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Science since Babylon
An eye-opening work for anyone concerned with the humanistic understanding of science"Enlightening reading for the scientist and non-scientist alike."— Times Educational Supplement"Provides the opportunity to read, or re-read, some of Price's most noteworthy essays and to once more reflect on the urgencies of a reasoned science policy for the U.S."— IntellectThis timely classic investigates the circumstances and consequences of certain vital decisions relating to scientific crises that have brought the world to its present state of scientific and technological development. It calls for a completely new range of studies to take its place in the territory between the humanities and the sciences. Derek deSolla Price documents his study with accounts of his own researches in his specific fields of interest, relating them to the “crises” which he believes to be of paramount importance. This enlarged edition offers a broad range of material, from ancient automata, talismans and symbols, to the differences of modern science and technology.
215 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1975
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 2, 2020
I was tipped off to the existence of this book by Eric Weinstein, who mentioned it on his podcast. The first four chapters are interesting, but largely targeted at academic historians of science. You can skip them without missing anything in the rest of the book. I found them interesting, but nothing in them is really relevant to my life or interests. 3 stars for those chapters.
The chapter "Renaissance Roots of Yankee Ingenuity" is where Price really hits his stride and he keeps it up for the rest of the book. If these chapters were published standalone they'd make a 5 star book. Essentially Price is looking at the rapid growth of science since the Industrial Revolution--output doubles every 10-15 years--and logically concludes that this can't continue for more than another few decades. We're now several decades in the future from when Price is writing, and his prediction seems to be coming true, as you can tell by the wailing about the (not really real) STEM crisis. Price doesn't have a solution to this problem, and nor do I. His conclusion is basically that it is going to happen and there is no reason to try to prolong the stagnation of science. Society has other problems to work on and we should allocate our smart people there instead.
If he has any positive goals for science it is summed up in the conclusion, where he basically describes what History of Science as an academic discipline should look like. I believe his goal with formalizing the discipline in the way he proposes is to help consolidate all of the many disparate strands of science into something more compressed so that the frontiers were new progress can be made is better mapped out.
The chapter "Renaissance Roots of Yankee Ingenuity" is where Price really hits his stride and he keeps it up for the rest of the book. If these chapters were published standalone they'd make a 5 star book. Essentially Price is looking at the rapid growth of science since the Industrial Revolution--output doubles every 10-15 years--and logically concludes that this can't continue for more than another few decades. We're now several decades in the future from when Price is writing, and his prediction seems to be coming true, as you can tell by the wailing about the (not really real) STEM crisis. Price doesn't have a solution to this problem, and nor do I. His conclusion is basically that it is going to happen and there is no reason to try to prolong the stagnation of science. Society has other problems to work on and we should allocate our smart people there instead.
If he has any positive goals for science it is summed up in the conclusion, where he basically describes what History of Science as an academic discipline should look like. I believe his goal with formalizing the discipline in the way he proposes is to help consolidate all of the many disparate strands of science into something more compressed so that the frontiers were new progress can be made is better mapped out.
January 24, 2023
A remarkably poorly researched and incoherent rambling embarrassment. De Solla Price is so very eager to have his neat little tidy divisions of humanity, to catalogue people like butterflies, that he invents divisions in a fractured world for our civilization to inherit and then squander. Spare me the left brain / right brain civilizations (and perhaps, peoples? It is not clear to me if/how he attributes Ramanujan to Babylon, but this is probably a distraction), Greek mathematics is Babylonian mathematics: Pythagoras lived in Babylon for 12 years. The ancient world, like the modern one, is tremendously connected when it comes to ideas and education. There are no tidy little experiments of cultures, just great ideas that slowly but inevitably creep across the world and change it forever.
The book ambles aimlessly, often about clocks and timekeeping, with a thoroughly fawning treatment of Einstein, to generally dissolve without much warning or explanation into pearl-clutching that we're not made of the same stuff our ancestors were, that we are losing our edge, that scientists are both too rare and too common, and that America (the implied sole inheritor of every great idea that has ever shaped this world) is declining. It's a trite tidy conclusion that is in no way substantiated by the ambling hundred pages of filler that comes before it, but it is tremendously politically convenient and ultimately that is probably what counts.
It does look like one of the chapters is basically a summary of a book by Kurt Seligmann, though, who is very cool. I might read his book.
The book ambles aimlessly, often about clocks and timekeeping, with a thoroughly fawning treatment of Einstein, to generally dissolve without much warning or explanation into pearl-clutching that we're not made of the same stuff our ancestors were, that we are losing our edge, that scientists are both too rare and too common, and that America (the implied sole inheritor of every great idea that has ever shaped this world) is declining. It's a trite tidy conclusion that is in no way substantiated by the ambling hundred pages of filler that comes before it, but it is tremendously politically convenient and ultimately that is probably what counts.
It does look like one of the chapters is basically a summary of a book by Kurt Seligmann, though, who is very cool. I might read his book.
