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Lost Discoveries : The Ancient Roots of Modern Science--from the Babylonians to the Maya, by Dick Teresi
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Amazon.com Review
Did Nicolas Copernicus steal his notion that the earth orbited the sun from an Islamic astronomer who lived three centuries earlier? "The jury is still out," writes Dick Teresi, whose intriguing survey of the non-Western roots of modern science offers several worthy arguments that Copernicus in fact ripped off Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. Common belief is that Westerners have been the mainspring of most scientific and technical achievement, but in Lost Discoveries Teresi shows that other cultures had arrived at much of the same knowledge at earlier dates. The Babylonians were using the Pythagorean theorem at least 15 centuries before Pythagoras drew his first triangle, and in A.D. 200 a Chinese mathematician calculated an incredibly accurate value for pi. The Mayans and other Mesoamericans were outstanding sky watchers and stargazers. The greatest advances occurred in math and astronomy, though Teresi also devotes chapters to physics, geology, chemistry, technology, and even cosmology. Sometimes he is a bit overeager to ascribe great thoughts to long-dead people (he casually suggests that "many ancient cultures had inklings of quantum theory"), but on the whole his book is a reliable and fascinating guide to the unexplored field of multicultural science. --John J. Miller
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From Publishers Weekly
Science journalist Teresi (coauthor of The God Particle) has combed the literature to catalogue the scientific advances made by early non-Western societies and to determine their impact on Western science. His work spans millennia and encompasses the full extent of the globe. He points out, for example, that five millennia ago the Sumerians concluded that the earth was round. He also provides information on cultures of the Middle East, India, China, Africa and Oceania, as well as a host of New World cultures, predominately those of Mesoamerica. Throughout, readers learn that scientific knowledge of various sorts in diverse forms has been a part of all cultures. In chapters on mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, physics, geology, chemistry and technology, Teresi makes a convincing argument that Western science has often been indebted to advances made elsewhere (mineralogy was studied in Africa as early as 5000 B.C.). Teresi is at his strongest in the section on mathematics, where he discusses the evolution of Arabic numerals from the ancient Indians and the earliest conceptualizations of zero and infinity. Much less compelling are his assertions that early societies foreshadowed the ideas of quantum mechanics. Although a bit uneven, Teresi offers a great deal of fascinating material largely ignored by many histories of science.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Product details
Hardcover: 464 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Later prt. edition (November 1, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780684837185
ISBN-13: 978-0684837185
ASIN: 0684837188
Product Dimensions:
6.4 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.0 out of 5 stars
33 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,628,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
One of the best books I read - dethrones scientific emphasis on 'the West as the Best'. Easy to read and intellectually stimulating.
The author of "Lost Discoveries" claims he began to write "with the purpose of showing that the pursuit of evidence of nonwhite science is a fruitless endeavor," but his goal changed when he kept finding "examples of ancient and medieval non-Western science that equaled and often surpassed ancient Greek learning." The book he wrote instead is a compendium of miscellaneous ancient, non-Western discoveries or beliefs in what he calls the "hard sciences." (An unfortunate lapse: By "nonwhite," Teresi apparently means non-European; his investigation includes other Caucasian civilizations.)Non-Western scientific background is definitely a topic worthy of a book for the general reader, and, although there's some fascinating stuff here (and a solid bibliography that will expand anyone's reading list), "Lost Discoveries" suffers from several shortcomings. One problem is the book's organization. Teresi divides his discussion into distinctions that were unknown a few centuries ago--mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, physics, geology, chemistry, and technology--and then divides each of these chapters by localities. As a result, the book has little narrative flow and makes for some awfully dry reading--the type of disconnected paragraphs one usually finds in textbooks or reference works. I found it difficult to read this book for more than a few pages at a stretch.Furthermore, since modern scientific specialties were, of course, unknown to ancient investigators, his categorization results in some odd choices. For example, beliefs concerning the shape of the earth (round, flat, or square) are discussed in geology as well as cosmology. Similarly, he arbitrarily divides up the work of alchemists among several chapters. Since ancient and medieval studies span many disciplines, there is a lot of annoying (and often verbatim) repetition: we read about the yin-yang duality