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Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?

85 points by mariedavid ↗ HN
Ideally, I'm looking at something similar to Russell's History of Philosophy but for science. I am studying the history of philosophy right now, and I'd like to complement the curriculum with some reading on the history of science.

94 comments

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pinewurst
“The Sleepwalkers” by Arthur Koestler
jleyank
You have to like his writing style but bill Bryson’s short history of everything. James burke’s day the universe changed is thought provoking and bronowski’s ascent of man is also good.

Timothy Ferris (not that one) and John gribbin have also trod this area.

WhompingWindows
Came here to suggest Bill Bryson's Short History of Everything. It covers a lot of less top-of-mind concepts, like he delves into air-balloons, artificial cloud making, moss collections, geological history, botany, and all manner of fields.
etrautmann
I also recommend this - he walks through how we know what we know across many fields of science and it’s highly informative and entertaining throughout
Jxl180
It's just unfortunately very out of date. He says something like, "finding the Higgs-Boson Wil be a task for a different century" or something to that effect.
adhesive_wombat
The actual quote is "whether it actually exists is a matter for 21st century physics," so he was completely correct. It was, indeed, a matter for 21st century physics: the Higgs boson was proven to exist in 2012: about 9 years after the book was published.
Jxl180
To be fair, I didn’t say he was wrong, I said it’s out of date.
adhesive_wombat
Well, you kind of made it sound like he was predicting it wouldn't be found for a century (though I suppose is he'd written the book just 4 years earlier, he'd then be right).

It actually goes into some detail about why the Higgs boson is important, it just says "it hasn't been found yet". If you fill in the epilogue of "the Higgs boson was found in 2012" yourself, those pages are still consistent, correct and useful.

It would really be out of date if the Higgs had been disproved, as it would have two pages of, essentially, a branch predictor failure.

Jxl180
I honestly thought the book was written in the 80s or 90s. I didn’t know it was as recent as 2003. That’s totally on me.
mariedavid
Thanks, I have heard a lot about Bill Bryson but never took the time to read it. I will start with this one.
spenrose
I've read a couple dozen. Best by far is David Wootton's The Invention of Science. Wootton has the language skills to work through the primary materials, and shows how in 100 years we went from educated people believing in werewolves and possession to having a modern, materialist understanding of reality.

https://www.inventionofscience.com

antwerp1
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
falcor84
I'd be very interested in a follow-up. Have there been any real paradigm shifts since?
robg
In neuroscience absolutely, from behaviorism, to the cognitive sciences, to modern techniques of every grain size. Psychology is still awash though in pseudoscience.
brian_spiering
The increased role of computation and machine learning in many scientific fields is a paradigm shift.
qiskit
Sure. In the last 100 years, "bohr's" non-deterministic quantum physics has all but overtaken "einstein's" deterministic physics. The final nail in the coffin for einstein will be a theory of quantum gravity. Can't get a bigger paradigm shift than switching from a deterministic to a non-deterministic world.
dandare
Not Kuhn's fault, but this book started a different kind of revolution:

> Postmodernists interpreted Thomas Kuhn's ideas about scientific paradigms to mean that scientific theories are social constructs, and philosophers like Paul Feyerabend argued that other, non-realist forms of knowledge production were better suited to serve people's personal and spiritual needs.

> Kuhn described the development of scientific knowledge not as a linear increase in truth and understanding, but as a series of periodic revolutions which overturned the old scientific order and replaced it with new orders (what he called "paradigms"). Kuhn attributed much of this process to the interactions and strategies of the human participants in science rather than its own innate logical structure.

> Some interpreted Kuhn's ideas to mean that scientific theories were, either wholly or in part, social constructs, which many interpreted as diminishing the claim of science to representing objective reality

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars]

wolverine876
That is some unknown people's broad-based interpretation of others' interpretations of Kuhn's theories of science. That is far from the source and through a filter of unknown accuracy - very unscientific!
solarmist
Heh. I take it as a compliment about how powerful his ideas were. But yeah, some serious overreaching with some of his ideas.

“Fanboys going all in on an idea and applying it to everything” kinda thing.

leephillips
Maybe better is his “The Copernican Revolution”. It’s one of the best popularizations of the history of science I’ve ever read.
easytiger
With the caveat that it has been well argued that "scientific revolutions" are an artefact of historical compression rather than real phenomenon that was experienced by participants in said "revolution"
solarmist
I'm pretty sure his conclusion was that new paradigms take hold by the previous generation dying/retiring. So I'm not sure how much compression that really is.
kippinitreal
I’ll second “Making of the Atomic Bomb” as an excellent history of modern physics tied to a great narrative.

For Biology I really enjoyed “A Brief History of Creation”, high level overview of all of the advances to understand what we are made of.

“Eight Day of Creation” is supposed to be incredible but it’s the size of the text book so I keep reaching past it on my desk

elhosots
The day we found the universe

Marcia bartusiak

Interesting (great!) read on the history of (fairly recent) astronomy. Ties in with physics

philomathdan
I enjoyed "The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors" by John Gribbin so much I've read it twice.
throw0101a
The Middle ("Medieval") Ages had a lot going on:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Philosophers

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2071784.God_s_Clockmaker

The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science by Seb Faulk was recently (2020) published and won a few awards (lots of interview on YouTube):

* https://twitter.com/Seb_Falk

Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution and The Rise of Early Modern Science by Toby Huff:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Huff

If you're doing philosophy and science, you may be curious about law: see The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession by Brundage:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Brundage

break_the_bank
e=mc^2 A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation Book by David Bodanis

This was a nice short read! I’d definite recommend it.

dandare
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson tells the story of many important scientific discoveries.
liamgriffiths
Coming of age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris

I loved this one because it covers a lot of ground and includes a lot of fascinating detail around the human factors and personalities involved.

ipnon
"The Eighth Day of Creation" is a second-hand account of the discovery of DNA and the molecular biotechnology revolution that followed. It's like watching da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa.
EamonnMR
Brief History of Mathematical Thought was good, as was Music Of The Primes.
nest0r
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
harshreality
The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester isn't so much a survey of fundamental scientific advancements, but precision engineering goes hand in hand with modern developments in physics, chemistry, microbiology, and medicine. Simply skimming the index of that book, or Starrett's catalogues, can provide some hints about things that might be overlooked in a general history of (modern) science. Scientific ideas come from the famous scientists, but scientific progress relies on experimental apparatus, which require tools. Actual products people can use also require tools to build. Those tools, and where and when they came from, are rarely emphasized in scientific histories.

There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Inventors_Hal...

runnr_az
100% agree… the history of technology is, in some ways, the history of more and more precise engineering. Bonus - Winchester reads the audiobook himself and he’s everything you’d want in a wise and worldly old British guy
wooly_bully
Not a book, but the History of Science series from Crash Course on youtube is very entertaining.
herodotus
I recommend "To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science" by Steven Weinberg.
bretthopper
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick

This is specific to "Information, communication, and information theory." but it's still quite broad and a great read.

mariedavid
I loved this book when I read it indeed. Really comprehensive and smart.
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