Fortean Times, October 2006
A People's
History of Science
Miners, Midwives and "Low Mechanicks"
Clifford D Conner
Nation Books,
2005
Pb, xiv+554, notes,
illos, bibl, index, ISBN 1 56025 748 2, $17.95
As modern
historians generally agree (though few have put it as persuasively as
Marxist punk legends The Gang of Four), history's not made by great
men. But the old encomiastic tradition seems to hold sway in the
history of science, which is still too often taught as the works of a
succession of uniquely inspired thinkers like Pythagoras, Galileo and
Newton.
In this provocative tome, American historian Clifford Conner argues
that the development of modern science owes far more to folk wisdom and
the artisanal knowledge of the working man than to the insights of a
few heroic figures. The approach is borrowed from such books as Howard
Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States' – and if
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Zinn returns the
compliment with some prominent plaudits on this book's cover.
Appropriately enough, Conner tells the story of science from
prehistoric times to the present 'scientific-industrial complex' by
drawing on a huge amount of previous research, with over 1300
referenced footnotes. Conner takes a broad definition of science as the
applied knowledge of nature, putting its roots in the geological,
botanical, astronomical and material understanding that the very first
human societies needed to survive.
As people settled down to a life of agriculture and trade, they learned
to use writing and numbers to help keep stock. Literacy then allowed a
greater sharing of knowledge. In the ancient world, the much-lauded
achievements of the Greeks were borrowed wholesale from the Egyptians
and Mesopotamians – something that most contemporary writers freely
acknowledged. The role of a few key thinkers among the elite of Greece,
Conner argues, has been hugely exaggerated, initially by 19th century
proponents of 'racial science' keen to promote the genius of these
'Aryan' forefathers. Plato, by Conner's account, was a vicious crank
with a thoroughly negative influence on science.
The iconoclasm continues with a debunking of Henry the Navigator, the
Portuegese prince whose navigational knowledge was bought from or
tortured out of seamen. Henry's 'discoveries' were news only to other
landbound theorists, not the people who depended on the sea for their
lives and livelihoods. The same pattern repeated itself as the European
empires expanded around the world.
In the book's longest chapters, Conner asks: who were the scientific
revolutionaries? And no less importantly, who were the winners of that
period from 1450-1700 that's often described as the most important
event in Western history? Again, the advances of the time were largely
thanks to the systematisation of craft knowledge. Elite figures like
Tycho Brahe and Robert Boyle owed their reputation to the work of their
technicians and employees. At best, they played an active role in
organising research and designing experiments, but more often acting as
hands-off managers and patrons.
Conner links the mindset of these gentleman scientists with the witch
craze that seized Europe at the same time. Francis Bacon, widely
credited as the father of the scientific revolution, explicitly wrote
of the torture of women accused of witchcraft as a metaphor for the way
that an inquisitive man should extract the secrets of nature. Many of
the victims of the witch craze were simply the possessors of folk
knowledge of botany or medicine which challenged the authority of
professional physicians, and many leading scientists of the day were
far from critical of their persecution.
As for who benefited, it was these gentlemen philosophers who took the
glory while the emerging class of industrial capitalists reaped the
material benefits. It's a trend that continues with the establishment
of science as a tool of industry in the 19th century, and the emergence
of 'Big Science' in the 20th. This is less fruitful ground for Conner's
argument, and the past 200 years occupy just the last 80 pages of the
book.
Obviously a short review can barely scratch the surface of the huge
amount of material covered here. The book is fascinating and
provocative throughout, surprisingly readable, and stuffed full of the
kinds of fact you just have to read out to anyone in the vicinity.
Readers of a conservative bent will find Conner's argument an easy one
to dismiss as just so much Marxist revisionism, but he freely admits to
taking a selective approach to counter the established version of
history.
Forteans certainly shouldn't be too challenged by the idea that
scientific 'progress' is a product of broader social and economic
currents rather the works of a few great men. After all, you don't get
steam engines till it's steam-engine-time - and to discover a little
about the factors that led to numerous engineers making the same
near-simultaneous breakthrough, see page 424.