and ch'i in the sections on astronomy, physics, geology, and chemistry; about Jainism with regards to cosmology, physics, and chemistry; and how Avicenna influenced physics, geology, and chemistry.Teresi was cofounder of Omni Magazine, which had a reputation (some might call it notoriety) for including articles on topics that strayed well beyond science and into paranormal exploration and New Age quackery. Although "Lost Discoveries" is usually on firmer scientific ground, the author occasionally recalls his earlier career with an eager enthusiasm to find direct or symbolic connections between ancient learning and modern scientific investigation. This is particularly true in his chapter on cosmology. (Teresi's obvious distaste for Big Bang theory doesn't help here.) The Mangaian creation myth, describing an infant universe emerging from a coconut root, may offer interesting literary and cultural insights, but it in no way "anticipates" modern cosmological theories of an inflationary universe. Elsewhere, it's simply preposterous to find intimations of quantum theory in the ancient Indian "yadrccha" (chance) or of the Higgs field in the Buddhist "maya" (the weight of the universe). One may as well argue that William Bennett is a quantum physicist every time he walks into a casino.It's too bad that Teresi didn't organize his research by civilization and time period, compare these societies on their own terms (rather than ours), chart their influences on each other and on subsequent cultures, and avoid misguided attempts to find inklings of 21st-century theories and knowledge in every ancient myth. Readers looking for a stronger investigation of the wonders of non-Western science, technology, and civilization should check out Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" or Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's "Civilizations."
I like that he sets out to prove Europeans-Mediterranean-West Asian superiority and then has the flexibility to see his mistake and ultimately spend the whole book criticizing the West. Very admirable. There is also a lot of interesting material here.On the other hand the writing is poor. In each chapter there’s at least one, if not several, long sentences that I had to reread 8-10 times and still I often moved on without comprehending. Things like verb agreement, comma usage, subject-predicate structure were lost in a complicated series of parenthetical phrases and asides in more than one instance. Very distracticing. Basically, he writes like a low grade journalist.There are also many factual or conceptual errors. These may have origins in the works he’s citing, but he repeats them without question. Examples: he confuses Sungbo’s Erido and the Walls of Benin as being the same structure. They’re different things. He states that z spin is stronger than s spin in textiles. Completely untrue, as they’re identical in structure, just mirrored in direction. He doesn’t understand plying or spinning at all. He also makes a whole paragraph point about limestone that is completely unintelligible and simply demonstrates his complete lack of geological understanding.These examples are just the ones I remember freshly from the final chapter that I’ve tecently read. There are undoubtedly many more errors that I’m not well versed in and can’t judge. But the ones I can see lead me to believe that there must be more that I’m just not smart enough to catch. Very troubling for non-fiction.I’d say go ahead and read it to see how poorly westerners did up until the 18th century ad, it’s worth the writing style to hear the message, but don’t take all the factoids at face value. Some are bogus.
This book presents myth-shattering evidence about the non-western roots of science and mathematics. The part about mathematical contributions of non-Western science seems to be well-researched and lies on solid ground. Past that, however, the book flounders as it confuses religion and philosophy with science. To lay claim that the Buddhist concept of emptiness has something to do with the void at the heart of the modern concept of atoms is more than a little bit of a stretch. The ancients may have accidentally hit upon the right concept, but so did they have thousands of other philosophical concepts that don't mesh well with modern science, and nowhere did they possess the mathematical and experimental proof to backup their claims. This is the main difference we make today between science and religion: that which can be proven versus that which cannot. It is a pity the author decided to take this turn, when the ancients had much that can be classified as solid, true science. The ancient Arabs, for example, contributed much in terms of optics, dynamics, meterology, and geographical projection. They were able to explain the formation of rain, explain motion, and draw accurate maps. So did many other cultures have solid contributions. Why focus on comparing the various Indian philosophic beliefs to string theory when the latter has less than a few dacades history and may be proven wrong? Isn't it more fair to compare those non-Western cultures to their European contemporaries, as the author briefly does in the introduction? It is another pity that the author refuses to include medicine in the scope of the book, since that is where much of non-Western contributions to science lie. Despite these shortcomings, this book is an exciting and gripping read.
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