November 7, 2004
BOOKS; Amazing Stories
By BETTYANN HOLTZMANN KEVLES
The Story of Science:
Aristotle Leads the Way
By Joy Hakim
Smithsonian Books, hardcover
Joy Hakim, author of a popular history series for young people, is off to an impressive start in this first of six volumes about science. Through serious anecdote and lighthearted aside, ''The Story of Science'' plumbs the origins of astronomy, physics and mathematics in the ancient world through the 17th century.
Ms. Hakim is a fine storyteller who winks at readers and never talks down. Her audience may be wary of science, but children should delight in the foibles and bad luck of scientists past.
While the book salutes the myths and achievements of ancient civilizations of Mayans, Egyptians, Indians and Chinese, she singles out Europe for taking the idea of mathematics and running with it: the discovery of pi, Archimedes's principle (and his contribution to warfare), the ''golden ratio'' and the follow-up over a thousand years later by Fibonacci in 13th-century Italy.
''In a corner of the Mediterranean world,'' she writes, thinkers separated science from mythology and came up with ''the big idea of science -- that the universe is governed by mathematical laws that can be understood by humans.''
It was not steady progress. Intolerant authorities and conquerors suppressed ideas, and some of Ms. Hakim's scientific heroes insisted on errors that held back progress for centuries. But not forever. This is important for children to understand. Science corrects itself and is open-ended. There is always a next question, which may not be answered right away, or ever.
Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles teaches the history of science and medicine at Yale.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CEFDA1E3DF934A35752C1A9629C8B63#
|
|
|