To explain the world
"Weinberg takes us across centuries from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad and Oxford, from Plato's Academy and the Museum of Alexandria to the cathedral school of Chartres and the Royal Society of London. He shows that the scientists of ancient and medieval times not only did not understand what we understand about the world--they did not understand what there is to understand, or how to understand it. Yet over the centuries, through the struggle to solve such mysteries as the curious backward movement of the planets and the rise and fall of the tides, the modern discipline of science eventually emerged"--Amazon.com. Presents a commentary on the history of science that examines historic clashes and collaborations between science and the competing realms of religion, technology, poetry, mathematics, and philosophy.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
5mentions
4people
2018–2022years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I recommend "To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science" by Steven Weinberg.
- To Explain The World by Steven Weinberg is great, written by a Nobel laureate theoretical physicist for a popular audience.
- "To Explain the World" by Steven Weinberg. Not only a history of science, but one written by a great scientist.
- Some good ones I read this year:
- _SPQR_, by Mary Beard. Engaging book surveying the history of ancient Rome, mostly Republic and early Empire if I recall correctly.
- _To Explain The World_, by Steven Weinberg. History of physics from the ancients to about the time of Newton. Don't skip the technical notes! Actually do the problems!
- I reread _Wolf Hall_, by Hilary Mantel, it was as good as I remember. This time through, I also spent some time on the Internet tracing the histories of the major characters before and after the events of the book, and it really enhanced my appreciation of it. (I also read, for the first time, its sequel, which was fine but not quite as good.)
- In what may be a case of Baader-Meinhof, I just came across the term "Whiggish" for the first time, reading Steven Weinberg's _To Explain the World_ (pretty good so far). He also has a dig at Kuhn, recounting a time when they met briefly and Kuhn gave a defense of Aristotle that he found incoherent.
I'm no expert in the field of scientific thought, but my sympathies fall with Morris and Weinberg and the like. I agree with Weinberg that Aristotle understood physics worse than many schoolchildren do today. Which is not to say that Aristotle was stupid, but just that your knowledge is a function of the times you live in and the volume of past human thought you've had the privilege to learn from.
There are legitimate social and ethical concerns for everyone to keep in mind with the advancement of scientific knowledge. But this shouldn't be conflated with the idea that we don't understand the natural world better than we used to. We do.
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