The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm, Lewis Dartnell (Penguin, 2014). This is not the book I wanted to read. The book I wanted to read was a detailed guide to bootstrapping your way to industrial civilization (or at least antibiotics) if you should happen to be dumped back in, say, the late Bronze Age.
I'm reminded of the book, Earth Abides. Where the main character would like to rebuild civilization based on the past one but realizes that it's not possible or practicable. Can goods and ammo are scarce 30 years after the collapse and they need a better way to acquire food. He decides to show the younger generation a bow and arrow. Thinking it would be efficient for how they now live but also save civilization a lot of time in having to reinvent it.
Darnell is exactly right about science versus knowledge. We have run this experiment. In 150BC, classical civilization was overrun by barbarians, leaving behind the most famous library in the history of the world, but it didn't do any good, taking 1500 years to recover. The barbarians combed it to write encyclopedias of trivia ("the planets move weirdly because the sun shoots triangles at them"). The enslaved civilization continued making things, such as aqueducts and colloids, but their ability to think declined. A couple hundred years later, there was a renaissance of people reading library books better than the barbarians, but it was unable to stop decline, let alone revive progress.
Roger Bacon invented science by reading examples of it in Archimedes, not the detailed information of Ptolemy. Worse, Ptolemy is full of false examples of how knowledge is supposed to be generated.
Maybe the Hellenistic Greeks could have better prepared for the death of science by writing handbooks codifying science. Probably they couldn't have done better than the Sand Reckoner. But codifying that it is the place to start would have been valuable.
"The book I wanted to read was a detailed guide to bootstrapping your way to industrial civilization (or at least antibiotics) if you should happen to be dumped back in, say, the late Bronze Age."
I'm just now finding this review (which is excellent), but I want this book you describe so badly that it hurts.
In great scientific writing, I'd recommend Structures, or why things don't fall down, by JE Gordon. He discusses things as diverse as the musical skills required of Roman artillery officers, trusses, why metal beams are ][ shaped, bias cut dresses, why medieval churches have buttresses, and crack propagation.
"Copernicus’s theory was substantially less accurately predictive than the Ptolemaic geocentric model that preceded it. A proper Popperian science should have rejected it out of hand; only steadfastly ignoring the data let it stick around long enough to be refined and generally adopted."
This is simply not true. Both theories were, very roughly, equally inaccurate, though observations by Tycho Brahe (the most careful pre-telescopic observer) suggested that Copernicus's theory tended, on average, to provide better predictions.
E.g., from this discussion of Tycho's observations [https://inference-review.com/article/ptolemy-versus-copernicus]: "The analysis offered here has demonstrated that Tycho compared the predictions of planetary positions made by Copernicus and Ptolemy with his own observations and indeed found, on balance, Copernicus to be superior. In fact, Tycho’s own data refute the claim, made by many historians of science, that overall the Copernican theory was not superior to the Ptolemaic."
It is perhaps instructive to consider what happened later when Galileo observed the phases of Venus with a telescope, reporting a sequence of phases which agreed perfectly with the Copernican model but which were strictly impossible according to Ptolemy; when this was verified by other observers, the Ptolemaic model was rapidly discarded by most astronomers -- see, e.g., the discussion in David Wootton's The Invention of Science. Which is actually a pretty "Popperian" moment.
I'm reminded of the book, Earth Abides. Where the main character would like to rebuild civilization based on the past one but realizes that it's not possible or practicable. Can goods and ammo are scarce 30 years after the collapse and they need a better way to acquire food. He decides to show the younger generation a bow and arrow. Thinking it would be efficient for how they now live but also save civilization a lot of time in having to reinvent it.
Darnell is exactly right about science versus knowledge. We have run this experiment. In 150BC, classical civilization was overrun by barbarians, leaving behind the most famous library in the history of the world, but it didn't do any good, taking 1500 years to recover. The barbarians combed it to write encyclopedias of trivia ("the planets move weirdly because the sun shoots triangles at them"). The enslaved civilization continued making things, such as aqueducts and colloids, but their ability to think declined. A couple hundred years later, there was a renaissance of people reading library books better than the barbarians, but it was unable to stop decline, let alone revive progress.
Roger Bacon invented science by reading examples of it in Archimedes, not the detailed information of Ptolemy. Worse, Ptolemy is full of false examples of how knowledge is supposed to be generated.
Maybe the Hellenistic Greeks could have better prepared for the death of science by writing handbooks codifying science. Probably they couldn't have done better than the Sand Reckoner. But codifying that it is the place to start would have been valuable.
"The book I wanted to read was a detailed guide to bootstrapping your way to industrial civilization (or at least antibiotics) if you should happen to be dumped back in, say, the late Bronze Age."
I'm just now finding this review (which is excellent), but I want this book you describe so badly that it hurts.
In great scientific writing, I'd recommend Structures, or why things don't fall down, by JE Gordon. He discusses things as diverse as the musical skills required of Roman artillery officers, trusses, why metal beams are ][ shaped, bias cut dresses, why medieval churches have buttresses, and crack propagation.
Sounds right up my alley, thanks!
"Copernicus’s theory was substantially less accurately predictive than the Ptolemaic geocentric model that preceded it. A proper Popperian science should have rejected it out of hand; only steadfastly ignoring the data let it stick around long enough to be refined and generally adopted."
This is simply not true. Both theories were, very roughly, equally inaccurate, though observations by Tycho Brahe (the most careful pre-telescopic observer) suggested that Copernicus's theory tended, on average, to provide better predictions.
E.g., from this discussion of Tycho's observations [https://inference-review.com/article/ptolemy-versus-copernicus]: "The analysis offered here has demonstrated that Tycho compared the predictions of planetary positions made by Copernicus and Ptolemy with his own observations and indeed found, on balance, Copernicus to be superior. In fact, Tycho’s own data refute the claim, made by many historians of science, that overall the Copernican theory was not superior to the Ptolemaic."
It is perhaps instructive to consider what happened later when Galileo observed the phases of Venus with a telescope, reporting a sequence of phases which agreed perfectly with the Copernican model but which were strictly impossible according to Ptolemy; when this was verified by other observers, the Ptolemaic model was rapidly discarded by most astronomers -- see, e.g., the discussion in David Wootton's The Invention of Science. Which is actually a pretty "Popperian" moment.