Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?
Ideally, I'm looking at something similar to Russell's History of Philosophy but for science. I am studying the history of philosophy right now, and I'd like to complement the curriculum with some reading on the history of science. You have to like his writing style but bill Bryson’s short history of everything. James burke’s day the universe changed is thought provoking and bronowski’s ascent of man is also good. Timothy Ferris (not that one) and John gribbin have also trod this area. Came here to suggest Bill Bryson's Short History of Everything. It covers a lot of less top-of-mind concepts, like he delves into air-balloons, artificial cloud making, moss collections, geological history, botany, and all manner of fields. I also recommend this - he walks through how we know what we know across many fields of science and it’s highly informative and entertaining throughout It's just unfortunately very out of date. He says something like, "finding the Higgs-Boson Wil be a task for a different century" or something to that effect. The actual quote is "whether it actually exists is a matter for 21st century physics," so he was completely correct. It was, indeed, a matter for 21st century physics: the Higgs boson was proven to exist in 2012: about 9 years after the book was published. To be fair, I didn’t say he was wrong, I said it’s out of date. Well, you kind of made it sound like he was predicting it wouldn't be found for a century (though I suppose is he'd written the book just 4 years earlier, he'd then be right). It actually goes into some detail about why the Higgs boson is important, it just says "it hasn't been found yet". If you fill in the epilogue of "the Higgs boson was found in 2012" yourself, those pages are still consistent, correct and useful. It would really be out of date if the Higgs had been disproved, as it would have two pages of, essentially, a branch predictor failure. I honestly thought the book was written in the 80s or 90s. I didn’t know it was as recent as 2003. That’s totally on me. Thanks, I have heard a lot about Bill Bryson but never took the time to read it. I will start with this one. For "serious" studies - for mathematics there are lot of really good books that go through the evolution of the methodologies over the centuries - I've read David Bressoud's "Calculus Reordered" and John Stillwell's "Mathematics and it's history" and can recommend both. For physics the field is so wide it's hard to pinpoint where to start. On Quantum Physics Jim Baggot's "The meaning of Quantum Theory" is the best introductory text by any measure for "mediacore academics" like myself. It tries to hand hold the reader through the firs steps of the historical evolution of quantum theory and why quantum theory is so weird as it is - as a physics MSc I wish I had read this book two decades ago :) For "light" approach the newer "Cosmos" series is pretty damn good in highlighting some of the key scientific work of past centuries. Don't let the cute animation fool you, this is deep, deep stuff and the producers should be regarded among the top science communicators. I've never seen a better "generalist" explanation for Faraday's and Maxwell's work, the discovery Cepheid variable stars and lots of other stuff. Thanks, I'll add the John Stillwell book to my reading list. And thanks for the idea of watching the newer "Cosmos" series. I'm always looking for ideas for shows to watch with my son! The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester isn't so much a survey of fundamental scientific advancements, but precision engineering goes hand in hand with modern developments in physics, chemistry, microbiology, and medicine. Simply skimming the index of that book, or Starrett's catalogues, can provide some hints about things that might be overlooked in a general history of (modern) science. Scientific ideas come from the famous scientists, but scientific progress relies on experimental apparatus, which require tools. Actual products people can use also require tools to build. Those tools, and where and when they came from, are rarely emphasized in scientific histories. There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Inventors_Hal... 100% agree… the history of technology is, in some ways, the history of more and more precise engineering. Bonus - Winchester reads the audiobook himself and he’s everything you’d want in a wise and worldly old British guy “The making of the atomic bomb” by Richard Rhodes is a fantastic history of nuclear physics. The sequel “Dark Sun” is also quite good. Continues the story into the making of the hyrogen bomb, the Teller-Ulam design, and the USSR’s efforts. Much shorter too :) For astronomy, I suggest The Universe, From Flat Earth to Quasar by Isaac Asimov [1]. Even though it was published in 1971 and may miss recent developments, it captures thehistory, the discoveries and controversies of the times, such as Olber's Paradox, very well. [1]. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Universe/Eo5xpO83Yp... The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn Not Kuhn's fault, but this book started a different kind of revolution: > Postmodernists interpreted Thomas Kuhn's ideas about scientific paradigms to mean that scientific theories are social constructs, and philosophers like Paul Feyerabend argued that other, non-realist forms of knowledge production were better suited to serve people's personal and spiritual needs. > Kuhn described the development of scientific knowledge not as a linear increase in truth and understanding, but as a series of periodic revolutions which overturned the old scientific order and replaced it with new orders (what he called "paradigms"). Kuhn attributed much of this process to the interactions and strategies of the human participants in science rather than its own innate logical structure. > Some interpreted Kuhn's ideas to mean that scientific theories were, either wholly or in part, social constructs, which many interpreted as diminishing the claim of science to representing objective reality That is some unknown people's broad-based interpretation of others' interpretations of Kuhn's theories of science. That is far from the source