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A review by buermann
Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science by James Poskett
5.0
Sketches out a history of modern science as the integration of pre-modern systems of human knowledge across the globe, unified in the span of a few centuries under the accident of European imperialism, whose totalizing apex was only reached in a positive feedback loop with the knowledge it was integrating. Yet another history-shaping side effect of the Columbian exchange.
I respect Poskett's decision to avoid controversial claims about Ibn al-Shatir and Copernicus while giving Islamicate science its due, but I am disappointed that he never relishes the irony of how the Great Comet of 1577 was, in the sense that it was important to astrologers and thus to their patrons, simultaneously responsible for the construction of Tycho's observatories at Hven and the destruction of Taki al-Din's observatory in Istanbul. Perhaps the story that the Istanbul Observatory was destroyed because of a bad prognostication is more myth than history.
It was news to me and very interesting how European colonial powers would loot the medical knowledge of their African slaves -- and Poskett doesn't even mention the infamous case of Cotton Mather's slave Onesimus and the introduction of smallpox inoculation to the Americas, all the stories he tells in that section were novel to me -- and then attempt to criminalize the practice of medicine by the slaves they stole it from, foreshadowing both the theory and practice of modern intellectual property law. In another section that struck me Poskett briefly mentions a surge in European research into acupuncture in the 18th century, citing Linda Barnes' "Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West", which eventually ended in its abandonment as a scientific dead end. The 70s acupuncture revival in the West is ironically premised on a belief that acupuncture was never seriously studied by Western medicine, an allegation of Western chauvinism where there was none: the early cadres of scientific revolutionaries were exceptionally enthusiastic students of non-European knowledge.
The book knocks down one myth of Western chauvinism after another, many of which still plague popular retellings of science history. The academic literature has been producing rich veins for this narrative for many decades but you almost never find them in the non-fiction section of the book store. Well written. Expansive in its coverage of a massive subject while relying heavily on small and well-documented anecdotes. Really a terrific read. I'm glad someone has finally written this book.
I respect Poskett's decision to avoid controversial claims about Ibn al-Shatir and Copernicus while giving Islamicate science its due, but I am disappointed that he never relishes the irony of how the Great Comet of 1577 was, in the sense that it was important to astrologers and thus to their patrons, simultaneously responsible for the construction of Tycho's observatories at Hven and the destruction of Taki al-Din's observatory in Istanbul. Perhaps the story that the Istanbul Observatory was destroyed because of a bad prognostication is more myth than history.
It was news to me and very interesting how European colonial powers would loot the medical knowledge of their African slaves -- and Poskett doesn't even mention the infamous case of Cotton Mather's slave Onesimus and the introduction of smallpox inoculation to the Americas, all the stories he tells in that section were novel to me -- and then attempt to criminalize the practice of medicine by the slaves they stole it from, foreshadowing both the theory and practice of modern intellectual property law. In another section that struck me Poskett briefly mentions a surge in European research into acupuncture in the 18th century, citing Linda Barnes' "Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West", which eventually ended in its abandonment as a scientific dead end. The 70s acupuncture revival in the West is ironically premised on a belief that acupuncture was never seriously studied by Western medicine, an allegation of Western chauvinism where there was none: the early cadres of scientific revolutionaries were exceptionally enthusiastic students of non-European knowledge.
The book knocks down one myth of Western chauvinism after another, many of which still plague popular retellings of science history. The academic literature has been producing rich veins for this narrative for many decades but you almost never find them in the non-fiction section of the book store. Well written. Expansive in its coverage of a massive subject while relying heavily on small and well-documented anecdotes. Really a terrific read. I'm glad someone has finally written this book.