Lost Discoveries : The Ancient Roots of Modern Science--from the Babylonians to the Maya

Rating:
Summary: Towards a more balanced world view
Review: Any book that attempts to revise the prevalent Western/White/Post-Industrial/European/American(?) weltanschauung by uncovering and suggesting the HUGE influences of Eastern/Hindu/Islamic/Chinese thought and technology, is bound to get flack.

So far, Teresi's book has not been much reviled...which is quite heartwarming. A couple of readers did point out errors in "fact" as presented in the book. However, since this is not a textbook of school-level science , we can forgive him that. It has a much wider scope and intention. Don't loose the trees for the mangoes!!

This being the first book of its kind that I have read outside India, I have nothing to compare it with. However, the author covers so much ground, and attempts to pack tons of information in a moderately sized book (around 300 pages), that at times the facts come faster than the mind can process. And although he's taken the easy way out by classifying chapters with broad categories, that has lead to a lot of repetition of facts within the book. A more efficient categorization would be by actual elements of discussion - say 1) Algebra 2) Civic Amenities 3)Metallurgy . This way a discourse of the general aspects of a civilization could have been relegated to appendices, and the bok itself would have more of a "tabular" comparison approach. But that's just me.

Kudos to Teresi for the amount of research done for this book. The references list a staggering number of sources, and so much about my own culture (Indian) was revealed to me through this book. Sadly, the text books in India are lame reincarnations and faded copies of books instituted during the British rule. Consequestly, things like the metallurgical supremacy of South India (Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka ) in ancient times (iron-ore mined in Africa was converted to high grade steel in India and later forged into Damascus blades). The fact that India was a pre-eminent power in cotton textiles and silk that were exported all over the ancient world. The british apparently tried, without success, to duplicate this quality , after they started the industrial revolution.

I would totally recommend this book to anyone interested in assigning credit where it is due.

Rating:
Summary: Okay but...
Review: As a reminder that inventiveness and creativity are not the sole property of the West this book is helpful. But as an argument that modern science somehow has its roots outside the West it is quite mistaken. While one can tolerate Teresi's often indiscriminate accumulation of history, myth, and legend - odd in a book devoted to science - his identification of invention with a scientific world view incorporating predictive theory and experiement is catastrophic. As e.g. Rodney Stark, FOR THE GLORY OF GOD, and others have shown, the modern scientific worldview is peculiarly Western and emerged out of the Scholastic (and horror of horrors) Christian worldview of the high middle ages. This is precisely why it was the West, and only the West, that modernized.

Rating:
Summary: Lost Nonsense
Review: I love ancient history, mathematics and technology. This is a
book where all three meet. If you liked "Ancient Inventions"
by Peter James, Nick Thorpe, you will love this book. There is
obviously a large range of work that Teresi has covered in this
book. Teresi calls to attention our biases and reminds us that
in different parts of the ancient world, different approaches
and methodologies were followed in science. A smug judgement of
this work with the prism of today's methodologies of science
would lead to some of the extreme reactions posted in other
reviews. To unconditionally disregard the evidence of science
from the ancient world smacks of ethno-centric arrogance. Teresi
is no James Burke (the very readable, but
Eurocentric "Connections" author, SciAm), but he does a very
decent job at *speculation* of how ancient discoveries and/or
philosophies may have influenced later Western works. Teresi's
book is a valuable compendium that adds to the knowledge of
ancient sciences. I borrowed this book from the public library
for this review. I have since placed an order for my personal
copy. Strongly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: A lot to offer, with a few flaws
Review: I'm usually fascinated by histories of science that expand our understanding past the standard picture that science started with the ancient Greeks and has largely been carried out in the West. So I dived into Lost Discoveries with great excitement. Unfortunately, I soon found myself putting the book down and wandering off to other things. Having finally finished it, I see it as a remarkably comprehensive and valuable step towards a broader understanding of early and non-Western scientific contributions, but also as having some significant flaws.

On the positive side, Teresi has gathered together a great deal of scholarly work on Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Maya, and Arab science and mathematics, and presents it clearly and understandably. He more than makes the case that we need to deepen our understanding of the ancient roots of science and broaden our acceptance of the idea that science has existed in many non-Western cultures. Readers will come away not only with these big and very important ideas, but with many fascinating details about advances and discoveries made long before they were made in the West.

On the other side of the ledger, I found myself seriously put off by the author's willingness to present just about any story that ever expressed any culture's mythology about the creation or structure of the cosmos as a meaningful predecessor of current cosmological thinking. Maybe I'm just not post-modern enough to grant equal scientific weight to an ancient creation myth as to the inflationary Big-Bang theory. The ancient story may be poetic and psychologically very meaningful, but it can't predict the primordial percentages of hydrogen and helium, or the wrinkles in the cosmic microwave background. Similarly, when Teresi writes that when particle physicists finally find the Higgs boson, they will validate the Buddhist idea of "maya," I found myself wishing that the author had used a finer sieve when chosing what to write about and what to leave out.

Still, anyone who is interested in the history of science, and at all curious about what kinds of science and mathematics predated or paralled the canonical Western scientific tradition, will find Lost Discoveries well worth reading.

Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation

Rating:
Summary: Will be interesting to the lay person, will spark discussion
Review: Lost Discoveries is a fascinating read, especially for the non-scientist like myself. The author does a good job of explaining broad scientific theories and area of study and then tries to show how non-Western, non-European peoples explored and made advances in many areas of science that most of us are taught had their beginnings in renaissance Europe. For example the advanced math of Babylonia, India and Egypt that dealt with concepts that Greek math did not.

Teresi makes a good case that a lot of this ancient science pre dates modern Western "discoveries," although at times the "science" that the ancients did seems only vaguely related to modern concepts of the same science. A better book might have spent more time on what how and why European authors stole (or borrowed) from non-Western sources. Teresi makes reference to anti-Islamic prejudice in renaissance Europe but does not explore that. I guess in a popular science book there is not room for the same rigorous defense in a more academic book. I just wish it was more clearly linked. At times I assume that the ancient discoveries were really lost and that Western scientists just stumbled on the same answers 1000 years later. Teresi does not do a good job convincing me otherwise except in a few cases mentioned in the beginning of the book.

This is an excellent book for undergraduates, the non-scientist or as a launching pad for class discussion about how History is written. It is very informative, but needs to be read with an eye towards some skepticism.

Rating:
Summary: Fake History Cooked to Order
Review: teachers and librarians deserve to be forewarned that this book provides hard evidence that complaints about "political correctness" are not mere right-wing fantasy. Teresi's understanding of mathematics and science is, despite apparent credentials, fatally shallow and distorted. His willingness to concoct historically insupportable myths that are pleasing to his political sensibilities is obvious on every page. His eagerness to insinuate himself into the good graces of the supposed educators who incessantly preach the virtues of "multiculturalism" and the vices of "eurocentrism" is palpable and pervasive. The book is, in short, a stew of junk science and fake history. But in these peculiar times, it will probably sell very briskly to certain people who mean well but think badly.

Rating:
Summary: Lost in history
Review: Teresi's book starts with a fascinating premise; the Eurocentric view of the world held by the west is the last reminants of our culturally biased world. While Teresi doesn't prove all his claims, he does make a strong argument for a world where modern science, mathematics and physics had many fathers. The idea that all of this suddeny flowed from the Greek's without any other contributing factors has always been a hard to swallow for me. Science is in the details and the accumulation of evidence.

There's no doubt that many cultures both extinct and still thriving contributed to our understanding of the world. Teresi stretches it a bit though by comparing a creation myth to the theory of The Big Bang. Still, the accumulation of evidence and detail is here and, while I think he occasionally gets derailed by political correctness, but he's on target much of the time.

His difficulty is that so much time has passed and there's too little detail for much more ancient claims to be substaniated from the evidence at hand. Still, Teresi's points are well taken and many are quite valid; his point about Copernicus using Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Urdi's mathematical theorem to help construct the Copernican system sounds valid based on the evidence at hand.

Lost Discoveries isn't a perfect book. Like the best science Teresi uses other scholars and evidence to built his own theory about the roots of modern science. He's too dependent on other researchers and makes a lot of assumptions about their conclusions. He also collates many interesting and obscure facts about other scientists outside of the western world to build his case. The only problem is that we have to assume he's being objective about the facts when, like every journalist, he's subjectively structuring his book to prove his various theories.

Teresi makes a number of very interesting and valid observations. Let's hope that someone else takes up Teresi's lead and can provide more compelling evidence on some of his weaker claims.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating ancient beliefs with tenuous modern connections
Review: 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."

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating ancient beliefs with tenuous modern connections
Review: 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."

Rating:
Summary: The Lost Discoveries
Review: The re-discovery of the truth

This book is really a digest about the "THE ANCIENT ROOTS OF MODERN SCIENCE" since it gives synopsis of events with timelines of some Europeans and non-Europeans. It is the first book I read that focuses and attempts to highlight that there was an 'earlier civilization' prior to these "Modern Times".

Overall, it was a challenging book to read and it reminded me of the first time I took up Physics in university...daunting, intriguing and an excellent substitute for caffeine. I really enjoy reading Mathematics, Astronomy and Technology sections of the book. I was disappointed with the attempt in correlating the 'Ancients' curiosity in the Physics and Chemistry sections, I did not get it and I will not since I will not revisit that section. I was totally lost with the whole GEOLOGY bit and it best left as it is. The Mathematics, Astronomy and Technology sections were fantastic. Some areas I will revisit again and definitely use as a reference.

My best section was "Mathematics: The Language of Science" since it was wonderful reading and working my way through-it. I was around my desk, dinning table and coffee table trying out the 'little tricks'; which made me smile in the wee hours of the morning. I recall my mother using some of these tricks when she "did her arithmetic in her head" and friends who dazzle co-workers and cashiers with multiplications/additions of large numbers quicker than one enter them in a calculator.

Moreover, it is unfortunate that in these modern times one is lost when one cannot use an icons on a cash register or computer for simple arithmetic...it is a pity we have progressed so far around this ring of civilization.

I good book...I enjoy it and have recommended it to my friends and peers.