and through a filter of unknown accuracy - very unscientific! Heh. I take it as a compliment about how powerful his ideas were. But yeah, some serious overreaching with some of his ideas. “Fanboys going all in on an idea and applying it to everything” kinda thing. Maybe better is his “The Copernican Revolution”. It’s one of the best popularizations of the history of science I’ve ever read. With the caveat that it has been well argued that "scientific revolutions" are an artefact of historical compression rather than real phenomenon that was experienced by participants in said "revolution" I'm pretty sure his conclusion was that new paradigms take hold by the previous generation dying/retiring. So I'm not sure how much compression that really is. I'd be very interested in a follow-up. Have there been any real paradigm shifts since? Sure. In the last 100 years, "bohr's" non-deterministic quantum physics has all but overtaken "einstein's" deterministic physics. The final nail in the coffin for einstein will be a theory of quantum gravity. Can't get a bigger paradigm shift than switching from a deterministic to a non-deterministic world. In neuroscience absolutely, from behaviorism, to the cognitive sciences, to modern techniques of every grain size. Psychology is still awash though in pseudoscience. The increased role of computation and machine learning in many scientific fields is a paradigm shift. Coming of age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris I loved this one because it covers a lot of ground and includes a lot of fascinating detail around the human factors and personalities involved. If you want to be really challenged, I'd highly recommend checking out The Tyranny of Science by Paul K. Feyerabend.[0] Whether you agree with the points made or not, you'll definitely learn a lot and realize a lot even from arguing against his points. [0] https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Tyranny+of+Science-p-9780745... Thanks, I had read some Feyerabend essays a few years ago. This is indeed instead thought provoking. The Middle ("Medieval") Ages had a lot going on: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Philosophers * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2071784.God_s_Clockmaker The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science by Seb Faulk was recently (2020) published and won a few awards (lots of interview on YouTube): * https://twitter.com/Seb_Falk Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution and The Rise of Early Modern Science by Toby Huff: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Huff If you're doing philosophy and science, you may be curious about law: see The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession by Brundage: Not a book but a podcast from Stephen Wolfram. Leaving it here in case it is useful. 1. A Brief History of Science with Stephen Wolfram - https://soundcloud.com/stephenwolfram/sets/a-brief-history-o... 2. A Very Brief History of Mathematics - https://soundcloud.com/stephenwolfram/a-very-brief-history-o... 3. An Informal History of Physics - https://soundcloud.com/stephenwolfram/history-of-physics There maybe more here - https://soundcloud.com/stephenwolfram The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson Galileo’s Pendulum: From the Rhythm of Time to the Making of Matter by Roger G Newton From Clockwork to Crapshoot: A History of Physics by Roger G Newton Connections by James Burke The Day The Universe Changed by James Burke re Math:
Everything and More A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace Koyre's From the Closed World to Infinite Universe Koyre is basically the orginator of the history of science. This was his popularization. Einstein & Infeld's Evolution of Physics Picks up where Koyre leaves off. Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of non-fiction books a lot of them are succinct descriptions of scientific discoveries: https://asimov.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Non-Fiction The Faber Book of Science by John Carey I’m a professional HN lurker but I can’t not contribute this one. The book all scientists should have read and would love, but haven’t heard about… “The editor of the internationally acclaimed Eyewitness to History now charts the development of modern science. In this first anthology of its kind, Carey chooses accounts by scientists themselves--astronomers and physicists, biologists, chemists, psychologists--that are both arrestingly written and clear. Contributors include Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, Lewis Thomas, Rachel Carson, Sigmund Freud, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, and scores of others.” Hope you enjoy! I'll add this one to my list, thanks ! The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick This is specific to "Information, communication, and information theory." but it's still quite broad and a great read. I loved this book when I read it indeed. Really comprehensive and smart. Try the Open Syllabus Project, a database of college syllabuses. You can find which books are most recommended by history of science professors to their classes. In some ways, it's the best source of information, objectively-measured consensus from domain experts. http://opensyllabusproject.org/ Caveat: I haven't used it in awhile and I don't remember how the search tools work. I recommend the series of books by Morris Kline on mathematics and its connection with other spheres of activity. They're all good, but I especially liked _Mathematics in Western Culture_ and _Mathematics and the Physical World_. I know that math isn't science, but, since math underlies much of science and a lot of everything else, you gain a deeper understanding of the development of ideas in science by reading Kline's books. I've read a couple dozen. Best by far is David Wootton's The Invention of Science. Wootton has the language skills to work through the primary materials, and shows how in 100 years we went from educated people believing in werewolves and possession to having a modern, materialist understanding of reality. James Burke's "Connections" series also has books by the same name. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documen...
