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A radical retelling of the history of science that challenges the Eurocentric narrative
We are told that modern science was invented in Europe the product of great minds like Nicolaus Copernicus Isaac Newton Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein But this is wrong Science is not and has never been a uniquely European endeavour
Copernicus relied on mathematical techniques borrowed from Arabic and Persian texts When Newton set out the laws of motion he relied on astronomical observations made in Asia and Africa When Darwin was writing On the Origin of Species he consulted a sixteenthcentury Chinese encyclopaedia And when Einstein was studying quantum mechanics he was inspired by the Bengali physicist Satyendra Nath Bose Horizons pushes beyond Europe exploring the ways in which scientists from Africa America Asia and the Pacific fit into the history of science and arguing that it is best understood as a story of global cultural exchange
Challenging both the existing narrative and our perceptions of revered individuals above all this is a celebration of the work of scientists neglected by history Among many others we meet Graman Kwasi the seventeenthcentury African botanist who discovered a new cure for malaria Hantaro Nagaoka the nineteenthcentury Japanese scientist who first described the structure of the atom and Zhao Zhongyao the twentiethcentury Chinese physicist who discovered antimatter but whose American colleague received the Nobel prize
Scientists today are quick to recognise the international nature of their work In this ambitious and revisionist history James Poskett reveals that this tradition goes back much further than we think
James Poskett 2022 P Penguin Audio 2022
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