A People's History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and "Low Mechanicks" [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I am not sure whether the author writes history or he is "cherry-picking" to justify his own ideology. The book is definitely BIASED and contains many things that inaccurate or incorrect.

I will focus basically on Chapter 3, entitled "What Greek Miracle?".

Regarding mathematics, of course the Greeks came into contact, were influenced, etc, by the Egyptians, Babylonians, etc, (as many ancient Greeks reported), but that's not the point. The point, which Conner deliberately or by ignorance is missing, is that the Greeks (first) saw the need to introduce the notion of PROOF (and rigor in general) in mathematics, perhaps due to the socio-political (and religious) dynamics of their time, and that's what we mean when we say that they founded contemporary mathematics. The Pythagorean Theorem was well known to the Babylonians, true, but the proof of it was NOT. The need to provide a rigorous argument for such property of a right-angle triangle begins with the Greeks, and not with the Babylonians, unless Conner has any evidence to the contrary which he does NOT.

The author also tends to identify Plato's insistence on geometry with Greek mathematics. Geometry was not ALL Greek mathematics. Even in Euclid's "Elements" we have several Chapters on Number Theory, but Conner conveniently doesn't mention that. Conner also downplays the practical mathematics that Archimedes engaged into, and completely omits the immense contributions of Diophantus in algebra and arithmetic, just so give weight to his silly argument that "geometry was for the elite, arithmetic was for the poor, therefore the Greeks and the rest of the scientist until today, who relied on Greeks, had one thing in mind: to distort history, and keep poor and non-whites down".

Regarding Aristotle (and science in general), to say that "he didn't give us anything new, other than what the farmers, fishermen, etc, knew already", betrays a lack of knowledge of Aristotle's work or/and misses the point on what we mean by science altogether. Just as in Math above, true, maybe the fishermen knew much of what Aristotle said, that's not the point. The point is that he gave us the METHOD (observation-
hypothesis-experiment, verification etc). That's what we mean by when we call him the "father of modern science". He was also "hands-on", unlike Plato, cutting open dead animals to study their anatomy, etc, and in his emphasis on experience is justified in several chapters in his "The Parts of Animals".

The same mistakes Conner does on the subject of medicine. The separation of religion, superstition, etc, from medicine, was THE important contribution of the Greeks (Hippocrates) to the world. The rest, come later.

Conner wants to dismiss or undermine major contributions done by ancient Greek scientists, just because they might had been rich, noble, upper-class, etc, or because their contributions did not result to directly and immediately improving poor peoples lives. Why should one's scientific contributions be rated in view of his class, personality, etc?
Should we also dismiss the whole body of Theoretical Physics, because it
doesn't directly give something useful to ordinary engineers, mechanics, carpenters, etc? Also, Conner's claim that Greek science (whatever they didn't "steal" from Africans) was overall damaging to the world, since taken for granted and unquestioned (that science) the Middle Ages scientists did not improve upon it, at least it could be characterized as a joke. It is certainly not the Greeks fault that religious blindness, oppression, and misery in the Dark Ages did not allow scientists to improve upon the ideas of Greek scientists (who, of course, they were not perfect).

Now, of course, the saddest thing in this book is that for Conner to justify his pretty much unjustifiable claims regarding the unoriginal, useless, etc, of Greek science, he ends up relying on unhistorical, unscientific, totally DEBUNKED, and ridiculous references like M. Bernal's "Black Athena". Considering his otherwise good references, his relying on Bernal's book to justify his claims against the Greeks (which most scholars reject), was an unfortunate event.

This book should not be thought as comparable to "A People's History of the US", by H. Zinn, an otherwise very good book. The title might mislead one to think that just because the latter was good, that the former is as good too. It is not the case. Also, they examine different things: one examines the history of a 200 year old country, where the other examines a 2000 year old (or more) activity. Justifiably, though, concerns could be raised on Zinn's position (if not on his book above) as he is the only commentator of Conner's book (on the back cover), claiming that is actually a good book.

Nevertheless, ignoring its un-historicity and bias, it is a well written book. I would recommend it ONLY to critical and careful readers.

Dr. Michael Aristidou
WA

It seems that Cliff Conner's challenging interpretation has ruffled some feathers. The fact that he dares to think that there has been gender and racial and class bias impacting on the history of science immediately damns him in the eyes of some reviewers on this site.

One reviewer has been so upset that he felt compelled to reach for the most terrible label ever: "post-modernist." It seems to me that there is nothing of the sort in Cliff Conner's conceptions or vocabulary. He may be a small "d" democrat, even a good old-fashioned Marxist, but not one of those terrrible, terrible post-modernists (although they, too, happen to talk about the impact of bias on science).

