Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution

The Invention of Science, a scholarly work, is written for a purpose quite different from the understanding it provides to most readers who are not experts in the field.

The author is a master of the field. Many of his arguments are counterpoints to positions taken by other renowned experts. These may be critical but subtleties are going to be beyond the comprehension of the rest. The enormous amount of details provided could be important for those in the field, but lay readers do not have the advantage of the supporting evidence or criticisms used by those being countered. As a result, the details get overwhelming every so often through the book.

Yet, the book is a fascinating work. To explain its unintended utility, let me use the example of an era our generation knows - information revolution. The similarities are definitely not precise - for example, meaningful developments were over a span of decades and centuries during what is later defined as the scientific revolution era while for us major innovation leaps happened in months and years. Still, such an example would help. Say, a later day historian is writing a book called The Invention of Digitization, language of the time - which could freely include the words like apps, browsing/search, GPUs or cloud - can fully explain the the zig-zag path through which 8084 processors, floppy disks, FTPs, GUIs, modems etc this world evolved.

What Galileo, Columbus and all the discoverers of those eras did was quite different not only from their viewpoints but also from ours. Of course, they told us about gravity and showed the way to America but they discovered "discovery". They started multiple new paths of inquiry and processes that have shaped our sciences, learning and technology ever since. What constitutes a theory or a hypothesis, the roles played by evidences, the importance of facts, the falsifiability and accumulation of rational knowledge - these are some of a large number of topics discussed in a fascinating way in this book.

This is not an easy book. So many arguments would appear overly pedantic for non-experts. Or simply a gibberish intended for another expert in the field who is not in agreement. Yet, for the patient, the book throws flashlight on the times that sparked something immense for the humanity, and mostly in the language or methods of that time rather than those of the later days.