the ancient world. The british apparently tried, without success, to duplicate this quality , after they started the industrial revolution.
I would totally recommend this book to anyone interested in assigning credit where it is due.
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Title: 1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies ISBN: 0060537639 Publisher: William Morrow & Company Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433 ISBN: 0195112075 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Crest of the Peacock by George Gheverghese Joseph ISBN: 0691006598 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 15 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Cases in Middle and Secondary Science Education : The Promise and Dilemmas (2nd Edition) by Thomas R. Koballa, Deborah J. Tippins ISBN: 0131127985 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 30 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Ancient Mariners by Lionel Casson ISBN: 0691014779 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 26 August, 1991 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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