Ben Waber reviewed The invention of science by David Wootton
A Masterful Deep Dive into Humankind's Most Important Era
5 stars
For all of the attention paid to the inarguable benefits to humanity of the industrial revolution, histories of its necessary predecessor - scientific revolution - are few and far between. Wootton expands that canon with a masterful, deeply read history, digging into obscure texts to trace changes in language use and the diffusion of ideas. The core hypothesis here is provocative but by the end of the book extremely convincing - that the "discovery" of the Americas in the late 15th century (from the European perspective, obviously) destroyed the belief system that had preceded it. This system shockingly had no word for "discovery" or "fact," which had to be invented across European countries to account for disorienting new, indisputable truths.
There's so much more here, and importantly Wootton is upfront about the limitations of his research and possible alternative explanations. There's a lot of inside baseball discussion of the …
For all of the attention paid to the inarguable benefits to humanity of the industrial revolution, histories of its necessary predecessor - scientific revolution - are few and far between. Wootton expands that canon with a masterful, deeply read history, digging into obscure texts to trace changes in language use and the diffusion of ideas. The core hypothesis here is provocative but by the end of the book extremely convincing - that the "discovery" of the Americas in the late 15th century (from the European perspective, obviously) destroyed the belief system that had preceded it. This system shockingly had no word for "discovery" or "fact," which had to be invented across European countries to account for disorienting new, indisputable truths.
There's so much more here, and importantly Wootton is upfront about the limitations of his research and possible alternative explanations. There's a lot of inside baseball discussion of the appropriate way to analyze history, which I loved but your mileage will vary. Highly recommend