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I suppose the traditional 1950s-era simplistic high-school-textbook story is indeed that of scientific progress as originating with the Greeks who discovered ma

I suppose the traditional 1950s-era simplistic high-school-textbook story is indeed that of scientific progress as originating with the Greeks who discovered mathematics, then stagnation until the European Renaissance applied mathematics to physics. However, this has been pretty thoroughly debunked enough for many decades now. Almost anyone with any interest in the subject now knows about Indian and Arabic mathematicians of the European 'Dark Age' era, Mayan mathematics and astronomy, Chinese developments in math and science, even prehistoric technological developments which certainly depended on experiment and observation (copper ore smelting as likely discovered by potters, etc.). It might be a little more interesting and informative to focus on a specific branch of science, such as plant breeding by farmers in the past up to scientists today. Another one of importance is the discovery of infectious disease and of the various approachs to treating infectious disease from ancient history (plant extracts etc.) up to the discovery of antibiotics and vaccines. Such specific examples offer better examples of history's quirks related to scientific progress (such as the effect of the rise of Lysenko to power in the Soviet Union with respect to plant breeding in the USSR, or that of the advocates of gain-of-function research in the United States and China with respect to the global Covid pandemic, and such other fun stories).

felipeerias 4y ago
The notion of one Dark Age followed by one Renaissance in Europe is another one of those myths. Perhaps it would be more accurate to talk about multiple periods of extreme turmoil (wars, plagues, etc.) followed by a flourishing of art and knowledge when things start to settle down. Over the centuries, this happened a bunch of times in different places all over the Mediterranean and Europe.
somenameforme 4y ago
One can easily find things like textbooks from the past. This [1] is the first one I was able to find. This is not a cherry picked example. I searched for '1950s math textbook pdf' on Yandex, which led directly to this [2]. That's simply their most "recent" textbook. It's from 1946, and seemingly a later edition of a book first published in 1931. In the historical introduction one will find mention of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindus, Arabs, and more. There's no doubt one will find similarly going to back centuries. The Greeks/Romans play such an outsized role in our knowledge because they discovered an immense amount, wrote down an immense amount and, up until extremely recently, a passable degree of fluency in both Latin and Greek would not only have been a basic requirement for higher education, but was also a sort of way to signal one's culture/class/learning. So the average educated individual would have had ready access to the depths of all of this knowledge. [1] - https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.509299/page/n3/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.509299/page/n3... [2] - https://www.resourceaholic.com/p/digitised-antique-maths-textbooks.html https://www.resourceaholic.com/p/digitised-antique-maths-tex...
- jterrys 4y ago
  My cheeky wager is that U.S pupils from yesteryear actually had a better globalist understanding of the origins of science than students today, only because modern textbooks have gotten shittier and watered down. (And sometimes even needlessly politicized). There's a very prevailing and disgusting pop-science trend today that's obsessed with breaking everything down and explaining things as simplistically as possible. The increasingly "uncomfortable" truth for many still persists today though, namely that modern science had its birthplace in the European Renaissance period. All kneel to the mighty Printing Press!

felipeerias 4y ago

The notion of one Dark Age followed by one Renaissance in Europe is another one of those myths. Perhaps it would be more accurate to talk about multiple periods of extreme turmoil (wars, plagues, etc.) followed by a flourishing of art and knowledge when things start to settle down. Over the centuries, this happened a bunch of times in different places all over the Mediterranean and Europe.

somenameforme 4y ago

One can easily find things like textbooks from the past. This [1] is the first one I was able to find. This is not a cherry picked example. I searched for '1950s math textbook pdf' on Yandex, which led directly to this [2]. That's simply their most "recent" textbook. It's from 1946, and seemingly a later edition of a book first published in 1931. In the historical introduction one will find mention of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindus, Arabs, and more. There's no doubt one will find similarly going to back centuries. The Greeks/Romans play such an outsized role in our knowledge because they discovered an immense amount, wrote down an immense amount and, up until extremely recently, a passable degree of fluency in both Latin and Greek would not only have been a basic requirement for higher education, but was also a sort of way to signal one's culture/class/learning. So the average educated individual would have had ready access to the depths of all of this knowledge. [1] - https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.509299/page/n3/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.509299/page/n3... [2] - https://www.resourceaholic.com/p/digitised-antique-maths-textbooks.html https://www.resourceaholic.com/p/digitised-antique-maths-tex...

jterrys 4y ago
My cheeky wager is that U.S pupils from yesteryear actually had a better globalist understanding of the origins of science than students today, only because modern textbooks have gotten shittier and watered down. (And sometimes even needlessly politicized). There's a very prevailing and disgusting pop-science trend today that's obsessed with breaking everything down and explaining things as simplistically as possible. The increasingly "uncomfortable" truth for many still persists today though, namely that modern science had its birthplace in the European Renaissance period. All kneel to the mighty Printing Press!