THE GLOBAL ORIGINS OF MODERN SCIENCE by Dr James Poskett (2012)
For well over a century, historians have been searching for the origins of modern science.
You’re probably familiar with the traditional story of the ‘scientific revolution’, the period between 1500 and 1700 when leading European figures challenged ancient wisdom and proposed radical new scientific theories. This was the period in which the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus put the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the centre of the universe. It was the period in which the Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei first observed the moons of Jupiter. And it was the period in which Newton himself set out the laws of motion in his Principia (1687).
Where did modern science come from? As a reader of The Fountain, you may be thinking that the answer is obvious. Surely modern science was invented at Trinity College? From the mathematician Isaac Newton to the physicist Ernest Rutherford, Trinity has long been home to some of the world’s most influential scientists. That’s true, but what about the world outside of Great Court? In my new book, I push the history of science, not just beyond Trinity College, but beyond Europe, exploring the ways in which Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific fit into the story. Despite what we’re often told, modern science was not invented in Europe. Rather, new research has started to reveal the global origins of modern science. © MPIWG LIBRARY / STAATSBIBLIOTHEK BERLIN.
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s ‘Tusi couple’, which enabled Copernicus to solve a major problem with his model of the universe.
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Historians of science certainly disagreed on some things, such as the causes and timing of the scientific revolution. But very few stopped to ask whether they were looking in the right place to begin with. Was modern science really a product of Europe alone? As it turns out, European science was not quite as unique as historians had often assumed. What’s more, many of the great breakthroughs made by famous European figures were in fact reliant on their connections to the wider world. Copernicus is a good example. In On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), he cites five Islamic authors, including the Iberian astronomer Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji and the Mesopotamian mathematician Al-Battani. For much of his astronomical data, Copernicus relied on the Alfonsine Tables, an updated compilation of a set of earlier tables produced by astronomers in Muslim Spain. Copernicus also borrowed a very important geometrical technique from the Persian astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. Known as the ‘Tusi couple’, this combination of two circles – a smaller one rotating inside a larger one – allowed Copernicus to solve a major problem with his