To speak of such things is apparently reason for some folks to uncork their bottle of insults, and splash about unpleasant accusations. That's too bad, since it can easily be documented that social bias and elitism have had an impact among scientists as well as among intellectual historians. It's not such a controversial point.

Rather than getting bent out of shape over Conner's statement of the obvious, the reader should relax and follow the flow of this clearly written book. What Conner shows is rooted in the anthropologically sound understanding that science is a collective process of comprehending and changing the world around us. This is hardly to deny the fact that there have been outstanding and "craftsman-like" individuals who have sythesized the work of others to develop new insights and make exciting breakthroughs. (For every such genius, of course, there are a number of intellectual thieves -- some of whom fare badly in Conner's book -- but that it is another matter.) Unlike so many intellectual historians, however, Conner's focus is on the collective process, the unacknowledged heroines and heroes, Conner's "Miners, Midwives, and 'Low Mechaniks'" (as well as hunters and gatherers and early horticulturalists) whose efforts were essential to the forward movement of science.

This is a very good book. As with any such work one can disagree with this or that aspect of the interpretation, of course. But it can be read profitably in conjunction with more standard works which focus on the contributions coming from the "great names" in science. Is it the last word in the history of science? Of course not. But it does offer us, in a very readable and often compelling form, essential dimensions of the story.

Being of a generally socialist bent, I am very sympathetic to the project of "people's histories", ever since it was conceived by A.L. Morton's excellent A people's history of England, but that does not mean that we should be uncritical towards what is actually written. Not just Howard Zinn's prototype book (People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present) in the modern series should be evaluated with care, but this goes as well for other books in this series, including this one, the "People's History of Science" by Clifford Conner.

Conner's thesis is that although the history of science has often been portrayed in the usual "Great Men" style as the work of a privileged few brilliant men (and yes, almost only men) seeing further than anyone elses and inventing wondrous new sciences and technologies, in reality most of established academia during the ages was of no value whatever, and real scientific progress resulted through the experiments and practice of artisans, painters, miners, etc., not through the academic thinking of the learned.
Tracing a chronology of technological development, Conner gives a convincing if not entirely open-and-shut case for this thesis, in particular when it comes to demonstrating the great advances in science made by the lowly and unacademic during the ancient periods as well as the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Equally, Conner gives women and non-Europeans their due, quite correctly emphasizing the large advances in technology made by the Chinese, the Native American societies, the Arabs, and so on, often ages before any European ever conceived of the thought. Conner does this quite well, in the process also repudiating the popular view of the natives as the "noble savages living in communion with nature"; in reality the various Indian tribes were masters at the manipulation of nature to their advantage, such as forestry and the genetic selection of edible plants to improve agriculture.

However, this book also has clear and evident downsides. Conner's own specialization seems to be in the history of science during the period of the Renaissance through the 18th-19th Centuries, for it is the chapters on this that are by far the best part of the book and particularly worth reading. On other subjects, however, he is much less informed. Especially the chapter on science in ancient Greece is woefully erroneous: Conner has bought completely into the oft-refuted theories of Martin Bernal, including even the slanderous commentary on Karl Otfried Müller, which even Bernal himself has since withdrawn. The entire "out of Africa" tendency of this chapter is as wrong and unscientific as that idea itself. But that's not all, since Conner's understanding of Plato is also horribly mangled, leading him to either ignore or completely misunderstand the possibly progressive elements in Plato's "Republic". For example, when discussing Plato's political views, Conner at no point even deems it worth mentioning that in Plato's ideal society men and women would have an equal opportunity to lead if worthy, surely a very revolutionary view in his time (compare it to Aristoteles!). He also does not understand Plato's conception of the various classes in his society, which are explicitly opposed to the idea of castes one are born into, unlike what Conner seems to assume. Conner even quotes Marx who refutes the point he is trying to make in that context.

I do not know enough about most of the other subjects Conner writes on without being specialized in them, like classical China, prehistoric societies, and so on, to judge whether that suffers from similar flaws, but at least if he gets these things that I do happen to know so horribly wrong, that bodes ill for the trustworthiness of the entire book. So do take his analysis with a grain of salt at all times, and check the sources elsewhere. Additionally, the book contains many minor spelling errors and wrong expressions in foreign languages cited; not a big deal, but something a competent editor should have caught and removed.

On the whole, the book's chapters on the so-called Scientific Revolution are very good, and his commentaries on other historians of science are worth reading. His thesis is also sufficiently proven to be convincing, if not enough to be certain; it may be added though that he does not establish very well that the Great Men theory of the history of science is actually still supported by contemporary historians, making his case seem a bit obsolete. And his use of sources is very narrow and occasionally wholly incorrect at times, so be skeptical when reading.