Ronald L. Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis
Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.
—Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1872)
“Who cares?” a critical reader of this book might ask. Who cares about Newton’s apple or Mendel’s peas? Why should anyone care to learn more about the historical episodes and ideas discussed in this book? Perhaps a biologist should know more about Darwin or Mendel, a physicist about Newton and Einstein, a chemist about Wöhler and Pauling, and so on. But maybe not? Perhaps even science students and scientists should not worry too much about learning the details of the life and work of the giants of their discipline. In any case, these giants are long dead, and their theories have changed or disappeared. Contemporary science is very different from what “men of science” used to do in the past. In fact, about half of the historical figures in this book were involved in natural history or natural philosophy, rather than in what we now call science. Therefore, why bother to know the details of what seem to be stories that are esoteric to specific disciplines?
The answer to the reasonable question Who cares? is simple and clear but not always explicit and straightforward: one should care because historical myths about science hinder science literacy and advance a distorted portrayal of how science has been—and is—done. Contrary to what Charles Darwin wrote in the opening quotation to this introduction, the history of science unfortunately shows that the power of misrepresentation endures, and as a consequence, myths remain widespread. We should perhaps note at this point that as in Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, the model for this book, we do not employ the term “myth” in any sophisticated academic sense but rather in the way it is used in everyday conversation—to designate a claim that is false.1
The public learns about science in formal (e.g., schools), nonformal (e.g., museums), and informal (e.g., mass media) ways. In all cases, alongside the content knowledge they acquire about a specific discipline (such as Newtonian mechanics in school, evolution in a natural-history museum, or the genetic basis of a disease in the news), people also get an implicit message about how science was done in each case. This message is often transmitted through a narrative about how a scientist “discovered” what students now learn as a “fact.” For instance, it is customary to read in a newspaper about some scientist in a university or research center who made a groundbreaking discovery, which has uncovered or is expected to uncover the secrets of a particular natural phenomenon. The implicit emphasis in such accounts is often on how bright that person was, how many years he or she devoted to the respective research, and how important the achievement is.
No one questions the need to be bright and hardworking in order to achieve something significant in science, but that is not the whole story. Traditional narratives often mask other important components of these achievements, such as the contributions of associates and assistants or the possibility that luck may have played a role. Stories that focus on one component of a scientific achievement may ignore some other equally important ones. This can lead to stereotypes about science—some of which are exposed in the last chapters of this book, which focus on how science is practiced and what kind of knowledge it produces. The first chapters, in contrast, explore some clichés about early science and misconceptions about the methods and accomplishments of some well-known scientists.
Students, educators, and general readers need not only to acquire a knowledge of scientific content but also to understand what is called “the nature of science”: how science is done, what kinds of questions scientists ask, and what kinds of knowledge they produce. Such scientifically literate citizens will possess a more authentic view of science and will be better able to understand the strengths and limitations of science—and thus make informed decisions about important issues, such as climate change, genetic testing, and biological evolution. Overall, the chapters in this book debunk three kinds of myths: those about the precursors of modern science, those about how science is done, and those about scientists themselves.
Other scholars have single-handedly attempted to correct many of the most egregious myths about science, with greater or lesser success.2 Too timid to take on this task by ourselves, we solicited the assistance of some twenty-six other experts in the history of science and science education. Together, we episodically or thematically cover the past two thousand years of history. Many of our contributors rank among the leading scholars in the world in their fields of expertise; all of them are experts in their assigned topics. Although some mistakes may have escaped our collective scrutiny, we hope that we have kept them to a minimum.