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Books like Eureka: The Birth of Science

Eureka: The Birth of Science

1999, Andrew Gregory

2.4/5

Here's something that I think we can all agree on: lists are not interesting. You could show me Elon Musk's shopping list, or the notated holdings of the British Museum and it's just going to bore me. That's not to say that there's nothing interesting about either of those things, in fact in the right format the information in either of those objects would be fascinating reading. A deep psychological dive into Musk based on his choice of yoghurt. A rich history of selected artefacts from the museum. But lists? I'll pass.This book is almost entirely a collection of lists.Anyone who's studied the history of science at all will know that we owe the Greeks a great deal, in fact it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that they founded science as we know it. I read this book knowing this, and hoping to learn more about why this happened in Greece and not somewhere else. There are perhaps two paragraphs explaining this in cursory detail, and then an awful lot of pages listing 'X person thought Y about this subject, but Z felt differently'. A list of names and briefly sketched views. I can understand that maybe to someone coming in completely ignorant of the subject might find this a valuable overview of what Greek thought about science was. But if, like me, you were after a deep sociological dive into why science sprang into being in Greece, or a well-researched and cited look into the great minds of the period and their debates, then give this a miss. A complete lack of characterisation of scientist and location make this little more than a list of names and one-sentence ideas.Maybe next time I'll read Elon's choice of fabric softener instead.
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