May 17, 2024
"For about twenty years now our society has pleaded with the young to be scientists if they possibly can and has given them scholarships and fellowships and grants. In the old days one was dared to be a scientist if one absolutely had to be, for the good of one's own soul. If you had to, you did physics and starved in a garret just like the artists in bohemian Paris. What has happened is that society has made science relatively safe for normal people. The older scientists, so to speak, were nuts; they were very highly motivated and they were paid with prestige and acclaim in their own ranks instead of with mere money, with immortal fame among their own elite. Now it has changed. When I first came to this country about twenty years ago, the comic-strip character of superman was a sort of all-American football player. Within a few years he had changed into a sort of all-American nuclear physicist with rays and such things, and I, for one, knew that the ground rules had been a little changed."
October 21, 2024
The book guides on the importance of "Humanities of Science". On writer's view: "In this age we need an informed and intelligent public to whom science and its working, even in crisis, is not a mystery".
There is little or no option to work beside the world stage of scientific knowledge. Also, we cannot ignore the decline of political process in choice of technology by society. Scientists and humanists together can serve on urgencies of civilization. It can be less doubtful that the branch of knowledge can act act like a bridge between art and science.
On reading book we can be intrigued by the questions like: What is relation between science and technology? Why did scientific revolution happen where it did? Why is lag between culture and evolution of science? Can science reach its uniform distribution over the globe? Are we awaiting for the "educational crisis" in science or civilization saturated with science? #प्रश्न_गरौँ_उत्तर_खोजौँ
Science Since Babylon
Derek John de Solla Price
There is little or no option to work beside the world stage of scientific knowledge. Also, we cannot ignore the decline of political process in choice of technology by society. Scientists and humanists together can serve on urgencies of civilization. It can be less doubtful that the branch of knowledge can act act like a bridge between art and science.
On reading book we can be intrigued by the questions like: What is relation between science and technology? Why did scientific revolution happen where it did? Why is lag between culture and evolution of science? Can science reach its uniform distribution over the globe? Are we awaiting for the "educational crisis" in science or civilization saturated with science? #प्रश्न_गरौँ_उत्तर_खोजौँ
Science Since Babylon
Derek John de Solla Price
June 13, 2024
A book worth consideration for all people who's interested in the history of science (HoS).
The title is purposely all-encompassing and the knowledge possessed by the Babylonians is actually only mentioned upon in the first chapter. Afterwards, de Solla Price makes a case out of the celestial clockworks in the medieval world, which branches out to several small excursions of not only the HoS, but also the history of mathematics, philosophy and symbolism.
Although the book is more America-centered than I expected, in my opinion the most interesting parts were the modern comparisons between science and technology, and discussions about the predicted future "size of science".
Overall a solid 4/5. Definitely made me think 🤔
The title is purposely all-encompassing and the knowledge possessed by the Babylonians is actually only mentioned upon in the first chapter. Afterwards, de Solla Price makes a case out of the celestial clockworks in the medieval world, which branches out to several small excursions of not only the HoS, but also the history of mathematics, philosophy and symbolism.
Although the book is more America-centered than I expected, in my opinion the most interesting parts were the modern comparisons between science and technology, and discussions about the predicted future "size of science".
Overall a solid 4/5. Definitely made me think 🤔
April 13, 2025
The best that this wonderful historian of science, much abused in his time as the Avalon professor of the History of Science at Yale, shows here, is the timely and relevant topic of government science's astounding and dangerous bloating into "Big Science."
"Big" in America = "Great" ; but in this instance, "Big" (vis a vis science) has led currently to statisticians listing, for example, 13,000 titles of grant funded studies mentioning (e.g.) "CO2 and anthropogenic warming" and calling this "progress." ("Progressivism?" Hm.)
Whole JOURNALS do this (and not just in the Green side of science politics but medical, energy, agricultural etc.) in government science - which is to say, all American (for one) professional academy and research institute science.
This enables whole passels of political leaders to state "the world is burning!" in a believable clerical / legalistic way, when indeed, NO PROOF OF CO2 DOING ANYTHING BAD, AT ALL, has been demonstrated - since the "studies of the statistics" ignore conclusions. As for medical sciences, it allows for the scientific method to be relegated to statistical niceties where RIGOR is vitally needed. And so it goes.
That's what Big Science is today. Read Price in here to get a good idea of how all this began c. 1960. Better minds than mine may actually pick up some of Dr. Price's threads and sew new intellectual suits. For the icily scary thing about it is its present stark relevancy.
"Big" in America = "Great" ; but in this instance, "Big" (vis a vis science) has led currently to statisticians listing, for example, 13,000 titles of grant funded studies mentioning (e.g.) "CO2 and anthropogenic warming" and calling this "progress." ("Progressivism?" Hm.)
Whole JOURNALS do this (and not just in the Green side of science politics but medical, energy, agricultural etc.) in government science - which is to say, all American (for one) professional academy and research institute science.
This enables whole passels of political leaders to state "the world is burning!" in a believable clerical / legalistic way, when indeed, NO PROOF OF CO2 DOING ANYTHING BAD, AT ALL, has been demonstrated - since the "studies of the statistics" ignore conclusions. As for medical sciences, it allows for the scientific method to be relegated to statistical niceties where RIGOR is vitally needed. And so it goes.
That's what Big Science is today. Read Price in here to get a good idea of how all this began c. 1960. Better minds than mine may actually pick up some of Dr. Price's threads and sew new intellectual suits. For the icily scary thing about it is its present stark relevancy.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews