Horizons

The Global Origins of Modern Science

By: James Poskett

Narrated by: Sid Sagar

Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

The history of science as it has never been told before: a tale of outsiders and unsung heroes from far beyond the Western canon that most of us are taught.

When we think about the origins of modern science we usually begin in Europe. We remember the great minds of Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. But the history of science is not, and has never been, a uniquely European endeavor. Copernicus relied on mathematical techniques that came from Arabic and Persian texts. Newton’s laws of motion used astronomical observations made in Asia and Africa. When Darwin was writing On the Origin of Species, he consulted a sixteenth-century Chinese encyclopedia. And when Einstein studied quantum mechanics, he was inspired by the Bengali physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose.

Horizons is the history of science as it has never been told before, uncovering its unsung heroes and revealing that the most important scientific breakthroughs have come from the exchange of ideas from different cultures around the world. In this ambitious, revelatory history, James Poskett recasts the history of science, uncovering the vital contributions that scientists in Africa, America, Asia, and the Pacific have made to this global story.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 James Poskett (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

Essential for anyone interested in science

This book is awesome, full of interesting and essential facts that fill in the gaps in the history of science and brings an integral global, to replace the arian-american eurocentric, perspective in the development of science.

Exceptional

I have had a layperson's interest in the history of science for decades. This book is one of the best I have read. Why? It offers new information and contextualizes it nicely. Its contribution to the canon in that it provides numerous examples, and case studies of how non-European science grew along with and in many cases prior to the traditional European story line. More importantly, it shows how there were major contributions to seminal works flowing into Europe that I had not been aware of. Example, Newton used data for his Principia that had been gathered on slave trade ships. The expansion of empire, trade, and religion opened channels of knowledge exchange that advanced science worldwide.

This book however does not seek to denigrate the clear history and contributions of Europeans--instead it augments it. It it not "woke" or revisionist. It is additive and it does so in an enjoyable way.

A Woke version of Whig History of Science

I am not an historian but am deep into the history of science. Posket is an Historian but somehow does not know what Science is. He constantly conflates technology or engineering with the search for underlying truth- Science. Nobody diminishes the contributions to the world data base by hundreds or even thousands of world sources. While many observers over centuries described celestial movements, it was Copernicus who wove all this into a better story (though imperfect). But Posket dismisses his work as derivative and obvious. Or he also discards Darwin's ideas as already old - though never mentioning Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus, who voiced early ideas of evolution 60 years before Charle's book.
This all seems to be a diatribe against the idea that the Scientific Revolution did not really happen, and if it did happen, it was only because of the rapacious, save selling, invasions of the European continental powers. That case is made only if one does not grasp the central idea of Science- not an accumulation of facts, but the quest to find the connection, the reason things look as they do. And then experiment to show your idea works. This book fell far short of enlightenment.

A history of science for out times

Excellent revision. Not without flaws but definitely path-breaking. I am a professional historian of science and recommend this book.