Noteworthy in that they show discovery and invention happen in context. I’ll second “Making of the Atomic Bomb” as an excellent history of modern physics tied to a great narrative. For Biology I really enjoyed “A Brief History of Creation”, high level overview of all of the advances to understand what we are made of. “Eight Day of Creation” is supposed to be incredible but it’s the size of the text book so I keep reaching past it on my desk Ivar Ekeland's The Best of All Possible Worlds > "Ivar Ekeland takes readers on a journey through scientific attempts to envision the best of all possible worlds. He begins with the French mathematician Maupertuis, whose least action principle [...] was a pivotal breakthrough in science, because it was the first expression of the concept of optimization, or the design of systems that are the most efficient or functional. [...] Tracing the profound impact of optimization and the unexpected ways in which it has influenced the study of mathematics, biology, economics, and even politics, Ekeland reveals throughout how the idea of optimization has driven some of our greatest intellectual breakthroughs..." Very readable style, and a lot of historical context around the names of scientists I've only heard in passing. Some few I liked a lot: * Bill Bryson's A brief history of Everything * Siddartha Mukherjee's The Gene: an intimate history and The Emperor of All Maladies (on Cancer) * Carl Zimmer's Evolution, the triumph of an idea * James Gleick's Information, A History, a Theory, a Flood * Walter Isacson's Codebreaker about the creation of the CRISPR -CAS9 gene editing technology A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson tells the story of many important scientific discoveries. - The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson is a great book that taught me a lot. It covers the gradual discovery of computers from Babbage and comes to modern ages. I highly recommend it. This book is also very fun to read. - Seven Brief Lessons in Physics by Carlo Rovelli is a brief, enjoyable, and great read. This book is good for both layperson and experts. - Albert Einstein is Einstein's biography by Walter Isaacson. Really nice book. - The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick (author of Chaos and The Information) is another great biography. This biography shows the evolution of his science as well as evolution of his person and thoughts. Great book. Background in Physics will be very helpful if you want to read this one. - The Mathematical Experience David, Hersh is a very succinct and pleasant book on the history of Maths. Will recommend. - Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges is a good mathematician's biography. I have not finished it, but fully intend to. - I have just read some of The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattyacharya is a biography of John von Neumann. It already seems very good and I plan to read through the end. - The Annotated Turing deals a lot with history and is a read of a lifetime. ____ - I have not read A Mind at Work yet. It is a biography of Claude Shanon. I would recommend you to check it out. - Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind is also recommended highly. I plan to read it. ____ I have recently watched a BBC Documentary that I thoroughly liked. One of its themes that had striken me was the change of science from fully deterministic to probabilistic. It's an extremely important paradigm shift for all of science. The name is Dangerous Knowledge (2007). The people covered are- Cantor, Boltzmann, Godel, and Turing. Thanks for all your recomendations, especially the BBC documentary. I'm really interested in Gödel and Cantor. Throw me similar, related, or unrelated documentary recommendations. I will be grateful. I recommend "To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science" by Steven Weinberg. +1 was going to recommend this too Quantum - by Manjit Kumar, is a very accessible book covering the history of quantum mechanics. Anything by P J Bowler is worth a look. He and Morus wrote the first "textbook" on history of science. "Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey" - disclaimer I was their student when they were writing this. Full bibliography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_J._Bowler Iwan Rhys Morus also has some good books on Faraday/Tesla and his own illustrated history of science and way back to his "Bodies/Machines" from 2002. They take a general view that is cynical of the "revoluions" fallacy in historigraphical approaches to the history of sciences. I highly highly highly recommend The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. It's where the term paradigm shift is from. This book had the large effect on my way of thinking of any book I've read in at least the last decade. "The Switch" [0] This set of blog posts that turned into a book is a great history of the underlying technologies that ultimately led to the computer, from the discovery of electricity onward. It's