Where and when did science begin? Was it in a prehistoric cave? Should we count the ancient cave paintings of Lascaux, likely created to win the favor of the spirits, as an early attempt at science? What about the agricultural innovations of the earliest city-states? Or should we begin the story of science in the 17th or 18th century with the develop of the modern scientific method? In his new book The Upright Thinkers, Leonard Mlodinow, an author, physicist, and former member of the writing staff for Star Trek: The New Generation, tells the story of science as a progress involving sweeping cultural changes better understood in a greater historical context:
"The development of modern science, for example—often heralded as the work of 'isolated geniuses' such as Galileo and Newton—did not spring from a social or cultural vacuum. It had its roots in the approach to knowledge invented by the ancient Greeks; it grew from the big questions posed by religion; it developed hand in hand with a new approach to art; it as colored by the lessons of alchemy; and it would have been impossible without social progress ranging from the grand development of the great universities of Europe to mundane inventions such as that of the postal systems that grew to connect nearby cities and countries. The Greek enlightenment, similarly, spouted form the astounding intellectual inventions of earlier peoples in lands such as Mesopotamia and Egypt."The process by which one culture builds upon another on, Mlodinow writes, is called "cultural ratcheting", and it's an essential component of scientific evolution. Ideas live on long after their creators have died, with future generations building upon them. Mystic and mathematician Pythagoras brought the secrets of learned Egyptian sages to the marble halls of Greece, building upon them and spreading them even further among his disciples. We, in turn, have taken the ideas of Pythagoras and made built upon them. Even the most erudite of inquiries have their antecedents in the most elemental of impulses. Mlodinow looks at the endless curiosity of natural philosopher Sir Isaac Newton and sees the same drive to understand the world that inspired the ancients who built Göbekli Tepe. Sir Isaac, was a secret devotee of alchemy: a well of proto-science from which others drew the vital waters of scientific inquiry for hundreds if not thousands of years. Newton, in turn, laid the foundation of innovation upon which Albert Einstein, Neil Bohrs, and Robert Oppenheimer would build the edifice of modern physics. Mlodinow's scientific narrative makes for compelling reading, grounding as it does the many scientific innovations that have made our civilization what it is in the history of what once was. Presuming we don't destroy ourselves with the technological gifts that have been bequeathed to us over the centuries, this journey will continue ever forward into the future.
