Description
- Pub Date : March 2022
- Author : James Poskett
- Publisher : Viking
- Language : English
- Binding Type : Trade Paperback
- ISBN : 9780241394106
- MRP : 799
ABOUT THE BOOK
We are told that modern science was invented in
Europe, the product of great minds like Nicolaus
Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert
Einstein. But this is wrong. The history of science is
not, and has never been, a uniquely European
endeavour.
Copernicus relied on mathematical techniques
borrowed from Arabic and Persian texts. When Newton
set out the laws of motion, he relied on astronomical
observations made in India and Africa. When Darwin
was writing On the Origin of Species, he consulted a
sixteenth-century Chinese encyclopaedia. And when
Einstein was studying quantum mechanics, he was
inspired by the young Bengali physicist, Satyendra
Nath Bose. Horizons pushes the history of science
beyond Europe, exploring the ways in which scientists
from Africa, America, Asia and the Pacific fit into this
global story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Poskett is Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at the University of Warwick. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge where he also held the Adrian Research Fellowship at Darwin College. Poskett has written for the Guardian, Nature, and BBC History Magazine, among others, and his research has taken him across the world, from astronomical observatories in India to natural history museums in Australia. In 2013 he was shortlisted for the BBC New Generation Thinker Award and in 2012 he was awarded the Best Newcomer Prize by the Association of British Science Writers. He is the author of the academic book, Materials of the Mind, and Horizons is his first for a general readership.