not a complete history of science, as it focuses on just one area, but it really brings out the nature of the interaction of discovery and practical development within their social context. I found it fascinating and enlightening. "The Eighth Day of Creation" is a second-hand account of the discovery of DNA and the molecular biotechnology revolution that followed. It's like watching da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa. It's not quite what you're asking (more about engineering, and only post-war British projects, from Black Knight to the Beagle probe), but Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford is very interesting. I especially liked the battle to sequence and publish the human genome before Celera could do the same and slap down a patent on it. The story of the development of Elite is also a fun insight into the challenges of programming in the 80s where every byte mattered. I enjoyed "The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors" by John Gribbin so much I've read it twice. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn A seminal, perspective-shifting book, but not a general history of science. Also, one historian of science that I spoke to said it was a bit outdated now (as of ~10 years ago). I'd be very interested in hearing about a more recent synthesis on the topic, if you know of one! A lot of the other suggestions in this thread seem to be more about science popularization than directly about philosophy of science. In another comment, I pointed out the Open Syllabus Project, which collects and surveys college class syllabuses. There you can find what professors in the field think are the best and most important books, which may be the best recommendations you'll find. https://blog.opensyllabus.org/about-the-open-syllabus-projec... Thanks! Everyone knows the term paradigm shift, but this book is still worth reading for the depth and thoughtfulness in exploring it and its implications. I recommend "What is this thing called Science?" by A. F. Chalmers. It describes how science came about and how scientific principles were established. I found it highly accessible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_This_Thing_Called_Scie... This thread was like walking into a candy store on a Monday morning! Hearty thanks for all your recommendations. Time to go hoard!!!!!! Yes, I didn't expect so many answers !! I have a whole page of reading recommendations now. Just have to choose where to start. One of those threads where you can literally choose anything and It would be amazing!!!!!! To Explain The World by Steven Weinberg is great, written by a Nobel laureate theoretical physicist for a popular audience. I would very much suggest both biographical and idea focused sources. For me, the absolute best written is Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes. It covers a large swatch of British Science from Newton to Maxwell. Other good reads are 1. The Invention of Science by Wootton (which is very academic in style), 2. The Wizard and the Prophet by Mann 3. Galileo At Work by Drake 4. Newton by Gleik. The day we found the universe Marcia bartusiak Interesting (great!) read on the history of (fairly recent) astronomy. Ties in with physics The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey is excellent -> https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0674976193/ Not a book, but the History of Science series from Crash Course on youtube is very entertaining. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. I found The Mechanization of the World Picture https://g.co/kgs/nzDC5R by EJ Dijksterhuis to be simple and precise overview with tons of examples Life is Simple https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56643989-life-is-simple The Grand Contraption by David Park. One of the most beautifully written non-fiction books I've ever read. Park was a professor of physics at Williams College. Published by Princeton University Press. Brief History of Mathematical Thought was good, as was Music Of The Primes. Károly Simonyi:
A Cultural History of Physics Mostly physics but pretty amazing. For molecular biology I recommend “the eighth day of creation” "To Explain the World" by Steven Weinberg. Not only a history of science, but one written by a great scientist. e=mc^2 A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation
Book by David Bodanis This was a nice short read! I’d definite recommend it. “The Sleepwalkers” by Arthur Koestler For chemistry specifically I would recommend A Short History of Chemistry by JR Partington. Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks. Lots of good personal experiences from chemistry’s golden age. "Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science" by DeWitt Books by Matt Ridley: - The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge - How Innovation Works - Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code A short history of chemistry by Isaac Asimov. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky